The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (142 page)

The police, fire department and EMTs broke into the building.
 
Maggie looked at them as they raced toward her.
 
She turned back to Marty.
 
“You’re not going to die,” she said.
 
“Your girls need you.
 
Do you hear me?
 
Your girls need you.
 
You can’t do this to the girls.”

And then, in spite of the smoke closing down on her, she pressed her scarred cheek to the hot floor, took a lungful of clean air and breathed whatever life was left inside her straight into him.

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS LATER

AMSTERDAM

Smelling of cannabis and feeling a bit high because of it, Vincent Spocatti left the Speak Easy Coffeeshop on Oudebrugsteeg, where pot was smoked as freely as the coffee was poured, and took a right on Warmoesstraat, a narrow street whose origins began in the 13th century.
 

As such, surrounding him was a bizarre hive of the old and the new.
 
This was a popular street and now, on the tip of dusk, it was teeming with clutches of people walking close and in the midst of chatter.
 
He listened to them as they passed—a cacophony of Dutch voices lifting and lilting.

He loved it here.

It was February, he was bundled against cold, there was a loaded gun in his pocket and his two marks were walking ahead of him.
 

One was an international banker pushing sixty, the other was his international mistress pushing thirty.
 
Back home in the States, the banker’s longtime American wife was pushing to have each murdered by nightfall.

He could smell the Amstel river in the distance and he could hear the familiar clatter of the Central railroad, which occasionally made the pavement tremble when a train passed.
  
And then, in his pocket, he felt a vibration of another sort—his cell phone.
 

He reached for it, saw that it was an email and opened it to a photograph of Carmen, who was in Bora Bora resting in a hut that reached into the South Pacific deep.
 
She was on a deck, in a bikini and looking tan and fit.
 
Beneath the photo were a few words:
 
“Paradise ending.
 
New job tomorrow.
 
This one’s big.
 
You might hear from me.”

He turned off the phone and looked ahead of him, where his marks were walking arm-in-arm, her head on his shoulder.
 
She was blonde and she was pretty, with a smooth complexion that was just this side of pink given the chilly air.
 
He heard her laugh and, as she turned her head to whisper something in the man’s ear, he saw just how delicate she was, just how fine her jaw line.
 

He had orders to get a photo of her face after he’d blasted it into nothingness.

Carmen.
 

The last time he’d seen her was in New York, when they decided to be nobody’s fool and turn the tables on Carra Wolfhagen and Ira Lasker when it was revealed that they lied to them and put them at risk.
 
And so, just for fun, they found rope, put nooses around their necks and strung each up by their throats above the bar.

Wolfhagen and the reporter joined them.

When they left them behind, scrambling and gagging and choking as they fought to stay conscious, there was a sense of redemption.
 
Maybe they’d live, maybe they’d die—neither he nor Carmen cared.
 
What mattered is that Carra and Ira have time enough on those nooses to know why they were there.
 
They’d think about their mistakes and wish they’d been straight with them from the start.

Later, Spocatti read in the Times how the scene unfolded.
 
Carra Wolfhagen was caught by the police when she ran out of the building and down the street.
 
The next day, Mark Andrews identified her and Lasker as the masterminds behind framing Wolfhagen.
 
She now was facing prison.
 
Spocatti read that Lasker died in the fire, as did Wolfhagen, who was burned so deeply beyond recognition, his remains were identified by his crowded set of teeth.
 
All in all, a good ending in which he and Carmen learned valuable lessons while pocketing millions for their trouble.

Now, the day had tipped into night.
 
Storefront windows illumined the stone sidewalks.
 
Above them, street lamps flashed and created warm umbrellas of amber light.
 
Tonight, he would end this job, likely by busting into their apartment and taking them by surprise, and then he’d move back to New York City, where another job was waiting for him.

Two years ago, he had been involved in a coup to take down the billionaire George Redman and his family, among others.
 
Things hadn’t gone as planned and now Spocatti was being brought back to finish the job thanks to a provision provided by a man’s will.
 
He was so intrigued by the situation—at the sheer freshness of it—that he agreed on the spot to take the job.
 

He would finish what should have been finished, and in the absence of one man’s ego and unwillingness to listen, he’d be free to kill in ways that were efficient, precise and, if he was in the mood, likely creative.

*
  
*
  
*

NEW
 
YORK

The cat, Baby Jane, walked across the piano keys to the sound of her own music.
 

