Fool Her Once E-Book

Joanna Elm

• Herausgeber: CamCat Books
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 502

Beschreibung

Fool Her Once

Leseprobe

Fool Her Once

Joanna Elm

Contents

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part II

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Part III

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Part IV

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Acknowledgments

For Further Discussion

About the Author

Author Q&A

Also by CamCat Books

The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon

CamCat Books

CamCat Publishing, LLC

Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

camcatpublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

©2022 by Joanna Elm

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address CamCat Publishing, 101 Creekside Crossing, Suite 280, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Hardcover ISBN 9780744304930

Paperback ISBN 9780744304923

Large-Print Paperback ISBN 9780744304893

eBook ISBN 9780744304817

Audiobook ISBN 9780744304794

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available upon request

Book and cover design by Maryann Appel

5 3 1 2 4

For my husband, Joe and my son, Daniel.

 Always and forever,

front and center in my thoughts.

Part I

Chapter 1

JUNE 2019—Week One: THURSDAY

It took him four minutes to circle the block. He drove slowly, looking for a parking space on Jenna’s street while keeping one eye out for surveillance cameras. He’d read somewhere that Midtown had more security cameras per block than any other neighborhood in the city. It made sense to know where they were located.

On his second go-round, he noticed the lights were still off in her apartment. He figured she’d have a light on if she was home. It wasn’t dark out, but it was dark enough for a third-floor apartment in the shadow of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. For sure, she wasn’t sleeping. Not this early. Not in Manhattan. It was only just coming up on nine.

Most likely she was out. Celebrating her big exposé in CityMagazine about uptown eateries in the Hamptons, the summer playground for the rich and famous. All in a tizzy now because of Jenna Sinclair’s revelations of farm-to-table frauds like restaurants claiming their overpriced oysters were locally harvested, when in fact they’d been flown in from the Gulf. It was a big deal. She’d even been on TV talking about it. For sure, she’d come a long way from her rookie reporter days.

Deep in thought, he almost sailed past a spot opening up right across from her apartment building. But he slowed just in time and backed in, executing a perfect parallel park. He killed the engine, leaned back in his seat, and pushed his baseball cap around on his head. No one paid him the slightest attention. There were hardly any pedestrians around. This stretch of Sutton Place wasn’t exactly busy since the Food Emporium on the corner had closed its doors.

That was good. He didn’t want any witnesses when he confronted Jenna. He knew she wasn’t going to like him turning up in her life like this. She wasn’t going to like what he’d come to tell her. He hoped she wouldn’t make a scene. He hoped things wouldn’t get ugly. He really, truly, hoped not.

Chapter 2

Jenna Sinclair ignored the flashing neon-orange numbers of the crosswalk timer and picked up her pace across four lanes of traffic on Fifty-Seventh to arrive at Neary’s feeling hot and sticky. Ryan was already seated at a corner table. His collar was open, his hair rumpled. He looked charmingly boyish—nothing like the distinguished, respected publisher he had become running CityMagazine. More like the Ryan she remembered from the old days. A Scotch sat on the table in front of him and he was scrolling through his iPhone. As she got closer, she noticed he was frowning. She hoped it wasn’t because she was late.

Her meeting at My World magazine had run longer than expected, and the Jimmy Choos she’d worn to impress the editors at her pitch session—See guys, I’m going to fit right in with that swanky Monte Carlo crowd!—had slowed her down as she raced across town. But it wouldn’t hurt for Ryan to see her wearing killer heels—something to draw attention away from the hint of a muffin-top that had materialized when she’d pulled on her favorite skinny jeans this morning. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, she thought. Walking everywhere would melt those extra pounds right off. The energy of the city would work its magic.

Her cell phone rang as she arrived at the table. She recognized Zack’s ringtone but she had no intention of answering. She was not going to let her husband—sorry, correction—her lying, cheating, soon-to-be ex-husband intrude on what had been a perfect day. She reached into her purse to mute the phone, but the sound had already caught Ryan’s attention.

“Have you been waiting long?” she asked as he looked up, his frown turning instantly into a grin.

“Long enough—I’m trying to make up for lost time.” He stood and reached for her hand, his fingers twining around hers as he drew her to sit beside him. “Work agrees with you, Sinclair. You’re glowing.”

“It’s sweat,” she laughed as a glass of chilled pinot grigio appeared in front of her. “I ran most of the way here.” A slight exaggeration. She’d speed-walked, and only for the last couple of blocks, terrified that a heel would get stuck in a crack and send her sprawling facedown on the sidewalk.

Ryan was right, though. She was enjoying herself, setting up interviews and pitching to editors around town. Maybe reviving her reporting career was not going to be as difficult as she’d feared, what with everyone buzzing about her Hamptons restaurant exposé.

She sipped her wine and filled Ryan in on the highlights of her pitch session. “Gordon’s very enthusiastic about the interview in Monte Carlo. He says he’ll try to get some advance expenses for me so I can spend a few days there.”

“Well, I’m sure he can swing a couple of grand.” Ryan grinned. “Your article is tailor-made for his magazine: glitz, glamor, dysfunctional families, the murder of the richest woman on the French Riviera. Her son-in-law has been convicted for conspiracy to murder, and you’ve landed an interview with his wife. What’s not to love?“

Jenna nodded. It was Ryan who’d suggested she contact Gordon, the articles editor of My World, a publication that spread its net wider than Ryan’s CityMagazine. But she was only half listening as Ryan’s earlier greeting bounced around in her head.

Trying to make up for lost time. What did that mean? Lost time? Was he trying to tell her he’d made a mistake all those years ago when he’d let Teddi Conroy, the skinny, rich, blonde reporter-wannabe step—slither, one should say—into Jenna’s shoes?

This was the third time Jenna and Ryan had met since her move back to the city. The New York Post had mentioned their first lunch as a one-line Sightings item. Only in New York City, and maybe L.A, Jenna had reflected, were the comings and goings of writers and editors and TV producers considered to be of any interest to the general public. Secretly, she was thrilled to see her name on Page Six. She hoped Zack had seen it too. It wouldn’t hurt for him to think that she’d wasted no time in getting back together with her former lover.

