Текст книги "The Perfect Stranger"

Автор книги: Wendy Corsi Staub

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Part III

Saturday, June 15

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

I was thirty years old when I got my diagnosis. I had to go see my doctor for test results while I was on my lunch hour at school—his office was right around the corner. I remember wishing it were a hell of a lot farther than that, because I had about a minute to transition from “You have the big C” to “the letter of the day is C.”

It was. Can you freaking believe it? The letter of the day was a C.

That’s just the way it worked out.

And the whole time I was standing in front of my first-graders that afternoon teaching them that C is for Cat and Car and Cup, I was thinking that C is also for Cancer and also for a whole lot of Curse words that I wanted to scream.

—Excerpt from Elena’s blog, The Boobless Wonder

Chapter 13

Bright sunshine glints on the tranquil waters of Mobile Bay, beaming hot on Landry’s bare arms as she cuts roses in her garden. Saturday morning sounds fill the air: the pleasant buzz of hedge clippers, lawn mowers, motorboats; the neighbor kids; laughter as they romp in the yard; the occasional barking of dogs being walked along the water.

Filling a second large plastic bucket with fragrant pink blooms, Landry needs enough flowers not just for the usual vases in the living and dining room, but also for the kids’ rooms where her guests will be staying. Addison can sleep in the master bedroom with her, Tucker on the couch downstairs. They weren’t thrilled about the prospect of giving up their rooms, but they’ll live.

Right now they’re at work. Landry will be leaving for the airport—again—in forty-five minutes.

The first outing was at 5:00 A.M., when she dropped off Rob and his golf clubs for his early flight to North Carolina.

Even after he got out of the car and was hugging her good-bye, he was talking about canceling the trip, worried about leaving her.

“We’ll be fine,” she kept saying. “I’ll have plenty of company all weekend.”

“I know. I’d just feel better if—”

“If they weren’t ‘strangers’?”

“I didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t have to. Look, you’ve spent every Father’s Day with your dad your entire life. He’s getting up there in years. You never know how much longer you’ll have with him.”

With anyone.

“I know,” Rob said. “I keep thinking of that. I want to go—I need to go, but—”

“You’re going. Get it-got-it-good.”

He laughed. “Bossy.”

“So are you. I’ll see you Monday. Go.”

He went.

And her friends are on their way.

Bruce Mangione delved into both Kay and Elena’s backgrounds and is ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that they are who they claim to be. Not a threat to her family’s safety.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine?” Landry echoed when he reported that verdict a few days ago. “Not a hundred percent certain?”

“Nothing in this world,” he told her, “is a hundred percent certain. Anyone who tells you that it is full of—”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I never was worried about the two of them anyway. It’s Jaycee who scares me.”

“But she isn’t coming this weekend, right?”

“No. She never even responded to Elena’s invitation.”

She took the folder Bruce handed her, filled with documentation showing that Elena and Kay are just Elena and Kay, and she handed him a check.

If she opts not to tell Rob about it, he’ll never notice it’s missing. She’s the one who handles all the finances. Ironic, because he’s the one who makes all the money.

But she will tell Rob. Just . . . not yet. Not until this is all behind them.

She may never tell her friends, though—Kay and Elena—that she hired a private investigator to check out their backgrounds along with Jaycee’s. Neither of them has children. They don’t know what it’s like to imagine someone under your roof creeping around the house in the wee hours, capable of . . .

God only knows what.

Jenna Coeur’s daughter Olivia was Addison’s age when Jenna presumably stabbed her to death, in her bed, in the middle of the night.

Jenna is still out there somewhere.

Bruce is still looking for her; looking, too, for solid evidence that Jenna Coeur and Jaycee the blogger are the same person.

The fact that Jaycee has completely dropped out of sight since last week would seem to back that theory. She has yet to resurface in the blogosphere—though as Landry told Bruce, that’s not necessarily unusual. She’s never been as vocal, or as regular, a presence as most of the others.

Still, you’d think she’d want to at least respond to Elena’s update about Meredith’s funeral . . .

Unless she was there herself.

Every time she allows her thoughts to go there, Landry is tempted to cancel the weekend after all. But she won’t let herself do that. The three of them need to be together this weekend—in person. Now, more than ever.

For Elena, the week held yet another unexpected loss.

On Tuesday night she called Landry to report that Tony Kerwin, the guy who had been harassing her last weekend, had dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

“A heart attack? How old was he? I thought he was your age.” Landry’s father died the same way, but he was in his late seventies, overweight, and had been battling heart disease for years, thanks to a fondness for anything deep-fried and smothered in southern gravy.

