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When he arrives in Newburgh it doesn’t take him long to locate the apartment building. It’s a five-storey building on a residential street. He wants to confront her on her own ground, to see how she likes it. He’s been too passive; it’s time to shake things up. He needs to frighten her.
He realizes that she might not be home. He hopes she is; he’s spoiling for a fight. He indulges himself for a moment – imagines knocking on her door, her surprise at seeing him and then pushing his way in. He imagines himself on her balcony, bending her back over the edge, until she’s afraid for her life. Maybe that’s all it would take. She seems willing enough to think him capable of murder.
But then he remembers her apartment number, 107 – she must be on the ground floor. He enters the building and looks at the buzzers. He wants to catch her off guard at her door if he can. A woman walks towards him from the lifts; she opens the door and he slips in behind her. He locates Erica’s apartment and knocks firmly on her door, hoping she’ll answer. No such luck – she’s not home. He clenches his jaw in frustration. But she’s on the ground floor – he can at least look in her windows, see if there’s any sign of a nine-year-old boy. He goes back outside, circling around to the back of the building. It’s fairly private. Unit 107 has a patio on the ground floor, with sliding glass doors. He creeps up to the glass and looks inside.
The place doesn’t look very lived in. He sees a pale-blue sofa, a coffee table with some newspapers on it and not much else; it’s barely furnished. There’s a galley kitchen beyond the empty dining room – a pendant light hanging over where a dining table should be – and a hall off to the right. He’s guessing it’s a one-bedroom. There’s no sign of a child. He breathes a sigh of relief. She must have taken a photo of some random kid about the right age who looks like him. Is there any length she won’t go to?
But he does see something he recognizes – his wife’s missing handbag, on the floor beside the sofa.
His heart almost stops. But before he can fully process the fact that Erica has been inside his house, he sees the door to the apartment open. Patrick steps back out of sight, but then peers carefully around the edge of the sliding glass door. Erica has entered the room, and there’s someone behind her. For a second the other person is blocked from view by Erica, but she steps away and Patrick gets another shock as he recognizes Niall. Niall closes the door behind him and then sweeps Erica into an embrace. In disbelief, Patrick watches Erica and Niall kiss hungrily and peel off their clothes on their way to the bedroom.
What the fuck is Niall doing with Erica?
Stephanie watches her husband, her stomach in knots. Patrick’s upset. His hair is a mess, as if he’s repeatedly run his hands through it, and his movements are rushed and jerky. He’s pacing the kitchen while the babies sit in their high chairs babbling and smashing their spoons against their trays. He’s just told her that he went to Erica’s apartment and saw Stephanie’s missing handbag on the floor through the window.
She’s thinking, He didn’t go to the office at all. ‘Why is she doing this?’ Stephanie asks, her voice shrill. This horrible woman has been inside her house. She’s stolen her handbag, her ID. She feels a terrible anxiety coursing through her. People can steal your ID and use it to destroy your life. She’s at the mercy of this maniac, and it’s her husband’s fault.
Patrick looks at her warily. ‘There’s something else you should know.’
She regards him with dread.
‘She’s sleeping with Niall.’
She looks back at him, speechless with disbelief.
‘I saw them in her apartment. They started kissing and then went off to the bedroom.’ He says, ‘I know how she operates. She seduces people. She seduced me and she’s obviously seducing Niall.’
‘Why, though?’ Stephanie exclaims. ‘Why would she sleep with Niall?’
‘For the same reason she came inside our house and took your purse – to intimidate us! To make me worry about what she might tell Niall. To show her power over me. That’s why she’s been watching you, showing up at the park.’
Stephanie shudders. It’s only now beginning to dawn on her exactly who they’re dealing with. Maybe she’s planning on blackmailing Niall, too – maybe she’ll threaten to tell his wife that he’s cheating on her. Stephanie knows that Niall cheated before; Nancy had told her. It almost broke up their marriage.
Patrick continues pacing. Stephanie stares back at him, her mind racing. They refused to pay her. Maybe they’ve made a mistake. The thought makes the world go all sideways on her. She needs Patrick to stay still for a minute so she can think. But her mind is numb.
She looks at her husband, still pacing across the kitchen, not even seeing her or the twins. Her anger erupts. ‘You never should have slept with her.’
He stops then. ‘I know that!’ He looks at her desperately. ‘But it meant nothing, Stephanie. She’s revising everything in her head, telling it differently from how it really happened. That’s what’s so scary – I don’t know what she’ll make up next!’
Stephanie asks bluntly, ‘Other than the fact that you slept with her a couple of times, she doesn’t have anything else, does she?’
Patrick looks at her and there’s something in his face that she doesn’t like. A mixture of shame and fear. A pleading look comes over him and she knows he’s about to confess to something awful. She wants to turn away, flee from the room. She doesn’t want to hear any more. She’s sick of all of this and suddenly almost hates him for bringing it all down on their heads. They have two precious little girls to think of – how will all this affect their future?
‘She says …’ Patrick starts, but his voice falters and he can’t seem to finish the thought.
‘She says what?’ Stephanie demands, her voice strident. One of the babies begins to cry, and the other immediately joins in.
‘I think she’s lying, but – after she saw you at the park, she asked me to meet her, and she said she had a child, and that it’s mine.’
Her heart sinks like a stone. Oh, God. She slumps in her chair, puts her hands to her face.
‘Don’t look like that,’ Patrick says, his voice pleading.
She barely hears him; everything seems to fade away into the background, even the twins’ noises, and all she can hear is the pounding of her own heart, thudding in her ears. A child. If this woman had a child by him, it changes everything. Finally she looks up at her husband. She realizes with a sickening feeling that he’s even more frightened than she is.
‘Stephanie, it probably isn’t true,’ he says. ‘That’s – that’s why I went to her apartment – and there was no sign of a child at all. She must be lying.’ When she doesn’t say anything, he says, ‘I have to find out for sure. There must be a way.’
‘Yes, there must be a way,’ she says coldly. ‘You must be able to find out if she had a child. Hire someone if you have to.’
He hesitates and says, ‘She also told me how much money she wants to make her go away.’
‘How much?’ Stephanie asks.
‘Two hundred thousand dollars,’ he says, his eyes flicking to hers and away again.
She can tell, reading him, that he thinks that’s a reasonable amount, considering what Erica’s threatening to do, and considering what they have in the bank. She has it in her power to solve this problem for him, for them. But she knows that if they pay her once, she’ll just come back for more.
‘Over my dead body,’ she says.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ON MONDAY MORNING, Patrick hears the door at reception open and cocks an ear. Niall has just come in. All last night Patrick hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Niall sleeping with Erica in her apartment. What had she said to him when her head was next to his on the pillow?
Patrick tries to tamp down his concern, but it’s hard to stop worrying about the two of them together. Fear paralyses him. Erica had waltzed into this firm on a pretence, had pretended not to know him. And Patrick had pretended not to know her. He doesn’t want to admit now that he does. How would he explain it? He can’t warn Niall about her – about the kind of woman he’s getting involved with. How can he confront Niall about Erica without admitting he was peeking in Erica’s window yesterday? He can’t. He can’t say anything.
But Erica knows things about him, things he’d rather his business partner not know.
He hears Niall coming down the hall, and then Niall’s cheerful face appears at his door.
‘Good morning,’ Niall says.
‘Good morning.’
‘Are you okay?’ Niall asks, looking at him more closely. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m fine, just – tired.’