At their second lunch, Ryan had told her he didn’t care about gossip either. (Of course he didn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken her to a restaurant where they would be noticed.) He and Teddi were separated, just like Zack and Jenna. Teddi had spent the past five months in Palm Beach generating gossip of her own. Jenna knew all that. She’d heard it around town even before Ryan confirmed it for her.

Tonight, she wanted to hear more. She wanted to know what had happened between them. She wanted to know why he was wining and dining her at expensive restaurants. Was it just business because he saw her as a source for future articles? Or was it more personal? His greeting just now suggested it was the latter, but if he and Teddi were really through, why hadn’t Ryan moved out of the townhouse they shared? Supposedly, he was living in the garden apartment of the townhouse and paying rent, but still. Why stick so close to an estranged wife?

However, as soon as the waitress placed their broiled lamb chop entrees in front of them, it was Ryan who jumped in with the questions. “What about the girl?” he asked. “How’s she doing? Is she coming to live with you in the city?”

Jenna wondered why Ryan couldn’t remember her daughter’s name, and why, despite his apparent interest in Dollie, it sounded more as if he wanted to know how long he’d have Jenna to himself.

“Dollie’s spending the summer in Maine,” Jenna replied, aware of Ryan’s thigh resting firmly against hers. She didn’t move away. It felt good to be this close to him again.

“Maine?” Ryan arched an eyebrow. “That’s a long way to go for summer camp, isn’t it?”

She shrugged off the question. Ryan didn’t need to hear about the difficulties of finding a summer camp for teenagers like Dollie. Then, she continued as if Ryan hadn’t spoken. “It’s good for her to be away from home. Zack and I need time to sort things out. I’m going to have to find a lawyer. . .”

“A divorce lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Because of . . .”

Jenna had mentioned the other woman’s name at lunch two days before, but she certainly didn’t expect Ryan to remember that name.

“Bethany,” Jenna filled in the blank. “Bethany, the intern from the Culinary Institute. The one he took all the way to Maine when he was dropping off Dollie at summer camp.”

“He’s serious about her, then?”

“I guess he is.” She shrugged. She really didn’t know the answer. All she knew was that her husband had cheated on her with a woman who looked—and probably was—half Jenna’s age.

But Ryan didn’t appear to be waiting for any further explanation. He set down his knife and fork and sipped his Scotch. “Well, I’m really happy you’re back, Sinclair,” he said. “You don’t belong all the way out there in the wilds of Long Island.” He made a face she couldn’t quite decipher, then said, “You were the best reporter the Sun ever had. You should never have quit.”

Jenna shook her head abruptly to stop him from pursuing the subject. “You know why I couldn’t stay.”

“You weren’t to blame for what happened, Sinclair. I told you a long time ago. You reported the facts, that’s all.”

Yeah, and a woman and her unborn baby died because of it. Jenna wanted to contradict but caught herself in time. She was not going to rehash old issues. She wasn’t going to change Ryan’s mind on this, just as he wasn’t going to change hers. She regretted Ryan had raised the subject.

Apparently, so did Ryan. He swirled the ice cubes in his glass and looked around the room as if he was about to order another drink while she finished eating. “Another?” He gestured at her glass. “Or shall we finish with a nightcap at your place?”

Jenna’s heart thudded against her rib cage. Ryan’s suggestion of a nightcap at her apartment was how they had tumbled into bed together the very first time. Is that what he had in mind, now? For a moment she reveled in the thought that after all these years he still wanted her. It eased the hurt of Zack’s betrayal and made her feel more desirable than she’d felt in a while.

But she wasn’t going to jump into bed with Ryan just to get back at Zack. Was she? It had to mean more. If she and Ryan were going to revive their relationship, there was Dollie to think about, too. Her daughter might be forgiving of her father’s philandering, but she would turn on Jenna in a heartbeat if she saw tweets or Snapchat messages about her mother cavorting with a former lover. Mothers had to be perfect.

She took a deep breath as Ryan signaled for a check, then put his arm around her, evidently taking her silence as consent. She checked her phone for any more missed calls or texts from Zack. But there was nothing.

“Are we good to go?” Ryan threw her a quizzical look.

“We’re good.” Leaving her phone muted, she dropped it into her purse as Ryan, hand at the small of her back, steered her out into the drizzle that was just starting to fall over Midtown.

Chapter 3

Week One: LATE THURSDAY NIGHT

He was afraid he’d doze off and miss her, but he was wide awake when she eventually strolled into view. With him. Arm in arm. Her and him. Together. Everything he had come to say to her suddenly vanished from his thoughts, evaporating in a haze of fury. The swig of water he’d taken a moment before they rounded the corner caught in his throat and he sputtered, the water dribbling down his chin.

He recognized McAllister immediately. He was the big-shot: the publisher, the editor-in-chief, the owner—whatever—of the magazine that had published her big exposé. The bastard’s photo was in the gossip columns often enough these days. Why was he surprised they were together? They were a team. Again. Just like the old days: digging up dirt, ruining lives.

He reached for his cell phone from the dashboard and held the camera on the pair of them trying to calm himself as they stood on the corner, talking to some scruffy guy pushing a shopping cart. Then he tossed the phone onto the passenger seat as they continued down the street toward her apartment building. He switched on the engine and prepared to pull out.

If he gunned it, the car would rocket toward them. It wouldn’t take more than split seconds to slam into them before veering wildly away with screeching tires carrying him onto First Avenue and away before anyone realized what had happened. The surveillance camera below the building awning was fixed, pointing at the steps into the lobby. He’d had the last few hours to figure that one out. And there weren’t any other pedestrians around for the moment. Just the building doorman, who wasn’t paying attention, and the scruffy guy, who seemed to be mumbling to himself as he crossed the street.

His hands felt clammy on the wheel. A little voice at the back of his head was telling him to take it easy, to calm down, take a deep breath, count to ten—all the usual advice for moments of rage like this one. Besides, this really wasn’t why he’d come this evening.

