Andrew Gross - No Way Back

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.

“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.