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“Not that stands out in my mind.”

“What about your parents, what did they do?”

“My mother was a homemaker. My father worked as an appliance repairman for Maytag,” she provided.

“So he traveled.”

“Not into the city. His territory was the outlying suburbs. Yours?”

“My father was a mathematician, MIT,” I offered.

“Different.” Catherine frowned, more speculatively now. “Suffice it to say, in 1980, I doubt our paths crossed, at least not in any memorable kind of way.”

“What about other relatives?” Bobby spoke up. “Given the, uh, family resemblance.”

Catherine merely shrugged. “You and D.D. are reading too much into this. We both simply look Italian. There must be hundreds of other women in Boston who could say the same.”

Everyone looked at me. I had nothing more to add. Frankly, I agreed with Catherine. I didn’t think we looked all that much alike. She was much too skinny, for one. And I had better legs.

The interview was petering out. D.D. had a perplexed scowl on her face. Bobby was staring hard at the tape recorder. Whatever they had been looking for, they weren’t getting it. MO, I thought. They were trying to compare Richard Umbrio to my stalker; except, according to Catherine, Umbrio had snatched her as a crime of opportunity, whereas the person who had left little gifts for me…

The victims may look alike. But the crimes themselves were different.

When no new questions materialized, Catherine planted her hands on the table as if to push back.

“One moment,” Bobby said sharply.

“What?”

“Think very hard. Catherine, how sure are you that the man who abducted you was Richard Umbrio?”

“I beg your pardon!”

“You were young, ambushed, traumatized, and most of the time you were with him, you were trapped down in the dark—”

“Mrs. Gagnon,” the lawyer started to say nervously, but Catherine didn’t need his help.

“Twenty-eight days, Bobby. Twenty-eight days Richard was the only person who occupied my world. If I ate, it was because he brought me food. If I drank, it was because he deigned to give me water. He sat beside me, he laid on top of me. He fucked me holding my head between his massive hands and screaming at me not to turn away.

“To this day, I can picture his face as he stared out the car window. I can see him haloed by the light each time he appeared at the opening of my prison and I knew I’d finally get fed. I remember how he looked by the glow of the lantern light, sleeping just like a baby, my wrist tied to his so I couldn’t escape.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Richard Umbrio kidnapped me twenty-seven years ago. And there is no doubt in my mind that each and every day I’m thankful that I stuck the barrel of the gun inside his mouth and blew out his brains.”

Carson, the attorney, grew wide-eyed at the end of his client’s statement. Bobby, however, merely nodded. He reached across the table, snapped off the recorder.

“All right, Cat,” he said quietly. “Then you tell us: If Richard Umbrio went to prison in ’81, then who was left to build an even larger underground pit at the site of an old lunatic asylum? Who kidnapped six more girls and stuck them beneath the earth?”

“I don’t know. And honestly, I’m a little offended that you think I do.”

“We have to ask you, Cat. You’re as close to Umbrio as we’re going to get.”

That clearly pissed her off. This time she did push away from the table, rising to her feet. “I believe we’re done here.”

“You were alone with him in the hallway,” Bobby continued relentlessly. “He talked to you in the hotel suite. Did he mention a friend? A pen pal? Someone he met while in prison?”

“He mentioned exactly how he was going to kill me!”

“What about Nathan? Richard kidnapped him first, maybe while they were alone—”

“You leave my son out of this!”

“Six dead girls, Catherine. Six girls who didn’t make it up out of the dark.”

“Goddamn you!”

“We need to know. You have to tell us. If Richard had a friend, an accomplice, a mentor, we have to know.”

Catherine was breathing hard now, her eyes locked on Bobby’s. For an instant, I wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Scream? Slap him across the face?

She placed her hands on the edge of the table. She leaned forward until she and Bobby were nearly nose to nose.

