No Way Back

CHAPTER SEVEN

Someone stepped out of the passenger’s side of the SUV and cautiously approached us along the circular drive, his gun extended from the top of the semicircular drive.

Dave turned to me. “Wendy, you said these people were from the government. I’ll talk to them.”

That’s when I looked out the window and saw the same black agent who had shot at me at the hotel perched behind the SUV’s open driver’s door.

My heart almost exploded in fear.

“David, we can’t go out there!” I seized his arm. “These aren’t the police. You heard what I told you. They’re here to kill us!”

“Kill us?” His tone was as skeptical as it was uncomprehending. “Wendy, we have to go out there. I’ll call Harvey. I promise, I’m not gonna let them take you without knowing where—” He started to open the door.

“No! Don’t!” I screamed, reaching over to him. “You’re not going out there, Dave!”

There was no time to convince him. I threw the car into reverse and floored it. With a roar, the Range Rover lurched out of the garage and shot right at the oncoming agent, who dove out of the way.

I gunned it toward the SUV.

“Close the door!” I screamed at Dave, twisting around to see behind me. “Close the fucking door!”

He couldn’t. We smashed full force into the grill of the government SUV, Dave’s door flying open. I was jolted out of my seat, my head hitting against the sun roof. The black agent disappeared. I didn’t know if I had hit him or not. I didn’t care! I had to remind myself that these weren’t the good guys—they were covering up a cold-blooded murder. That I was the one trying to save our lives.

Two shots rang out. Not loud cracks. More like muted thuds. Suddenly the rear windshield splintered and my heart almost clawed up my throat. Dave looked at me, his gaze bewildered as mine was fearful and panicked.

If there had been any doubt what these people were here for, it was clear now.

I jammed the car into drive and floored it again, this time forward. Dave’s door was still open, the car’s wheels screeching.

“Wendy!” he shouted. I hit the gas and steered toward the far entrance of our driveway.

By then, the first agent had risen to his feet. He ran ahead to block our way out, his weapon trained on us.

I bore down on him, prepared to run him over.

This time he leaped out of the way on Dave’s side, firing as we sped by. “No!” Another shot thudded into us from behind, the rear windshield shattering. Another hit the side as I turned.

“Dave, close the fucking door!”

He reached for it in desperation, bullets flying into the car. The agent was emptying his gun. I heard a horrifying “Oooof” over the rain of glass and the engine roar. I looked at my husband. His head pitched slightly forward and he had a glazed look in his eye, and I realized in panic what had happened before I saw the blood flower on his chest and his hand drop limply to his side.

“Oh my God, David!” I screamed in horror.

Even as I rambled over our front circle, our eyes met for an instant. Our last instant. I’m not sure if there was anything in them anymore, just a kind of blankness and futility, as if he was somehow letting me down. It was a look I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.

Frantically, I lunged for him, as we bounced over the Belgian block, the force of the turn pitching him to the side. And then Dave slid, fell out of my grasp, and onto the pavement like some lifeless sack of grain, as I turned the corner of the driveway onto our street.

I slammed on the brakes and stared at him in horror. “David!”

I knew he was dead. The glassy eyes staring blankly up at me. And dead only because of what I’d done. Staring up at me, like some disturbing image I’d seen on a news clip, someone else’s husband, twisted, inert, two dark blotches on his chest.

Another shot pinged through the car from behind me, and I saw Agent Number One running toward me. I knew if I stayed even a moment longer, I’d be dead as well. I looked one last time at Dave.

My heart was crumbling.

I hit the gas, the Range Rover lunging forward. I sped away, tears flooding my eyes. I drove down my dark, sleeping street, anguish tearing at me. Disbelief. I told myself that this was only some horrifying, nightmarish dream and screamed at myself to wake up from it. Now. Wake up!

Please.

But as I sped through the darkened town, cutting down side streets and weaving through a parking lot only a resident would know to make certain I wasn’t being followed, not knowing where I was driving, only that I had to get away, as far away from this as I could; I knew with certainty it was no dream.

Oh, Dave …

And I saw clearly how it was all going to look once it became public. That I’d killed a government agent in a panic after being caught in a stranger’s hotel room, and now, having escaped the law enforcement agents who had come for me, I’d gotten my husband killed too. How, after an argument the night before, I’d betrayed him. I could just hear Pam on some news clip tomorrow reinforcing the whole thing. How down I had sounded. How desperate I’d been to meet her at the hotel.

And even if the police did somehow believe me about how the shootings there went down, how would the people who did this ever let me be, having witnessed what I had? How would I ever feel safe again, knowing they had to cover this up too?

They would never let me be free.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I drove.

I’m not sure for how long or how far. Until I felt far enough away that I was certain no one was following me. Every set of headlights that flashed in my mirror sent a shiver of dread rattling through me. Several times I was sure I’d been found. Several times I froze, rigid with fear, waiting for the inevitable siren or flashing light.