“Tony was my age,” Elena told her. “It was one of those fluke things. He never showed up for work on Monday—which I’ll admit made me very happy because I was dreading seeing him, and of course I had no idea anything was wrong. But then today when he didn’t come in and didn’t call in, I guess someone reported it and the police got the landlord to let them into his apartment. They found him dead on the kitchen floor.”

“Oh my God, Elena, I’m so sorry. You must be . . .”

Sad? Guilty? Relieved?

“I don’t know how I feel,” Elena admitted. “Right now I can’t seem to get past the irony that I couldn’t stand the guy, and he got to take the easy way out.”

“Out of the problems you were having with him?” Landry was incredulous.

“That too, but I meant he took the easy way out of life in general.”

“He didn’t exactly choose to take it, Elena.”

“No, I know, but still . . . he didn’t have to suffer. One minute he was alive, the next—bam. Never even knew what hit him. Easy way out,” she repeated yet again.

Uttered by anyone else, under any other circumstances, the candid comment might have seemed inappropriate. And maybe it was, in a sense. But Landry understood exactly where Elena was coming from.

In the grand scheme of things—particularly in their cancer-riddled, murder-tainted corner of the world—dropping dead of a massive heart attack, while tragic, might be seen as a blessing. There are worse ways to go. Two years ago the doctors assured Landry and her mother that Daddy never suffered a moment’s pain, most likely death was instantaneous.

“It’s the way he’d have wanted it.” Mom literally wept on Landry’s shoulder, tears of grief and of gratitude. “He never could have endured knowing that he’d have to leave us. He wouldn’t have wanted to know that the last time we saw each other was good-bye forever.”

No. That would have been torturous for him.

“Are you sure it was a heart attack?” Landry asked Elena—not doubting it, yet not quite able to grasp that something like that could strike someone so young.

“Well, I’m no coroner, but that’s what I heard—that it was natural causes. Crazy at his age but he was a fitness freak, so who knows? He probably worked out too hard that morning, or maybe he had an undiagnosed heart condition or something.”

Landry suggested that they postpone the weekend get-together in light of Tony’s death, but Elena wouldn’t hear of it.

“No way. No reason to do that. It’s not like he and I were– Look, you know how I felt about him. I couldn’t stand the guy. Do I feel bad about the way I talked about him? Kind of, but it’s not like he didn’t deserve it.”

Again, she had a point. Still, it seemed a little coldhearted . . .

No. Coldhearted—that’s Jenna Coeur.

Not Elena.

Elena was tormented by Tony; she considered him a stalker, and maybe that wasn’t far off the mark. Landry herself had heard his obnoxious telephone message.

It’s tragic whenever someone dies before his—or her—time, but that doesn’t erase earthly transgressions or inspire instant forgiveness in those who were wronged by the dearly departed.

“I need this now more than ever,” Elena went on, chattering a mile a minute as always, “and I know Kay does, too. We’ve already got plane tickets—which are nonrefundable, by the way. There’s no reason to cancel. The wake is on Thursday. I’ll go pay my respects to Tony, teach my last class on Friday, and fly down there on Saturday morning.”

So it was settled.

And right now, Landry thought, she only wants—needs—to reconnect with the only people in the world who understand what she’s going through.

As long as Meredith’s murderer doesn’t pop up as a surprise guest, everything will be fine.

Which, she’s convinced herself—mostly—would be all but impossible.

Then again . . .

Anyone could probably find out where I live, if they really wanted to.

Point Clear is a small town populated by friendly southerners. In order to find Landry, an outsider would only have to mention her first name to anyone here, or even up the road in Fairhope. The well-meaning locals would direct her right to the Wells doorstep, where . . .

Well, what would he—or perhaps more likely she—do?

Ring the bell? Ask to come in?

Try to break in? The house has a sophisticated alarm system. There’s no way she’d get past it. If she tried, the police would be summoned and be there in a flash.

Or Bruce. She could call him. He has a pistol permit, as he reminded her when she hired him.

“If you need me,” he said, “I can come this weekend.”

Yeah, it would be fun to explain to her houseguests—and her kids—why the strange man with the gun is lurking around the house.

Everything is going to be fine, just like she assured Rob when she left him at the airport.

And now it’s time to turn around and go back to pick up the others. Elena and Kay are connecting from Boston and Indianapolis on the same flight from Atlanta.