McAllister had changed the equation. Now he wanted to kill both of them.

He fixed his eyes on the traffic ahead on First Avenue. It was moving smoothly. Any moment, the lights would change in his favor, and if he timed it right, he could hit them and speed into the turn onto First, merging into the flow of traffic in seconds.

If he accelerated now. Right now.

Chapter 4

Week One: FRIDAY MORNING

The buzzing of the intercom startled Jenna as she waited for the Bialetti to stop gurgling. Her head felt heavy, but her Fitbit told her she’d gotten almost six hours’ sleep since Ryan had left the apartment. She moved the moka pot off the flames and walked into the hallway to the intercom.

It was Oscar, the day doorman. “Miz Sinclair, police here to see you. Coming up now.”

She sat down abruptly on the narrow hallway bench. Dollie. Something had happened to Dollie. She felt ice cold as she opened the door to wait for the elevator to discharge the cops, who turned out to be plainclothes detectives. She tried to recall what someone—probably Lola, her best friend who knew all about law enforcement—had once told her about cops always going in threes, not twos, to inform next of kin when there was a fatality. Was that still true? Maybe they’d downsized because of budget cuts. Or maybe the “three” rule did not apply in New York City.

Her heart was pounding, thudding against her chest, the blood roaring in her ears, as she beckoned them into the apartment. She barely heard as the taller, younger one said: “Miss Sinclair, we’re sorry to disturb you, but we’re wondering if you could answer some questions about yesterday evening? We’re looking into an incident involving Mr. Ryan McAllister.”

It took her more than a moment to refocus, and for the pounding of her heart to slow a little. They weren’t here about Dollie.

“Incident?” She repeated the word, frowning.

They looked at each other. The taller, younger one was black with a shaved head and soft brown eyes. He introduced himself as Detective Jim Martins. His partner was older and shorter, with thinning hair. His face was slicked with perspiration, as if he’d walked up the three flights to her apartment rather than taking the elevator. Jenna immediately forgot his name.

Martins took a notebook out of his hip pocket but didn’t look at it when he replied: “Mr. McAllister was found in the street, early this morning.”

“What do you mean ‘found’?” Her voice rose shrilly. “Is he dead?”

“No.”

“Where was he found?” Jenna’s heart was pounding again even as the memory from just a few hours ago flashed through her mind.

They had strolled back from Neary’s; had stopped on the corner of her street while Ryan fished around for a loose bill to hand over to the homeless guy who hung out there. She’d linked her arm through his as they walked into her building and to the elevator.

They’d barely crossed the threshold into her apartment when Ryan had nudged her back against the door and brought his mouth to her lips, working down to the hollow of her throat, his fingers tugging at the straps of her cami. All thoughts of waiting, doing the right thing had evaporated in a millisecond. Instead, she had responded, clinging to him, thrilling to the thought that he wanted her.

They had moved as one into the living room, onto the couch, then down onto the hand-knotted wool Jaipur rug, Ryan pushing down her jeans and panties and flinging them over the couch.

“No. Wait.” Jenna had sat up abruptly. “I can’t.”

The detective’s reply jolted her back into the conversation. “Just a couple of hundred yards down the street from this building. You had dinner with him last night.”

Jenna focused on Martins. He didn’t sound as if he was asking. “Did Ryan tell you that?” She paused and repeated her first question. “What do you mean ‘found’?” Jenna wished she could take a long gulp of espresso to get her brain working again.

“Let us ask the questions, Miss Sinclair, okay? We’re just trying to figure out what happened.”

Jenna didn’t like the abrupt change in tone, and suddenly the detective’s eyes didn’t look so soft either. Did he think she’d done something wrong? She realized she sounded a little defensive. That was stupid. There was nothing to hide.

“Yes, we had dinner,” she said.

The other detective nodded, and she followed his gaze across the floor into the living area to where her white jeans lay crumpled under the chair. “We’re just trying to establish a time line,” he said. “We’d appreciate it if you could help us out. Give us some idea of what time he left here?”

“I don’t remember when he left.”

“He couldn’t help us with the timing either.”

Not hard to believe. The events of the night were wrapped in a mist floating around her head, but she remembered Ryan guiding her to the bed, sliding in beside her and holding her. “We don’t have to rush,” he’d said. “We don’t have to do anything tonight. It’s okay. We have all the time in the world.”

“We don’t know how long he was lying in the street,” Martins mentioned casually. “He couldn’t tell the paramedics what happened.”

“Oh my God.” The words came out as a whisper. The image of Ryan swaying drunkenly flashed before her eyes. “What happened? Did he fall? Did he pass out?”

“We don’t know exactly.”

“Is he injured?”

“We don’t know the full extent of his injuries. They’re checking him out now. He’s at Lenox Hill Hospital.”

Jenna had the feeling they weren’t telling her everything. Why would detectives be investigating someone falling down drunk in the street? Had he been hit by a car?

“Miss Sinclair? Can you give us an approximate time when you last saw him?”

She nodded quickly. “Sure, I’ll try.” She knew they could get a time from Nando, the night doorman, and she didn’t want to appear uncooperative. “We had dinner at Neary’s, round the corner,” she said. “We came back here for a nightcap. We were discussing some writing projects I’m working on. I just finished one for his magazine.”

“His magazine?”

Jenna nodded. “He’s the publisher of CityMagazine. He bought the exposé I just wrote on restaurants in the Hamptons. We planned on working on some others together . . . I mean there were a couple of projects we discussed. We were talking, we lost track of time.” She knew she was babbling. God only knew why she felt so guilty. She and Ryan had done nothing wrong. “It was probably around three.” She paused. “I’m sorry. Yes, around three, maybe three thirty. That’s when I saw him out.”

“Did you part on friendly terms?”

Jenna stared at Martins. Had they already spoken to Nando? Had he told them he’d seen Jenna following Ryan down the street?

Just before leaving, Ryan had told her Teddi was returning, flying into La Guardia, and he had to go home, shower and change before picking her up. Jenna had been furious as she listened to the elevator carry Ryan down to the lobby.

