The Other Woman (24 page)

She thinks she’s alone.

Holly unzipped the hooded jacket she was wearing and shrugged it from her shoulders, revealing a sleeveless black top. Made of that same stretchy stuff as her pants. She adjusted her earbud string and tied the jacket around her waist. He could see her chest, the swell of her curves more maddening than he remembered.

With a shake that was almost a shiver, Holly jogged along the sidewalk away from him and turned right across the bridge.

Matt could hardly breathe. She was—dangerous.

Another plan began to form. A new plan. A better plan.

He’d be ready for Holly when she returned.

*   *   *

“So we made it through Saturday night at least, ya know?” DeLuca’s silhouette appeared at Jake’s office door, a Dunkin’s extra large cup in one hand. His partner raised it, toasting. “No new bodies. Maybe the Bridge Killer’s decided to fold his tents.”

Pam’s voice buzzed through the intercom. “Jake, DeLuca’s here.” D never waited to be announced.

“You’re a sick person, D. And there’s no Bridge Killer.” Jake typed the name Kenna Wilkes into his BlackBerry. Just in case. Looked up at DeLuca as he sent it to himself.

“Can’t believe you’re here plugging away.” DeLuca lounged in the doorway. “You can’t work all the time.”

“You can if there’s a serial killer on the loose,” Jake said.

“Well, that’s the thing. Maybe there isn’t … a serial killer.”

Jake looked up, watched DeLuca take a long pull of coffee. “You have two seconds before I—”

“Kylie Howarth. Is the Longfellow vic’s name. But she’s a suicide.”

Jake stood slowly, closing his laptop. He sat down again, his metal chair creaking a complaint. He stared at DeLuca, calculating what that would mean. Longfellow had been the first body. The first domino of the so-called bridge killings. The beginning of the hysteria. Suicide?

I knew it.
There was no Bridge Killer.

DeLuca came into the room, flipped around Jake’s swivel guest chair, sat with one leg on each side. Draped his leather-jacketed arms across the back of the seat. Plunked his coffee on Jake’s desk.

“We think,” DeLuca said.

Jake slammed his palm on his desk, sloshing a mini-puddle of coffee onto the wooden surface. “You kidding me? What’re you talking about, D? You on drugs? There’s no room for
maybe
in this business.”

DeLuca made the time-out sign. “Is there room for ‘probably’? Hear me out. Her parents called. Kylie Howarth,
K-y-l-i-e,
is their daughter. They’re from—Louisville. St. Louis. Someplace like that, it’s in my notebook. Wife’s, like, a city councilor. Husband’s rich. Anyway, they’d been out of town in, ah, you know, Europe. Switzerland, someplace like that. Skiing. So they didn’t get the letter. Till they got back.”

“The—?” Jake wrote down the name Kylie.

“Letter. She’s sorry, she let them down, she can’t face it all anymore. Apparently she had some problems. She’d run off to Boston, poor-little-rich-girl type of thing, they hardly heard from her. So it didn’t concern them when, you know. They were out of touch. So she sends them this letter. Saying she was gonna ‘fly.’ Didn’t know they were gone. Apparently.”

“But how did they, I mean why—?”

DeLuca blotted the spilled coffee with a handkerchief, stuffed it back in his jeans pocket. “The letter was postmarked Boston. They called the cops. Kurtz took it. She told me about it. I told her I’d fill you in.”

Jake’s intercom buzzed again. “Jake? Cadet Kurtz is—”

“Send her in, please,” Jake said. “So how do we know it’s her? Kylie How—?”

“Howarth. We don’t,” DeLuca said. “Description matches, though. Everything matches. Description, timing, ‘flying’—you know, off a bridge. The parents are getting a plane A-sap, bringing the letter. Could be here today, they’ll let us know. Then they’ll have to see Dr. A in the ME’s office. ID the body.”

“Bad news for them,” Jake said. “Hate that. But guess it’s good for us.”

“Yup.” DeLuca nodded, swiveling the chair slightly back and forth. “Thing is.”

“Thing is what?” Jake said.

“Detectives?” Cadet Kurtz, also carrying a Dunkin’s cup, peered around Jake’s door. She held out a sheaf of papers, but looked at DeLuca. “So you told him? I was going to call you, sir, but Paul—uh, Detective DeLuca—said that—”

“All set,” Jake said. He motioned her to hand over the documents. “Good work.”

