THE OVERTON WINDOW (30 page)

“How do the doctors here know that’s what was used?”

“Well, it’s easy enough for the lab to pick it up, but in this case it was even easier than that. The people who did this, they left a veterinary syringe in her neck. It was still there when EMS responded to the call.”

Noah stood up, but too quickly, and he could feel the stubborn light-headedness threatening to return. “Where are those pills, the ones you took from me?”

She went to her pocket and handed him the bottle. “I wrote you some instructions for that stuff. Just go easy on it, okay? In fact, whatever you’re coming down from I’d recommend you just ride it out and stop self-medicating.”

“Good-bye, doctor. Thanks for everything.”

“I don’t know how you’re involved in all this,” Ellen said, “but you’d better know something, Noah. There are a million kinds of murder, but anyone who would do to a person what they did to her? It only means there’s nothing at all they
wouldn’t
do.”

CHAPTER 35
 

The street address that had been scrawled on the hospital’s notepaper didn’t lead him to another of the so-called safe houses that Molly had described. When Noah looked up as the cab pulled to a stop he found he was outside what looked like a quaint family-style eatery, the Buccaneer Diner on Astoria Boulevard in Queens, about a mile from La Guardia Airport.

Inside the restaurant the lunchtime rush was winding down, with most of the tables emptying out and the floor staff busy doing cleanup and taking care of departing patrons at the register. But sitting alone in a booth near the back, in the nearest thing to a dark corner that was available in such a place on a sunny Monday afternoon, was the young woman he’d come to see.

When Molly looked over and saw him walking up the aisle she stood and was suddenly overcome by a flood of tears she must have been barely holding at bay. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms.

In the cab on the way he’d given a great deal of thought to what he might say to her if he actually found her waiting at the end of the ride. Now that he was facing her all of the mental dialogue he’d rehearsed had
winked right out of his mind. Nothing in his long history of skin-deep relationships provided any clue as to where to begin.

Not only did you break my heart, but you and your friends could have killed me with an overdose, all in the name of a hopeless cause.

I care about you, I was starting to believe in you, and now I don’t know if a single thing between us was real.

And of course, there was this one:

I think my father must have ordered your mother to be murdered, just as easily as he’d ordered his breakfast that morning.

There was too much, so Noah said nothing. Neither forgiving nor forgetting, he put it all aside for the time being and just held her for a while.

She’d asked about her mom in a voice that said his answer should be limited to any hopeful news. Noah told her that her mother was awake and speaking when he’d seen her, and that, despite her concerns for the welfare of her precious daughter, her spirits seemed good.

Molly took that in with a solemn nod, and then she laid out her situation.

Her traveling companions had gone on ahead to test the waters at La Guardia in preparation for their flight west toward less hostile environs. According to the news the DHS had taken the nation to high alert over the weekend, and that put the airports at the very highest level; this was obviously cause for concern. Sure enough, word had reached her that the first of her friends to pass through the TSA checkpoint had been singled out and pulled aside. They weren’t just searched and harassed, as had often been the case in recent years; this time they were arrested and detained.

Molly explained that she had to get out of town and make it to a rendezvous across the country as quickly as possible. Driving wouldn’t do; she had to fly in order to make it. The problem was how to get her safely
onto a flight when her name might very well have made it to the top of the swelling watch lists of Homeland Security by now.

Noah was listening, and he was also studying her face as she spoke. The passing resemblance to that picture of his mother was almost gone now that she’d ceased to maintain it. That likeness had been subliminal at best, just enough to hook into his subconscious. But now, as they sat under the bright fluorescent lights of a Queens diner, he realized that there was absolutely no denying who Molly
did
look like.

And that gave him an absolutely brilliant idea.

CHAPTER 36
 

Noah returned from the pay phone near the front door, sat down, and scooted halfway around the semicircular padded booth until he was near enough to her for privacy.

“Okay, we’re all ready.”

“What do you mean, we’re all ready? You made one call and shut down security at an international airport?”

“I did better than that.” He looked around a bit. “Did I see a carry-on bag?”

“Yeah …”

“Let me have it.”

Though she appeared to be totally flummoxed she reached to the floor by her feet, brought up her small duffel, and slid it onto the table in front of him.

Noah zipped the bag open and rummaged through, pulling out a baseball cap, a faded university jersey, and her small polka-dot makeup case.

“Do you have a pair of sunglasses? Wait, forget it, I’ve got mine.”

“Okay,” Molly said, “this is the part where you tell me what we’re going to do.”

“Have you ever wondered how celebrities and public figures avoid all the hassle the rest of us have to go through when they need to suck it up and fly commercial?”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“They make a call like I just made. All the major airlines have a VIP liaison in the big cities, and there’s a service company we’ve used from the office, KTL, that’s going to grease the way even more. They’ll meet us at the curb and walk us right to the plane—”

“Hold it, hold it,” Molly said. “We aren’t celebrities, Noah.”

“No, you’re right. But I’m a rich kid from a powerful family, and it’s reasonable enough that they’d believe I could be dating a celebrity.”

“What are you talking about?”