She’d grabbed a T-shirt and sweat pants and headed for the stairs, arriving in the lobby in time to see Ryan walking out of the building, a little unsteady on his feet. She’d let him get to the corner before calling after him to stop.

“Miss Sinclair, did you have a fight?” Martins persisted.

“God, no!” Jenna’s reply burst from her lips. No, Nando could not have seen her push Ryan. She was surely already out of the doorman’s line of vision when she’d caught up with him.

“Okay.” The detective gave her a curt nod and handed her his business card. “If you remember anything else, please call me.” His partner opened the front door out into the hallway.

“You said he’s at Lenox Hill?“

Martins looked over her shoulder and appeared to be staring at something in her living room. She hoped it was not at her discarded white jeans. “Yes. Lenox Hill.” He nodded. “His wife is probably with him by now.” He paused in the open doorway. “They have Mr. McAllister in the ICU,” he added as he followed his partner to the front door.

The intensive care unit? It had to be serious.

“Did you say ICU?” She aimed the question at their backs, but the door had already closed.

Jenna returned to the kitchen. She was so parched it was making her dizzy. She stood at the faucet, cold water running into the sink as she cupped her hands and swigged from them, not caring that half of it was landing on the kitchen floor.

She poured herself a double espresso, carried the mug into the living room and sank into an armchair, looking around for her cell phone. Her eyes flickered round the room, noticing the mess the way the detectives would have seen it from the hallway. Through the door into the bedroom, she saw the empty glasses, the empty bottle of Jameson’s on the nightstand. Blood rose to her face, she felt hot and cold and then hot again as she caught sight of her scrunched-up, bright white panties hanging off the middle shelf of her bookcase, where Ryan had tossed them.

She took a couple of deep breaths. The cops probably thought they had the whole picture: cheating husband, wife returning from a trip, girlfriend gets jealous, doesn’t want to let him go.

They’d questioned her as if they thought she was the one who’d hurt him badly enough to put him into intensive care in the hospital.

She closed her eyes and tried to recall exactly what had happened when she’d finally caught up with Ryan.

Chapter 5

The hospital would not release any information because Jenna was not next of kin. She punched in the number of Ryan’s cell phone and immediately hit the red button. No doubt Teddi would have the phone now, and Jenna didn’t know what to say to her. Maybe she would call Ryan’s assistant at CityMagazine, ask her what she’d heard, what she could find out. There was nothing online in the digital versions of the New York Post or the Daily News. She plugged in Ryan’s name for a Google alert. If anyone got hold of the story, she’d know immediately.

Finishing her espresso, she retreated into the bathroom. She threw water on her face, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair, and looked for her face cream on the counter. Then, she remembered how in a fit of reorganizing and cleaning, she’d stashed her lotions and face creams out of sight in the bathroom cabinet. And thank goodness. At least Ryan hadn’t been exposed to all those tubes and bottles with “anti-aging” and “firming” stamped all over them.

She squirted an extra sliver of hydrating serum onto her fingertips before massaging it into her face and neck. Then, she threw on shorts, a tank top, and her running shoes. Grabbing her keys off the hallway table, she hurried out of her apartment.

Out on the street, she turned left, jogged to the corner, and stopped in the spot where she’d caught up with Ryan in the early hours of the morning. She stared down at the sidewalk, searching for any trace of an accident: loose change that might have rolled out of his pockets; tiny glass shards from a shattered iPhone, or a vehicle’s black skid marks glancing off the curb, even a hint of a dried blood smear. She shuddered. But there was nothing to see.

She stared across Fifty-Ninth, past the site of the old Food Emporium, and into the underpass between Fifty-Ninth and Sixtieth streets. Usually, two, sometimes three, homeless individuals were seeking a night’s sleep on the sidewalk in there. Maybe one of them had mugged Ryan. Not likely, however. Despite most people’s habit of ignoring the homeless on the streets, Ryan always handed them a dollar bill or five, often before they even asked. Perhaps one of them had seen what had happened.

She jogged in place for a minute before sprinting across the street toward the only body on the sidewalk, curled up with his back to the passing public, an unlaced black boot on his left foot and a knitted cap on his head. It was the same guy who’d stopped them on the street the previous night. She was sure of it. She recognized the big electric fan in his cart. She remembered wondering where he’d find an outlet to plug it into.

She stood for a moment, staring at the dirty, wrinkled hand clutching a stringy blanket under his chin. Then, she crouched down. “Excuse me. Sir, excuse me.”

“Whaaa!” The body moved surprisingly swiftly into a sitting position. He shrank back from her against the wall of the underpass. His eyes darted from side to side.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” she said softly. Before she could finish the thought, his leg jerked out, his stockinged right foot catching her across the shin. Jenna jumped up and back a couple of paces. The movement of his leg seemed involuntary. She didn’t think he’d intended to kick her. Indeed, he was shrinking back against the wall again, covering his head and face with the stringy blanket and wheezing.

“Sir? Do you remember me? Last night, my friend and I . . .”

He broke into a frenzied bout of coughing, shaking his head violently. Jenna stared helplessly for a moment before reaching into her shorts pocket for some change. The dirty blanket stayed on his head and Jenna realized he wasn’t about to tell her anything useful. She dropped the change into a can sitting in the shopping cart alongside the fan. Then, she turned and jogged back across Fifty-Ninth and past her building to continue up the street toward the tiny park on the East River. There she finally took a deep, long breath and slumped down on one of the park benches that afforded Sutton Place residents a panoramic vista across the river to Queens.

She continued to take deep breaths till her pulse slowed. Then, she let her thoughts loose, allowing all the unanswered questions to flood into her mind. She wondered how Teddi had gotten herself to the hospital. How had the cops known Ryan had spent the evening with Jenna? If he was in the ICU, he likely wasn’t in any condition to tell them anything. Then suddenly, the memory of what had happened when she’d caught up with Ryan on the corner forced itself into her mind.

He had tried to explain himself, swaying on the sidewalk. “Lovey, I can’t leave Teddi stranded at La Guardia. Not with all that construction going on. She’ll never get a cab.”