“Richard Umbrio had
nothing
to do with your crime scene. He was in prison. And while he was a homicidal son of a bitch, he was also, blessedly for your purposes, a loner. He had no friends. No accomplices. Once and for all, we are done here. Any other questions you have can be delivered to my attorney. Carson.”

Carson obediently whipped out business cards.

Catherine straightened. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Annabelle—or Tanya, or whatever her name is—and I have business to attend to.”

“We do?” I spoke up rather stupidly.

“Wait a minute—” Bobby started.

“Absolutely not,” D.D. echoed, rising from the table.

It was the very vehemence of their response, its implied possessiveness, that made me follow Catherine.

“Don’t worry, darlings,” our hostess tossed over her shoulder at Bobby and D.D. “I’ll have her back before midnight.” She shut the library doors behind us and headed down the hall.

“Where are we going?” I asked, having to hustle to keep up.

“Oh honey…Obviously, I’m taking you shopping.”

C
ATHERINE’S RETAIL-THERAPY
location of choice was Nordstrom. Her limo driver dropped us off out front. Catherine breezily informed the chauffeur she’d call him again when needed. He drove off to do whatever it is limo drivers do in between being summoned by their mistresses. I followed Catherine into the store.

She started off by suggesting that we eat. Since my stomach was growling audibly, I didn’t protest.

It was after six, and Nordstrom’s café was growing crowded. I waited in line for grilled chicken and pesto on focaccia. Catherine ordered a cup of tea.

She glanced at my enormous sandwich, the side of Terra sweet potato chips. She arched a brow, then returned to sipping her green tea. I ate the entire sandwich, the bag of chips, then went back for a piece of carrot cake, simply out of spite.

“So what do you think of Detective Dodge?” she asked, when I was halfway through the cake and presumably so blissed-out on sugar I wouldn’t notice the fine hint of longing that had entered her voice.

I shrugged. “As a cop or what?”

She smiled. “Or what.”

“If I found him naked in my bed, I wouldn’t kick him out.”

“Have you?”

“That’s not exactly the nature of our relationship.” Though the image of Bobby, naked, was taking longer than I would’ve thought to clear from my head. “Now, him and D.D., on the other hand…”

“Never happen,” Catherine said immediately. “Sex, maybe, but a relationship? She’s far too ambitious for him. I doubt she’ll settle for anything less than a politically minded DA, or perhaps a crime boss. Now,
that
would be interesting.”

“You two don’t like each other very much.”

Her turn to shrug. “I have that effect on women. Perhaps it’s because I sleep with their husbands. Then again, if the husbands weren’t sleeping with me, they would simply be fucking their secretaries, and if you were going to be jilted, wouldn’t you rather be jilted for someone who looks like me than for a peroxide blonde with cheap taste in shoes?”

“I never thought of it that way before.”

“Few do.” Catherine put down her tea. She traced a random pattern on the tabletop with her red-lacquered nail. When she spoke again, her voice was low, with a trace of vulnerability again.

“Once upon a time,” she said quietly, “I invited Bobby to move to Arizona with me. Offered him everything, my body, my home, a glamorous life of leisure. He turned me down. Did you know that?”

“Was this before or after he shot your husband?” I asked.

She smiled, seemed amused that I knew that minor detail. “After. You’ve been listening to D.D., haven’t you? She’s obsessed with the notion I set up Bobby to kill my husband. I think she’s read one too many suspense novels. Ever heard of Occam’s razor—the simplest explanation is the best one?”

I shook my head.

“Well, simply put, Jimmy beat the shit out of me, Bobby made the right choice that night, and I’m now living happily ever after, can’t you tell?”

Her voice hit a brittle edge on the last word. She seemed to hear it, picked up her tea, and took another sip. I said nothing for a while, just absorbed this woman in front of me, who packaged herself as a walking advertisement for sex, when I was pretty sure now she hadn’t felt a thing in nearly twenty-seven years.

