Gypsy closes the lid on her laptop. The sofa isn’t against a wall, but rather sits in the middle of the suite’s living room, back to the entry. Anyone walking in would have a clear view of the screen.
How long had the maid been standing behind her?
She plucks something from the floor and waves it at Gypsy. It’s the Do Not Disturb sign. “It’s here. Inside, you see? Not on the door. You made a mistake.”
“I didn’t make the mistake. My friend did.”
Damn him.
“But don’t you want the maid to make up the room?” he’d asked on his way out, when she’d told him to be sure the sign was in place. “Bed made up with fresh sheets . . . so that we can destroy the bed again later?”
“I want privacy. And you’ll be in Connecticut, keeping an eye on her like I told you. Find out everything you can, because when the time comes, we’ll need to move fast.”
He’d grumbled his way out the door. Had he left the sign off on purpose?
Is the maid really a maid?
Her name tag reads Kasia. Gypsy memorizes it, and her face, and her hairstyle. A short cut with long bangs, parted on the side above her blue eyes. But she could be wearing a wig, and colored contact lenses, faking the Slavic accent. She might not be a maid at all. She might have crept up behind Gypsy and peered over her shoulder and seen what she was doing online.
“I’m sorry. I will leave. I take garbage?” She reaches for the soggy plastic cape lying on the floor behind the couch.
“That’s not garbage, it’s my raincoat!”
“So sorry, so sorry. Do you want me to leave fresh towels or—”
“Just go.”
Kasia fumbles her way out into the hall, closing the door behind her.
Gypsy strides over to it and slides the chain, hand trembling. Turning, she spots a figure across the room, and gasps.
But it’s just her reflection in the mirror. She walks over and peers closer, confirming traces of the other woman’s features in her own.
We could be related. She could be Margaret’s daughter. She found me before I could find her. She wants to destroy me before I can destroy her.
If she’s Oran’s daughter, she’s inherently smart, and dangerous.
So? You’re smarter. More dangerous.
She returns to the closed door and leans into the peephole, expecting to find a blue eye looking back at her. She sees only the open door to the suite across from hers, and the edge of the maid’s cart alongside it.
She puts her hand on the knob, then pulls it back. There will be security cameras in the hallway.
That’s all right. Gypsy is one step ahead of the woman calling herself Kasia—and she’ll stay a few steps behind her when she leaves after her shift.
Barnes drives around Cynthia Randall’s residential industrial neighborhood looking for a parking spot. Warehouses and shuttered manufacturers share blocks with storefronts and houses that aren’t so much historic as they are old.
The only people who seem to be out and about can’t be considered pedestrians. They’re not walking; they’re loitering.
Barnes knows the type. He was the type, back in his juvenile delinquent days after his father died, before Wash came along one night when Barnes was breaking into cars.
In his troubled youth, his street name had been “Gloss,” so smooth and slick that nothing ever stuck. Wash did—his friendship, the legacy of NYPD service, the lessons he taught, his warnings, and his advice—with two noted exceptions.
Barnes has spent his adult life rationalizing his reckless behavior in March and October 1987. When he was younger, he blamed circumstances.
The night Barnes slept with Delia Montague, Wash was hospitalized for the illness that would kill him. The night Barnes accepted the dirty money from Stef and walked away from his newborn daughter, Wash’s health was deteriorating, and a close mutual friend of theirs had just been killed in an armed robbery.
Three decades later, Barnes owns his mistakes. Too bad being older and wiser doesn’t grant you a time-travel pass to undo the damage and make things right.
Barnes squeezes the car into a spot in front of a church where the signboard letters have been rearranged to spell an obscenity, and baby Jesus is ankle-shackled to the manger in the curbside plaster crèche.
They walk several blocks, long-legged Amelia matching his stride, her boot heels clicking along the sidewalk. They pass a playground, empty swings dangling above muddy trenches.
“Can we go to the park and play Penny on the Playground, Daddy?”
“You’re getting warmer, son!”
At Cynthia’s address, they find a multifamily house. The peeling paint job isn’t quite white and isn’t quite beige. A few tufts of grass poke alongside puddles in a tiny yard that’s mostly mud. There’s a small rutted driveway with space for two cars. A dented Toyota occupies one, with two children’s car seats in the back. There are two front doors on the small cinderblock stoop covered by a vinyl awning. One is hung with a tinsel candy cane that appears to have weathered many a nor’easter.
At an adjacent house across the chain-link fence, a large dog is leashed to a stub of a tree. He growls and yaps wildly as they approach.
“Aw, nice doggy,” Amelia says. “What’s your name, fella?”
“My money’s on ‘Satan,’” Barnes mutters.
They ascend the steps. The wrought iron railing wobbles in his hand, detached from its concrete anchor. The other railing is a crude, splintery-looking replacement crafted from two-by-fours.
Cynthia Randall lives at 265A, the door on the left. Not the one with the bedraggled candy cane—for better or worse, he’s not sure.
He rings the bell, and they wait. Satan barks, trying to launch himself over the fence.
After a minute, Barnes rings again. Still nothing. He knocks. The candy cane door remains closed, but the other one opens. A young Hispanic woman stands with a baby on her hip and a toddler lurking at her knees.
“Buck! Cállate la boca!” she shouts at the dog next door, and to Barnes’s shock, the animal obeys. She turns back to Barnes and Amelia, resuming a conversation they haven’t yet had. “Hi. Cynthia’s at work till . . . What’s today, Tuesday?”
“Wednesday.”
“Oh, si. Wednesday—she’ll be home in about half an hour if you want to come back. I would have you come in to wait, but I’m about to put these two down for their naps, and they need a quiet house to sleep. Don’t ring the bell or knock when you come back. And don’t get Buck going, because that dog, he is loco.”
She closes the door.
Barnes and Amelia look at each other, then down at the steps. Dry, thanks to the awning. They sit down to wait.
“It can’t possibly be getting dark out yet, can it?” Amelia checks her watch.
“It can. Dead of winter, and the farther east you go, the earlier the sun sets.”
“When there is sun.” She looks from the grim sky to the burned-out house across the street. “You know until today, I assumed New England was all fancy suburbs and picturesque small towns, not gritty cities.”
“Eh, I’ll take a gritty city any day. Small towns aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
“I don’t know about that. I was planning to stay in Ithaca after college.”