The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (114 page)

As quickly as she could, she was on her feet.

Wolfhagen reached out a hand and swung toward her head.
 
She could feel his fingers brush through her hair as she lurched toward the table beside her.
 

On it was one of her prize possessions—an original crystal Lalique Bacchantes vase that could send fifty New Yorkers into early retirement.
 
It was thick and it was heavy, but Carra was able to grab it and smash it in tiny piece at his bare feet.
 
She did so as he was still coming toward her, but the moment the broken glass lodged into the bottom of his feet, he stopped in pain and looked incredulously at her.
 
All around him was a circle of sharp glass.
 
He was trapped and he knew it.

“You’re going down,” she said, backing away from him and toward his bedroom.
 
“You’re out of my life now.”

She darted into the room, slipped into the bath, saw the disc on the vanity and grabbed it along with the cordless phone on the wall beside the sink.
 
She took each back into the hallway, the phone poised above her head and ready to strike in case he was waiting for her.

But he wasn’t.
 
He hadn’t moved.
 
He was still standing in the growing round of his own blood.

With the blood dripping from his mouth, the remnants of shaving cream still clinging to his body and the patches of thick hair he’d yet to shave off, he looked like a monster to her—which, of course, he was.
 
His voice was muddled when he spoke, but he was so oddly calm, she could understand him in spite of his smashed lip.
 

“You won’t win,” he said.
 
“I video taped everything we did back then.
 
There’s a safe deposit box with each tape.
 
If anything happens to me, my lawyers have access to all of it and they have orders to release the tapes to the press.
 
It’s then that the world will know the truth about you.”

“I’m not worried about the tapes, Max.”

“You should be.”

“Why?
 
I’m not on them.”

“I’ve seen you on them.”

“No, you haven’t.
 
I thought about it this morning, after you threatened me with them last night so you could come to the party and stay here.
 
You’ve got nothing on me.
 
I knew where you hid the cameras back then.
 
I knew where not to stand.
 
But if you think I’m wrong and that you’ve got something on me, I’ll take my chances.”
 

“Like you’re doing with the police?
 
They’re going to question me again, Carra.
 
They’re going to wonder what happened to my face and my feet.”

She looked down at his feet.
 
“You’re going to show them your hooves, Max?
 
Is that it?
 
Please.
 
Here’s what I know about you.
 
When I leave here, you’ll pull the glass from your feet and you’ll fix your lip.
 
Your too vain not to do otherwise.
 
And if you do tell the police what happened here today, I’ve got my own story.
 
We had an argument and you attacked me.
 
Guess who lost?”
 
She kept her eyes on him, turned on the phone and tapped numbers.

“I wouldn’t call the police, Carra.”

“Who said I am?
 
Tonight, it’s all about business and you’re going nowhere.”
 
She cocked her head at the bedroom as the phone started to ring.
 
“That’s where you’re staying from this point forward.
 
You’ll have no access to a phone, to this disc, and no way to ask for help.
 
What you will have is four men standing guard outside your door.
 
Make one move when they get here, and it’ll be your last.”

“People can be bought, Carra.”

“Not these men, Max.”

“You don’t know a thing about money or people.”

“Then prove me wrong.
 
We’ll see who’s right.”
 
She held up a finger.
 
“But if you try it, know that they’ll have orders to kill you.”

“Death doesn’t frighten me.”

And there it was—his greatest lie yet.
 
For the first time since he came back into her life, she felt as though it was she who had the upper hand.
 
And, so, she pounced.
 
“That’s a lie,” she said.
 
“I think you really believe you have a chance to be on top again and because of that, I think you fear death more than you hate your body, more than you hate your childhood and more than you hate your miserable fucking existence.”

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

5:52 p.m.

When Marty arrived on East 75th Street, he wasn’t surprised to find the media parked outside Wood’s home.
 
It was nearly six o’clock and time for the evening news.
 
If all of
 
New York wasn’t already talking about this case, soon they would be. The fame that had found Kendra Wood in life was about to catapult her to new heights in death.

He left the cab and scanned the confusion of cameras and cables and vans and people for Jennifer, found her reading her notes in front of the police barricade, and smiled to himself.
 
Around her neck was the necklace he gave her when they first dated.

The cab sped away and Jennifer looked up, but not at him. She said something to her cameraman, laughed with him and lifted her face to the dozens of birds darting above them in the umbrella of trees.
 
