36

The gun exploded, the silencer dampening but not eliminating the pop, and Cassie was aware that she had winced and cried out—and that Enrico was still alive. He had launched himself on top of Buckley, pinning him on his side on the mattress. There was a cut on Buckley’s cheek, the gash already puddling red, and he was holding his right hand with his left. The wound on his hand looked far worse than the one on his face: Cassie could see blood streaming down the man’s forearm, as well as the black burns along his fingers and thumb. His index finger was misshapen and either dislocated or broken.

Their eyes met and he snapped at her. “You can’t even fucking load a gun!” And then Cassie saw the Berretta on the floor beside her, twisted metal shards rising like tentacles from the rear of the pistol, the silencer straight but dangling from the tip of the still-smoking weapon. They stared at each other, and Cassie understood that this was why Enrico was still alive: she’d failed to load the gun properly.

“Call for help,” Enrico said to her. “Call downstairs.” He had wrapped his arms around Buckley, and they looked almost like lovers, and she recalled momentarily what it had been like when she had wrapped herself around him. Then she struggled to her feet, wobbly, her legs like licorice, but she held on to the side of the desk and reached gingerly for the phone.

“Don’t,” said Buckley, and he spat something—a tooth, Cassie saw—into the carpet. Cassie paused long enough for him to continue. “I’m telling you, you can’t hide from us all. There’ll just be someone else after you tomorrow.”

Outside they heard guests in the hallway, some returning from the street where they had gone when they had been evacuated from the hotel, some drawn by the sound of the gun exploding. It was clear, however, that none had any idea what that noise was or where it had come from. She heard someone suggest that it must have been something on television and someone else argue no, it was too loud, and speculate that it had something to do with the air conditioning. Maybe something to do with whatever had triggered the fire alarm that had sent them out into the night in the first place. Neither guest sounded concerned.

Cassie continued to stare at Buckley. His right cheek was growing black and his right eye was disappearing into the swelling all around it. “Who are you?” she asked. “Tell me now: who are you really?” She kept her finger on the button for guest services.

« «

Say it like you mean it.

When had she said that, Cassie wondered, and then she remembered. She’d challenged her mother to reassure her that everything would be okay when Daddy was so drunk he couldn’t navigate his way up the stairs and kept falling down as if he were battling a degenerative muscle disease. Apparently, her mother had not been especially convincing when she’d said everything was fine.

For a second, Cassie thought she must have said those words to an old boyfriend, too. Maybe he’d said he loved her in a joshing sort of way and she’d wanted more. Maybe she’d felt betrayed by the lightness of the way he’d spoken. Maybe she’d felt betrayed then, too.

No, that wasn’t it.

Because that had never happened.

She’d never had a boyfriend who’d told her he loved her.

Never.

Cassie looked at the blood congealing on Buckley’s fingers. Clearly this was a betrayal of a new sort, at once bigger and smaller than any she’d experienced before in her life. It was bigger because the stakes were bigger; it was smaller because she hadn’t really known him.

She’d only gotten drunk with him a couple of times. She’d only had sex with him a couple of times.

Only. Only.

The sad truth was, she really hadn’t known him at all.

« «

She watched Buckley try once to extricate himself from Enrico, wriggling and struggling to free his arms or his hands, and she started toward the men on the bed to help keep him restrained, but it was evident that Buckley was in a lot of pain and Enrico was deceptively strong. Buckley wasn’t going anywhere. He ran his tongue through the slot where a moment ago he’d had an upper incisor. “It doesn’t matter. My name, I mean,” he said when the brief scuffle was done. He sounded—and the irony was not lost on Cassie—drunk.

“It does.”

“Then it’s Evgeny.”

“Not Buckley?”

“No.”

“You’re not really an actor, are you? You’re not really from Westport? It was all a lie, wasn’t it?”

He rolled his eyes and then nodded.

“And that was you following me around New York City,” she said, not a question this time.

“It was.”

“You work with Miranda?”

