Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“Oh wow. You’d spring for a grande? For me? Big spender.”

He shot her a sour look. “You’re a real smart-ass, you know that? No wonder you’re not married.”

Vikki gave him a bland smile. She was really looking forward to slapping handcuffs on Evan Wingfield. And if he tripped in the sand and fell face-forward and she “accidentally” mashed his face into the ground with her non-designer shoe, that would be icing on the revenge cake she’d been mentally baking since the first day she’d met Evan Wingfield.

“Maybe later,” she said. “My guy is gonna get antsy if we’re delayed.”

“So tell him we’re making a coffee stop,” Evan snapped. “What else has he got to do today?”

“Lemme just get across the bridge. I think there’s a Starbucks on the St. Pete side.”

Wingfield stared out the passenger-side window. Tampa Bay was calm, with a light breeze, and sailboats skimmed across the sun-dappled water’s surface, but he seemed oblivious to his surroundings. The rank odor of anger and tension radiated off him like cheap cologne.

“That bitch Letty probably filled Maya’s head with all kinds of poison against me,” he said abruptly. “Have you talked to her since you got down here?”

Vikki shrugged. God, what a narcissist. It was always about him. Never about the child he claimed to love.

“She’s a kid. She watches this stupid PAW Patrol cartoon show and begs to go to McDonald’s.”

“Does she ask about me?”

“Sometimes.” She deftly slipped the knife between his ribs. “Mostly she asks about her mommy. And Letty.”

“Six months from now, she won’t remember their names,” Wingfield said. “Do you remember anything from when you were four?”

“I remember my dog, Patches.”

“Good idea,” Wingfield said, snapping his fingers. “We’ll get her a dog.”

“Super. That ought to fix her right up,” Vikki said, keeping her eyes on the road.

When she saw the Starbucks in a strip shopping center, she flipped her turn signal and turned in to the parking lot, hoping that the silver Volvo would follow suit. She turned to Wingfield. “Drive-through?”

“No. I need to go in and use the bathroom. Be right out.”

She tried not to stare at the leather bag at his feet, hoping he’d leave it behind. He opened the door, stepped out, and at the last minute, grabbed it and looped the strap over his shoulder.

As soon as she saw him enter the store and head for the men’s room, she texted Garcia.

Pit stop. He wants coffee and a piss.

Garcia texted a thumbs-up emoji.

She called DeCurtis from her Apple watch. “We made a pit stop at Starbucks. He’s got a carry-on with him that he won’t let out of his sight.”

“Hopefully it’s the money,” DeCurtis said. “Has he said anything incriminating?”

“Only if you consider every sentence you utter as being evidence that you are a total shitsicle of a human being,” Vikki said. “How’s Letty doing?”

“About like you’d expect. Somehow, she’s managing to hold it together, probably for Maya’s sake.”

She saw Wingfield emerge from the bathroom and head for the counter. He paced the restaurant, leaned against a high-top table, pulled out his phone, and made a call.

“I don’t like this,” Vikki muttered. “He’s in there making a call.”

“So are you,” Joe pointed out.

“He doesn’t know that. He thinks I’m out here basking in my own stupidity, waiting for a mocha grande.”

Wingfield ended the call, put his phone in his pocket, and walked over to the counter, where the barista handed him his order. He swiped a credit card, pocketed it, and turned to leave.

“Son of a bitch,” Vikki said.

“What?”

“He totally stiffed me and didn’t get my coffee order. Okay, that’s it. He’s a dead man.”

She ended the call and shot Wingfield an annoyed glance as he slid into the front seat.

“Hey, thanks for that awesome coffee you were gonna buy me.”

“Sorry,” he said, in a tone they both knew was meant to convey that he was completely not sorry. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get going, okay? We’re booked on a four o’clock flight back to New York. Juliette wants to get Maya on a strict schedule right away, so that she’ll adapt better.”

Vikki backed the car out of the slot and headed for the Starbucks exit. She saw the silver Volvo slowly back out of a slot at the far end of the lot.

“What’s your fiancée think about helping raise another woman’s kid? Especially one with all kinds of emotional problems?”

“Juliette’s cool with it. She wants us to have kids of our own. Someday. In the meantime, Maya loves her. Calls her JuJu.”

“Cute,” Vikki said.

52

AS SOON AS JOE ENDED the call with the FBI agent, Letty cocked her head and looked at him. “You’re such a liar.”

“What?”

They were in her motel unit. Joe was eating potato chips, shoving one after another into his mouth and chewing noisily. He looked like any other typical Florida beach bum—faded T-shirt, loud orange board shorts, Teva sandals, Ray-Bans—albeit a beach bum with a badge in his pocket and a holstered nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson pistol clipped to his waist and obscured by his T-shirt.

Letty was dressed in the disguise Ava had helped her assemble. Big floppy hat, oversize sunglasses, a flowing poncho-type beach cover-up that brushed her kneecaps.

“You just told Vikki I’m managing as well as can be expected. Which is a ridiculous lie. I’m a complete nervous wreck. What if something happens? What if he tries to grab Maya? What if this plan of yours goes all wrong? He’ll get away with it, Joe. Get away with killing Tanya, hiring you to kill me. I’m so terrified I feel like I might barf at any minute.”

“Please don’t.”

He gently removed her sunglasses. “I’ll tell you what my sergeant told me when I was in the police academy. Fake it ’til you make it. It’s okay to be scared. I’d be lying if I told you I’m not scared. Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared. But here’s the thing, Letty. We’re prepared. We’ve got the element of surprise on our side. Wingfield doesn’t know where Maya is. He doesn’t know who Vikki really is, and he’s never seen me before.”

“You don’t know Evan,” Letty retorted. “He can sense people’s weakness. It’s like his superpower. When he spotted me working at the diner, he overheard me tell my friend I was essentially homeless. He could tell I was vulnerable, and he preyed on me. Like Midnight hunting one of those lizards on the patio. He did the same thing with Tanya. I watched it happen, but he still managed to gaslight me, make me think I was imagining things.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a particularly vulnerable kind of guy,” Joe reminded her. “But you want me to tell you what I think?”

She nodded.

“You might not like it,” he warned her.

“Tell me anyway.”

“I think Wingfield met his match in your sister. You’ve said yourself, she kept secrets, was a liar and an opportunist. She played you, telling you she was homeless so you’d invite her to stay with you in New York, and she played Wingfield, by taking up with him and letting him think he was her baby daddy.”

“Is this your way of telling me Tanya was a bad person, as bad a person as Evan? That they deserved each other and she deserved to have him kill her? Is that supposed to make me feel better about this whole nightmare?”

“No. It’s me telling you what you actually already know, which is that Tanya was kinda messed up. But she didn’t deserve her fate. Evan Wingfield isn’t bulletproof. He’s no evil genius. You were taken in by him because you, Letty Carnahan, are a good and decent person.”