He heard her say, “If one of them shits on me, I swear to God I’m smearing it on that bitch from Fox 5.”

Marty called out her name.

Jennifer spotted him in the crowd and waved him over.
 
“What are you doing here?” she said, smiling.
 
“I thought we were going to talk at eight.”

“We were,” Marty said.
 
“But I need to talk to you now.
 
Got a minute?”

“I don’t know.”
 
She looked at her cameraman, a short man with a cap of white hair who was nearly twice her age.
 
“How much time?”

“Seven minutes and your pretty face will be smiling at half of New York.”

She touched the man’s forearm.
 
“That’s sweet,” she said. “My pretty face.
 
If I had a fan club, Bob, I’d make you president.”

“If you had a fan club, I’d be working elsewhere.”

“Oh, come on.
 
You’d Tweet me if you had the chance.”

“Not unless you took your ass to the city clinic first.”
 
He raised a finger before she could speak.
 
“Careful.
 
You don’t want me to fuck with your lighting, girl.”

Jennifer kissed him on the cheek and followed Marty across the street.
 
“Isn’t he great?
 
You don’t find cynicism like that just anywhere.
 
I love him.”
 
She squeezed Marty’s hand.
 
“What are you doing here?
 
Something tells me it isn’t just to see me.”

“You’re right,” Marty said.
 
“It isn’t.
 
Though this is a nice surprise.”
 
He cocked a thumb at the row of houses behind them.
 
“Emilio DeSoto and Helena Adams.
 
I’m interviewing them.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened.
 
“How’d you swing that?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Sure, I do.”

“It was Gloria,” he said.

“Gloria?”

“Just got off the phone with her.”

“But I thought you were pissed at her.”

“I am,” Marty said.
 
“But I knew she could get me inside so I said to hell with it and called her.”

“She really does know everyone, then.”

“She makes it her business to,” Marty said.
 
“It’s what she does.”

“Think they saw something?”

“It’s what I’m hoping.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Actually, there is,” Marty said. “What are you doing after this?”

“Bob was going to buy me a drink but I can get out of that,” she said.
 
“Bob’s a pushover.
 
He loves me, too.”

“Enough to Tweet you?”

“Oh, please.
 
He’d Tweet the hell out of me if he was straight.”

Marty smiled.
 
“Too much information.
 
If he’s willing to take a rain check, I was wondering if you’d drive over to Carra Wolfhagen’s and keep tabs on her husband.
 
He’s staying with her.”

That was enough for Jennifer.
 
She took him by the arm and led him farther down the street, away from the other reporters.
 
“Wolfhagen’s there?” she said in a low voice.
 
“But they can’t stand each other.”

“You think?”

“Why would she let him stay with her?
 
She’s divorcing him.
 
Everyone knows how they feel about each other.
 
You’d think he’d find some other place to stay.”

“It is interesting, isn’t it?”

“What else do you know?
 
You’re holding back—I can tell.”

“I’ll tell you everything later,” he said.
 
“But only if you’ll watch him.”

“Of course, I’ll watch him.”

They walked back toward the crowd of reporters.

“Bring your cell,” Marty said.
 
“Call me on mine and follow him if he leaves.
 
I don’t know when I’ll be able to join you, but I’ll get there eventually.”
 
He looked at her.
 
“You’re okay with this?”

She frowned at him. “Oh, please.
 
It’s not like I haven’t pulled surveillance before.
 
Remember Gotti?”

How could he forget?
 
At that early point in her career, she may have been a young reporter, but she’d tailed the mob boss for three weeks without getting caught.
 
She’d gone undercover and dated the man’s son to extract information about the family.
 
She won a Peabody for her report, which exposed sides to Gotti he never wanted made public.
 
And it made her a star.

She squeezed his hand.
 
“I’ll see you after you interview DeSoto and Adams.
 
It’ll be fun, like old times.”
 
She winked at him.
 
“And do me a favor—wear those tight jeans I like so well, the ones that show off your ass.
 
You never know.
 
You might just get lucky again.”

With that, she crossed the street, stood in front of the camera, skimmed her notes and took a breath as the camera’s floodlights flashed on.
 
Bob pointed a finger at her and Jennifer began speaking to half of New York, as did the other reporters around her.