Trespassing(107)

“My baby . . .” I scramble to my feet and charge toward the kitchen.

Blood pools on my kitchen floor and trails down the travertine in the hallway, toward the front door. “It’s not her blood,” someone says. “It’s Lincoln’s.”

“Bella!”

“She’s out back,” Guidry tells me. “She’s safe, Veronica.”

I burst onto my back porch, where Natasha is seated, cigarette in hand, trembling. She’s talking with an officer. “I didn’t have a choice. He was going to kill us. When Veronica distracted him, I got the gun away from him, and I shot.”

Bella and Miriam huddle at her side, and my daughter leaps at me when she sees me. “Mommy. Mimi says it’s okay to be scared.”

I press my forehead to hers. “Nini says that?”

“No. Mimi.”

She’s growing up. She’s saying Mimi’s name correctly now.

“Mimi’s right. But Mommy’s here now.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Christian Renwick, clad in cargo pants and a ripped T-shirt. This time, I see something I’ve never seen on him before: a holster at his hip and a badge on a lanyard around his neck.

Chris raises his hand—the one with the scar—and offers a wave.

I wave in return.

“Let’s get you to the ambulance,” Guidry says.

I tighten my embrace on my daughter. Bella presses her cheek to mine.

“The boat,” I say. “Azul.” For a moment, hope flashes: maybe Micah’s still there.

“Impounded. We recovered a cell phone on the boat, registered to your name. Pretty safe to say whoever had access to that boat was the one making the calls.”

“Who owns the boat?”

“It’s registered to the company, Diamante. Diamond Corporation.”

“Micah?”

“Or his father.”

“Daddy kissed me bye-bye on the nose,” Bella says.

“He was here,” I say. “There was a ring he must have taken, along with the rest of the money from the safe-deposit box. Who else would’ve wanted to lure us here?”

“Renwick suspected he saw him, too.”

“What?”

A paramedic is taking my blood pressure.

“Twice,” Guidry says. “Once in the morning, during a walk with his nieces. And later that night.”

“The night I got the phone call on the beach?”

“Yes.”

“Christian saw him? At my house?”

Christian lied to me.

“Renwick also switched the rum left on your porch with the bottle you drank from tonight. We ran tests on the bottle left on your porch. The levels of benzos found are consistent with those in Gabrielle’s system. If you’d drunk that rum, you’d be sleeping for a while.”

“He said he was a writer. He should’ve told me.”

Guidry shakes his head. “A good undercover man never does. He cleared out when you saw his work.”

If Christian hadn’t been here, Mick would’ve come for me sooner. If he hadn’t put the device on the cat’s collar, no one would have known we were in danger. And if he hadn’t switched the rum, I’d be in a deep sleep by now. He saved me three times.

I meet Guidry’s gaze. “Thank you for putting Chris on the case.”

“Don’t thank me.” The detective shakes his head and backs away from the ambulance as the EMTs prepare to close the doors. “I didn’t do what I told you I’d do. I didn’t find your husband.”





Chapter 59

December 23

I’ve given the police every morsel of information I can muster, and they think my theory has merit: Micah was planning to escape his role in Diamante, to escape the insurmountable debt he’d put us in, to escape the web of lies he’d spun in regards to the children he’d fathered without telling me.

He’d spilled his blood in his car to thwart anyone looking for him—both those from the Diamante international shipping company and the authorities—or maybe even to fake his death.

“His plan wasn’t to leave you behind. He wasn’t supposed to disappear like that. When you told me he was missing, I assumed he was delayed, but that he’d be back for you. So when you told me he was gone . . . dead, I mean . . .” Shell is sitting across from me at Blue Heaven, an outdoor café and bar on Thomas Street, just down the road from Ernest Hemingway’s house. She’s lost weight since I last saw her, and maybe that’s why she looks a little older around the eyes, the mouth. Or maybe she’s just weary with the prospect of the legal battle ahead of her husband. “He never wanted you to go through this.”

She shoos away one of the Blue Heaven’s free-roaming chickens that dares to waddle near our table. “Oh, this place,” she mutters under her breath.

I have to admit that when she asked me to meet, I chose Blue Heaven partly because I thought she’d be just distracted enough to give me the upper hand in conversation. On one hand, I smile to see her out of her element, if only because she should know how it feels to be knocked askew without firm grounding. On the other, the woman sitting across from me is the only mother I’ve had for the better part of ten years.