There was quiet on the line for a moment.

"Sometimes we'd have help come in," Claire began. "When she was little and already a real handful, very defiant. So we'd bring in babysitters or nannies when I was down to my last nerve and just needed a few hours away. One of them was named Helen ... she was Honduran, I think. Wally was a terror with her, of course, testing her like she tested everyone, but somehow Helen seemed to take it in stride. Late that first night, she was trying to get Wally in bed and Wally was fighting her with everything she had. I hovered at the bedroom door, curious to see how Helen would handle her. In the middle of Wally's worst tantrum, Helen remained completely calm. She leaned in close to Wally until the two of them were face-to-face, and in this cold, powerful voice she said, 'Listen to me now, little girl ... if you do not behave, The People will come for you.' Wally went absolutely silent, and I saw something on her face I had never once seen before: fear. Wally was terrified."

The line went quiet for a moment. Atley could hear the tinkling of ice as Claire took a drink-he hoped there was something strong in her gla.s.s. As she continued, he could hear the quaver in her voice.

"I've thought about that night," Claire continued, "again and again over the years, trying to imagine what thoughts haunted Wally at that moment, what faces she imagined. The People. Who did she think they were?" Claire paused, but Atley did not interrupt her. "I know that whatever her nightmares are, none of us can rescue her from them. I suppose it's the same for all of us."

Claire Stoneman went quiet again. For Atley it was almost too much to bear, the image of the woman sitting in her apartment, waiting, he a.s.sumed, with a full Thanksgiving meal for a child who would not be coming home. At least not today.

"I told you I would find Wallis," Atley finally said. "And I will."

"Thank you, Detective," Claire said, genuine grat.i.tude in her voice. "Happy Thanksgiving."

"Same to you, Mrs. Stoneman."

Atley had been pulled from the Manetti case and was technically on leave, but it was a holiday weekend and his time was his own. Department resources would be off-limits to him until his shooting case was cleared, but other avenues were available if he could dig up a lead to pursue. His first thought was Bill Horst-the FBI had its hooks into the city better than anyone.

TWENTY-TWO.

Wally and the crew slept late-the two couples in their own rooms-and then ordered a room service breakfast in the last hour before checkout. They were mostly quiet with each other as they ate omelets and drank orange juice, all of them experiencing some afterglow from the night before. Wally and Tevin were also a little awkward with each other, adjusting to the sudden change in their relationship.

For Wally-in the light of day-the new phase of her relationship with Tevin felt a little like an unwelcome complication. She did love Tevin, and their experience the night before had been important to her, but Wally was still driven by a powerful sense of purpose and didn't want to be thrown off her quest. She knew this was selfish, but at the same time she didn't want to end up resenting Tevin for distracting her. The choices in front of her were all so confusing.

They checked out of the room and walked back across Central Park, Ella and Jake in the lead with Wally and Tevin just behind. Wally could feel Tevin's uneasiness, could sense that he was trying to play everything cool but didn't quite know what Wally expected of him, or what she would allow.

"We're good, right?" she quietly asked Tevin.

"Yeah, of course," he answered. "Always."

"What's that?" Ella asked from up ahead, picking up on the curious change in chemistry between Wally and Tevin. Wally made a show of ignoring Ella's question, but Ella seemed to know everything anyway and shot Wally a playful smirk. Apparently, Wally and Tevin becoming an actual couple was something Ella could really get behind. Wally didn't feel ready for that level of sharing yet-she felt like it would just be more unwelcome distraction.

As they walked on, Wally began plotting the next step in locating Yalena. The events that had taken place at Charlene Rainer's office had terrified her, but Wally's level of determination was unchanged. She thought again about those terrible events-the deafening echoes of gunshots, Charlene's blood splattered everywhere-and Wally suddenly felt guilty for her next thought: she was frustrated that Charlene had taken so much critical information with her into the next life.

Or had she? Wally thought about all the potential information contained in Dr. Rainer's office: patient files, medical insurance forms, contact numbers, bookkeeping information. As they reached Central Park West, the crew headed north toward their new crash pad at the dry cleaner's, but Wally paused at the corner of 88th Street.

"I'm gonna swing by the doctor's office," she said.

"The shrink's?" Jake asked, surprised. "Why would you ever want to go back there?"

"I think I have to," Wally said.

"It's a bad idea," Tevin said. "There's going to be cops there still."

"Uniforms, maybe, but not anyone who knows me, I'll bet. If it looks wrong, I'll just beat it."

Wally could feel from the crew's vibe that they were disappointed, the three of them realizing that her need to find Yalena hadn't been diminished by the special time they had together on Thanksgiving day ... and night.

"Please just come home with us," Ella pleaded.

Wally bristled at Ella's needy tone. They were going to make her feel guilty for doing what she needed to do.

