Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

Miles considered the question. “No.”

“Who knows what you know?”

“Dorian. My assistant. She’s worked for me for years. And then there’s Heather, who does investigative work when we need it. There’s the doctor from the clinic. There could be any number of people who have the information. What are you suggesting? What if someone did know the names of the people I’m trying to make contact with? How does that connect to someone going missing, or being in a fire?”

“Hey, you’re the one who seems freaked out by it, so there’s got to be something going on in the back of your mind.”

“It’s... maybe it’s all nothing.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s nothing. And you want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m one of them. You’ve got nine people you’re trying to find. Two are missing and one’s maybe dead. That’s a third of your list, right there. So if... if... someone is going around and deliberately making this happen, when’s it going to be my turn?”

Miles gave her a look that suggested the idea had not occurred to him until she’d said it. “Christ.”

“To put it fucking mildly,” she said. “Look, you’re supposedly the guy with the big brain here, but let me toss this out.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re planning to divide up all your money and shit between the nine of us. And like I said, I don’t need your money, but let’s put that aside. So these nine people, they all get, well, a ninth of the pot. Am I right so far?”

“Yes.”

“So, when nine goes down to six, those six end up getting way more. Right?”

“Right,” Miles said slowly.

“And if nine goes down to five, then those five end up getting more. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Chloe, you’re making huge leaps here.”

“Well, that’s easy for you to say,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not one of the nine.”

The words hit him hard. Miles felt the emotions welling up again. He didn’t want to lose it again. He struggled to stay on track.

“What you’re talking about,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, “is murder. You’re talking about someone going around murdering my... progeny. There’s no evidence, at least not in what I heard from Dorian, that suggests any of these... occurrences... are homicides.”

“That’s only because they haven’t found the bodies,” Chloe countered, almost casually.

Miles looked out his window. “What you’re saying... it’s unthinkable. But if it’s somehow true... have I somehow set the wheels in motion?”

Chloe said nothing.

“The whole reason... I set out to do this to help all of you, not to bring harm to you. Who... who would do this?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Chloe said.

Miles turned away from the window, wanting to look her in the eye as she presented her theory.

She shrugged, smiled goofily, and said, “One of us.”

“What?”

“One of the nine,” she said. “You want the whole pie, you knock off your half brothers and sisters.”

“No,” Miles said under his breath.

“One of your kids already knows about the others and is taking us out,” she said, almost cheerily. “Makes sense to me.”

“No,” he said again.

“Just so you know,” she said, reaching out and touching his arm again, “it’s not me.” She paused. “Of course, that’s what I would say, isn’t it?”

And then Miles did something neither of them expected. He laughed.

“This is the very definition of a clusterfuck,” he said. “Maybe it is you. You’re like the girl in Hanna .”

Now Chloe smiled. “I saw that movie. About the sixteen-year-old girl who’s an assassin. Yeah, okay. One of your kids just happens to have been raised to be an international killer, and now she’s killing all her half siblings. I could pull that off.”

Now they were both laughing.

Miles placed a hand on the dash to steady himself. The laughs subsided. “Oh, man, nothing about this is funny.”

Chloe shrugged. “You have to laugh sometimes.”

Once he’d composed himself, Miles took a deep breath and said, “We should get you home, and I should get back to New Haven and try to make some sense of this mess.”

“Yeah, like that’s fucking happening. If there’s a chance in a thousand that I’m right about this, you think I’m gonna go home and wait for someone to make me disappear? You may not be much of a bodyguard, but I’m sticking right by you.”

She paused, and then added, “ Pops .”

Wearily, Miles nodded and said, “Got it.”

New York, NY

Nicky, increasingly, believed there was only one way this could end.

When she’d said to Roberta that Jeremy couldn’t keep her locked up in this multi-million-dollar brownstone forever, Roberta had conceded the point. What was Nicky supposed to take from that?

Was Roberta going to show up in her room one day to announce Nicky was free to go? That Jeremy’d had a change of heart, that her punishment was over, that he was no longer concerned about what she might have overheard?

Yeah, that was going to happen.

For a while there, Nicky thought they’d try to buy her off. Offer her money, or gifts, to make her forget what she’d heard. She imagined Jeremy coming to see her and saying this whole thing had been a terrible misunderstanding, that he’d like to make it right by giving her a good-paying job in the organization, preferably someplace overseas where she’d be far, far away from any New York authorities.

And she’d go along with it, happily.

Sure, she was just a kid, but she was mature for her age, very attractive, and smarter than most girls her age. She could pass for nineteen or twenty if she had to. Old enough to be put on the payroll somewhere. Maybe train her as a future Roberta. Someone who could find more young girls to entertain Jeremy and his important friends.

But she didn’t think that was going to happen. She feared Jeremy was considering a more permanent solution. How would they do it? Put some slow-acting poison in those wonderful meals Antoine made? But she hadn’t felt even the slightest bit ill, so she’d ruled that out for now. Good thing, too, because the food was the best thing about being imprisoned here.

So, if they were going to kill her, why not just get it done? Maybe they were working up the nerve to do it. They had to figure out not only how to do it, but how to cover it up.

If Jeremy Pritkin was anything, he was a meticulous planner.

So Nicky had been thinking, I have to get the fuck out of here .

Her second-floor room was maybe twenty feet from the wide landing between two broad sets of stairs, one going down and one going up. One of Pritkin’s security goons was always there, just like there was that one day when she tried to make a break for it.

Nicky’s visitors were invariably Roberta or one of the staff bringing her a meal, or fresh bed linen or clean towels or rolls of toilet paper. Nicky was expected to change her sheets herself. She’d been instructed to strip the bed every second day and leave the sheets, along with the towels from the bathroom, piled up by the door.

Sometimes, if Roberta was feeling kindly, she’d bring Nicky a stack of reading material — Vogue, Vanity Fair , the most recent Sunday New York Times — which Nicky would devour, even the articles she wasn’t all that interested in. It helped to pass the time. She had TV, but the Wi-Fi continued to be disabled in this part of the building. That iPad they’d given her was only good for games.