Courtesy of Carressa Industries, a black service sedan chauffeured Max and Val to the Saint James Cathedral. It was easier than driving themselves, hassling with parking, and being assaulted by reporters. Sitting side by side, Max stared out the window while Val raked her eyes over the mysterious letter that had predicted the blast. The curve of the handwriting was angular but steady and neat. Not obviously male or female. A capitalized “HE” and mention of saving her soul—some kind of religious thing. Anger at Val for disrupting a vague purpose.
Did this person know what she could do? What Max and her children could also do? The circle of people who knew about her ability was extremely small. If that person had plans to hurt her family, she had to find them first. And kill them.
Max was right—she wasn’t a bomb expert. But she was an expert on fucked-up people. Why send her a letter with a bunch of crazy, ambiguous threats? Someone who wanted to be found, that’s who. Someone who would leave clues for her to follow, if she searched hard enough. A group of religious zealots in Africa had taken responsibility for the bombing, but this letter offered proof that they lied. The real bomber was still out there, taunting her.
Val looked up when the sedan slowed to fight thick traffic a few blocks away from the cathedral. Chewing on his thumb, Max glanced at her, the wheels of his incredible mind churning behind his eyes. His gaze flicked to the paper in her lap, then he crossed his arms, frowned, and resumed staring out the window.
He still thought she was overreacting, that it was nothing and Northwalk wasn’t coming back. The bombing and the letter weren’t logical to him. Hadn’t he learned anything from their six years together?
She jabbed a finger at the paper. “When are you going to take this seriously?”
“I’ll take it seriously when it becomes a serious problem,” he replied without meeting her eyes. “Your mother seems nice. I can set her up with a doctor’s visit and medication if she still needs it.”
“Fine. Ignore it until it goes away.” She refolded the letter and shoved it in her coat pocket. “That’s worked so well for you in the past.”
His head snapped toward her. “What are we supposed to do, Val? You have one vague letter to go off of. If you think it’s so important, give it to the police.”
“You know I would if I could—”
“Would you?”
She flinched. “Of course I would. That’s why I have to look into this. You’re right—maybe it wasn’t Northwalk. But someone tried to kill you, and they’ll probably try again. You and the kids always come first, you know that.”
He looked away again, lips a tight line, nostrils flared with anger he worked to keep from bursting to the surface. He didn’t believe her. How could he even entertain the idea that she cared more about a case than she did her own husband and children? Did he really think she could be as callous as her own mother and dump them for something shinier?
Now she felt her own blood pressure rising. They silently seethed at each other for a minute until the chauffeur parked in front of the cathedral and opened the door for them. Max slid out first and held his hand out to her, not too angry to be polite. People were watching, cameras snapping. Had to keep up appearances.
She kept her head down as they hustled past reporters, the chilled air bringing tears to her eyes. Through the heavy double doors of the cathedral’s entrance, a mass of somber people greeted them, families and coworkers of the victims. Max shook hands and offered hushed words of condolences while Val stood by his side and said nothing. He was better at this kind of thing than she was. Anyway, she hated funerals; they always reminded her of her sister’s suicide. No use wallowing in those painful memories.
Val scanned the crowd and spotted Aaron and Lacy Zephyr sitting toward the middle of the church, chatting with a couple in the pew behind them. When Aaron saw Max, he rose, snaked through the crowd, and embraced Max in that handshake-hug thing men did. To Val’s surprise, her husband didn’t recoil from the overly friendly gesture; in fact, he seemed to welcome it. Were they friends now? Enduring trauma together could bring people closer than they’d normally be otherwise; she knew that much. Still seemed weird.
Eventually Max made his way to the front, Val trailing after, and took a seat a couple rows away from the altar. Others squished in around them until every available sitting space was taken and latecomers were forced to stand around the periphery, clogging up the aisles. Organ music wafted through the cavernous cathedral. Val looked around once more as the thick crowd fell silent and priests began their slow march to the altar. No way all these people were friends and family of the deceased. Rubberneckers and reporters must have snuck in.
The bomber could be here. Criminals who caused scenes, like arsonists and ritual killers, often enjoyed reveling in their handiwork.
Max elbowed her, and for a moment she thought he would chastise her for staring suspiciously at people in mourning. Instead, he cocked his head a hair to the side, motioning at something behind him as discreetly as possible.
“She’s here,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“The woman Lacy thinks Aaron’s having an affair with. The blonde twelve rows back.”
Val turned to get a good look at Aaron’s possible mistress, ignoring Max’s elbow jabbing at her obvious gawking. She spotted her immediately—a gorgeous woman with pale yellow hair and full red lips, impeccably dressed in a black silky thing that looked designer. The woman bore a notable, if not striking, resemblance to Lacy. Men were so predictable.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Val asked Max as the priests started to talk about God’s plan.
“I have no idea. Maybe she had relations with one of the people who died. The bar she works at is popular with some of the board members and company managers. Seems I’m the only person who didn’t know about it. Her name’s Eleanor.”
Her gaze cut to Aaron, sitting on the other side of the aisle. If he noticed his paramour crashing the funeral, he did a damn good job of hiding it. His arm around his wife, his attention never wavered from the ceremony unfolding in front of him.
At the priest’s direction, everyone lowered their heads to pray. Max bowed but his eyes stayed open. Irrespective of his allegiance to logic and skepticism, too many unanswered prayers had killed his faith. Val mimicked him, head lowered and eyes open, though she pretended to lean into Max’s shoulder so she could stealthily watch Eleanor. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Val raised it just a hair over the back of the pew and snapped a picture. The woman prayed with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm, her lips mouthing the priest’s words while her face contorted into a mask of divine rapture. A true believer. That must be nice, to be so certain of your place in the world that you had a powerful friend looking out for you and a purpose—
We all have paths to follow, a purpose, and you disrupt that purpose.