She stopped in the middle of the keyboard, reached out her paw and pressed down on one of the keys.
 
Curious, she did so again, this time more firmly.
 
And then, delighted that she possessed the gift of music, the cat reared up on her hind legs and crashed down in an eruption of sound.

Maggie Cain swept into the room and hooked the cat with one arm.
 
“You’re no Chopin,” she said.
 
“You do, however, have the aggression of a young Rachmaninoff.
 
But do me a favor and work it out later, when I’m not writing.”
 
She scratched the cat’s chin.
 
“Okay?”

Unfazed, the cat squirmed out of Maggie’s arm and ran across the room to the window.
 
She leaped onto the sill and looked out at the falling snow.
 
New York was in the midst of a Nor’easter.
 
They were predicting eighteen inches, but as Maggie moved behind the cat and looked out at the barren street, she knew they were in for more because the snow already was that deep.
 
But she didn’t mind it—right now, everywhere she looked was bright and white and seemingly brand new.

She went back to her office and stared at the words on her computer monitor.
 
Her new novel, a thriller, was nearly finished.
 
She’d never attempted the genre before but given what she’d experienced six months ago, she felt uniquely qualified to give it a shot.
 
And she was enjoying it.
 
Three more chapters, a second and a third draft to hone the text, and then it was off to her agent Matt, who encouraged her to write it.

The phone rang.
 
She glanced over at the lighted dial and saw that it was Mark.
 
She weighed whether she wanted to be interrupted by him, and decided that she didn’t.
 
She let him slip into the gray world of voice mail and waited for him to leave a message.
 

“It’s me,” he said.
 
“You up for company?
 
I could grab a cab, stop by the market and get the fixings for a roasted tomato, basil and garlic soup.
 
Let me know soon—I know you’re probably writing and haven’t eaten.
 
The soup would do you good.”

He severed the connection and she looked back at the screen.
 
She tried to concentrate, but it was difficult.
 
He was making every effort to win her back.
 
What still surprised her is that he even had to try.
 
If she had been told the night she found him alive in that safe house that there would be any question they’d be back together again, she would have scoffed.
 

But then Mark went to Wolfhagen’s funeral and when he did, a part of her saw him in a different light.
 
Regardless of what Wolfhagen had done to her and to the millions of people whose financial lives he ruined in the stock market crash he helped to create, Mark still revered the man, which she couldn’t accept or understand.

When she confronted him with it, he shrugged it off—Wolfhagen once meant a lot to him.
 
He taught him what he knew today.
 
He forgave him for what he’d done in the past.
 
She should, too.
 
After all, he’d done his time.
 
He wasn’t responsible for anything Carra and Ira did.
 
It was healthy to move on.

But for Maggie, that wasn’t the case—her scar wasn’t just emotional, it was physical.
 
And how could Mark overlook the fact that Wolfhagen tried to shoot her?

She dropped Mark then.
 
Months passed without a word.
 
And then, two weeks ago, he called with an apology and asked if they could work this out.
 
He told her that he loved her.
 
He said that he missed her.
 
He wanted them to be together.
 
But in spite of the fact that a part of her still loved him, another part of her wondered if she was for him.
 
Not knowing, she built up roadblocks.
 
She still hadn’t agreed to see him.

Words on the screen.
 
She read them again and added a sentence.
 
He was pulling out all the stops with that soup.
 
He knew it was her favorite.
 
And the weather was perfect for it.
 
She typed a line of dialogue, screwed up her face when she read it and then deleted it.
 
Words on the screen.
 
She stared at them so long, they went out of focus.
 
For a moment, they could have been ghosts.

And then she knew exactly who to call.
 

She reached for the telephone and, holding it between her head and her shoulder, she opened her computer’s browser, searched for a number, got it and dialed.
 
Given the heavy snow, she was surprised that the line was answered.

“Tarot Cafe.”

“Roberta?”

“Lotta.”

“Is Roberta there?”

“She’s in a trance.”

“Oh.
 
Is it rude to break her from it?”

“Depends on what she’s seeing.
 
Hold on and let me read her face.”

Maggie waited.
 

“I’m seeing a darkness.”

“Maybe we should interrupt.”

“This important?”

“It’s critical.”

“Hold on.”
 

It was a moment before Roberta came to the phone.
 
And when she did, her voice was reduced to a hush.
 
“Is this you?”