No One Will Miss Her(18)

But of course there was nothing there. And Anna hadn’t noticed a thing. Whatever mark last night’s horrors had left, however powerful the sense that she’d woken up this morning as an entirely different person and everyone would know, it was now clear that she could still be, or at least seem, normal. The realization made her giddy.

I could get away with this.

Everything she had done since last night was predicated on this being true, but until now, she hadn’t truly believed it. Even though some people would be quick to point out that this wasn’t the first time Adrienne Richards had gotten away with murder, in the most literal sense of the word—but that had been different. Adrienne had been young, and dumb, and reckless, and the man’s death had been an accident. A very different thing, all told, from putting a shotgun under someone’s chin and looking at her face as you pulled the trigger.

There had been so much blood.

She shuddered and shook her head furiously, trying to obliterate the memory, or at least blur it out.

And yet, the other thought was still there in her head, impossible to ignore.

I could get away with this.

There was just one thing: it was definitely “I,” and not “we.” She was seeing things clearly now, and that included the unignorable fact that her husband was going to be a problem. Everything had happened so fast, there had been no time to consider the obvious pitfalls of choosing him as a partner in crime—and it wasn’t as though she had a choice, not when he had chosen her first. This whole mess was his fault, and here she was, cleaning it up. Not for the first time. Good little wifey, stepping in. There had been a time when she wanted to play that role, and then, eventually, “want” stopped having anything to do with it. Every marriage has its well-worn grooves. This was theirs. It was how things worked between them. The blood spatter had been still warm and wet on her cheeks as she turned to him and told him that it would all be fine, she would take care of everything. And she’d meant it.

But this, she thought, was the last fucking time.



The woman in the Louboutins showed her down the hall and through another doorway, the clicking of her heels suddenly hushed; the marble floor underfoot had been replaced by gleaming wood covered with a richly woven oriental rug in subtle shades of red and ochre. A small gold plate beside the door read, simply, richard politano, and then, beneath that, private clients. They passed through an inner waiting room—empty but for the rug and a few other pieces of tasteful, plush furniture—and then a second doorway, where her escort cleared her throat and said, “Adrienne Richards,” like she was a servant in a Jane Austen novel announcing the arrival of a noblewoman in the drawing room. There was a huge mahogany desk in the room, and a small man sitting behind it, who rose at the sound of Adrienne’s name.

“Mrs. Richards,” he said, smiling in the same practiced way as the woman in the Louboutins. He extended a hand, an exact half inch of shirt cuff showing past the sleeve of his perfectly tailored suit. “So nice to see you. It’s been ages.”

“It’s Adrienne, please,” she replied, matching his smile. “And it has been ages. I was trying to remember when I was last here.”

There was a soft click from behind her, and she turned to find that the heavy door through which she’d entered was now shut. The woman in the Louboutins had left, and left them their privacy. She suddenly understood the purpose of that superfluous lobby, an empty room in a building where square footage came at a serious premium: it was a symbol, a hundred-thousand-dollar buffer between you, the private client, and the ordinary business practiced elsewhere in the firm. In here, you were special. In here, you were safe.

“Adrienne, then,” said Richard Politano. “And you’ll call me Rick, of course. As for your last visit, weren’t the two of you here together? You and Ethan? Just the once, I think. It would have been quite some time ago, during that . . . well, unpleasantness.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“Well, we meet today under better circumstances, then. Have a seat,” he said, sweeping his hand to one side to indicate a pair of armchairs, cozily arranged at angles to a polished coffee table. “Can I offer you a coffee? Or a glass of wine? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I had to shuffle a few things to fit you in, but of course I’m always happy to make time for you, and Ethan. How is Ethan?”

“Ethan is fine . . .” She trailed off, pressing her lips together, shifting in her seat—and noted with pleasure the way Rick shifted forward incrementally in his, leaning hungrily into the space where something was clearly being left unsaid. She decided there was no need to beat around the bush: “But as you can see, Ethan is not here.”

It was a statement designed to elicit a response, and she wasn’t disappointed: in the split second it took for Rick Politano to temper his reaction, she saw a series of emotions flit across his face. Amusement, surprise, intrigue, excitement. Good, she thought. She offered him a smile, tentative and sly.

“Rick. I’m going to speak candidly. I can do that, can’t I? You’ve always struck me as a man who takes confidences seriously.”

“Of course,” he said, and this time, he made no effort to hide his interest. His tone didn’t change, but his smile did; the upper lip crept up by a millimeter, and in an instant, Rick Politano’s expression shifted from friendly and businesslike to positively vulpine.