"It's not home, Ella. It's an empty dry cleaner's." Wally's tone was cold-even harsh-and she instantly regretted it.

"Wally ..." Ella looked hurt.

"Ella, s.h.i.t ... I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"This mystery mom you're working so hard to find," Jake said angrily, "she threw you away. Don't forget that."

"Easy, Jake ..." Tevin reproached him.

Wally opened her mouth to reply angrily, but stopped herself. They were having a bad moment already and she didn't want to make it worse.

"You know I'm right, Tev," Jake said. "And so do you, Wally." He turned away and continued walking north. Ella gave Wally a sympathetic look, smiling a little to let her know that there were no hard feelings, but then hurried to catch up with Jake.

Only Tevin remained.

"Jake is being a d.i.c.k, but he's not wrong," Tevin said to Wally. "I know you've got some idea in your head, how Yalena is some heroic person who made a huge sacrifice for you, but you need to be honest about it, Wally. She did leave you behind. And she said in her letter that you should go on with your life and not look back. Remember that the next time you put yourself in danger for her."

Wally knew Tevin's heart was in the right place, but at that moment his calm, reasonable tone just p.i.s.sed her off.

"Yeah," was all Wally said, and forced a little smile for him.

Tevin leaned in to Wally and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek, then turned and hustled after Jake and Ella, leaving Wally behind on the corner of 88th and Central Park West. She suddenly felt chilled and deeply alone.

She forced herself to shake off the dark feelings and headed west, quickly covering the three blocks to Charlene Rainer's office building. There was one police cruiser and a couple of workmen's pickup trucks parked in front of the office building, including a locksmith's truck. The front door was kept open with a doorstop, and workers were shuttling through the front entrance, carrying hardware and replacement doors for the wrecked offices upstairs.

Wally strolled inside with confidence, as if she owned the place. There was still no doorman in the lobby, and Wally noticed that the workers were using the elevators in the atrium to move their gear up, so she headed straight for the empty stairwell and climbed up to the third floor.

More workmen were on the third floor. Wally walked slowly as she approached the three office doors that needed repair. The closest of the three was the third office she and Dr. Rainer had entered as they tried to escape-the model builder's studio-and that was the door the workmen were repairing first. The next door-the lawyer's-had already been removed and was set leaning against the wall, at least ten splintered bullet holes clearly visible on its surface. The third doorway was Suite G-Dr. Rainer's-and there was yellow NYPD crime scene tape stretched across it. A folding chair sat just outside the door, and Wally figured there must have been a uniform cop a.s.signed to protect the crime scene. He was gone from his post ... for now.

Wally headed for the second door-the lawyer's-still walking casually as if she belonged in the building. Casual was the last thing Wally was feeling inside, though, as evidence of the violence two nights earlier was obvious in several places. The pool of blood from Charlene's wounds had been mopped up but not very thoroughly, and blood splatter was everywhere on the surrounding walls, marked by circles drawn in red grease pen by crime scene investigators. There were smudges of black fingerprint dust on the walls, especially around the area of the doorways, and several sections of the wall plaster had been removed, for what reason she didn't know. Looking up to the hallway above and across the atrium s.p.a.ce, Wally could just make out evidence of blood splatter from the unlucky woman who had died first.

Wally shuddered at the visual memory of both women's deaths, and thought about the handgun stashed in Charlene's desk drawer. For this day, Charlene Rainer had said, as if she had expected that one day Klesko would emerge from the past and come looking for her. Wally could only a.s.sume that her own mother lived just such an existence, trying to carry on with her new life but never quite able to feel safe, never free to make contact with her own daughter for fear that she would endanger her.

As Wally reached the empty doorway of the lawyer's suite, she glanced behind her to find that the workers were focused on hanging the first door and were not looking in her direction. She slipped inside the lawyer's office and, once inside, noticed that the doorway between that suite and the next-Dr. Rainer's-had been filled and hung with a brand-new door, but the new lock had not been attached yet. A piece of the yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the doorway, but Wally simply ducked under the tape and pushed through the unlocked door, stepping into Charlene's inner office s.p.a.ce and closing the door behind her. Charlene's office was a total mess, not just from the battle, but from the army of crime scene techs who had obviously tromped through, dusting every surface for prints and leaving chunks of plaster on the floor from where they had cut away pieces of the wall. Charlene's laptop computer was gone from its spot on the desk.

The disturbance that caught Wally's attention most, however, was the open drawers of Charlene's file cabinet: someone had been going through the files. Wally headed straight for the cabinet and rifled through the alphabetized files, and her heart sank when she discovered that her own file was missing. Detective Greer must've grabbed it, Wally thought. Wally searched under two other names-Valentina and Yalena Mayakova-just in case, but there were no files under either name. Wally shifted her focus to Charlene's desk, sifting through all its drawers for anything that might be relevant. As she looked, Wally became aware of footsteps approaching from somewhere out in the hallway. They stopped outside Dr. Rainer's door-just a few feet from where Wally stood-and there was a metallic sc.r.a.ping sound as the person sat down in the folding chair. The cop was back.

