The Intern(97)

A guy in a uniform that read EVENT SECURITY followed Doug out the door. One of Charlie’s spies?

Her phone buzzed.

Recognize anyone? Charlie texted.

He attached a grainy photo of a woman boarding the T outside the museum, taken from some distance away. It was Madison. She could tell from the jumpsuit.

If you mean my intern, hard to say if that’s her. Too blurry.

I’ll get a better picture. Talk to Kessler yet?

Nope, he left. Guess your guy didn’t tell you.

She didn’t hear from Charlie after that.

Waiters served the main course. Kathryn had ordered the cod, but she was too nervous to eat. The executive director of the Pro Bono League must not have seen Doug leave. She launched into an introduction full of praise for his distinguished career. When she called him to the stage, there was an awkward pause. Heads swiveled in the direction of the Bixby tables. After a long minute, Chloe rose from her seat and glided to the mic.

“Good evening, and thank you for that lovely introduction. I’m Chloe Kessler, a second year at Harvard Law and Doug’s daughter. My father sends his apologies. He was taken ill and had to leave. But he asked me to speak in his place about the privilege and responsibility of pro bono work.”

This was the moment Kathryn had been waiting for. Chloe—young, blond, pretty, subbing in for her sick father—held the audience spellbound. With Charlie off chasing Madison, and his spy following Doug, it was her chance to disappear. She tucked her phone under a napkin. If they tracked her location, they’d think she was still at her table.

Walking casually into the ladies’ room, she peeked under the doors of the stalls to make sure she was alone. Before the event started, she’d stashed a go-bag with clothes and a wig inside the closed infant changing table, on the assumption that nobody would bring a baby to this event. She was right, or in any event, it was still there. In a stall, she stripped down. The items she couldn’t afford to lose were taped to her body, under the white tuxedo that she rolled up and hid at the bottom of the trash. Wincing, she ripped off the tape, stowing the valuables in a small backpack. Cash, passports, her gun, and two phones—one registered to Jenna Allen, the other a clone of Kathryn’s phone with geolocation features disabled. If it worked like she’d been promised by the guy who sold it to her, it would enable her to send and receive texts and phone calls without being tracked—by anyone, criminal or law enforcement.

Moments later, dressed in black, a dark wig covering her conspicuous hair, she slipped out a side exit. Jenna Allen called an Uber heading for Logan Airport, where she’d catch a bus north, never to return.

That was the plan. Then her emotions got the better of her.

As the Uber neared the airport, she saw that they were in that same no-man’s-land of parking lots and warehouses where Charlie had grabbed her and threatened her just the week before. Hatred swept over her. For Charlie. Ray. Eddie. Mrs. Wallace. All of them. Since she was a little girl, they’d manipulated her, beaten her, held her back, starved her, destroyed her mother, murdered her husband, separated her from her child. She wanted to ruin them, like they’d ruined her. Just at that moment, the Uber passed the Belvedere garage, where Doug said to meet him. He could be in there right now, not realizing that he was about to take his last breath, that some goon hiding in the shadows was waiting to ambush him. She couldn’t stand for that to happen. Not because she loved Doug, but because she hated Charlie and his bitch mother and refused to let them win.

The bus to New Hampshire didn’t depart for another hour.

She leaned forward.

“Excuse me, I changed my mind. Let me out over there at the Belvedere garage?”

“You’ll be charged for the full trip,” the driver said.

“Fine. Around the back, okay?”

It was a cold, moonless night. The Uber let her out behind the garage where there were no streetlamps. A dark figure in the murk, she slipped in through an unlocked door and walked the first level, searching for Doug’s car. He drove a silver Porsche with vanity plates that read RAINMKR. If it was here, she’d find it.

She was heading down the ramp to the basement level when the shots rang out. Three loud pops in quick succession, accompanied by a shattering of glass. It came from below. She ran down the ramp and ducked behind a pickup truck, listening for more shots. Those three sounded like they came from a single gun, with nobody firing back. An ambush, followed by silence. Someone was dead. Presumably Doug. Would she be next? Her heart pounding, her breath rattling in her chest, she strained to hear. Finally, a car door slammed. Tires squealed on concrete. She stood up just in time to see the car speed past. The Jenna phone was in her hand. By instinct, she snapped a photo. The car wasn’t Charlie’s, but she knew it. And she was shocked, though in a way not surprised.

The taillights disappeared out the exit, and the car was gone. She listened for another minute and heard nothing. Emerging cautiously from behind the truck, she walked toward where the shots had come from, sticking close to the row of parked cars. But then the row ended, and she was in the open. Doug had parked in the farthest reaches of the bottom level of this obscure garage, because he planned to run and wanted to maximize his head start. He probably wasn’t thinking about the fact that it would take longer for the cops to find his body.

She approached the Porsche like a sleepwalker in a nightmare. The windshield was shattered, but no sound emerged through the gaping hole in the glass. No moans, no labored breathing. Only silence. He was splayed in the driver’s seat, his face pulverized to a raw mass of flesh. Unrecognizable. She was too late. They got him. They beat Doug in the end. But Kathryn was still standing. And she had people to protect.