“You should have mentioned it earlier,” Jenna had blasted back. “Like before we returned to the apartment.” Like, maybe even before we’d ordered dinner, she thought angrily. She’d felt betrayed and used. His words, “we’ve got all the time in the world,” hammered in her head. A big, fat lie. Their time had apparently run out, because Teddi was about to touch down at La Guardia.

“It’s not what I want to do,” he told her. “But she texted me from Palm Beach.”

That’s when Jenna had pushed Ryan away. Shoved him, really. With both hands. Then she had turned swiftly and headed back to her building without looking back.

Her thoughts raced now. Could she have pushed Ryan hard enough to knock him over? People died from simple slip-and-falls if they hit their heads hard enough. It didn’t take very much if you hit the wrong spot.

And, if not her, then who? A random mugger? Or . . . ? She chewed on her bottom lip. Could it have been Zack? She hadn’t given much thought to Zack turning up at the apartment. The only time he’d ever stayed there in all sixteen years of their marriage was for a week after Dollie was born. Zack hated the city.

But, perhaps he hated losing her more. “Don’t just walk out like that, Jen. Let’s talk. Please. We can resolve things,” Zack had said as she stormed out of the inn, carrying two big totes, hurrying to leave before he tried to stop her.

But no, she shook off the thought. Even if Zack had driven the ninety miles into the city to resolve things, he would not have been lurking outside the building at two or three in the morning. If there was something he wanted to say to Jenna, he would have come straight up to the apartment and said it. He wasn’t the type to beat around the bush, as he himself might have pointed out, with his usual flair for picking just the right phrase.

She blinked and adjusted her shades. She had to find out what had happened to Ryan. She couldn’t just sit around imagining the worst.

An hour later, having showered, and changed into a pair of clean jeans and T-shirt, she was in the lobby of Lenox Hill Hospital. Teddi picked up on the first ring of Ryan’s cell phone, no doubt seeing Jenna’s ID flash onto the little screen.

“Jenna.” The hostility in Teddi’s voice was unmistakable.

"I’m downstairs, Teddi.” Jenna’s words caught briefly in her throat. “I’m so sorry. The cops came to tell me about Ryan.” Jenna hesitated, struggling for words. Of course Teddi’s tone was hostile. Teddi would know all the embarrassing details by now; that Ryan had been found steps away from Jenna’s apartment building in the early hours of the morning when he was supposed to be waiting for her at La Guardia. She would know that Jenna and Ryan had spent the night together. Jenna took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry, Teddi, I didn’t know . . .” She paused again, aware she was making a total shambles of her apology. What exactly was it that she intended to say? That she didn’t know that Teddi was coming home? That Ryan had misled Jenna about his marriage? She took another deep breath. “I just want to say, if there’s anything at all I can do . . .”

“No.” Teddi interrupted her. “You’ve done enough already.”

Chapter 6

Nothing could have prepared Jenna for her first sight of Ryan in the ICU. He was unrecognizable. Tufts of his hair stuck out from the bandages that swathed the top of his head and wound across one eye and around his chin. The other eye was closed. His lips were pale. Tubes came out of his nose and left arm and snaked into a machine that emitted beeping and whirring noises. His hands, lying lifelessly on top of the coverlet, looked bruised and swollen.

She glanced away, catching a snatch of conversation between Teddi and an older woman whom Jenna recognized as Teddi’s mother, Ewa Conroy.

“Co ona tu robi?” Ewa directed the question to Teddi in her native Polish, then turned on Jenna. “What are you doing here?” Ewa’s lips pursed as she waited for an answer.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Teddi replied. “I invited her up.”

In fact, what Teddi had said, when Jenna had asked to see Ryan, was, “Sure, why not? You’ll see exactly what happened to him on your street.” As if Jenna had lured Ryan to some crime-infested neighborhood in the Bronx.

Even in her distress, Teddi looked stunning. Jenna wondered if she had stopped at her townhouse to change, or if she’d stepped off her flight looking this stylish with her golden tan and her golden hair tousled just enough to seem sexy. Her crisp white cotton shirt was tucked into slim, patterned capri pants, and fashionable ballet flats rounded out what was, probably, the required, casual look in Palm Beach.

Jenna turned her attention back to Ryan. “How serious are his injuries?”

Teddi busied herself with smoothing down Ryan’s bedding. “He’s only just come out of surgery. They had to relieve the pressure on his brain. They’ve induced a coma to help the healing process. He was barely conscious when they found him.”

“Do they have any idea what happened?”

“If anyone has any idea, I’d have thought you would,” Teddi retorted, her blue eyes fixed on Jenna in a pointed stare. She looked across at her mother. “Mom why don’t you go and grab a sandwich in the cafeteria?”

Watch out, Jenna thought as Ewa gathered up her giant Birkin handbag. It looked like Teddi wanted privacy so she could grill Jenna about the events of the previous evening.

“Ryan and I had dinner,” she told Teddi as soon as her mother was out of the room. “He walked me home from Neary’s.” She paused. “He came in for a nightcap.”

“Do you think just because you’ve written one exposé for CityMagazine, the two of you are going to pick up where you left off? I saw the item on Page Six. You can get the New York Post in Palm Beach, you know.”

Jenna was surprised that Teddi sounded so possessive—especially since it was she who’d left Ryan. But then, what did Jenna know? Teddi was a trust-fund kid. She moved in rarefied circles, flitting between Manhattan and the Hamptons and Palm Beach, thanks to her mother who had known enough as a Polish translator to sink her mitts into a New York billionaire during one of his visits to Warsaw. Ewa had accepted Jack Conroy’s subsequent marriage proposal on condition that he provide for her in a prenup and set up a trust fund for her (fatherless) baby daughter whose unpronounceable Polish name had been whittled down over the years to the cuter-sounding Teddi.

Jenna blinked and wondered if Teddi was waiting for an answer. She didn’t have one. It would be foolish to acknowledge that, yes, she had entertained some fuzzy thoughts about her and Ryan together again. She felt herself tearing up as she focused on the bruised fingers of Ryan’s left hand.