“I thought I did. I didn’t. Not really. Her real name was Elena. Elena Orlov.”

“Was?”

“Was.”

“She’s dead?” asked Cassie, at once relieved and strangely, unexpectedly saddened. “God, how? Why?” She noticed the blood on the carpet by the door as she spoke, recalled Alex’s on the sheets of that magisterial bed in Dubai, and had a feeling that the great stain this time was Elena’s.

“Because she didn’t kill you. That was the first clue. We have a feeling she was turned when she went to school in Boston. She was working for you folks now.”

“America?”

“America.”

“So you’re Russian intelligence?”

“I’m nothing.”

Enrico elbowed him hard in the back. He grimaced and then said, “Yes, FSB. I’m a Cossack. Google it.” Then he said to Enrico, “You don’t need to wreck my kidney, and you don’t need to suffocate me. I think we’ve established I’m not going anywhere. So, let up on the chest, okay, buddy?”

“Call, Cassandra, call,” Enrico told her. “Don’t talk to this crazy person.”

“No, Cassie. Don’t call. Put the phone down,” Buckley said. “You’ll find Elena’s purse in the bathroom. It’s beside her body. And in that purse is a gun. Another gun. It’s a Beretta that’s already loaded, and so, thank God, you won’t have to load it. You won’t have to do anything. There’s also a knife. Even if you really aren’t with the CIA, I’m sure by now you have some new friends with the FBI in New York. Call them. Tell them to call their legal attaché in Rome. Tell them that Elena Orlov is here in this hotel in room six twenty-one. She’s dead. Tell them Evgeny Stepanov is in room four zero six. I’m two floors below you. I’ll be waiting for the FBI attaché there. Then when I’ve left your room, count to thirty, fire the weapon, and scream for help.”

Enrico shook his head. “Don’t do it, Cassandra. He’s just going to run away.”

“No, man, I won’t. I have no place left to run.”

“I want to know one thing,” Cassie asked. “Is my brother-in-law clean?”

“As far as I know.”

“So you have an inside elsewhere?”

“So it would seem.”

Cassie put down the phone. She took her finger off the button for guest services. The she retrieved Elena Orlov’s purse from the bathroom, careful at first to avert her eyes from the corpse in the tub, but then incapable of not glancing at it. There she was. Miranda. Elena. She was on her side, but Cassie could still see how deeply into her neck Buckley had run a knife and the blood that was pooling near the drain. She took the bag from the bathroom and in the hallway went through it. She wasn’t sure what to make of half of what was inside it—the pills, the restraints—but she found the knife and the Beretta. She flipped off the safety on the weapon.

“Remember: that gun is properly loaded,” Evgeny said to her when she returned.

“Go on.”

“Point the gun at me. It’s fine. You’ll feel safer. Then your friend can let me go. He’ll stand next to you. You’ll hand me the knife. Or if you want to keep your distance, you can toss the knife onto the mattress. I think I’ve already left enough blood on the bedspread and the carpet, but a little more couldn’t hurt. And my tooth is already there—on the floor. So there will be plenty for forensics. Then I’ll go to my room, and you’ll call your FBI contacts and tell them where I am.”

“And hotel security?”

“No. Don’t call them. That will lead to the Italian police and a real investigation. I want the world—at least my world—to believe you shot me dead. You killed me.”

Enrico was shaking his head no, his eyes imploring her not to do this. Cassie wondered if he’d even release Evgeny when she asked him to. He might not. She thought of all the mistakes she had made with her life—all the pain she had sown and reaped, all the things she would never have and never do—but she had a feeling now that listening to Evgeny wasn’t going to be one of them.

“What about me?” she asked. “You said that even if I kill you or call the police, there will just be someone else coming after me.”

“You’ll be someone new. Your people will see to it.”

“I assume by my ‘people,’ you don’t mean the airline.”

“Look, Cassie. Think about it. Do you really want to go through life as the Cart Tart Killer? I doubt it. Right now we share something I never expected when I followed you to that bar in the East Village: the need to start again.”