Sweet relief. A dad—but not a husband.
“Let me see if Kat and I can get this update out real quick. This is big. Thank you.”
“Could be the break in the case,” he said.
“Nice work. And I’ll let you know, on pizza.”
By early afternoon, Kat and I had filed our next piece of breaking news:
Police have arrested a former PrydeTek employee they say hacked the million-dollar dolls’ video streams, using sex tapes to extort nearly $1 million from the three men found fatally stabbed over the past two weeks.
It’s unclear whether the hacker may be linked to the murders.
I snapped the laptop shut on the kitchen countertop.
Hopefully, it’s not unclear for long.
Chapter 21
Where the hell have you been?”
The man in a flour-dusted apron stepped out from behind the counter, his hands up in the air. He smacked them on both of Davies’s shoulders, leaving fingerprints on his blue button-up shirt. “It’s good to see you back,” the man said, the rhythm of his accent punctuating his exclamations. “And with someone pretty, too.”
Davies smiled.
“This is Lana.”
“Maria!” He shouted back to the kitchen. “Come out here. You won’t believe who’s back, and he brought his girlfriend Anna.”
Davies started to correct the shop owner, on a few points, but he wasn’t listening.
“Best seat in the house for you two,” he said, looking around the cramped seating area at the five tables, already occupied. “How about al fresco?”
He dragged a folding table and two chairs to the sidewalk outside, situating us on a small slab of concrete under a maroon awning, steps away from a steady crowd ambling through the North End’s restaurant-dense scene at dinnertime.
“Now, Andre,” he said. “Pizza Margherita for you? How about for the lady?”
Andre looked at me, and I nodded, excited for what he said was the best pizza in the North End.
“Same, thank you.”
“Good decision,” the shop owner said. Then he paused. “You know, I like you. I got the food covered. The rest—that is up to this guy.”
He laughed with gusto, slapped Davies on the shoulder again and hurried back to the kitchen.
“Marco and Maria have been friends for a long time,” Davies said, peering into the pizza shop. “Through all the ups and downs.”
“Well,” I said, “I can’t think of any better way to make it through the downs than pizza.”
“Wait until you taste it.” Davies smiled. “On ups and downs—what a first week for you. How does Boston compare to Chicago?”
“Different than I expected.” I sat back in the folding chair. “I thought I’d be moving away from writing crime stories.”
“But you couldn’t resist this one.” He raised his eyebrows at me.
“You got me.” I shrugged. “But who could, really? I mean, sex dolls, sex tapes, three murders in a row. Unsolved murders. Did you find out any more about the hacker?”
Davies laughed.
“Do you ever stop?”
“I apologize.” I spotted Marco, hands full, pushing open the door behind us. “Tonight is just you and me, and pizza.”
It didn’t disappoint. I was just about lost in a crisp crust when Davies offered some more info—off the record—on what police had culled from the programmer.
“It’s in his interest, of course, to work with us to help track down the killer,” he said. “He says the system really wasn’t that hard to hack. As slick as Elliott may be, he fell short on security measures.”
“So the field of candidates has widened, instead of narrowed? Or, he could be leading you to a scapegoat.”
“We’re just glad we don’t have rogue robots on a murder streak,” Davies said, with a laugh. “We’ll find the killer, whoever it is. In the meantime—and I’m sure your big scoop is helping with this already—we’re asking anyone with one of the dolls to shut it down completely, or to shut her down completely, I guess I should say.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Davies looked at me, and I realized I’d said the word aloud.
It was time to tell Davies about Sandra.
Chapter 22
Aside from my slip about Sandra, and the warning from Davies that followed, it might have been a just-right first date. Standing outside my apartment, I fished for my key.
“I really had fun,” I said.
“So did I,” Davies said. “I hope it won’t be too long before I see you again. My expertise isn’t limited to just pizza. There’s still cannoli.”
“Well, this is a girl who loves pastries,” I said, key in hand.
“That’s because you’re such a sweetie—Anna.”
I burst into a laugh and he leaned in close to me.
“You’re hilarious.” I put a hand on one of his forearms and looked up at him. Clean-cut, kind, silly in the most lovable way.
Should I let him kiss me?
And my phone rang.
I pulled it out of my purse. The caller name, “Momma,” lit up the screen.
“I can’t compete with Momma,” he said, giving me a quick squeeze. “Give me a call.”
I nodded and stepped inside.
“Sweetheart, how did it go?”
I shut the door quickly, hoping Davies hadn’t somehow caught her question.
“It was great,” I told her, sinking into an armchair. “He was charming, funny. It was really sweet the way he talked about his boys. I could tell he was a good guy from the start. Of course, we both know I’ve been wrong before.”
“That’s all the past now,” she said. “What you’ve got is right now, today. You left that old scumbag back in Chicago. Is that what’s bugging my baby girl? I can’t tell if you’re happy.”
“It’s not anything to do with that,” I said. “Davies was great. I actually haven’t thought once about that scumbag since I got here. I’m just tired.”