He smiled. “I’m now dating Natalie Portman.”

She looked at him as though his head had just turned into a pumpkin.

“Wait, what?”

“It’s perfect,” Noah said. “She’s an A-lister but she’s done mostly art-house films, so the average Joe probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. She’s about your size—”

“I don’t look like Natalie Portman.”

“You kind of do, actually, and we’ve got time to make a few tweaks before the limo arrives.” He reached over to smooth one of her eyebrows with the pad of his thumb but she ducked it and swatted his hand away. “Relax,” he said. “This is going to work.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s not going to work at all.”

He put his hand on hers, and though she still looked completely unconvinced, she didn’t pull away.

“Trust me,” Noah said.

•  •  •

Molly came back from the bathroom after ten minutes in there with her kit and a few instructions from Noah. She was in her Vanderbilt sweatshirt, her hair was up in a casual bun at the nape of her neck, and she’d done just enough to her lips and brows and lashes to suggest a layman’s conception of a movie star who was wearing no makeup at all. The great advantage of this whole thing was that when celebrities are out in public trying to avoid a mob of fans and paparazzi, the last thing they want to resemble is who they really are.

She sat and looked over, with one of her newly perfected eyebrows slightly upraised in a regal but skeptical arch. Noah gave her the baseball cap and his sunglasses to complete the disguise. She put them on, pulled up her hood, and checked her reflection in the silver side of the napkin holder.

“Perfect,” he said. “Absolutely perfect. Oh, wait.” He took her makeup kit and searched through its contents until he’d found a small dark pencil with a dull tip. “Lean your face over here.” Molly did, and he carefully and gently went to work. “Natalie has got two little tiny beauty marks, one here … and one … over here.” He leaned back, squinted, and studied his masterpiece. “That’s it. We can put a bit of powder on those on the way and they’ll be fine. Come on now, the car’s already outside.”

On the short ride to the airport he told her the backstory he’d given to Kyle, the executive service agent from KTL: Noah and young Ms. Portman had spent a wild weekend together painting the town, and things had gotten a little out of hand toward the end. She’d had her purse stolen, she wasn’t feeling well at all, and some nasty aggressive photographers had begun to bird-dog them. Now the mission was to spirit her out of the city while keeping her off Page Six of the
New York Post.

As Noah had anticipated, this wasn’t an uncommon thing at all for KTL, and once they’d established who he was they accepted the rest of his story immediately. For a little less than two thousand dollars charged
to his expense account—plus the cost of a full row in first class, to be billed separately—the plan was off and rolling with no further questions asked.

With the terminal in sight Noah took in a deep breath and then let it out on a slow count of ten. He looked over at Molly and she seemed to be meditating, or praying, hard to tell which, but any port was welcome in this storm.

“Now remember,” he said, “the whole idea is that you don’t have to deal with anybody. You don’t have to talk to anyone and you don’t have to make eye contact with anyone, which is good because your eyes are the wrong color. I told them you’ve lost your ID so no one’s going to expect you to show it. You’re in the big club now, you’re a hotshot movie star who’s had a few rough days of partying, and you’re in no mood for any inconvenience. That’s what we’re paying all this money to avoid. But just keep thinking all that in your head; our guy and I will do all the talking.”

True to his word, there ahead at the curb stood Kyle in his dapper suit, waiting with open arms at the appointed meeting place. The limo pulled to a stop, their host opened the door, and with a practiced sweep of his manicured hand he invited them into his care.

“Mr. Gardner, Miss Portman,” Kyle said. “Right this way.”

And right that way they went.

Most people know there’s a whole hidden part of Disney World the tourists never get to see. Underneath the sidewalks and behind the scenes, in a vast complex every bit as big as the park itself, this insider network of tunnels, workshops, machinery, and control rooms is where the magic really happens. Likewise, a major airport has its own sublevel of secrets, and our man Kyle held all the skeleton keys to this particular enchanted kingdom.

The trip through the public areas had been a breeze. The two men
walked purposefully in front with Molly close behind them. For the most part they went unnoticed, though two or three random people did seem to sense that an incognito starlet might be moving in their midst. At every point along the way where the average passenger would have had to stop and deal with some slow, invasive procedure, there was a special someone stationed nearby to give the three of them a knowing wink, lift up the velvet rope, and wave them on through.

Halfway into the terminal Kyle stopped along the wall, looked furtively both ways, and then keyed open a featureless gray door. Like some portal from rural Kansas into the Land of Oz, inside this door was a large VIP room with elegant furnishings and sitting areas, a bar and some bistro tables, and down the center, a privately staffed setup for dignified, one-on-one security screenings.

“And now, my troopers,” Kyle chirped, “just a quick run through the metal detector and then we’re on to preboarding for a nice, cool glass of champagne. Are we holding up all right?”

“I think we’re fine,” Noah said. Molly breathed an Oscar-worthy sigh of impatience and leaned her head against his arm.

As they approached the area with the X-ray conveyor a TSA employee got up from his chair, put down his magazine, and sidled up to his security post.

When he saw this man Noah stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Molly bumped into him from behind.