DeLuca raised his cup at her. “Kurtz, I was about to tell Detective Brogan what you said the Howarths told you about their daughter’s employment history. Where she’d applied for a job.”

Jake began to read. He held the pages, midair.

“No way,” he said. He looked at DeLuca, then at Kurtz, then back again, trying to read their faces. “You two are frickin’ kidding me.”

41

Two missed calls, a text, and an e-mail. Jane clicked her car door open, alone in the
Register
’s parking lot, turned on the key to get the heat started.
I have to sleep.
She would see who’d called, drive to her apartment, then answer, if she absolutely had to, when she got home. Then, sleep.

She clicked in her access code. If she didn’t got some rest, she’d never make it through the Gable interview. Lucky she had already done her research. Lucky she didn’t have to look good on camera for it.

Voice mail.
“You have two new calls. To listen, press one.”

“Jane Elizabeth?”

Her father’s voice. Was something wrong?

There was a pause. Her dad hated leaving messages. Something must be wrong. Lissa? Her wedding? His health? “Your sister showed me the article in the
Boston Register
this morning. Online.”

Another pause.

“Nice job, honey,” her father said. He coughed, cleared his throat. “I wish your mother could have seen it.”

There was a beat of silence, then a click. Her father never said good-bye on the phone. Why did she always feel tears, hearing his voice? She was tired. Just tired. She pushed
1
for the other message.

This caller’s voice was so shrill, so tense, she almost didn’t recognize it.

“We have to talk, Jane,” Moira’s recorded voice said. “Owen just got home. Now he says—well, first he told me he was in Springfield, but now he’s saying he spent the night in Worcester.
Worcester!
That’s more than forty-five minutes from here. Why not simply come home? Why not? I’ll tell you why. He actually had that girl in the car.
In his car
. I saw her, she got out, preened herself in front of me, all that hair and … ah. That incredible b—”

Jane could hear Moira stop for breath, imagined her trying to calm herself. Did she hear the clink of ice?

“We need to talk, Jane. Did you see this person in Springfield? Why did Owen go to Worcester? It’s terrible, Jane, it’s terrible. You’re an outsider, reliable, the only one I can trust. You know someone is going to notice. And when they do, it’ll be too late. Call me, please.”

Jane stared at the phone. Hit the Save button. And stared again. So much for Jane’s feigned ignorance. Sounded like Moira, too, had seen the other woman.

She turned off the ignition. She had to go back upstairs and tell Alex.

She turned on the ignition. She had to get home. She could call Alex later and they could figure out what to do. If Moira was drunk, or delusional, or scheming, or sincere, or whatever all the other possibilities were. Nothing more was going to happen today. Nothing she could do anything about, anyway.

Who’d texted? She clicked a few buttons. Amy. “Another Sat nite by URself? How ’bout Hot Alex? CL me.” If Amy only knew. And she hadn’t even told her about Alex’s on-again, off-again wedding ring. If she did, Amy’d be on the hunt for bridesmaids’ dresses.

Jane yawned, her whole face stretched with the desire for sleep, her eyes closing. She covered her face with her palms, then batted her cheeks to wake herself up.

Next, the e-mail. From Jake.

Shoot
. She clicked it open. Stared at it. Two words:
Kenna Wilkes
.

*   *   *

It was cold, and beautiful, and it felt like she was flying. Holly stretched to her longest stride, the music filling her head, a blast of salt air filling her lungs and making her so powerful. She was running and running, not away from anything, not anymore, but toward her perfect future. The post office had been open on Sunday, perfect, package number two now on the way.

Odd that Jane hadn’t mentioned the first package. Maybe the mail had messed up. Maybe it hadn’t arrived? She knew the address was correct, she’d chosen Jane carefully and copied her address at Channel 11 from the Web before she’d moved to Boston. She’d even written the mailing labels in advance.

Holly took a deep breath, trying not to fret. She’d only mailed it—when? Like, the other day. Maybe Jane hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe Jane was ignoring it? Testing her? Or maybe she didn’t recognize her from the photos. At the rally, Holly’d been so excited to see Jane! And thought she’d come on purpose, hoping Holly would be there. Funny, she didn’t have a cameraman with her. TV reporters usually did.

Holly let it go, the wind whistling past her woolen cap, and she made the turn back to the post office. The muscles in her legs and her lungs had that nice burning sensation, so she knew she’d pushed to the limit. And a little beyond.

