Missing You(95)

Now his perfect operation seemed to have hit a major snag. Looking back on it, Titus could blame only himself. He had grown lazy. It had all gone so smoothly for so long that he let down his guard. Immediately after “Kat”—he recognized her as the woman who had reached out to Ron Kochman at YouAreJustMyType .com—had contacted Ron Kochman, Titus should have closed down the profile and cut the line. He hadn’t for several reasons.

The first was, he was close to nailing two other victims using that profile. It had taken a lot of work to get there. He didn’t want to lose them over what at first blush seemed to be nothing but contact with an ex. Second, he had no idea that Kat was an NYPD officer. He hadn’t bothered to check her out. He had simply assumed she was a lonely ex-girlfriend and that his “let’s not go back to the past” spiel would be the end of it. That had been incorrect. Third, Kat hadn’t called him Ron. She called him Jeff, making Titus wonder whether she had mistaken him for another guy who looked like Ron, or Ron had once been known as Jeff, therefore making it even harder to find him and an even better fake profile.

That too had been a mistake.

Still, even if hindsight is twenty-twenty, how had Kat put it together? How, from a small communication on YouAreJustMyType, had Detective Kat Donovan found Dana Phelps and Gerard Remington and Martha Paquet?

He needed to know.

So now Titus couldn’t just kill her and be done with it. He had to grab her and make her talk to see the level of threat. He now wondered whether his perfect operation had run its course. That could be. If he learned that Kat was closing in on him or had shared the information with anyone, he would hit the DELETE button on the whole enterprise—that is, kill the rest of the targets, bury them, burn down the farmhouse, move on with the money they’d made.

But a man had to find balance too. A man could panic under these circumstances and make the mistake of being overcautious. He didn’t want to make a final decision until he knew more facts. He needed to get ahold of Kat Donovan and find out what she knew. He would have to make her disappear too. For some reason, there seemed to be this myth that if you killed someone, the law would come down on you harder. The truth was, dead people tell no tales. Missing bodies give no clues. The risk was greater, far greater, when you let your target or enemies work with impunity.

Remove them entirely and you’re always better off.

Titus closed his eyes and leaned his head back. The ride to New York City would take about three hours. He might as well take a nap so he could be well rested for what might come.





Chapter 36


Kat stood frozen in the backyard of this ordinary house in Montauk and felt the earth open up and swallow her whole. Eighteen years after saying that he no longer wanted to marry her, Jeff was a scant ten feet away. For a few moments, neither one of them spoke. She saw the look of loss and hurt and confusion on his face and wondered whether he was seeing the same on hers.

When Jeff finally spoke, it was to the old man, not Kat. “We could use a little privacy, Sam.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

In her peripheral vision, Kat saw the old man close the book and go in the house. She and Jeff didn’t take their eyes off each other. They had either become two wary gunfighters waiting for someone to draw or, more likely, two disbelieving souls who feared that if one of them turned away, if one of them so much as blinked, the other would vanish into the eighteen-year-old dust.

Jeff had tears in his eyes. “God, it’s so good to see you.”

“You too,” she said.

Silence.

Then Kat said, “Did I really just say ‘you too’?”

“You used to be better with the comebacks.”

“I used to be better with a lot of things.”

He shook his head. “You look fantastic.”

She smiled at him. “You too.” Then: “Hey, that’s becoming my new go-to line.”

Jeff started toward her, arms spread. She wanted to collapse into them. She wanted him to take her in his arms and press her against his chest and maybe pull back and kiss her tenderly and then just wait for the eighteen years to melt away like the morning frost. But—and maybe this was more a protective maneuver—Kat took a step back and held up her palm to him. He pulled up, surprised, but only for a moment, and then he nodded.

“Why are you here, Kat?”

“I’m looking for two missing women.”

She felt on firmer ground when she said this. She hadn’t gone through all this to rekindle a flame her old fiancé had long ago extinguished. She was here to solve a case.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Their names are Dana Phelps and Martha Paquet.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

She had expected this answer. Once Kat put together that she was the one who said, “It’s Kat” first, the rest had fallen into place.

“Do you have a laptop?” she asked.

“Uh, sure, why?”

“Could you get it, please?”

“I still don’t—”

“Just get it, Jeff. Okay?”

He nodded. When he went inside, Kat actually dropped to her knees and felt her entire body give out. She wanted to sink to the ground and forget about these women, just lie on the earth and let go and cry and wonder about all the what-ifs that this stupid life brings us.