Landry puts the clippers into the back pocket of her shorts, picks up the two buckets of roses, and heads inside. She has a little over half an hour to arrange the flowers in vases and finish making the house—and herself—presentable for her guests.

Elena is sitting in a middle seat toward the back of the plane when she sees Kay board at last.

Good. She had expected Kay to miss the connection. The inbound flight from Indianapolis to Atlanta was late, and Kay is cutting it close. The flight attendant closes the door right behind her.

Elena watches her walk down the aisle, looking nervous. Kay keeps glancing over her shoulder, as if someone is going to chase her down and order her off the plane or something.

It’s probably because she’s not used to flying. She’d confessed earlier that she’s only been on planes a couple of times in her life, and not in many years.

Elena tried to prepare her, sending her an e-mail with instructions about how to get through airport security without incident: wear shoes that are easy to take off, have nothing in her pockets, make sure her laptop went through the scanners in its own bin, no liquids in her carry-on but instead placed inside a quart-sized clear plastic bag in containers that are three ounces or less . . .

There are so many rules now, Kay wrote back anxiously.

Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.

If only they could sit together, Elena thought, but there were only single seats left by the time they booked their tickets.

Too bad Kay didn’t get into Atlanta soon enough to join her at the airport bar. After a couple of Bloody Marys, she’d be feeling no pain.

“Kay!” Elena calls as she walks right past without spotting her. “Kay!”

The man next to her, on the aisle, rattles his open newspaper and makes a grouchy sound. Elena ignores him.

Kay stops, glances back, spots her and looks relieved. “Elena! Hi.”

“I thought you might miss the flight.”

“So did I.” Again, she looks over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Elena tells her. “You made it. They’re not going to kick you off now.”

“No, I know, it’s just . . .”

“Your luggage!” she exclaims, realizing Kay has only a purse over her shoulder. “You didn’t do carry-on like I told you?”

“I thought it would be easier to check it.”

No doubt because she made Kay fret about all the security procedures.

“It’s not a good idea to check bags when you have a connection,” she says. “It’s really tight because you were late—I bet your bag didn’t make it on.”

Kay looks even more distressed.

Elena backpedals: “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll get it on the next flight. No big deal. You need to relax. You look like you’re going to keel over again. Your luggage will be—”

“No, it’s not that. I just thought I saw . . . never mind.”

“What?”

The man beside Elena clears his throat and turns a page of his newspaper.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. We’re pissing you off, sir. I don’t really care.

“What did you think you saw?” Elena persists.

“Ma’am, please take your seat so that we can make an on time departure!” the flight attendant calls from up front.

In response, Kay moves toward the only open seat on the plane: a middle seat against the back wall of the passenger’s cabin, across from the bathroom. Elena is well aware that the passengers in her own row—either the grouchy man on the aisle or the morbidly obese woman by the window—will not make a last minute switch and sit in Kay’s seat instead, so that she can sit up here. And chances are, the people sharing Kay’s row would prefer their window and aisle seats to a middle seat a few rows ahead. Particularly with an open newspaper taking up a good portion of Elena’s seat on one side, and the oversized woman’s flesh spilling into it on the other.

Unable to wait until they land for Kay to explain, Elena says to her retreating back, “What did you think you saw?”

Kay turns just briefly, allowing Elena to connect with the disturbed look in her eyes. “You know. Her. In the airport. Just now.”

“Her . . . who?”

“J . . . C,” is the chilling reply, before Kay hurries back to take her seat.

Hollywood, Crystal Burns has come to realize, is more efficient at keeping secrets than the FBI and CIA combined.

All week, she and Frank have been trying to track down Jenna Coeur; all week, they’ve been coming up with dead ends.

An online search revealed that plenty of people have reported sighting her since her acquittal—mainly in New York City and Los Angeles, as you’d expect. Most seem legitimate. Other sightings, as you’d expect, are clearly bogus.

One nut job believes that she was an alien queen who has since shape-shifted herself into the secretary of state. Another—some loser on a porn message board—claims that Jenna Coeur has resurfaced in a film called Schlong Island Getaway.

Naturally, Frank volunteered to check out that one, just to be sure.

“It’s not her,” he reported, “but you wouldn’t believe what she does in the final scene. She—”

“I don’t want to hear it, thank you very much. And I can’t believe you watched the whole thing.”

“I fast-forwarded most of it.”

“Terrific, Frank.”

