“No, this is a girl I’m looking for.” He checked the counter, which was clear. “She was seen here getting some coffee.”
“Kid that age?” She folded over her bottom lip. “I don’t think so. I’d remember selling coffee to a little one.”
“She’s older now. About sixteen.”
The counter girl glanced back before she sat down across from him. “Is this that missing kid? I talked to a couple detectives about her.” She gave him a suspicious look. “You a cop, too?”
“Private investigator.” He showed her his identification and license. “I’m working for her father.”
“Runaway, huh?” She grimaced. “The cops don’t care much about missing kids unless they’re real young. So what do you want to know?”
“According to a witness who saw her here, you waited on her. She bought a small coffee, and you gave her a muffin.” He saw the uneasiness in her eyes. “It’s okay, I’m not going to say anything to your manager. I just wanted to know why.”
“If it’s the girl I think you mean, she’s a street kid. You know, living out there.” She grimaced. “I’m not supposed to give out stuff, but it’s hard, you know, when they look at stuff on the racks, and they pay in nickels and pennies, and you know they ain’t got enough to get something else.” She looked down at the table as if she was ashamed. “My ma, she says they can go to a soup kitchen or a church any time, but I can’t help it. I mean, a muffin, come on, it’s not a big thing. And she buys something every time she comes in.”
“She’s been here more than once.”
The counter girl nodded. “She comes in regular, late at night. Maybe a couple times a month.”
“Is there anything else about her you can tell me?” When she shrugged, he added, “Does she always leave in the same direction?”
“I’m sorry, I just don’t look after they leave the counter.”
“If you remember anything else”—he slid one of his business cards across the table—“give me a call. Anytime.”
“Sure.” Her expression turned dubious.
“One more thing.” He slid a ten across the table. “A muffin is something, and you’re a good person.”
“Yeah.” She offered him a genuine smile. “I just wish it was enough.” She pocketed the ten and went back to work.
Meriden worked the area for the rest of the morning, questioning the merchants with businesses around the coffee shop, and making no headway on the case. He grabbed a sandwich before he went to the garage, where he intended to put in a couple of hours before he called it a day.
Rowan Dietrich’s bike sat at the back of his bay, delivered there by a tow-truck driver who owed him a favor. He resented it like everything else Dansant stuck him with, but the sooner he got it repaired, the sooner the girl would be on her way.
He didn’t like her living in his back pocket, but he had to admit she had a sweet ride. He’d spent a lot of time biking when he’d lived overseas, both for convenience and to save money. A motorcycle didn’t require as much fuel, which was outrageously expensive over there, and it could be parked almost anywhere. He suddenly realized why he disliked the bike so much. It was a Ducati.
Nathan had loved Italian racing bikes.
Although his own years in Europe were just a blur of anger and confusion now, Meriden could clearly remember a few things about Nathan. The rest he’d put together after some careful, painstaking research. He’d been sent to Rome to study, but he’d left there after a year to hitchhike his way across a half- dozen countries, paying his way by picking up work as a cook. He’d met Gisele at her father’s restaurant, and it had been all over for Nathan the moment she smiled at him. She felt the same, for she had been the one to convince old Giusti to take him on as an apprentice.
Meriden knew Nathan had fallen for her, hard, and had gambled everything to have her. They’d had only a year together, but from all accounts they’d been incredibly happy. If the dark men hadn’t come for Nathan, he’d still be there, cooking beside Gisele’s father.
When he’d learned the details of what had happened to the Giustis, Meriden had gone back to Nice to make sure Nathan was dead. He’d bribed a hospital employee in Nice to obtain copies of the medical records. Nathan had been horribly burned in the accident that had killed his wife, and despite attempts to resuscitate him, had died that night in the hospital. His death certificate had been signed by the attending physician.
The facts were undeniable. Irrefutable. Inescapable. Pain spiked through Meriden’s skull. Thinking of those days gave him a migraine; if he didn’t stop he’d end up locked in a dark room. He’d accepted what had happened to Nathan, how he had died, and the bizarre aftereffects that had brought Sean together with Dansant in France. One accident, one horrific, tragic choice, and three lives had been changed forever. Sometimes he wondered what Nathan would think of him and Dansant. If he would be as accepting, or if he’d want them dead, too.
