But as she reached the middle of the road, a shadow caught her eye.A flicker of movement coming from somewhere.Too slow to be a vehicle, too big to be an animal.She rushed over to the other side of the street, glanced back and saw it was another late-night fiend.A man in a brown jacket, beanie hat and hiking boots.
It stalled her for a second, but she reasoned that it was just another midnight walker.Another chancer taking liberties for a quicker route home.Still, it was a jolt to the system seeing someone else in this dead zone, especially in the middle of the night with nothing for company.
Rose picked up the pace.Home loomed a few miles ahead, but as she peeked back, she saw the figure had done a one-eighth and was now retracing her steps.The man kept his gaze down, but there was an intensity to his walk, like one of those tunnel-visioned commuters she saw on the New York subways.Someone who was already an hour late to his destination.
Nothing to fear.She couldn’t be the only night owl in a city of half a million.Although, other than a few passing cars and this stranger, Rose was yet to see much proof of that.
Still, she kicked things into high gear.Rose’s footsteps ate up the pavement towards her apartment, which suddenly felt like it might as well be on another planet.She told herself she was being paranoid but couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes boring into her back.She risked another look over her shoulder, and the man was looming closer, close enough for her to hear his footsteps slamming into the concrete.
Her fight or flight kicked in.A primal reaction.One Rose had entertained quite a few times recently.
This was how it happened, wasn't it?A lone twenty-something woman walks through the streets at night, and a few months later, the police find her in a dumpster.Then they'd make a TV show about her.Her friends – what few she had left – would call her an all-American girl, they'd say her smile lit up a room, they'd say she was the life of the party.
None of it would be true.Except the dumpster part.But Rose had seen enough true crime to know that if you wanted to survive, you had to abandon all shame.
And so Rose began to run across the pavement, down the sidewalk, across another road, over a small grassy knoll.Rose had no intention of stopping until she reached something that resembled civilization.Somewhere with light, houses, parked vehicles.Somewhere someone could hear her screams should she need them to.
Rose must have covered a mile before glancing behind her again, and when she did, the man was still out there – but far enough away that Rose breathed a sigh of relief.She watched him a little longer, confident that she’d made her escape, and then the stranger took a hard left in another direction.
She gulped air into her burning lungs with her hands on her knees.Sweat trickled down her spine despite the chill.She patted herself down, checking for anything lost in her unexpected marathon.Phone?Still there.Keys?Jingling in her pocket.Purse?Still present.
It was all accounted for.There was no psycho on her tail, merely an overactive imagination working overtime.
A part of her wanted to laugh.What if the guy was just making his way home?What if he had no intention of hurting, mugging, or assaulting her?Maybe tomorrow morning he'd tell his wife, 'Honey, the weirdest thing happened last night.'
Strange old world.When had the world tilted so far off its axis that a stranger’s footsteps sent women running for their lives?But here she was, pumped full of adrenaline over a shadow.Rose shook her head.She guessed trust was a luxury in the modern world.
But as Rose composed herself, she realized that she’d veered off course.This wasn’t anywhere near her neighborhood.A street sign said she was in a place called Natkin Way – a name that meant nothing to her.
But she wasn’t worried.Her internal GPS had gotten her home from far worse situations.How many times had she miraculously found her way home after abusing her liver?More than she could count, despite her young age.
So Rose began walking.The neighborhood was sparse.She passed a lumber mill, a row of dead buildings with boarded-up windows.Then beside it, a narrow alley beckoned, seeming to point her in the direction that her geographic senses screamed led back home.
In the alley, trash cans lined one side of the wall.Graffiti and faded posters lined the other.Rose was six steps into the alley when the world suddenly became a series of blurs.One moment she was walking, and the next her airway was gone, and she was being pulled backwards off her feet, and the pressure was tight and high against her windpipe, and whoever was behind her knew exactly where to apply it.
Rose grabbed at the sudden intrusion with both hands.She dug her nails in and raked and felt fabric tear and skin underneath but the grip didn’t change.Her feet scraped against the ground and found nothing to push against.She tried to twist, to buck sideways, to drive an elbow back, but the person behind her had his weight set low and his body pressed against hers and there was nowhere to go.
Her hands stopped clawing.Her legs buckled and the ground came up slowly, and then she was on her back looking at a strip of sky between the buildings.
As she felt something warm against her palm, Rose’s last thought was of Leo, and how he’d elongate the ‘a’ when he saidmama.Then she felt her fingers being closed around something in her palm and held there.The warmness bonded fast, fusing something to her skin, and in the last few seconds of consciousness Rose Michaels understood that whatever was in her hand was never coming out of it.
CHAPTER TWO
The week after Lindsey Doyle’s arrest was the closest thing to normal that Ella had experienced in six months.
But now, sitting outside the Central Detention Facility, also known simply as the D.C.Jail, normal was disappearing again.
While forensics tore her apartment apart, Ella and Luca had stayed at Ripley’s house in McLean.Ripley had put Ella and Luca up in one of her so-called spare rooms, which was about twice the size of Ella’s entire apartment.Ripley’s son had dropped off Ripley’s grandson, Max, for the weekend, and the kid had taken to Luca like a moth to a bonfire.By Saturday afternoon, Luca had the two-year-old on his knee with a half-size acoustic guitar, which he played better than Luca did.Ripley had then told her and Luca to clean up after themselves if they planned on practicing making a child of their own, which they had.Nobody mentioned Doyle for two days, nor did they mention the bullet holes in Ella’s ceiling or the fact Luca had come within inches of death.
Then the forensics team cleared the apartment, and Ella went home, and the world came back.
Vernon had asked her to stay away from Doyle while the Bureau cleared the tape, which was standard protocol.When a federal agent was personally connected to an arrestee, there were lines you couldn’t immediately cross and boxes that needed ticking before anyone could sit down in a room together.Ella hadn’t fought it.A month ago she’d have been climbing the walls, but things had changed when Luca called her from the kitchen floor with a gun in one hand and coffee on his shirt.The urgency had drained out of her.Doyle was in custody.Doyle was going nowhere.For the first time since this started, Ella could afford to be patient, and patience felt so unfamiliar that she almost didn’t recognize it.
But a week was long enough.Vernon had given the green light yesterday, and now Ella wanted answers.
The D.C.Jail was an ugly building made uglier by its inhabitants.It housed pretrial detainees and sentenced misdemeanants, which meant it was a holding pen for people waiting to be moved somewhere worse.It was also the Bureau’s jail of choice for any suspect they wanted within spitting distance of FBI headquarters, or any suspect too dangerous or too connected to send anywhere else.
Ella exited her car and made for the entrance.She signed in at the front desk and showed her credentials.The officer behind the glass checked her name against something on his screen, picked up a phone, spoke briefly, and then hung up.