Now, on a sunny Saturday morning, Frank is busy attending his youngest’s kindergarten graduation ceremony, with Crystal’s wholehearted blessing.

And here she sits, sifting and resifting her way through the mountain of information she’s collected about Jenna Coeur and Jaycee the blogger—one and the same person, as far as she’s concerned.

That theory was cemented by the fact that Jaycee is clearly no ordinary blogger. The cyber crimes unit is involved in the investigation now, backtracking through every trace she left online, but so far they’ve turned up no hard evidence. A lot of people are careful, trying to preserve their online anonymity, but she’s taken great pains to cover her tracks on the Internet.

Crystal checked out of the Los Angeles hotel where Jaycee placed last Wednesday’s call to Landry Wells. No one recalls having seen Jenna Coeur there; the room connected to the outgoing call to Landry’s number was occupied by a walk-in guest who registered as Jane Johnson and paid in cash. Naturally, in Hollywood, that kind of thing doesn’t raise an eyebrow. The hotel’s lobby security camera footage shows a slender woman in a large hat and sunglasses who seemed to keep her face deliberately turned away from the cameras. She could very well be Jenna Coeur—or any white-hot starlet seeking to be incognito.

Then there’s Wasabi Express on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The fact that Jaycee rattled off the number, according to Landry Wells, would seem to indicate that it’s one she knows by heart. But no one who works at the restaurant recalls ever having seen, let alone ever even having heard of, Jenna Coeur. Not surprising. It’s a busy counter place; all of their business is either takeout or delivery to various high rises. She could have used any alias and left the money for her order with her doorman; chances are the delivery kid never had any contact with her, not unusual in that well-heeled neighborhood.

There are hundreds, thousands, of residential buildings on the Upper East Side. Canvassing all those doormen is a daunting task that looms high on Crystal’s agenda, along with countless others. It’s conceivable that Jenna Coeur has been living in one of them, safely tucked away in a tower and unnoticed, for years now. After all, she had money. Tens of millions, even after paying for her legal defense team.

And there you have it: the core difference between Jenna Coeur and Diaphanous Jones, now serving life in prison for the murder of her own child.

Money.

It can’t buy everything, but the acquitted actress seems to have proven that it can sure as hell buy freedom—and a safe place to hide, where no one would ever find you.

No one but me.

Staring at the frozen image on her computer screen, showing a beautiful woman with huge, haunted eyes, Crystal shakes her head.

Look out, because I swear to God that I will track you down before you hurt anyone else. This time, you’ll get away with murder over my dead body.

“And what would you like to order, sir?” Beck asks her nephew Jordan, seated at the kitchen table with his legs dangling from the chair.

“I’ll have the bugs with a side order of . . . um . . . more bugs!”

“Yes, sir.” She scribbles on the pad in her hand, the same one her mother used when she pretended to be a waitress. She located it in a kitchen drawer after Jordan asked her if they were going to play restaurant like Grammy always did.

“Of course we are,” she assured him, and found the pad, along with a box of pancake mix and half a bag of mini chocolate chips in the cupboard.

She gladly said yes last night when her brother Teddy called to ask if she’d keep an eye on Jordan for a while this morning. He was driving down to help Dad deal with some insurance paperwork, and wanted to leave his pregnant wife alone at home to get some rest.

Beck had been planning to drive home this morning to deal with her life and was glad for an excuse to put that off until tomorrow. When she called Keith to tell him she wouldn’t be back until Sunday, he, too, seemed relieved. Their daily conversations have been perfunctory, cementing her realization that the marriage has run its course.

“All right, sir,” she looks at her nephew over the pad of paper, pencil poised, “you say you’d like the bugs with a side of bugs. Would you like the bug sauce on that?”

Jordan screams with laughter. “Yes, please!”

Smiling, Beck puts the pad aside and hands over a coloring book and crayons to keep him busy while she cooks.

At the stove, she drops a few pats of butter onto the hot griddle.

Watching it ooze to liquid, she thinks about Keith.

The thought of ending their marriage—and the inevitable mess that will entail—is overwhelming right now.

Maybe they can keep going through the motions for another couple of months—or even just weeks—until she finds the strength to do what has to be done.

She pours pancake batter onto the griddle and carefully dots each pool with chocolate chips to create eyes, a nose, a smiling mouth.

There. Just like Mom used to do.

So many happy memories . . .

So many difficult moments over the past two weeks, and many more ahead.

For all she knows, Keith is going to hit her with separation papers when she walks in the door. Well, at least she won’t be doing that today.

