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.
She backed away, then turned and ran. Half an hour later, she boarded the bus north, to freedom.
36
Kathryn sat by her mother’s bedside, holding her hand while she slept. Sylvia’s face was hollow, shadowed by approaching death. The room smelled of disinfectant and was filled with blinking, beeping machines that made her nervous. Her mother’s heart rate seemed irregular, her oxygen levels too low. The hospital was understaffed. She couldn’t find anyone to ask for help. Even if she did find someone, how much could they do? Sylvia was going to die. That was the reality. Kathryn steeled herself to face it, but it still burned. After a lifetime of low expectations, she’d finally come to appreciate her mother at the exact moment when they got separated. It was so unfair. She was emotionally invested in the dream of their reunion. A new life together in a new land. Now that wouldn’t happen, either.
They’d been robbed.
It wasn’t the only robbery she’d suffered.
Small children have short memories. Kathryn had visited her daughter twice since giving birth to her. The last time was two years earlier, too long a gap for a little girl’s heart. She’d gotten to New Hampshire in the wee hours of the morning—too early to visit Grace—and went directly to her mother’s bedside. Sylvia was unconscious, so she sat holding her hand, whispering her troubles into her mother’s ear as if she’d get an answer. She spoke to a nurse who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell her much about Sylvia’s condition, and tried without success to find a doctor who would. Eventually, she gave up and drove instead to the neighbor’s house to retrieve her daughter.