If he had known what would happen, Sean thought, would he have still run into the flames?
Despite his and Dansant’s efforts to discover the truth about Nathan’s past, and if there was any possibility of it affecting them in some way, there were still countless, troubling gaps in the man’s personal history. Nathan had gone to Rome, but then he had disappeared for almost a year. There were no records of when he had left Italy or how he had traveled to France; it was as if he’d simply rematerialized there. He’d been running from something, or he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of forging his papers and creating an entirely new identity for himself. He’d done an excellent job of becoming someone else, but the dark men had still caught up with him. Why they would wipe out an entire family simply to get their hands on an expat who liked to cook made no sense to Sean, but few things about Nathan did.
“Hey, Sean.” Eugene, one of his regular customers, strode in through the shop door. “Where you been, you lazy bastard?”
“Job across town.” Sean stood up and shook hands. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to order some parts.” He bent sideways to look at the bike. “Is that a Ducati Monster?” He whistled. “Tires are fucked. What’d the owner do, get spiked?”
Eugene had a couple of motorcycles he was perennially working on, and Sean didn’t mind asking for a consult. “Collision in an alley. You ever seen two tires blow at the same time?”
“If they were spiked, yeah. Or maybe some shitty retreads.” Eugene crouched down to finger the split in the rear tire. “This don’t look right. See how the rubber is peeling outward? This bitch blew fast and hard.” He stood up and walked over to look at the front tire. “Same here.”
“Overfilled?”
“If you filled ’em with cement or something.” He scratched his head. “This is some fucking weird shit happening here, my brother.”
“I’m putting two new tires on it.” Sean made a mental note to order them from his supplier. “Come in the office and I’ll write your parts.”
Eugene glanced back a few times as they crossed the bay. “Hey, can I have the old tires off that bike?”
“For what? Bookends?”
“I want to show ’em to a friend of mine,” Eugene said. “He’s got a junkyard, and collects spooky shit. He’s got this eight-track he pulled out of a wrecked van that went over a bridge, killed a bunch of kids back in the seventies. It’s got a tape stuck in it, but when you turn it on it only plays ‘Free Bird.’ Creeps me out.”
Sean chuckled. “Sure, you can have ’em if you haul ’em.”
“Excellent.” Eugene took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. “Okay, let’s talk carburetors.”
The view from Gerald King’s bedroom window never changed. From his position on the top floor of one of the last freestanding mansions in Manhattan, he could see the streets below, the river beyond, and in the distance a vague smear of New Jersey skyline against the twilight sky.
During the spring and summer he seldom looked out, indifferent to the city’s myriad celebrations of warmer temperatures and better business. Only when the fall began leeching the green from the trees and the people from the streets did he come to admire the view. As winter finally arrived with its bitter winds and gray snows, the city became like the landscape of his soul: empty, desolate, an ancient Titan chained for eternity to the rocks of existence, feeding on poison daily just to stay alive.
If he had been a man who prayed, he would have made a single request of God—that he be given a second chance at life with the only thing he had ever loved. And she was here, in the city, perhaps even now just around the corner. Just out of his sight.
What was she doing? Walking the streets? Watching faces? Looking for his? After all this time, did she still think of him? Or had she made herself forget him?
She could do that, and more. With her powers she could make dreams come true. He had seen it with his own eyes; touched the proof of it with his own hands. And now she was out there, lost and alone, hiding herself among the herd of common humanity, who should have been gathering around to fall on their knees to worship her like the goddess she was.
The knowledge that she lived made him feel young again. It also made him aware of every tick of the clock on his mantel, every shadow shifted by the passage of the sun.
“Mr. King.”
Gerald kept his staff on a ruthless schedule designed to keep his contact with them to a bare minimum. The interruption now, however, could not be avoided—not when he was so close to finding her. “What is it?”
“You have an electronic message from Atlanta, sir.” The communications technician remained standing just beyond the threshold. “The transmission came through flagged as urgent and encrypted for eyes-only.”