She still hasn’t figured out how she’s supposed to leave her father here alone.

Both her brothers have offered to take turns staying here with him in the weeks ahead. But they both have kids at home, and Neal has to work, and Teddy has to look for work . . .

She also has a job to get back to. She told her boss she’d be back Monday morning. But she could ostensibly commute to Lexington for a while. Or . . . forever.

Sooner or later her father is going to have to learn to live alone.

So, for that matter, is she.

“I’ll be fine. Go home to your husband,” Dad told her last night, picking the carrots out of the stew she’d made him. She’d forgotten that Mom always left them out; Dad can’t stand cooked carrots.

Does Louise know that?

The errant thought popped into Beck’s head out of nowhere. She hated herself for it. All week, she’d been trying to banish the idea that her father might have had an affair, an affair that might have led him to—

It’s preposterous.

But . . .

I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Mom. I don’t want her to worry. You know how she is.

At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to Beck that there might have been reasons other than the one he gave.

Even now, knowing that Mom was sick again, that her cancer had spread . . .

It makes even more sense that Dad would be trying to protect Mom from any kind of stress.

And it would be right in character for him to meet with a financial advisor without her knowledge.

Their marriage was always kind of old-fashioned in that way. Dad handled money matters, driving, lawn care, household repairs. Mom covered the cooking and laundry and decorating, the kids and school  . . .

“Aunt Beck?”

“Hmm?” She looks up to see Jordan watching her.

“I miss Grammy.”

Sodden grief crashes in, barely allowing her to push out the words, “Me too.”

“I wish she didn’t get sick and die.”

That’s what Teddy and Sue opted to tell him, wanting to shield their innocent child from the terrible truth.

Keith disapproved of the lie, but who is he to judge? He’s not Jordan’s parent. Not a parent at all.

To think that she had assumed he’d be the father of her children one day . . .

Mom had assumed the same thing, having told her, on Mother’s Day, as Keith gave a long, scientific answer to some question Jordan had asked, “He’s going to be a good daddy someday.”

No, he isn’t, Beck wanted to say. All Jordan needed to hear was a simple yes or a no, not this complicated lecture.

Now, as her nephew watches her with big, sad eyes, she blinks back tears, hoping he doesn’t start asking her questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no.

“Aunt Beck?”

“Hmm?”

“I think the bugs are burning.”

“What?”

He points at the skillet behind her, and she turns to see it smoking.

With a silent curse, she scrapes the charred pancakes into the garbage and starts over as Jordan goes back to his coloring book.

This time she watches the griddle carefully, keeping thoughts of Keith and her mother and her father—and Louise—from distracting her.

A few minutes later she’s delivering a plate of perfectly cooked smiley-faced pancakes, doused in maple syrup, to the table. “Your bugs, sir, with a side of more bugs and bug sauce on the top.”

“Aunt Beck! That’s not how it goes! You’re s’posed to call it the stinkerdoodle special!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says with a grin. “Enjoy your . . .”

Stinkerdoodle.

That’s it!

“Aunt Beck! Where are you going?” he protests as she sets the plate in front of him and bolts from the room.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie. I just have to grab my laptop.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re expecting a few bumps on the ascent and there’s some stormy weather along the panhandle, but we’ll do our best to find as smooth a ride as possible. We’re next for takeoff. Flight attendants, please be seated.”

As the plane hurtles down the runway, Kay grips the arms of her seat and squeezes her eyes closed.

She should have driven. Highway driving—once she got used to it again during all those hours on the road last weekend—had turned out to be soothing.

Flying is the opposite.

Her heart is pounding; her head is pounding, too. Her entire body aches, further evidence that stress—sheer terror—can take a drastic physical toll on a person.

The plane lifts into the air, and she holds her breath.

A bell dings in the cabin.

Kay’s eyes fly open.

Does it mean they’re going down?

No one else seems to be agitated—except Elena, who is jumping to her feet a few rows ahead. The man in the outer seat doesn’t look pleased as he rises to let her out into the aisle, but Elena doesn’t seem to care. She hurries back toward Key, gesturing for her, too, to stand up.

Kay glances up at the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign, still lit on the panel above the seats.

“It’s okay,” Elena tells her.

The woman seated to Kay’s left, blocking her access to the aisle, stays put, shaking her head in disapproval.

“She has to go to the bathroom,” Elena tells the woman.

“How would you know?”

Elena rolls her eyes impatiently. “Would you mind letting her up, please?”

