The Guest Room(86)

“Could they be on their way here? To my house?”

“I don’t think I was followed. Maybe they were following me in New York City. But I was at your front door a long time and no one killed me.”

“But they might look for you here.”

She shrugged. “I had to go somewhere.” Then she rose to her feet, saying, “I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

Quickly he put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her. “No, don’t. Please…don’t. You came here for help. I’ll help you.” Nevertheless, he knew that no good could come from her being here. A collage of faces flickered behind his eyes: There was his wife and there was his daughter. There were the girl’s bodyguards, now dead, but there were plenty more just like them. And there were the detectives he had met in the past week, the women and men who had explained to him that his house was a crime scene or showed him the secrets that only a morgue could share. But Alexandra was far more child than whore. She was nineteen. He couldn’t possibly send her outside into the chill October air, where all that awaited her were men like Spencer Doherty and, eventually, death. He thought of the hunting rifle he’d chosen not to buy. The bullets he’d seen in the box. But then he recalled Sonja’s corpse and realized that he could have purchased an assault rifle—he could have bought a bazooka—and he still wouldn’t have had a chance against the kind of men who brought Alexandra to America.

“You won’t call police guys?” she asked.

“I haven’t yet,” he said, and she sat back down. And so he did, too. “But if I’m going to help you, I need to know a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like your real name. I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that it’s not Alexandra. Outside just now, you said…”

“No, it’s not Alexandra.”

“Okay, then. What is it?”

“Anahit.”

He repeated it. “That’s pretty.”

“Armenian. Means goddess.”

“Were you both—you and Sonja—Armenian?”

“Yes. But Sonja grew up in Volgograd. I grew up in Yerevan. She had blue eyes, remember? Very rare for Armenian girl. It’s because her grandmother was part Russian.”

“How long have you been here? In America?”

“A month.”

“So you’d only been in the United States three weeks when you were brought to my brother’s party.”

She nodded, and for a moment they both were silent as they recalled how it was exactly a week ago that their worlds had collided—and exploded.

“Why did Sonja kill your bodyguards? Why last Friday night?”

She raised a single eyebrow. “Just guards. Not bodyguards.”

“I’m sorry. Is that why she killed them? Because they were your…your captors?”

“She was afraid they were going to kill us on way back into New York City. There was a third girl you never met. Crystal. They had already killed her because she was talking to police guy.” She put her cigarette down in the ashtray, and he stared at the circular smudge of her lipstick on the filter.

“A detective,” he repeated, trying to focus. “She was talking to a detective? Who was he working for? A Manhattan D.A.? Or the U.S. Attorney’s Office?”

She looked at him, confused, and replied, “For police guys. He was working for police guys.”

“Got it,” he said. There was no point now in explaining the fine points and particulars of a criminal investigation in America. “So, the police know about you?”

“I don’t know what they know. I just know they arrested some dudes this week and then let most of them back out. A girl like me has no power. I can’t trust them.”

He shook his head. He would correct her. He would tell her that she needn’t fear the police, she needn’t worry about going to jail. She was going to be fine. Perhaps he would introduce her to Dina Renzi. The firm would surely pro bono their services on her behalf. Besides, she wasn’t a criminal. Not really. She was a victim, for God’s sake! All this fear she had about jail? She was never going to jail. He began crafting in his head how he would explain to her what the witness protection program was—if she even needed such a thing, which he thought was unlikely—and how she’d be fine. She’d be just fine.

“Look,” he began, “the police are already investigating the people who brought you to America. That’s clear. They know you were doing what you were doing against your will. But let’s also be clear about this: it was Sonja who killed the two men at the party. Right?” The question was out there before he could frame it properly. He believed in his heart this girl was incapable of that kind of violence, but after all she had been through, one never knew. But, just in case, he had meant to lead her more, to make sure that she didn’t tell him something he shouldn’t know—something not even Dina Renzi would want to know.

Instead of answering him, however, she reached into her leather jacket and pulled out a handgun. Instantly he grew alert. Not scared, not at all. But watchful. He was surprised, and understood on some level that he shouldn’t have been. Of course she had a gun. Of course.

“That’s what you think?” she asked.