Kathryn rang the doorbell with a heart full of fierce love.
“Look, hon, your mom came to get you,” Denise said.
Grace took one look at her and ran away crying. She hid in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not even on the promise of applesauce cake, which was apparently her favorite.
“Don’t take it personally,” Denise said. “With Marie sick, she’s had a lot of disruption.”
“She doesn’t know me from Adam. I wouldn’t go with me, either.”
Eventually, Denise managed to coax Grace from the bathroom. The little girl sat at the kitchen table eating cake, watching Kathryn warily while Denise made coffee. Later, Grace allowed Kathryn to sit beside her on the sofa as she played with her doll, and Kathryn knew with a blast of gratitude that her daughter would accept her, given enough time.
But time was a luxury they didn’t have. Charlie was out there somewhere, tracking Kathy right now. So were the feds. Eventually, one or the other would find her, and rip her away from her daughter. And from her mother, whom she’d left all alone in the hospital. Kathy needed to get back there to spend these last precious hours with Sylvia. She begged Denise to keep Grace for just a little longer, so she could take care of her mother, offering to pay for the woman’s time. Denise wouldn’t accept money.
“I can’t take your money. Marie’s been a good friend to me for years. Go, be with your mom. Leave Grace with me for now.”
Kathryn returned to the hospital in the Volvo registered to Marie Allen. This time, she managed to track down Sylvia’s doctor and get a prognosis. It would be a matter of days, he said, not more than that. She sat with that information for a while, gazing at her mother’s face, trying to memorize it for when she was gone. Wherever she went next, Sylvia wasn’t coming.
The escape they’d dreamed of together would never come to pass. That terrible truth pushed everything else from her mind, and she sat up through that night, holding her mother’s hand. Sylvia drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally muttering unintelligibly. Kathryn was afraid to sleep, or even go to the bathroom, for fear that she’d miss something important. She couldn’t bear for Sylvia to pass away alone. But she could only fight off sleep for so long. Eventually, she dozed, waking with a start hours later, running to get coffee, sitting with Sylvia from when the sun came up to when it went back down. She lost track of time, though she never forgot that in the outside world, things were still happening. Dangerous things. The people who were coming for her hadn’t stopped looking.
It was getting light again when her phone buzzed. It was him. Charlie. He’d been texting her at intervals since Doug’s murder, demanding to know where she was, making threats, warning her against snitching to the feds or else the same thing would happen to her.
He’d even sent a photo of Doug Kessler’s car with the windshield shot out and his pulverized head visible inside. What happens to snitches, it had read.
She was terrified to open this latest text, but it was better to face the truth than let him ambush her. With every moment that passed, she felt him drawing closer. By now, he could be standing in the parking lot outside, preparing to drag her away. She had to know.
Heart pounding, she opened the text.
Got sent an interesting picture from a friend who works at Logan Airport. Thought you’d want to know your little friend is snitching.
The attached photo showed Madison sitting at a JetBlue gate at Logan. The display for the departing flight, visible over her shoulder, said WASHINGTON. Seated beside her, mouth open in midsentence, was Olivia Chase, the FBI agent who’d posed as an intern in Kathryn’s office until they found out and fired her.
Madison was cooperating.
She was surprised how much that hurt.
Then again, if Kathryn had any hope of surviving, and rescuing her daughter, she had no choice—she had to cooperate, too. Join the feds, beg for protection. Charlie was off the rails. He would kill her if she didn’t. It was that simple.
She went to her list of contacts. Despite the early hour, Brooke Lee picked up on the first ring.
“Hello, it’s Kathryn Conroy.”
“Judge Conroy. What a surprise,” she said.
Her tone was so filled with contempt that Kathryn was taken aback. She was hoping to negotiate a favorable deal, but that would be tough if the lead prosecutor loathed her as much as this woman seemed to.
“Ms. Lee. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms last time, but I was hoping we could talk.”
“You caught me at a bad moment. Can I call you back?”