Is this the fate I had narrowly avoided when my father decided to flee? And if so, then why didn’t I feel more relieved? Because mostly I felt sad. A deep down achy kind of sad. The world was cruel. Grown men preyed on little kids. People betrayed the ones they loved. What was done could never be undone again. That’s just the way things worked.

As if reading my mind, Catherine’s head came up. She looked me in the eye: “Why are you here, Annabelle?”

“I don’t know.”

“Richard isn’t your stalker. By the time you were seven, he was already sentenced to life in prison. Besides, Richard’s fantasies involved physical intimidation and domination. He wasn’t subtle enough for stalking.”

“You were only twelve; it wasn’t your fault.”

She actually smiled at me. “You think I don’t know that?”

“And you survived.”

Now she laughed, a full throaty sound that caused several of the other diners to glance our way. “You think I survived? Oh Annabelle, you are simply
precious.
Come now, as a seven-year-old target yourself, surely you learned something.”

“I happen to be an expert kickboxer,” I heard myself say stiffly. “My father took my safety very seriously—taught me self-defense, criminology one-oh-one, when to run, when to fight, and how to know the difference. I grew up with over a dozen different aliases, living in a dozen different cities. Trust me, I know how serious this is.”

“Your father taught you?” Arched brow again.

“Yes.”

“The academic from MIT?”

“The same.”

“And how did your father know so much about criminology or self-defense?”

I shrugged. “Necessity is the mother of invention. Isn’t that what they say?”

Catherine stared at me in bemusement. “Wait, wait,” she said, when she could tell I was getting pissy again, “I’m not trying to mock you. I want to understand. When this all happened, your father…”

“He moved my family away. We packed our suitcases in the middle of the afternoon, loaded up the car, and disappeared.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“With fake names and everything?”

“Absolutely. There is no other way to be safe. Which reminds me, you’re supposed to be calling me Tanya.”

She waved away my alias, clearly unconcerned. “And did your father get another job with a university in Florida?”

“Couldn’t. Not without a curriculum vitae, and fake driver’s licenses rarely come with those kinds of attachments. He drove a taxi.”

“
Really?
And your mother?”

I shrugged. “Once a homemaker, always a homemaker, I guess.”

“But she didn’t protest? She didn’t try to stop him? Both of your parents did this for you?”

I was growing puzzled now. “Well, of course. What else was there to do?”

Catherine sat back. She picked up her tea. Her hand had started to shake, causing the liquid to slosh. She set the china cup back down.

“My parents never spoke of what happened,” she said abruptly. “One day, I vanished. Another day, I returned home. We never spoke of the time in between. It was like the twenty-eight days had been some minor blip in the space-time continuum, best left forgotten. We stayed in the same house. I returned to the same school. And my parents resumed their same old lives.

“I never forgave them for that. I never forgave them for being able to still live, still function, still breathe, when every part of me hurt so much I wanted to tear the house apart board by board. I wanted to gouge out my own eyeballs. I wanted to yell and scream so badly, I couldn’t make a single sound.

“I hated that house, Annabelle. I hated my parents for not saving me. I hated the block I lived on. And I hated every single child in my school who had walked home safely on October twenty-second without trying to help a stranger find a lost dog.

“And they whispered, you know. They told stories about me on the playground, shared winks and nudges in the locker room. And I never said a word because everything they whispered was true. Being a victim is a one-way ticket, Annabelle. This is who you are now, and no one will ever let you go back.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “Look at you—you are not weak or defenseless. When Umbrio got out of prison, you didn’t just curl up in a ball. You shot him, for God’s sake, and more power to you. You met the challenge. You won, Catherine.

“Not like me. I’m all training and no trial. I’ve spent my entire life running and I don’t even know who it is I’m supposed to fear. ‘Can’t trust anyone,’ was my father’s favorite motto. ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’ I don’t know. Maybe my father had a point. Seems like it’s always the handsome, charming husband who brutally murders his wife, the mild-mannered Boy Scout leader who’s secretly a serial killer, the quiet coworker who one day opens up with an AK-47. Hell, I’m suspicious of the mailman.”