She couldn’t tell if they had been bruised in his fall or because of the needles that were stuck into the back of his hand. Two of his nails were turning black. A sudden graphic image of car wheels running over Ryan’s fingers materialized in front of her eyes.

She could not reconcile his still form with the Ryan she knew. He’d never been one to stand or sit still. Jenna’s first memories of him in the newsroom involved him always pacing, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder, back and forth at the news desk.

All the meaningful “firsts” in Jenna’s adult life revolved around Ryan McAllister. He had hired her for her first newspaper job, had given Jenna her first byline, assigned her first scoop. He had been her first live-in lover and her first love.

A tear rolled down her cheek and onto Ryan’s bed.

Teddi handed her a tissue. “The surgeon who operated on him thought he might have fallen,” Teddi said, her tone a couple of notches softer. “Or that maybe he was hit over the head and mugged.” She shrugged. “If it was a mugging, it wasn’t very successful. He still had his wallet and Apple watch. And his phone. Thank God. One of the paramedics answered when I called from the airport.” She shivered visibly at the memory.

Ryan’s phone. Of course, thought Jenna, that’s obviously how the cops had tracked her down. Ryan had never password-protected his phone. The cops would have seen the texts between her and Ryan and found Jenna’s phone number and address in his contacts list.

She took a step closer to the bed and would have reached to touch his hand had Teddi not been watching her. Instead, she reached into her purse for her cell phone to text Lola. She needed her friend right now. She needed her advice on how to deal with the detectives if they came to interview her again.

Jenna was walking toward the door when a doctor entered the room and addressed her as Mrs. McAllister. Teddi, with a startled look on her face, crossed the room quickly. “I’m Mrs. McAllister.”

“I’m sorry.” The doctor cleared his throat. “I’m the chief radiologist, Dr. Stevens. I just wanted to update you on your husband’s X-rays and MRI. We were able to ascertain before surgery that his skull was fractured in two places. Since then, we’ve taken another look. . . .”

Jenna interrupted, unable to stop herself, “Because someone pushed him? Knocked him over?”

The doctor shook his head. “It was more than that. There are some abrasions and intradermal bruises that suggest someone aimed two very hard blows or kicks, one to each side of his head.”

Jenna gasped loudly as the doctor continued, “These blows or kicks seem aimed precisely at his temples. Someone knew exactly what they were doing. So, yes, he may have been knocked down or pushed to the ground, but we believe he sustained his critical injuries because, in layman’s language, someone kicked his head in. We’ve passed this latest information to the police. Sometimes they can follow up on the imprints left by a shoe or boot. It’s not much, I know, but it may be all we have to go on if Mr. McAllister can’t recall what happened or . . .” He stopped to take a deep breath.

“Or if he doesn’t make it.” Teddi’s voice broke as the words came tumbling out.

The radiologist pursed his lips. “We can’t really say that at this point, Mrs. McAllister. We just don’t know.”

Jenna backed out of the room before he finished speaking. She stood in the hallway, leaning against the plate-glass window that looked into Ryan’s room, swallowing furiously to stop bile from rising in her throat.

Someone kicked his head in. The words spun around in her head like an out-of-control carousel. Someone kicked his head in.

She took a long, deep breath as her phone pinged with Lola’s reply. “Come on down. Text me when you get here.”

Jenna exhaled. Thank heaven. Lola would know what to make of this new information. “People get their heads kicked in all the time,” she’d tell Jenna. “It’s just a coincidence.”

Lola would tell her to calm down and to stop imagining that monsters from the past were coming after Ryan. And after her.

Chapter 7

Twenty-One Years Earlier: Summer 1998

Thud!

Jenna’s fingers jumped off the keyboard as a bundle of newspapers landed on the edge of her desk. The Sun’s messenger boy winked at her as she surveyed the stack of out-of-town newspapers he’d just dumped on her. She figured it would take her a couple of hours to sift through them, looking for those “gems,” as Ryan McAllister called them, that would turn a one-liner from a small local newspaper into a scoop for the Sun.

The weekly tabloid, which was sold at supermarket checkouts, was not the newspaper where she’d dreamed of working when she’d graduated from City College, but it was the only one that had offered her a job. It was also within walking distance of the Fifty-Ninth-Street apartment on which her parents had deposited a hefty down payment as a graduation present.

She glanced over to where Ryan stood at the news desk, phone glued to his ear as usual, and then she quickly picked up the top newspaper from the pile. Even in her second month at the Sun Ryan still scared her a little. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he’d made his way up the ranks in the newsroom to the position of news editor very swiftly. He’d been working in newspapers since high school. He had grimaced when she told him about her journalism degree at her interview. “You can’t learn how to be a reporter in a classroom,” he’d said, and she caught the trace of a weird transatlantic accent, maybe British, maybe Australian. “And a college degree isn’t going to get you more money,” he added. “Not here, anyway.”

A degree certainly hadn’t led to an assignment out of the office yet; mostly she’d been given phone calls to make to add facts and quotes to articles written by other, more senior reporters. Then there was always the task of picking through out-of-town newspapers.

The first one she picked up in the new batch was a Connecticut newspaper that featured a “20 Years Ago Today” column on its front page. A lot of newspapers published similar columns. Jenna enjoyed those the most. They mentioned local news stories that had happened when she was just a baby and her parents were still alive. Sometimes the snippets would mention some movie that had been a super box-office hit at the time, or a song that had stayed at the top of the charts for weeks and weeks, and which Jenna remembered hearing on her mother’s compact discs.

That day the Connecticut column caught her eye immediately. It was about the 1978 execution of Ed Haynes, a serial killer. Evil Ed, as the newspaper called him, was a New Yorker, but he had been caught in Connecticut with the body of one of his victims in the trunk of his car. A second victim had been killed and buried in Connecticut, but he had tortured and buried his other victims on the North and South Forks of Long Island. Haynes, the snippet informed her, was executed by lethal injection, the first to be executed after the death penalty was reinstated in Connecticut. The column also noted that at the time, serial killer was not yet a widely used expression, and that the execution was witnessed by Haynes’s fiancée.