“Well, you had a busy week,” she said. “Get some rest and take it easy tomorrow. I want you to know you’re still a good judge of character. Trust your gut, sweetheart. You’ll know in your heart the right thing.”
I let that sink in. My mom always seemed to know what I needed to hear, even when she was referring to something else. The spirit of the message was right on.
“You’re right,” I said. “Love you.”
I stood up as soon as I ended the call and went straight to my bedroom. Picking out a stretchy green dress, size 2, and an oversized navy sweater, I packed the bundle in a plastic bag. Then I added a note on the back of one of my new business cards:
Sandra, the memory you have of escaping is fake. You don’t have to be afraid, and you don’t have to stay.
Chapter 23
I’d just settled on a playlist I’d titled “Badass Babes” and tucked my phone into my waistband when a call interrupted my first cranked-up running song.
Instead of Pink’s newest single, the name Detective Andre Davies was on the screen. A bit too soon for him to be calling, I thought, the morning after our first date.
I stood there for a moment, watching it ring, and then moved aside for another spandex-clad, early-morning jogger to pass me. I decided not to pick up Andre’s call—let him wait; nothing wrong with playing hard to get.
Soon I’d caught up close behind her, fueled for the next forty-five minutes by Pink’s high-power attitude and the promise of a voice mail from Davies. Boston’s skyline and the city’s promise became more distinct by the minute. Rays of dawn made sequins on the water to my right, and my budding love interest was very clearly interested.
What a rush.
I’d just slowed back down to a walk, breathing heavily, when I couldn’t wait a second longer. I was floating. I had a nice time with you, too, Andre Davies.
My earbuds still in, I hit Play on the voice mail.
But instantly I recognized it wasn’t the playful ton
e he’d taken last night. Something had changed.
“Lana, I’m sorry to bother you this early.”
His voice stopped for a second, and I checked to see whether I’d accidentally paused the message. I hadn’t.
“I just got the call.”
So what the hell happened?
He went on: “One of the dolls was discovered on the street.”
Dear God, if she got out, just leave her be.
Please.
“She might have fallen, or might have been pushed, or…maybe she leapt herself, twenty-two stories. Anyway, she’s in pieces, I’m told.”
I slumped to the curb. The euphoria from my run and the breakthrough stories came crashing down.
“I don’t know if it’s something you’d want to see, or cover, but after what you told me about Sandra last night, I thought you would at least want to know. You can call me back if you need more info, or a street address.”
I checked my text messages. One from Davies: Hope you’re ok.
I wasn’t—but I knew exactly what I had to do.
Chapter 24
Less than an hour later, alone in an elevator, speeding up to Allen Green’s apartment, I went over a plan in my mind. Leave the bag of clothes for Sandra and go. Get the hell out of there, Lana Mae.
At least that’s what I told myself as I followed the long, narrow seventeenth-story hallway, eerily quiet aside from the squeak of my Nikes on the granite floor. My pulse quickened the closer I came to the door.
I slipped the plastic bag over the handle, just as planned, but it dropped to the floor. Quickly, I bent down to put it back, and the door opened.
Sandra, clearly surprised. But she seemed very happy to see me.
She wore her simple brown cooking apron, arms out to me. She looked sweet and welcoming, like a friend about to ask me to come in to try something she’d just baked.
“Lana, you came back.” She embraced me. “I worried I’d never see you again.”
“Well, I said I’d bring you clothes.” I looped the handles of the bag over one of her wrists and held her hands for a moment. “I can’t stay. I really hope you’re okay.”
“I knew you were the sort of person who keeps promises.” She squeezed my hands, pulled me just inside the door, and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek.
I tried to back away politely, but she led to me to a settee in the entryway and closed the door softly.
“I just want to see what you’ve brought.”
“It’s not much—”
“Oh, my gosh!” Sandra cried out gleefully at the dress and dropped the bag with the sweater and the note to the floor. “It’s lovely. You don’t know how much I wanted a dress.”
Loosening the apron strap behind her head, she let the garment fall to the floor, a rumpled pile of tan linen. She looked at me, naked and unashamed, sunlight from the other rooms outlining her body and untamed head of blond hair. Suddenly worried she might have been with Allen—and he might be here still—I stood to leave.
“Wait, please. I just want to see how it looks.” She pulled the dress down over her head, her laughter muffled as she struggled to squeeze her arms through. Then she smoothed it out over her curves and stood there, looking down, with her hands over her mouth, like she wanted to cry.
“It’s just wonderful.” She hugged me again. “You don’t know how much this means.”
Touching my face gently, she kissed my cheek. Her palms moved lightly over my cheeks, affectionately, and then slipped down to my neck and shoulders.
Then, she changed.
Before I realized what was happening, she had me pinned—hard—against the wall. Confusion and panic rippled through me.
I felt her grip tighten, unflinching as I tried desperately to wriggle out of her hold and claw her off, no match for her strength.
“Sandra, what are you doing?” I tried to push back or slip down out of her hands. “You’re hurting me!”
“I’m so sorry, Lana.” Her face was tortured, and her grip loosened slightly, but she didn’t let go. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so sorry.”