The letter. Electricity ran up Val’s spine. Did Eleanor write the letter? Did she plant the bomb? Why? Why would she do either of those things? Had they crossed paths before? Val didn’t remember ever meeting the woman. Maybe she’d somehow discovered that Lacy had hired Val to look into Aaron’s roaming dick. No, that had nothing to do with the letter. Probably not. Did it?
Max would say she was being paranoid—and he’d be right. But just because she was paranoid didn’t mean she was wrong.
With her head still bowed, Eleanor opened her eyes and looked straight at Val.
It IS her, Val’s gut screamed.
A second later, the prayer ended and everyone’s attention went back to the priests up front.
She gripped her husband’s arm tight. “Max, it’s her,” she whispered. “Eleanor’s the one who—”
Max stood, pulling his arm out of her grasp with him. He’d been called to the front, she realized, to give a eulogy on behalf of the company. He scooted out of the pew and walked to a podium beside the altar.
Max began, “For those of you who don’t know me”—light laughter drifted through the crowd—“I’m Maxwell Carressa, the office janitor.” More laughter. “Through my duties sweeping floors and taking out trash, I often get to know people from afar, get an objective perspective of what they’re like when they think no one’s looking. I can tell you without a doubt that May Salander, Corey O’Leere, Annie Norman, Nihan Shah, Shweeta Sestahn, Marshall Ambrose, DeShawn Joy, and Johanne Sans were not only hard workers critical to the company’s success, they were good people…”
As Max went on, Val’s gaze cut to Eleanor. She looked engrossed in the eulogy. Giving public speeches was something Max had become good at through his time on the philanthropy circuit. He didn’t even need notes. Eleanor watched him speak with a slight smile on her angelic face, a grin that looked almost devious. She plotted something.
The crowd laughed again. Val looked to the front to see Max pantomiming pouring a cup of coffee with his pinky finger in the air. Something about how one of the victims was a dainty coffee drinker.
“There are so many sides to people we never see,” he said. “No one is just an analyst, or an accountant, or a wife, or a mother, or a tough guy. If we’re truly lucky, the people we love and care about will share with us the sides of their personality they don’t often show, the sides they might be embarrassed by or ashamed of. The things that make them unique. The things that make us love them, and the reason why it hurts when they’re gone.”
Val looked back at Eleanor through a sea of sad faces, some smiling, some sobbing.
She was gone.
What the hell? Val swiveled around in her seat for any sign of Eleanor. She couldn’t have gone far, not in this crowd. Then she saw it—a flash of yellow in the back of the church, pushing through a group of standing mourners toward an exit. Leaving in a hurry.
Val started to get up, stopped, and looked at Max. He’d be pissed if she left in the middle of the service.
“We can try to pluck meaning from the fog, and note that it’s not the years of our life but the life in our years that count—”
If she didn’t go now, she’d lose Eleanor. The woman could be planting another bomb.
“But it’s not so easy when life is cut short for such a terrible reason.”
Val stood and forced her way out of the pew, muttering apologies as she went.
“In my infinite wisdom as the office janitor, all I can say is, in the end, our love is all we really have. It’s the only thing that will never die. And so May, Corey, Annie, Nihan, Shweeta, Marshall, DeShawn, and Johanne live forever. Thank you.”
The sounds of hundreds of hands clapping filled the cathedral. Val used the opportunity to move faster, shoving her way through the crowd she’d seen Eleanor disappear through, until she reached a side exit. Unlocked, the door opened into a corridor that ended at an egress point, with a stairwell branching off it that led down.
Outside or down? She went with her gut—down.
Val descended the stairs at a quick trot, unsure what she’d find in the old church. A dark, open space greeted her when she got to the bottom, and instinctively she reached for her gun—she hadn’t brought it, of course. Damn.
Muffled sounds from the cathedral above drifted down through the ceiling; otherwise, all was quiet. She walked forward, then paused for a moment so her eyes could adjust to the dark. Round dining tables spread out across the room, adjacent to a long, thin counter. Some kind of soup kitchen. A potpourri of processed food aromas lingered in the air, along with the smell of…something burning?
She crossed the gauntlet of tables, cringing as her heels clicked against the hardwood floor. There’d be no sneaking up on Eleanor if she had, in fact, come this way.
A faint light caught her eye. She followed the glow past a support column, around a corner, and into a food pantry. Beneath a single harsh lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, an old man laid crumpled on the floor. His eyes bulged out of his face, mouth locked in a silent scream. One still hand clutched at his chest while the other reached for a pill bottle lying just out of his reach. Flames grew on the floor next to him, a blaze from what looked like a cigarette dropped on top of a pool of oil about to explode into an inferno.
Val ran for an extinguisher and blasted the fire, killing it before it had the chance to grow and engulf the church. Breathing hard and thankful she’d averted what would have been a horrible disaster, she dropped the extinguisher and put two fingers to the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Though she’d hoped there might be a chance to help him, she confirmed what was obvious—he was dead.
Looking at the pattern of oil she’d extinguished, Val took a step back and gasped—the oil was in the shape of a smiley face. This wasn’t a coincidence—it was Eleanor. Val didn’t know how or why, but she was certain. First, the woman threatened her family, then tried to kill Max in the explosion. Now she taunted them, leaving more dead bodies in her wake in some kind of sick game. It wasn’t Northwalk after all—it was a crazy stalker threatening Val’s husband and children. Eleanor must be the one who would to kill Val’s mother.
She implored a God she wasn’t sure existed; if he did, this was the best place to reach him: God help me stop that evil bitch.