Jenna wondered where the fiancée was now, twenty years later? Had she married someone else? What had attracted her to a serial killer in the first place? Jenna thought an interview with the woman would make an interesting article. She looked through the Sun’s archives before pitching the idea to Ryan.

It turned out that Ed Haynes had brutally assaulted, tortured, and killed six young women in all, and had raped about a dozen more. He had picked up most of them in bars on the South Fork, better known as the Hamptons. Most of his victims were imported summer labor from Ireland and Denmark. Their loved ones had not missed them till they failed to come home at the end of summer. Jenna had to remind herself that back then, in 1978, there had been no instant, easy ways to communicate—no emailing, nor even the capability to text like Jenna had on her bright orange Nokia.

The news clippings gave gruesome details about Haynes’s trademark torture techniques and his habit of burying his victims in densely wooded areas. In one of the archived stories, she read that a childhood friend, Rosie Michaelson, had attended his trial. Jenna had a hunch that Rosie was the fiancée who’d witnessed the execution. She felt a shiver run up her spine as she wondered how on earth any woman could be attracted to a monster like Evil Ed.

Ryan was not enthusiastic about her pitch at first. “The fiancée is going to be one of those nutters who either couldn’t find a boyfriend, or is some born-again do-gooder who believed in Evil Ed’s redemption.” Then, as Jenna turned away, trying to hide her downcast face, he relented. “But you never know. See if you can find her, Sinclair.”

What Jenna found over the next couple of months was that she had a knack for tracking down people. She tried using a couple of search engines on her office computer. One of the other reporters suggested she use Altavista or Yahoo or Infoseek. Someone else recommended a new search engine, Google. But she couldn’t find anything immediately useful in those searches. Instead, because Rosie had been described as a childhood friend, Jenna took a train to Ronkonkoma and then a cab to the school Ed Haynes had reportedly attended.

There she conducted a classic search. Among other things, she looked through school yearbooks for any mention of a Rosie or Rosemary or Roseanne. From there, she followed two leads, one of which brought her to Rosie’s best friend in high school, who revealed that Rosie had married a corrections officer from the prison where Ed had been executed in Connecticut. “She’s Rosie Miller now,” the friend told Jenna. She also revealed that Rosie had had a major crush on Evil Ed when they were in school. “But he never gave her a second glance till she started visiting him in prison.”

Unfortunately, Rosie’s friend didn’t have any information as to where Rosie lived with the corrections officer. As far as she knew, it was somewhere in Connecticut.

A series of phone calls to a local reporter in the Connecticut town where the prison was located produced a name for the corrections officer and a street address for him. But the reporter added that Norman Miller no longer worked at the prison. Nor was he living at the street address that a contact at the prison had provided. Undaunted, Jenna tracked down some neighbors on Norm Miller’s old street and discovered that Norm and wife Rosie had moved to a new address in Seaford, Long Island. Ryan looked impressed when she told him how much she had unearthed and signed a slip for a cash disbursement and a rental car.

“Don’t get lost, Sinclair.” He grinned at her stricken look. “And look out for all that weekend traffic on the LIE.”

He had obviously sussed her out correctly as an all-city girl who had never spent much time—if any—outside of Manhattan.

“Don’t worry.” She waved a big Hagstrom atlas at him. “Got it all figured out,” she added with much more confidence than she felt.

Rosie Miller lived in a raised ranch on a quiet street that backed onto school playing fields. There was one car in the short concrete driveway, a Ford Taurus. Jenna didn’t know anything about cars and would have had a difficult time identifying a Mercedes or even a Maserati, but she looked on the back, knowing it was the sort of detail that made stories sound authentic. Ryan liked that. He preferred a story that described someone smoking a Marlboro rather than just a cigarette.

Rosie tried to close the door when Jenna identified herself.

“Please,” Jenna put her hand on the door jamb. “My editor will fire me if I come back with nothing.” Rosie’s lips pursed but she opened the door wider, and let Jenna stand in the hallway.

“Please Mrs. Miller, it’s taken me a long time to find you. I just want to chat. I won’t identify where you live or even your last name.”

“No. Please. My husband, Norm, died last year. But my son and his wife live with me. I don’t want them to know anything about this.”

“They won’t need to,” Jenna offered, moving a couple of steps farther into the house until Rosie had no option but to invite her into the living room.

“But you’re going to have to leave soon,” Rosie warned her. “I don’t want you here when my son comes home.”

Jenna nodded as she settled into one of the overstuffed armchairs. She noticed almost immediately that Rosie was a chain-smoker, tap-tapping her Virginia Slims into a big blue-glass ashtray. She tried to make the woman feel more at ease by telling her how lovely her necklace looked.

“Adele, Norm’s daughter makes these,” Rosie said. “That’s his daughter from his first marriage. She lives in Arizona on a reservation. She’s married to a Native American. Met him in college down there.” There was a short silence and then, running out of small talk, Rosie answered Jenna’s first question about where she’d met Ed Haynes. Her answers were short and clipped at first, but eventually came out in lengthy spurts as if she’d been waiting a long time to tell her story.

“I know most people won’t understand what I could possibly have seen in Ed, but I knew him all my life. He lived two doors down, we went to the same schools. He was very good-looking back then, but he had a reputation as a bit of a juvenile delinquent. You know, graffiti, stealing bikes, destroying property. I was forbidden to talk to him, not that he ever took any notice of me. Only one time when a boy knocked an ice-cream cone out of my hand outside the ice-cream parlor. Ed saw it and laid the kid flat out on his back. I didn’t really get to know him till after his trial. And it wasn’t till after he was sentenced that I started writing to him.”

“Didn’t you believe that he had raped and tortured all those girls?”

Rosie shrugged. “He didn’t deny it in the end, although he said the girls had led him on. But he stopped all his appeals. Said he preferred to be executed rather than castrated—which is what they talked about doing . . . I mean, chemically.” Rosie shrugged, looking away from Jenna’s horrified expression. “Don’t ask me to explain that,” she added. “It’s just something I heard from Ed.”

