The Flight Attendant(71)

“Hi, this is Cassie Bowden,” Paula said when someone answered. “I met Alex last week in Dubai and I want to speak to him right now! I want to know why he hasn’t called me!”

She watched as Paula’s drunken eyes went wide and her jaw actually went slack in disbelief. She said nothing more, nothing at all. She just handed the phone back to Cassie, as Suzanne released her arms.

Cassie looked at the screen and saw the connection was gone.

“He’s…um…” her friend began, but then stopped.

Cassie waited. Suzanne pushed Paula hard on her upper arm, literally prodding her to continue. “What?” Suzanne asked, still smiling at the hilarity of all of this. “What?”

“He’s dead,” Paula murmured.

“He’s what?” Suzanne asked.

“He’s dead,” Paula repeated. “Someone at the house—not his mom or dad, I’m pretty sure—got really pissed and hung up. So, I don’t know any more than that.”

“That’s so weird and so sad,” Suzanne said, her voice softened by the absolute buzzkill of Paula’s news. But she was stunned only briefly. “Let’s Google how he died,” she said. “Maybe there’s an obituary.”

Cassie took back her phone. It felt radioactive in her hand. Would it ring again soon? Would Alex’s mother or father call her back? Probably not. Instead she would probably get a call from Frank Hammond or someone in authority somewhere, telling her not to harass the family. But maybe not. Oh, the family certainly would tell the police she had called. They’d tell the FBI.

And eventually it would get back to Ani.

But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered whether this stupid little stunt would be anything other than one more black mark in her file somewhere.

She sighed. She hoped when Ani called her next, it wouldn’t be to say that she’d had enough of her and was dropping the case.

“Don’t waste your time Googling it, Suzanne,” she said. “I can tell you exactly how he died.”

Paula sat up a little straighter on her stool. “Wait, what? You knew he was dead and allowed me to call his parents? Are you crazy?”

“I tried to stop you.”

“She did,” Suzanne agreed. “She did.”

“Not hard enough!”

“He was killed in Dubai at some point after I left his hotel room,” Cassie told them. “If you want to read all about it, just go to the New York Post. You can even see me. Sort of. His real name was Alex Sokolov. Not Ilyich. Sokolov.”

She had been planning to order another margarita and stared a little longingly at the squat, lovely bottle of triple sec behind the bar. But as she glimpsed the faces of her friends as they held their phones before them and read about the death of an American trader in Dubai and the woman of interest in the security cam photos, she had a change of heart. She had a twenty-dollar bill and two ones in her wallet, which wouldn’t cover what she probably owed, but she handed it to Paula and said she was sorry—sorry, in truth, about so many things, of which not paying her share of the bar tab was pretty damn inconsequential—and said good night.



* * *



? ?

The next morning, Sunday, she wasn’t sure which surprised her more: the fact she slept through the night or the fact she still hadn’t been arrested. Her attorney hadn’t called to fire her for phoning Alex Sokolov’s family in Virginia.

Of course, the day was young. A lot could still happen.

She got up and went to the animal shelter, as if it were just another Sunday in August. It was a fifteen-minute walk if she strolled, considerably less if she was in a hurry. But as she was passing a supermarket on the avenue, once more she had the distinct sense that she was being followed. She told herself, as she had the other day, that she was being delusional. But she knew also that the FBI had reason to put her under surveillance. And there certainly were other people out there, including whoever had killed Alex, who might want to know more about the woman in the Royal Phoenician photos.

The idea that whoever that was knew who she was caused her to feel a chill, despite the stifling summer heat. She paused and flipped open her compact to look behind her, almost hoping to see Frank Hammond or someone else who just exuded FBI, because she knew she would have preferred that to the faceless man in shades and a black ball cap.

Unless that dude was FBI. And maybe he was. She thought of how casually the air marshals always dressed on her flights.

In her compact she saw no one in particular on the sidewalk. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the streets on a Sunday morning in August, and among the cabs and buses and delivery vehicles she noted nothing suspicious. Still, she trusted her instincts. There again was that gift of the amygdala, the gift of fear. Ahead of her was a corner convenience store with entrances on both the avenue she was on and the cross street she was approaching. She flipped shut her compact and went in. But instead of buying even a cup of coffee, she cut through the store and left through the other exit. A few yards down that cross street was a doorway for a dry cleaner that was closed for the day. She stood flat against the side wall, invisible from the avenue, and waited. She counted slowly to one hundred, adding the word Mississippi after each number, the way she’d been taught as a little girl. Then instead of returning to the avenue and continuing north to the shelter, she walked a block west. She’d head north at the next intersection. It was a long detour, but it dialed down her panic.