But it didn’t come.

I came to my senses on the Hutchinson River Parkway, heading north. A few miles up, I merged onto 684, just getting as far away as I could. Then Route 22 into Dutchess County. I finally stopped, from sheer exhaustion and the throes of grief taking over me. That time of night, I was practically the only car on the dark road. I pulled into a dark, closed-up gas station and cut my lights. It was going on 1:00 A.M. My heart had barely slowed a beat since the shooting.

I started to sob. Deep, shame-filled sobs, everything starting to come up all over again, my forehead slumped on the wheel. My body convulsing. Over and over, I pictured Dave’s empty face staring up at me. That final, befuddled look in his eye, how he didn’t understand. How could he? His final word to me simply a helpless plea. “Wendy!”

And I knew he was dead only because of me. Because of what I’d done. How I’d betrayed him.

I screamed to no one, “Why did I ever go up to that room?” And no one answered. Tears cascaded down my cheeks.

I reached across the seat for my bag, fumbling for something I could use to dry my eyes.

Instead I found Curtis’s phone.

An unstoppable urge came over me to hurl it as far away as I possibly could. Since I’d set eyes on him, it had only brought me hell. I opened the door, took the phone in my hand, and went to fling it into the darkness.

Then I stopped. Suddenly it occurred to me this might be the one thing that could help me.

There had to be something in it that would show what Curtis was into. Why he was being targeted. Who his killers were, and why they wanted him dead. What had Hruseff said? “This is for Gillian …”

It might well be my only chance to find out. I knew in the morning I’d be a hunted woman, sought for a connection to one murder and complicity in another. And that even I, if I looked at the situation through impartial eyes, would likely be convinced I was guilty. Until I knew why they wanted Curtis dead, I’d be a wanted woman. I’d never see my children again. I’d be running for the rest of my life.

I turned the phone on, the BlackBerry powering to life. I scrolled through his recent e-mails and texts, scanning for something from Hruseff or from someone named Gillian. I didn’t find either. What I did find out was Curtis’s last name—Kitchner. CBKitchner@gmail.com being his e-mail account. I looked over his messages. From friends. His family. His Facebook account. I looked under his contacts for a Gillian. Nothing. I didn’t know where to begin.

I was about to put it aside when something made me look through his photos. Maybe it was simply the worry that once I put aside his phone I had no idea what my next move would be. I didn’t know in which direction to drive. Maybe I was just so desperate to find out anything I could about him and what he might have done.

I saw his life: with friends at bars, a team photo of what looked like a rugby match. Then some in rugged terrain—Curtis with some soldiers in combat gear. It looked like Iraq or Afghanistan to me. He and a woman I took to be his sister at a table with what I took to be his parents. They were all smiling and happy. They probably had no idea yet they had lost a son.

Then something caught my eye. A woman. The last picture he had taken. She was pretty and small, dark-featured, with full, dark hair pulled back. I noticed what appeared to be cuts and bruises on her face, and as I enlarged the shot, I saw that she was in a bed, wearing a green hospital gown. There was a date—five days ago. The only identification was simply an initial, L.

A shiver traveled down my spine.

The dark complexion. The oval shape of the face. Anyone might have easily made the mistake. Anyone who had been watching us … perhaps from the hotel bar.

I was staring at someone who looked a lot like me.

CHAPTER NINE

“Jamie, Taylor. Can you move forward, please?”

Lauritzia Velez got the kids’ attention as they waited for the elevator on the third floor of the Westchester Mall.

Not her kids, actually. The Bachmans’. Lauritzia had only taken care of them these past two years. Taylor was nine, and was texting her friend Cameron, all excited about running into Michael Goldberg at the Apple store in the mall, and Jamie, eleven, was already completely obsessed with the new PlayStation 3 game he had just bought with a birthday gift certificate.

“You know, when we get back home, that game is on the shelf until you finish your homework.”

“But it’s Peyton Manning,” Jamie muttered, his eyes still glued to the box.

“And you too, Miss Fancy Fingers.” She pushed Taylor forward, the girl’s fingers continuing to text at warp speed.

A heavyset woman carrying two shopping bags next to Lauritzia smiled at her sympathetically, as if to say, It’s no use. I’ve got my own.

Lauritzia was twenty-four, dark-haired, with pretty dark-brown eyes that were the color of the hills at dusk where she was from, and she had worked for Harold and Roxanne Bachman since she had moved here from Mexico two years earlier. For the first time, she’d been able to put the hardships of the past few years behind her. She loved Mr. and Mrs. B; they’d been so good to her. They treated her like part of their family. They took her on vacations, encouraged her to call them by their first names, which she still wasn’t comfortable with. They even paid her tuition at the community college where she was taking classes. Maybe one day she would have a degree. In retail merchandising. Perhaps she’d even open her own store. In the meantime, she looked at Taylor and Jamie as if they were her own. Like her younger cousins, whom she had always taken care of back home. With what had happened to her own family, they were practically all she had now. For the first time since everything started, she actually felt she had a new life. A life she trusted. Not to mention a home.