Her car was there, right where she’d left it. The lot had been pretty empty when she parked, only a couple of cars. There were more now, now that it was—she looked at her black digital watch—a little after noon. A guy stood by the railing, a folded newspaper sticking out of his back pocket. She watched him toss bread crumbs or whatever into the water, swooping seagulls snapping them up.

Holly kept running, slowing down, following along her iPod selections in cool-down mode. She’d programmed them specially for her run, starting off slowly, then getting faster and faster, then perfect running music, the Cars, Gaga, Katy Perry, Flo Rida; then the cool down. She was almost through her favorite Sting, so one song still to go before her timed run-list finished. And she had to be back at the car, perfectly, when the downloads ended.

She’d make it. She always did, even if she had to hurry up or slow down a little to make it precisely right.

She leaned both palms against the hood of her car, her hands feeling the chill of the metal through her knitted gloves, and let out a long cleansing breath exactly as the cool-down music ended. The stretching music started.
Alanis.
She carefully lifted one leg behind her, then the other. She looked up. The guy was watching her.

She squinted in the October sunshine. Ignored the music’s orders to continue stretching. Was the glare on the water playing tricks with her vision? Did she want it so much that it seemed to appear? She stopped, midstretch, staring. Blinked, twice, but the same man was still there. And she knew who it was. She
knew
.

No.
Not possible.

The man was walking toward her. Could it be?

She pinched her own arm, hard. “Ow!” she cried. Like one of the seagulls skirling across the sky. But she felt it. She didn’t wake up. It wasn’t a dream. It was real.

The man came closer. Closer. Closer.

She heard him say, “Hollister?”

42

“Wake up, Hollister.” Matt draped Holly onto the passenger seat of his car. She hadn’t exactly fainted, but he’d arrived right in time to catch her as her knees gave way. He pulled off her stretchy cap and tossed it into the backseat. She still looked terrific, that was for sure. Though he figured seeing him would be a shocker, he never expected she’d totally lose it like this. Well, it could work for him. “Holly? You with me here?”

“Is it really you? Matt?” She turned to him as he got behind the wheel, one palm under her cheek like a groggy little girl. “How did you know—?”

“Let’s not talk about that now,” Matt said. “You look kinda woozy. Do you need some water?”

Holly shook her head slowly, staring at him. She reached out with one hand, didn’t quite touch him. “No, no, don’t leave. No water. I’m fine. It’s only—Matt?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“You called me Hollister. I knew you would, I knew it. Knew if I…” Her voice trailed off. She closed her eyes.

Geez
. A complete wack. Matt felt her car keys in her pocket and clicked her car locked through his open window. Meters not in effect Sundays, that was a big plus. Even if she didn’t move her car tonight, she wouldn’t get a ticket until the next day. Holly’s earbuds had fallen out, and he’d looped them around her neck. He could hear the buzz of some music coming from them.

“The world works in mysterious ways.” From somewhere he pulled out a line Holly used to throw at him. He rolled his eyes, knowing she’d never notice. “I guess I was meant to find you.”

“Mmmmm,” she said. Keeping her eyes closed. “Tell me the story, though. The whole thing.”

“Tell you the…?”

Holly sat up, tucked one ankle under her, wide-eyed as a kid asking for another fairy tale. “The whole story. How you found me.”

Nip this puppy in the bud,
Matt thought. Hell, he needed to stall for time, but he’d tell her the truth, kind of, then move on. “Well, I saw your picture in the paper. The Boston paper. I read it for the Red Sox, you know?”

He tapped the newspaper on the console next to him. “I don’t get the print version back home, so I check out the
Register
online. And there you were, in a story about—”

“My picture’s in today’s paper?” Holly’s eyes sparkled. She sat up straighter, grabbing for the Sunday
Register
he’d purchased outside the post office. “Let’s see!”

Matt had to laugh, watching her scan the front page. “Not today’s paper,” Matt said. “It was … a couple days ago. So I flew in to see if I could find you.”

He expected—he didn’t know what he expected. But not this. Holly had the newspaper in front of her face. Like she’d completely forgotten about him.

“Holly? Hollister?”
What the hell?

“Jane Ryland works for the
Register
?” Holly’s voice was hollow, and her finger pointed at something on the front page. “She’s a reporter for the
Register
? I thought she was television. A television reporter. Doesn’t she work at Channel Eleven?”