Staring at me, she didn’t shake my body, didn’t speak again. Instead, she backed me down the wall—my pleas escalating with every inch—down farther and farther and into an empty coat closet, pushing me inside and forcing the door closed.
“I don’t want to do this.” Her voice was sorrowful through the door.
Slamming my hands against it, I tried to reason with her.
“Then why? What are you doing? Please, please let me out. I won’t hurt you. I’m a friend.”
Instead of an answer, I heard her sliding a chair from across the hall and took my opportunity to make a break for it. But Sandra grabbed me by both arms.
“This is the only way.” She looked at me apologetically, holding me still. Then she said firmly: “I need your shoes.”
“What? Sandra, please listen. I’ll help you.”
She didn’t budge. With Sandra blocking the closet doorway, I pulled off both shoes and dropped them to the floor.
“I came here to help you.” I was shaking—begging Sandra not to do this.
“Lana, trust me. I wouldn’t hurt you.” Her face was close to mine. “You are a friend…You are my only friend.”
Then she looked away, avoiding my eyes, and backed me farther into the closet and shut the door, shoving the top of the chair under the doorknob. I shouted until my throat was raw, but there was no answer. My phone sat on the settee, useless to me.
How could I have been so foolish?
Then, between my panicked cries, I heard it—the sound of the condo door closing, followed by silence.
Trapped inside the closet, I kept pushing and pulling the knob as hard as I could, slamming myself against the door. I felt around for anything I could use to slide through the gap between the door and the floor to knock the chair legs over. Nothing. Curled against the ground, desperate, I pushed my fingers as far as they would go into the light.
I wondered whether anyone would find me, or when. Maybe it would be Allen.
If Allen Green is still alive.
Finally, I started to yell again.
“Allen?” I thought about the note I’d written, sitting on the floor. Would Allen find it? It wouldn’t look good.
“Allen? Are you here?”
Silence.
“Anybody?” I cried out again and again. No answer. “Somebody, please help me!”
Chapter 25
Sandra
Squinting through a flood of natural light, Sandra looked up from the middle of a busy intersection at the city skyline reflected in twenty stories of glass, alarm rising through her as fast as the angry commotion building around her, and wondered whether she should go back inside.
Isolation or danger?
“Lady!” A delivery driver strained to lean out his window, spitting profanities and punching his arms into the air maniacally. “What the hell are you doing?”
Around her, cars and trucks moved in screechy jerks, the drivers laying down hard on their horns. “Get out of the way!” She heard them shouting as she swerved through hot exhaust fumes and between hulking metal frames to a sidewalk, farther away from what had been her prison. And into another moving crowd.
The foot traffic split around her as Sandra focused, singling out a woman and mimicking her strides, and the whole group moved toward a corner, and halted. Sandra looked at her guide, also waiting, and copied her.
Then she noticed the pattern of lines on the street. A pathway. When the sign changed, everyone moved across, safely. Simple. Sandra laughed to herself that she hadn’t mapped it out before, watching from above. Then, she’d been lost in who they might have been going home to, or how they interacted with each other.
On the street, they didn’t even seem to look at one another. Trying hard to be like them, Sandra resisted the urge to stare, even at people she saw with wires dangling from their ears. Maybe
she wasn’t so alone.
Adjusting her footsteps to the bumps of the brick sidewalk, she stole glances, fascinated by their faces. They all were so different, the features less symmetrical than hers, but those imperfections told some story, made them each an individual among millions.
Then, she caught the attention of one of them, a tiny one.
Before her, a wriggling baby in a sun bonnet flailed his arms over his mother’s shoulder. When his big brown eyes locked with Sandra’s, he stopped and craned his neck up, staring at her in pure wonder, his head wobbly but eyes fixed on Sandra for a few precious seconds—and then he leaned against his mother’s neck and melted in the most heartwarming way into a gums-and-two-bottom-teeth smile. Aching to hold him, to care for him, Sandra reached to pick him up, but the mother moved ahead, just before she could touch him.
“What a doll.” A young woman in a strappy dress stood next to Sandra at the crosswalk.
“Excuse me?” Sandra was startled.
“The baby.” Amused, she looked over at Sandra. “Do you live at Broad Place, back there? I walked out behind you. You seem lost.” Behind them, the tower’s taller stories were still visible, looming over the other buildings around it.
“If you’re going to that concert the manager mentioned, it’s just a little farther.” The woman motioned straight ahead and smiled, kindly. “To the greenway and go left.”
The greenway, an oasis of park between two city roads. The vision from her memory.
Ignoring the new rules and dashing through traffic and blaring horns, she reached it, the scene she’d replayed thousands of times, but real now. People moved more slowly there, couples and families enjoying each other and the carefully plotted, garden-like setting.
For the first time since her frantic exit, she looked above her. Sky—not a ceiling—wide open and unlimited. It was—Sandra thought, scanning and memorizing everything she saw—over-the-top beautiful. Glorious. She soaked in the peacefulness, storing up in her memory each face she saw and the textures of each of the plants and flowers she touched, plucking a few for her bag, as she followed the pathways carved through, aimless until she heard the rhythm.