Rosie lit a fresh cigarette from the dying embers of the one she’d just finished.

“Weren’t you afraid of him?” Jenna asked.

“Maybe a little to begin with. But Ed couldn’t hurt me where he was. There were guards all around us all the time, and even when he was waiting, you know, on death row, when we were able to be in the same room, there was always someone outside the door.

“They left you alone together?”

Rosie nodded. “Norm did. He was the corrections officer who worked on death row. He understood those men. He tried to make it a little easier on them. He gave Ed and me time to be alone and close. He let us stay in the library where we could . . . you know . . .” She bit her lower lip.

“Make love?” Jenna prompted, hoping her voice did not betray her horror at the idea.

Rosie nodded. “That’s what I mean, people won’t understand. They won’t be able to picture Ed as loving and gentle. He said he loved me and wished he had gotten to know me when we were still in school, before he started doing what he . . . He asked me to buy a ring for myself and he put it on my finger before he touched me.”

Jenna felt a little wave of disgust—and disbelief—wash over her. Rosie was right. No one would be able to reconcile the image of Evil Ed putting a ring on Rosie’s finger with the image of him as a depraved serial rapist and killer.

“You were able to enjoy having sex with a . . . a rapist while a guard was waiting outside the door?”

Rosie nodded, then abruptly looked away.

Hoping to erase the image of the woman sitting across from her having sex with a depraved maniac, Jenna turned her attention to Norman Miller.

“He was there on the day they executed Ed,” Rosie said quietly. “He drove me home. I was shaking so badly I couldn’t drive my own car. When we got to my apartment, he poured me a stiff drink and stayed till I was able to crawl into bed. Anyway, he started checking in with me to see how I was doing. I was living in the apartment I’d rented while Ed was on trial. I’d even gotten a part-time job in that town. I didn’t move back to Long Island till after Norm and I got married a few years later, and he got transferred. He was a good man.”

As she was leaving Rosie’s house, Jenna noticed the framed photos in the display cabinet. One showed an older man with a small strawberry birthmark on his left cheek—Norm, she guessed. Another was of a pudgy-faced boy with straight, long brown hair flopping across his forehead and into his eyes as he blew out the candles on a cake with the numerals 2 and 0 in the center.

“Your son?”

Rosie nodded. “Yes. He turned twenty last month.”

Jenna turned toward the door. Then, suddenly it hit her. The boy was twenty; born the same year that Evil Ed had been executed.

Jenna stopped and stared at Rosie. “Ed’s son.”

Rosie stared back, blinking rapidly as if she’d been caught in bright headlights. “Yes,” she finally said. “That’s why I have no regrets. My son is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Jenna wanted to retrace her steps back into the room, but Rosie was already opening the door. “Did Ed know about his son?” she asked.

Rosie nodded, now looking sad and miserable. “Of course. I was seven months pregnant when they executed him.”

“How did he feel about it?”

“He was sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Yes.”

It took Jenna two days to write the story. She ended with Rosie’s final quote: “He called his unborn son an unlucky little bastard spawn.”

Then she hunkered down in her seat after hitting the send button on her keyboard. She did her best to look busy while keeping an eye on Ryan, hunched over at his computer screen. When he stood up and looked directly toward her desk, Jenna knew he had read her copy.

“Sinclair, over here,” he beckoned and then redirected her to his private office. She thought he would have looked happier with her copy.

He had printed out her story. “What does this mean?” He read the last two lines aloud, and then said: “Are you kidding? You put that at the end of the story?” He sighed and tutted. “Listen to me and write this down.”

Jenna grabbed a pad and pen off his desk.

“For the last two decades, Rosie M has lived with the horrendous secret that her only son is the “unlucky bastard spawn” of Evil Ed, one of the most depraved, sadistic serial killers this country has ever seen. Ed Haynes struck terror across the North and South Forks of Long Island when he tortured and brutalized six young women and then left them for dead in remote wooded areas on Long Island. After he was arrested, more than a dozen of his rape victims came forward. He was executed in 1978.”

Jenna stopped.

“What are you waiting for, love?” Ryan continued: “Rosie M’s secret came to light in an interview during which Rosie, now forty-five, told me”—he grinned at her—“That’s you. You’re going to get a big byline on this one. Right, where was I? Oh, yeah, Rosie told me that thanks to the help of a kindly prison guard she was able to spend nights of love with the brutal serial killer. Quote: ‘Eddie was a gentle lover,’ said Rosie blah blah blah. Get it?”

Ryan opened his office door to yell for the photo editor. He tossed the copy to him. “Get one of your guys to doorstep this address. You’re looking for a twenty-year-old goofy-looking kid with longish hair, and . . .” He turned to Jenna. “What’s the kid’s name?”

Jenna stood dumbstruck.

“You didn’t ask?” Ryan shook his head. “Okay, find out, get more details about him, what he does, where he works, or goes to school, whatever.”

Two days later, Ryan beckoned Jenna over to the art desk, where she saw a dozen photos and a layout for a double-page spread. She looked dumbfounded at the thick, black letters:

found: secret “spawn” of evil ed, savage serial slayer

Ryan placed the loupe on the photos of a male outside Rosie’s house, approaching the house, holding hands with a young woman. His wife, Jenna guessed.

“Here look at this,” Ryan beckoned to Jenna. The loupe was on the woman, on her stomach. “That’s not fat.” Ryan grinned.

No, Jenna could see quite plainly that it was a baby bump. She nodded unhappily.

“Grandson spawn of savage slayer. Coming next year.” Ryan pretended to shudder. “Is that the kid you saw in the photo at the house?”

Jenna couldn’t really tell. She’d spent more time looking at the birthday cake in the photo than the face. But the hair looked the same. She nodded.

“Did you get his name?”

She didn’t answer. She had the name. She’d called Rosie immediately, had caught her off guard after Ryan had dictated the new lede to her story. But something warned her against handing it over to Ryan.

“Come on,” Ryan urged her. “You got a couple of hours and then we’re going to press.”