The elevator door had opened, but the kids just stood there.

“Let’s go, Jamie, please.” Lauritzia pushed them forward. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a Hispanic-looking man in sunglasses leaning against a railing. She thought he seemed to be watching them. Things like that always gave her a shudder. “Taylor, take my hand.”

They stepped inside, along with the woman with the shopping bags and two or three others. The doors closed and the elevator stopped at the second floor. A young couple got on, along with two black guys in the usual team sweatshirts and baggy pants.

“Kids,” Lauritzia said, pulling them to the rear, “let everyone in.”

“Lauritzia, can we stop at Five Guys?” Jamie asked. His favorite burger place.

“We’ll see.”

The doors closed and the elevator went down to the first retail floor, then on to Level 1, where they had left the car. Lauritzia let her mind drift to what she would make them for dinner. The Bachmans said they were going out. She had some chicken she could thaw. And there was leftover macaroni.

Maybe Five Guys wasn’t the worst idea …

The doors opened on the ground level. “C’mon, guys.” Lauritzia placed her hands on their shoulders and started to push them forward.

That was the moment when her life was rocketed back to her own private hell.

A man stood in the doorway. A man who looked like a thousand men she had seen in her past: dark skin, black hair knotted into a roll, sunglasses; the all-too-familiar tattoo running down his neck.

She saw him reach inside his jacket.

Lauritzia knew. Even before she watched him search through the elevator for her eyes, scanning through the other people getting off.

Before she saw him pull out his weapon.

She knew.

And in the horror of what she knew was about to happen, her thoughts ran to the one thing she knew she could not lose.

“Taylor, Jamie!” As they stepped forward, she lunged for them, pulling them behind her as the first deadly pops rang out.

People began to scream.

The chilling sputter of the gun was a sound that had riddled through Lauritzia a thousand times back in her own town, as common as church bells. A sound she knew all too well, and that had cost her everyone she once held dear.

If this is my time, let it be so, she said to herself. But Jesus, Mary, please, not the kids.

The familiar sounds of panic rang all around her. The gunman was quick on the trigger and did not wait. Jamie and Taylor screamed, not fully realizing what was happening. Lauritzia forced them to the floor, pressing herself on top of them, praying that whatever evil was being done, it would leave and not take them.

Just spare the kids, she begged God. Please, do not take these kids!

She pressed her face against Taylor’s, saying her own prayers, and tried to stifle the girl’s cowering sobs. Someone fell in front of her, and she waited for the bullets to hit, for the end to come.

But suddenly there was a different sound. Not the ear-splitting sputter of a machine pistol. But two loud pops.

Then there was only silence where a moment before there had been mayhem. Silence and that awful, smoke-filled smell that always came before the wails.

She looked up. The tattooed young killer was on his back, dead, his semiautomatic pistol at his side. A young policeman came up with his arms still extended. What happened next was the aftermath she knew all too well: the awful smell of lead rising like smoke. The anguished screams and moans. The hushed murmurs of shock and disbelief.

The woman with the shopping bags who had smiled at her was dead, her once kindly eyes frozen and wide. One of the black guys was moaning, his T-shirt soaked in blood. The young man who got on with his girlfriend on Level 2 was holding on to her body, moaning in disbelief. “Kelly … Kelly …”

Beneath her, Jamie and Taylor were sobbing.

The policeman finally took his gun away from the shooter. “Is everyone all right?” Then, shouting into a radio, “Emergency. Emergency! Shooting at the Westchester Mall. Level One. We need EMS immediately—everything you’ve got. Suspect down.”

Other people wandered up and began to help the shell-shocked people out of the elevator. Lauritzia lifted herself up, and then the kids, who were whimpering in shock. I have to get them out of here, she knew. Before anyone comes.

Before they ask her questions that she did not want to answer.

“Is it over? Is it over, Lauritzia?” Jamie kept muttering.

“Yes, yes,” Lauritzia reassured him. She hugged them with all her might. “You are safe.” But she knew it wasn’t over.

Only then did she feel the burning on her face and put her hand there and notice the blood. Her blood.

“Lauritzia, you’re hurt!” Taylor yelled.

“We have to go!”

She pressed their faces close to her as they stepped over the bodies to shield them from the horrible sight.

“Everyone wait over there,” the policeman instructed them. “EMS is on the way. You too,” he said, guiding Lauritzia.

But she could not wait.