“It’s okay,” Kay tries to tell her. “I don’t need to—”

“Yes, you do. Come on, Kay.”

A flight attendant steps out of the galley behind them just as Kay’s seatmate stands to let her out. “Ladies,” he says, “the seat belt light is still on. It’s not safe for you to move around the cabin right now. Please be seated.”

Kay expects Elena to argue, but to her credit, she doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Kay tells the woman beside her as they settle back into their seats.

No reply.

Jaw set, Kay leans back stiffly to endure the flight, hands clenched in her lap in an effort to stop the trembling.

The woman in the window seat to her right—young, wearing an engagement ring and reading a bridal magazine, a whole rosy future ahead of her—glances at her. “Nervous flier?” she asks sympathetically.

Kay nods. “Afraid so.”

“Me too.”

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“I took a Xanax. You want one?”

“Oh . . . no, thanks.”

“I’m going to visit my fiancé. He’s in the Coast Guard down there, and as much as I hate flying, I’d do anything for him. How about you?”

“I’m going to spend the weekend with friends, and actually . . . I’d do anything for them, too.”

They smile at each other. Then the bride-to-be goes back to her magazine, and Kay breathes a little easier. Just a little.

Cory picks up on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“Where do you think?”

“Airport, I hope.”

“Yes. Where else would I be?” Jaycee keeps her voice low and her back turned to the other passengers milling around near the Starbucks. As soon as she finishes this call, she’s going to get a strong cup of coffee. Between her sleepless night, the flight, and what lies ahead, she’s going to need it.

“Just making sure you made it. I was afraid you were going to back out.”

So was I, she thinks, but she doesn’t tell Cory that. No reason to get him all worried for nothing. She’s going ahead with it, like she promised. She’s been resigned to doing what she has to do—well, to what Cory’s been telling her she has to do—for a while now.

Funny—the lyrics to the old “Going on a Lion Hunt” role play game she learned years ago in Girl Scouts are going through her head again lately.

Can’t go over it . . . can’t go under it . . . can’t go around it . . . gotta go through it.

The same refrain was endlessly on her mind when she was pregnant twenty-odd years ago, knowing there was no escaping the looming horror of childbirth, the trauma of adoption.

Gotta go through it.

She was going to have to deliver that baby, and she was going to have to give it up.

Funny, too . . . She’d initially resisted when Steven tried to talk her into terminating.

Years later, when the screaming, bloody human mess she’d delivered into this world left it in the same state, she wished she’d listened to him in the first place.

“Go ahead!” Olivia shrieked. “Do it! I dare you! I dare you!”

Jaycee squeezes her eyes shut for a moment to block out the memory.

Then she assures Cory, “I’m not backing out. Don’t worry.”

“Good. This is all in your best interest. You know that, right?”

“I’m not so sure I agree, but it’s too late to back out now anyway.”

“Call me when you get there so that I can give you a pep talk if you feel—”

“I said I’ll do it.”

“Good,” he says. “Because a big, bold move is your only way out of this. You know that, right?”

Of course she does. She’s known it for a while now. Eighteen months, to be exact. That was when he first approached her with this crazy idea.

Since then, the idea has morphed into an actual plan. Laying the groundwork has been a painstaking two-steps-forward, three-steps-back endeavor. But at last it’s time for full-blown execution.

It’s now or never, as they say.

“I’ve got to go,” she tells Cory. “I’m desperate for coffee.”

She glances again toward the Starbucks and locks eyes with a stranger at the end of the line. He doesn’t look away. Casual interest? Or did he somehow, despite her sunglasses and wig—this time an auburn one—recognize her?

Not taking any chances, she walks away, phone still pressed to her ear as Cory signs off with a benign—considering what she’s facing, “Good luck.”

“Good luck?” she echoes. “Gee, thanks.” She hangs up, shaking her head.

Good luck . . .

Hasn’t luck always been on her side? Ever since she left Minnesota and Johanna Hart behind, anyway. Even after she became Jenna Coeur . . . especially after she became Jenna Coeur.

By a stroke of luck, she became one of the biggest movie stars in the world; by a stroke of luck . . .

You basically got away with murder.

There’s no reason to think her luck is going to change now.

It’s going to be okay, Jaycee tells herself, turning off her phone and tucking it back into her pocket. You’ve got this. You can do it. Whatever it takes.

Sheri Lorton is jerked to consciousness by something wet swiping at her face. Startled, she opens her eyes to see that the puppy, Maggie, is licking her cheek.