35

On the way back in the car, I felt like I was talking to him. At some points, I imagined what I’d say to him if he was there.

“Don’t you know?” I said to myself, sulkily, while I kept my eyes on the freeway. “Don’t you know I’d never do anything like that to hurt you?”

I meant it, too. But somehow I couldn’t help feeling like I was getting what I deserved. My friendship—my relationship—whatever I called the complicated mess that was me and Axel Linden, had never once felt safe, never once felt secure. And without secure foundations, it had been difficult to trust him.

He said it himself: Axel didn’t really have friends. He didn’t have anyone to rely on because he didn’t know how to rely on someone else. Sure, I was mad at him. He’d hurt my feelings and left me stranded out here. But if he thought I was going to leave him now, he had another thing coming.

The day dragged on, the sun rising into the sky and beginning to sink into the red, cloudy afternoon hanging over New York state. But I couldn’t stop now, even if I was hungry, even if I was tired. I knew Axel must have gone back to New York, despite the danger. But all we had to do was alert his detective buddy to the situation. It wouldn’t be hard for the police to find Max, and then it wouldn’t be hard to get him to confess to what he’d done. I shuddered at the thought that Axel’s first time seeing his father might also have been the last. Max would be lucky not to go to jail for what he’d done.

How could you run out on your kid like that? I didn’t know, but I knew it couldn’t be me. My parents had loved and cared for me my whole life: even now, I knew I could call if I was in trouble or needed them. And I was. The minute I got home, I was going to take Macy and get a flight out to Wisconsin. There, with my little girl safe, with my family together and safe, I knew my foundations would be secure enough to help Axel. My new husband.

It seemed ridiculous saying it, but as New York appeared on the horizon and I began to pass the towns nearby, Sleepy Hollow, Yonkers, I really did think of him that way. We bickered and fought and mistrusted one another. But we really did mean the world to each other. I couldn’t imagine Axel opening up his life to anyone else in the way he had for me. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met a man who made me feel safe. Well, I could, of course. It was six years ago, the first time I met Axel.

And he could change. I’d seen it. I knew it was possible now. And if he could change, well…

For some reason, I thought of Macy. I wanted my little girl back with me again, wanted her dark, curly hair in my hands and to swing her around while she giggled. I wanted, more badly than anything, for things to be normal.

I drove into Queens, and when I finally got stuck into the traffic around Jackson Heights, I didn’t even feel impatient anymore. I felt calm, clear-headed. I knew what I was going to do.

I was going to go pick up Macy and take her home. Then I was going to call Axel. I was going to tell him the truth. That he’d messed up and hurt me, but that I knew why, that I understood what he was going through and I could help him.

And I was going to tell him the other thing. The thing I knew, the thing which had brewed in my stomach for so many weeks now it hurt to even say. The thing which seemed too ridiculous to be true.

I parked the car on the side of the road outside my house. I undid my seatbelt and looked around. The streets of Queens were busy and vibrant as ever, and I could hear at least four different languages being spoken as I stepped up to my apartment door.

It was open, weirdly enough, but I could see through the window that Sebastien’s bodega was empty. Maybe he’d gone to get something from the building manager’s office. I stepped through, but it was eerily quiet. I checked my watch.

By rights, the building should have been noisy at this time of day, as kids got back from school and left for clubs or to hang out with their friends, as moms chatted in doorways. But there was nothing as I came up the first, then the second flight of stairs.

When I got to the top floor I was panting, but I froze when I heard a shotgun’s pump click.

“STOP!O DISPARO.”

It chilled me to the bone. I knew what that meant. I’d heard Raúl, Sara’s kid, watching Spanish cop shows on the TV.Stop or I’ll shoot.

“Sebastien?” I said.

I heard the shotgun pump click again, and Sebastien appeared from round the door of the apartment.

“Linda,” he said, and the look on his face already told me what had happened.

“Sebastien?” I said, and stumbled forward, down the corridor to the door of the apartment.

Inside, the place was a mess. The table had been thrown over and there was stuff on the floor, children’s toys and crayons.

And on the sofa was Sara Loseña, my best friend, with an ice pack on her head.

“LINDA!” she said, and stood up. I could see tears already forming in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she whispered.

“No,” I said.

“He came with a gun…I couldn’t do anything. He hit me.”

“No,” I said again.

“We called the cops and they’re coming,” said Sara. “How did you know?”

“No,” I said, “no, no, no.”

But no matter how many times I said it, it was still true. As Sara told me the whole story, she wept, and so did I. She showed me the note he’d left behind.

Dearest Linda

No doubt the father of your child will have received this message already. You are to call me within 24 hours to give me five million dollars in cash. You and Axel are to come ALONE. You will not tell anyone. You will not call the cops. Disobey these instructions and I am afraid little Macy will come to ENORMOUS HARM.

Your old boss, L.

Luca had come to the apartment.

And he’d taken Macy.

Axel

“Ninetysix,”I grunted.“Ninety-seven. Ninety…eight!”

A hundred pull-ups. There are professional athletes who wake up and don’t have the energy to do a hundred pull-ups. But of course, it was not about energy. It was about motivation. And I was highly motivated during the three-hour workout I’d just subjected myself to, during which I’d already beaten all my personal bests and was about to beat another.

“Ninety-nine,” I cried, and then came the last one. Every muscle in my body was burning already, but I didn’t care. Anything not to think about what had happened since I’d got back to New York this morning.

I collapsed onto the floor, and lay flat on my back, almost weeping from the pain. When I got up, I could see myself in the mirror, angry, red-faced, and soaking with sweat. I warmed down for a while, and then hit the shower. But even a gentle comedown from the enormous levels of physical strain I’d been under wasn’t enough to stop my legs from turning to jelly.

The revelation that my father was alive had shocked me. But that he was the one who forged the birth certificate? I should have known. When the detective said it was impossible to forge my dead mom’s signature, I should have remembered that Max Linden, the deadbeat to rival all other deadbeats, would know how. He’d forged a bunch of my mom’s stuff when we were kids—he even used to joke when I was little about how he could sign checks from her to the bank and they’d cash them.

“Not like you ever had a checkbook of your own, you bastard,” I muttered in the shower. But I really had thought my dad was dead somewhere. Seeing him again had made me feel…well. What had it made me feel?

Nothing much, I thought, as I sat in my bedroom, looking out across the skyline in a robe.

But I sure had felt something looking into Linda’s eyes that night on the shore by the lake. I knew that she was difficult, and unpredictable. But now I no longer knew what to think. I’d been coming to think things about Linda that I’d never thought about anyone else—that she was kind, that she was dependable, reliable. I liked her—maybe more than liked her.

But seeing her standing next to Max had sent me crazy. It had showed me something I hated about myself. That deep down, I was vulnerable. And there were the two people left alive in the world to whom I was vulnerable.

My phone rang, and I looked across absentmindedly at it. I didn’t feel like taking any calls, not now…

But it was a blocked ID calling.