“Oh, Button,” he says, enveloping me into a hug. “It was terrifying to see him shoving your head down like that. I—” His voice breaks and I realize he’s as shaken as I am. “I’ll meet you in the den in a minute, okay?”
As Roger enters the kitchen, I head up the back stairs tomy room. I change into the sweater and jeans I’d worn that day and dig a pair of socks out of my roller bag. My feet hurt too much for shoes, so I don’t bother. The shivering, I notice, has eased but not fully subsided.
It’s only when I’m in the en suite bathroom, grabbing a towel for my hair, that I’m afforded a look at my face for the first time. The right side is bright red and starting to swell, as if it’s being inflated with a tire pump. I gingerly rest a finger on my cheek. The skin feels incredibly sore, but my cheekbone doesn’t seem to be broken.
Before heading downstairs, I sit for a minute on the edge of the bed, trying to get a grip. Is the man tied up on the riverbank really the same person who killed Mulroney, who possibly shoved me into traffic? If so, what could I have seen or done that compelled him to hunt me down? And how did he know my whereabouts?
I return to the ground floor but stop in the kitchen first, grabbing a bag of pearl onions from the freezer and resting it carefully against my cheek. Roger’s in the den as promised, now in corduroy slacks and a sweater, and standing by a freshly lit fire.
“Come here,” he says, extending an arm. “I can tell you’re still shivering.”
“You called 911?”
“Yeah, and I assume they’ll send an ambulance, too, since I said the assailant was injured. They— Oh my god, your face.”
“I know. It’s blooming like a flower in a time-lapse video.”
“Should we call an ambulance for you as well?”
“I don’t think it’s necessary.” I inch closer to the hearthand savor the warmth of its flames. “From what I can tell, it’s mostly swelling.”
“What in the world happened? Did he grab you from your room?”
I shake my head and quickly rehash the series of events—seeing the flames from my window, racing outside, being attacked from behind and then dragged to the water.
“And what about you?” I ask when I finish. “You must have been putting the fire out when I came outside.”
“Yup. I’d cracked my bedroom window, thank goodness, and so the smell woke me. I knew it wasn’t in the house or else the smoke detectors would have gone off, so I ran outside and took the hose to the shed. I was mainly trying to contain the flames until I could grab a phone and call 911, but within a couple of minutes, I’d managed to put it out. When I started toward the house, I spotted one of your shoes in the side yard and I panicked and went looking for you. I was lucky the oar was on the dock because I’m not sure I would have been a match for him otherwise.”
“Do you think he set the fire as a diversion?”
“Yeah, probably. Maybe to flush us out of the house so he didn’t have to break in.”
Our conversation is cut short by the faint sound of car tires crunching on gravel. It must be the police.
“I’ll go to meet with them,” Roger says, turning to leave. “You stay warm.”
A minute later I hear the murmur of voices and the slam of a door. I slip out of the den and tiptoe on stinging feet to the living room, where I position myself by one of the tall windows facing the river. A minute later, I see theoutlines of Roger and two uniformed cops, one male, one female, making their way across the lawn and down the embankment. Still shivering a little, I return to the hearth in the den. Before long I hear another vehicle approaching, accompanied by the whoop of an ambulance.
I try to stay in the present, to focus on the scent of woodsmoke and the crackle of the fire, but my thoughts keep being ripped back to the terror of having my head forced into the water, sure I was about to die.
The ambulance departs, with its siren wailing now. At least two more vehicles come up the driveway almost simultaneously, and shortly afterward, I spot the outlines of three people tramping along the side yard on their way to the riverbank. I’m still by the fire ten minutes later when footsteps approach the den and Roger bursts through the doorway, looking stricken.
“I’ve got news,” he says. “But we need to talk quickly.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“More cops have arrived,” he says, taking two steps into the room. “And Nowak’s on the way. They’ll want to interview us separately.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Yes. Not someone from New York. It’s Frank Wargo.”
“Omigod.”
“I didn’t recognize him when they pulled the mask off, but they took out his wallet, and it’s him.”
“So he’s been in the area after all.” I press my hands to my head, my thoughts racing. “He wanted me dead—which means he must be the one who killed Jaycee. And he found out I’d gone to the police.”
