Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(9)

Anything is possible.

When the weather is nice enough for Kristina to perch on the fifth floor fire escape, she’s able to spot Mack in the distance, heading home. She discovered that by accident one evening about two months ago, when she was sitting out there to escape the heat.

This is an old building; no central air. Kristina used to have a small window unit, but of course Ray took it when he left her like the Grinch leaving Whoville.

The breakup was the first in a series of events that left Kristina wondering if she should just give up and move away, make a fresh start.

That was before she fell for Mack, of course.

Anything can happen.

That’s why you love New York. A girl like you can be waitressing one day, starring on Broadway the next.

That’s how it was supposed to work, anyway. But right after Ray moved out, Kristina lost her waitressing job because the health department closed down the restaurant. Then she tore a ligament during a dance workout—which wound up requiring surgery she couldn’t afford, particularly without health insurance. And of course, the injury has put her Broadway show auditions on hold for God only knows how long.

As a result, she’s been isolated not just from the friends she and Ray shared as a couple, but now also from all her dancer friends and all her restaurant friends—pretty much her entire social circle. She doesn’t even have family now, other than her mother’s sister in England and her father’s cousins somewhere out West, who didn’t even show up for his funeral.

It’s been a long, hot, lonely summer, and Kristina has spent it falling madly in love with the guy who moved into the apartment below her on June first . . . with his wife.

Yeah. Mack is married.

Carrie. That’s her name. Mack’s wife.

Kristina rarely sees her. She has some kind of Wall Street job, and she leaves the building really early in the morning, way before Kristina gets up.

But now that Kristina is doing office temp work at an accounting firm in the Chrysler building, Mack is pretty much on the same morning schedule.

She used to hate riding in the building’s ancient elevator, which takes forever even without stopping at other floors. She used to particularly hate when it stopped on the fourth floor and Mrs. Ogden, who smelled of old fish, would get on. Kristina was secretly almost relieved when her granddaughter found her dead on the floor of her apartment one day, having fallen, the way elderly people do, and hit her head.

Now that Mrs. Ogden is gone and Mack has moved into her apartment, whenever Kristina presses the down button and the doors close after her, she’s disappointed when it descends all the way to the lobby. On good days, it creaks to a stop on the fourth floor and Mack steps in.

He’s not the best-looking guy she’s ever known. He’s nice and tall, but somewhat lanky for her taste. His black hair is razor-trimmed above his ears, and he’s usually freshly shaven and wearing a suit. A little too put together, as far as she’s concerned. She’s always been a fan of shaggy-haired guys, the kind who go around in ragged jeans with five o’clock shadow; guys who might be hiding a tattoo or . . . something. Guys with an edge.

That’s so not Mack.

But somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter. For some reason, she’s drawn to him anyway.

Wife and all.

“I didn’t go looking for it. It just happened.”

How often did she hear those words from her mother, a British war bride? Mum liked to tell the story of how she fell for Kristina’s father, a young American soldier who’d married his high school sweetheart the evening before he shipped out.

Their love story was a romantic and thrilling happily-ever-after tale. Daddy divorced his hometown wife right after the war, married Mum, and they stayed madly in love until the end. Mum died a few years ago with Daddy holding her hand, and he went less than six months later—a heart attack, officially, but Kristina is certain it was a broken heart. He simply didn’t want to live without the woman he loved.

Anyway—Kristina didn’t go looking for this, either. It just happened. On that hot July night when she happened to be hanging out on her fire escape and spotted Mack below, something about him just clicked with her.

Maybe it was the way he was walking—the way his feet expertly navigated the crowded city sidewalks while his head seemed to be somewhere else, a million miles away. Somehow she sensed, even from a distance, an aura of unsettledness about him.

Until that night she’d assumed—when briefly she’d seen him in passing, and even more briefly given him a passing thought—that he was one of those boring, happily married, hopelessly domesticated guys.

That night on the fire escape, though, it occurred to her that that might not be the case.

Now she knows for sure that it isn’t.

Poor Mack.

And poor me, Kristina thinks, pacing her apartment, wondering how she’ll manage to accidentally-on-purpose run into Mack tonight. The fire escape is out of the question in this weather.

Too bad, because it’s the perfect setup. Whenever Kristina spots Mack in the distance, coming down the block, she dashes down the four flights of stairs to the lobby. Then she takes her time checking her mailbox in the small vestibule by the door, waiting for him to come in from the street.

He always seems pleasantly surprised to see her. If he thinks it’s unusual that she’s often getting her mail at the precise moment he walks in, he hasn’t mentioned it.