“Oh, me, too,” Catherine said immediately. “And utility workers, maintenance workers, and customer-service representatives. The amount of information they have at their fingertips is positively scary.”

“Exactly!”

“I formed a shell company,” she said matter-of-factly. “Put everything in the company’s name and—badda bing, badda boom—ceased to exist on paper. It’s the only way to be safe. I can have Carson look into it for you.”

“Thanks, but I don’t exactly have those kinds of assets….”

“Nonsense, it’s about security, not money. Trust me on this one. I’ll have Carson set you up. You need to think about the future, Annabelle. The real trick to security is keeping one step ahead.”

I nodded, but that quickly her words took the wind out of my sails. One step ahead? Of what? What did the future really hold for someone like me? I’d been trained for twenty-five years to live out of suitcases. To lie. To distrust. To commit to no one. Even in Boston, I had only a passing acquaintance with my Starbucks coworkers, and barely registered one step above a maid with most of my wealthy clients. I attended church, but I always sat in the back. I never wanted to be asked too many questions; I didn’t want to lie to a man of God.

And as for my business, what would happen if it did take off, if I tried to hire employees? Would my fake ID hold up under the intense scrutiny of business-licensing boards, referral services? I kept telling myself I was optimistic. I kept telling myself I was in control, had a dream. I would not be my father’s pawn! But truth was, week after week, I slogged through the same under-the-radar routine. My business did not grow. I did not make friends or date seriously.

I would never fall in love. I would never have a family. Twenty-five years after I started running, my parents were dead, I was all alone, and I was still terrified.

And then I understood Catherine Gagnon. She was right. She had never escaped from that pit in the ground. Just as I had never stopped living like a target.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I mumbled.

“I’m done, too.”

“Please, I think I just need a minute.”

She shrugged. “I’ll powder my nose.”

She followed me to the ladies’ lounge, taking up position in front of a gilded mirror. I went into one of the stalls, where I pressed my forehead against the cool metal door and worked on regaining my composure, finding focus.

What was it my father had always said? I was strong, I was fast, and I did have a fighter’s instinct.

What did my father know? For all his scheming, he hadn’t been able to dodge a lost taxi.

I squeezed my eyes shut, thought of my mother instead. The way she had stroked my hair. The look on her face that fall afternoon in Arlington, when she had told me that she loved me, that she would always love me.

From my pocket, I took out the picture Mrs. Petracelli had given me. Taken at a barbecue in the Petracellis’ backyard. I was sitting on the picnic table next to Dori. We were grinning at the camera, each holding a Popsicle. My mom stood to the side, toasting the camera with a margarita, smiling at us indulgently. My father was toward the back, working the grill. He had also noticed the camera, maybe heard Mrs. Petracelli say “Cheese,” and had turned with a large, beaming smile.

The smell of searing hamburgers, freshly cut grass, and roasting corn on the cob. The sound of neighbors’ sprinklers and other small children playing next door.

I could feel the nostalgia welling in my throat, the tears burning my eyes. And I understood why I never made it forward. Because mostly I wanted to go back. To the last days of summer. To those final weeks when the world still felt safe.

I wiped my eyes. Flushed the toilet. Pulled myself together, because what else was there to do?

I made it to the sink, setting the photograph carefully to the side so it wouldn’t get wet while I washed my hands. Catherine wandered over, regarded my reflection in the mirror. She had retouched her lipstick, brushed out her long black hair.

Side by side, we did look like sisters. Except she was the glamorous one, destined for a life amid the stars, while I was clearly going to become the crazy cat lady who lived alone down the street.

Her gaze drifted down, spotted the photo. “Your family?”

I nodded, then felt, more than saw, her stiffen.

“I thought you said your father was a mathematician,” she said sharply.

“He was.”

“Don’t lie to me, Annabelle. I met him. Twice, in fact. Really, you could’ve just said he was with the FBI.”