The Hollow Ones(33)

None of this made sense.

She waited. The latte was good, its creamy warmth easing the chill of the rain and the circumstances, the caffeine settling nicely into her nervous system. As she sat there, she realized suddenly that she felt better. Or rather: She realized how shitty she had been feeling the past few days. Delivering the letter—hell, even just having committed her thoughts to paper, and sealing them inside an envelope of precise size and color, and then depositing it in an anonymous seam in an ancient street on an island city of one and a half million—had achieved what would otherwise have taken months or years of therapy.

Maybe, she thought, this was what Earl Solomon was suggesting. Maybe this was a thought experiment to get her through this ordeal. Maybe “Hugo Blackwood” was a state of mind.

By the time she arrived back at the subway station, the rain had abated. A train came right away, and she rode back home to New Jersey thinking about the things she used to think about. Getting groceries. Catching up on laundry. The little things. There was comfort in this.

She ran to Walgreens for a few items—coffee creamer, toothpaste—and walked the rest of the way back to the apartment. Her dark mood had not been lifted, but it had been leavened. She stood her umbrella against the wall in the hallway next to the door and entered her home, hanging her nearly dry jacket on the knob of the closet door.

A man was sitting on her sofa.

“You called upon me,” said Hugo Blackwood. “Here I am.”



He had the darkest eyes and hair, fair to alabaster skin. He was thin, borderline gaunt, yet elegant in a mysterious way: Odessa thought of her image of male characters from eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literature.

He wore an impeccably tailored black suit—simple but flawlessly cut and assembled—with a black shirt, black vest, no necktie. He was in his forties or perhaps his well-preserved fifties. Hard to say. He held one of Odessa’s teacups in his hands and looked at her inquiringly.

“I read the letter,” Hugo Blackwood said, a purring British accent. “I was, in fact, expecting it a little sooner…”

Odessa’s first thought was: Get a weapon. For the first time since it had been taken away from her, she wished she had her Glock. She had left her keys in her jacket pocket. The door to the hallway was behind her. She could be out of here in three seconds if necessary.

“I’m an FBI agent” were the first words that sputtered out of her mouth. A warning and a threat—just one she’d never dreamed she might have to use in her own home.

“I know,” he said quite simply.

Her breath came fast. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

She stared. “No.”

“You wrote to me,” he said. “So I let myself in.”

When no words would come out, she just shook her head.

“I’m making us some tea,” he said. “I do hope you don’t mind…”

Odessa gripped the edge of the wall. “There is no way you made it back here before me.”

His eyebrows arched. He indicated the sofa he was sitting upon, proof that he had indeed entered the apartment before she had.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“You are going to have that many questions?” he said.

“How did you find me?”

“Well, your name was in the letter.”

“What is that…mailbox? What is this? Who put you up to this?”

“You did. The mailbox is more of a mail slot. It remains fairly efficient even in these times.”

These times? As she went back and forth with him, she edged closer to her kitchen. That was where the knives were.

“Can we talk about the issues you set forth in your summoning?” he asked.

“Summoning?” Dessa said.

“You called me,” he said. “I presume the matter is of immediate importance to you.”

“No,” she said, indignantly. “No, we can’t…”

Her kettle. It was hot and still faintly steaming. He had gained entrance to her apartment and had time to boil water…all in the time it took her to drink a latte, ride the PATH back, and stop in at Walgreens?

He noticed that she was flummoxed by the boiled water. “I brought my own tea bag, I may add. Mariage Frères, Milky Blue,” he said, sipping his brew. “Why don’t you make a cup and sit down, steady your nerves.”

That straightened her up. Her nerves did not need steadying. Her questions needed answers.

“I am fine as I am, thank you,” she said.

“The elements of the cases you describe present themselves to me as symptoms,” he said. “And these things occur in threes.”

“Solomon said that,” Odessa said.

“Earl, yes. I imagine he would.” He smiled. “The facts in evidence are unremarkable on their merits. But these incidences are curious in the abstract. Especially occurring separately within such a short period of time.”

“How do you know Earl Solomon?” she said.

Blackwood took in a breath, evidently inconvenienced by the question. “How did I come to know him?”

“How long have you known him? Who are you two together? What the hell is going on here?”

“Must we? You sent me a—”