“Come!” she told them, lifting them off the ground and carrying them past the swarm of bodies. They were trembling and whimpering—who would not be?—but there was no time to delay. She took a last, quick look at the shooter. She had seen his face a thousand times. The tattoo. Only by the grace of God had they been spared.

But these others … She glanced back sadly at the heavyset woman’s frozen eyes. Dios toma ellos almas.

God take their souls.

But by the time the police came she had to be long gone.

“Children, quick!” she said, dragging them toward the garage. “We must get out of here now!”

CHAPTER TEN

Thirty minutes later, the tears ran freely in the Bachmans’ kitchen. Tears mixed with horror and elation.

“You saved their lives,” Roxanne said as she dabbed Lauritzia’s cheek with a cloth and hugged her. Held her as warmly and gratefully as if Lauritzia was one of her own. “There’s nothing we can do that can ever thank you enough.”

Mr. B rushed home. They told Lauritzia over and over that she was a hero. But she knew she wasn’t a hero. She knew she was anything but that.

Still shaking and in tears, Jamie and Taylor sat in their parents’ arms and told them how Lauritzia had pulled them to the elevator floor before they even realized what was happening, and how she had covered them with her body as the shooting broke out, shielding them from harm, and then got them out of there.

“It must have been so horrible,” Roxanne said over and over, tears in her own eyes, unable to let them out of her arms.

“It was. It was,” Taylor said, her face buried in the crook of her mother’s arm. “Mommy, I saw this woman and she was—”

“Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it, honey.” Roxanne pressed her daughter to her cheek, stroking her hair.

Jamie, still white as a ghost, could barely speak at all.

“Maybe we should contact the police,” Mr. Bachman said. He had rushed home from his law office in Stamford as soon as his wife called. “You got a look at him, didn’t you?”

“Not a good one,” Lauritzia said. “I was on the ground. No, please, no police. That is not a good idea.”

“Maybe later, Harold,” Roxanne said. “You can see how they’re all still rattled.”

“Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe later. If they need me.”

“Anyway, there were witnesses all over,” Roxanne Bachman said. “We don’t have to involve the kids.”

Mrs. B was tall and pretty, and usually wore her shoulder-length blonde hair in a short ponytail. And she was very smart; Lauritzia knew she had once been in the financial investment business. That was how she and Mr. B first met. Now she did a lot of charity work for the school. And did yoga and ran marathons. And was the president of the neighborhood in Old Greenwich, where they lived.

“It’s just all so horrible.” Roxanne couldn’t stop squeezing her kids.

“They’re saying it was some kind of drug thing,” Harold said. His prematurely gray hair always gave him an air of importance, and Lauritzia knew he was important; he was a senior partner in a big law firm. “There was no immediate connection to any of the victims, but one of the people who was wounded has a record for selling drugs or something …”

“Sí, it was horrible,” Lauritzia agreed. They would never know how horrible. Yes, those poor people, Lauritzia knew, feeling ashamed.

“You ought to get that looked at,” Roxanne said of her wound. “I can take you to the emergency room—”

“No, the blood has stopped. It’s nothing.”

“Anyway, you should lie down. You’re still in shock. I’ll look in my medicine cabinet. I might have something.”

“Yes, I think that would be good.” Lauritzia nodded.

Roxanne put her hand to Lauritzia’s cheek. “Look how close this came … We can never make up to you what you did for us today.”

Soon the phones began to ring.

Mrs. B’s parents. Judy and Arn. Roxanne had called them, having told them the kids were heading to the mall, and knowing they would hear about it on the news. And then their friends. Then Jamie and Taylor’s friends. Soon it would be chatter on Facebook. After that, maybe local reporters. They’d want to hear their story.

And maybe hers too—the one who saved the kids!

Next it would be the police.

In her room, Lauritzia lay on her bed. She was growing more sad than she was afraid. Sad that it had come to this. That she had never been completely truthful with them. Or told them anything of her past. Except a made-up story, about how her father was a cook in the village where she came from. That had once been true. And how she had come here to visit her sister. That was partially true as well.

Before the nightmare began.

Now she knew she could no longer stay. They knew. They knew where she was. She could not put the family in any more danger than she already had. She could not do that to them. People she had grown to love. Anyway, once the truth came out, they would lose all trust in her. They would ask her to leave.

A drug thing. That’s what Mr. B claimed that it was …

It is always a drug thing, Lauritzia knew.

La cuota. That which is owed. To the familia, the cartel. A tax to the grave.

For her, what she owed was clear.

She had seen them. Through the maze of people. Before dragging Jamie and Taylor to the ground and burying her face in their trembling bodies. She had seen the shooter’s face and the dull, businesslike indifference in his eyes. The tattoo that ran down his neck. There was no attempt to hide it. The skeleton’s head that brought back all the terror and fear she had prayed she had forever left behind.