Even more quietly now, Wally looked through Charlene's desk, but she found nothing, and turned back to the file cabinets. Wally remembered how cautious Charlene was about sharing information that had to do with Yalena Mayakova and thought maybe her file had been intentionally filed under a different name or in an unlabeled file folder. Wally returned her attention to the file cabinets and worked her way through them but found nothing of use except that once she had run through all the file names, to the end of the alphabet-Charlene had a patient named Zahan-there was still another file cabinet left that she had not explored. The doors of this extra cabinet were unlocked, and Wally immediately set to scanning her way through them.

The individual files bore client names, as with the case files in the larger file cabinet, but this second group of files contained only billing doc.u.ments. Again, Wally found no file with her name on it but kept scanning all the way to the end-Zahan again-only to discover a single unlabeled folder after Zahan. Wally pulled the file out and spread it open on Charlene's desk. The records on this anonymous account matched Wally's history with the doctor, the last official visit logged being eight years earlier. This anonymous client had never once been billed for his or her visits. Reaching the end of the file, Wally found a standard contact sheet. The first address listed, with no name attached, was Wally and Claire's home address on 84th Street. The second address was for the Harpswell School. Under the "Emergency Contacts" heading there were four phone numbers: Claire's home and cell phone, the general number for the Harpswell School, and, unexpectedly, a fourth phone number that had been completely covered over with permanent black marker, with no name given next to it.

Wally held the paper at an angle to the daylight coming in through the window and discovered that the redacted phone number had been written in a hard-tip pen and made an impression in the paper just visible when read from an oblique angle. It turned out not to be a phone number at all, but a PO box address on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, completely unfamiliar to Wally. She copied down the address and looked at it again, feeling a quick thrill of adrenaline rush through her. A voice inside her told Wally that she finally held in her hand a direct connection to her mother.

Wally secured the address inside her shoulder bag and then scanned the room, looking for a way out. She now noticed that the office's window-looking out at the fire escape-had been completely removed. Her luck was turning. Wally unlatched the iron security grate from the empty windowsill and stepped out onto the fire escape. She climbed down to the alleyway below, and she was gone.

TWENTY-THREE.

It was early evening-dark outside-when Wally slipped through the back entrance of the old dry cleaner's and found Tevin asleep-he had dozed off on a rusty cot that had been left behind in a back room of the cleaner's. She was changing out of her Thanksgiving clothes and into her warmer street threads when he stirred awake.

"Wha-"

"It's okay, it's just me," Wally said.

"Hey. You're going out again?"

"Yeah. Where are Jake and Ella?"

"Times Square. Figured the holiday crowds would be a good time to get rid of the last phone cards."

"Why didn't you go?"

"I was worried ... the way we all split up today. I wanted there to be someone here when you came back."

"You guys said what was on your minds, Tev, and I have no problem with that."

"But what I wanted to say is that you being happy is the most important thing to me. I'm going to help any way I can until you find what you want."

"That means a lot," Wally said, and it was true. "I felt bad about today too, especially after ..."

"Yeah, especially after. I know. Is this going to be weird?"

"I don't know. I mean, not necessarily ..."

They looked at each other and cracked up just a little, embarra.s.sed.

"Oh man," Tevin said. "Maybe if we just ignore it for a while, see how it sits?"

"I vote for that too," Wally agreed, and Tevin seemed relieved.

"Where are you headed now?"

"A place near the Brooklyn Navy Yard," she said, and recounted the lead she had found in Dr. Rainer's files.

"You're taking a cab?"

"Nah, there may be someone waiting. I rented a car."

Tevin beamed at this news. "Seriously?"

Wally shrugged. "The new ID is good, and I used Claire's AmEx again. I mean, at this point why not?"

"Wait ... can you even drive?"

"Really badly. I barely made it out of their parking lot."

Excited, Tevin rose off the cot and began lacing his shoes. "I'm killer behind the wheel. Leave a note for the others so they don't stress, okay?"

Wally was about to object, but she could see that Tevin would not be denied this adventure.

Tevin was beyond psyched to find that Wally had rented a Lincoln Town Car; he'd expected something boring and beige-an anonymous Toyota sedan-and instead found himself behind the wheel of a cla.s.sic American whip, cruising the streets of Manhattan.

"It was the only car they had left," Wally said.

"Now I am truly happy," Tevin said, unable to stop smiling. "This is better than the-"

"Better than the what?" Wally cautioned him. "If I were you, I would choose my next words very carefully."

"Better than the turkey. Duh."

"Whatev," she said. They both smiled.

Tevin drove downtown and onto the Williamsburg Bridge, crossing the East River to Brooklyn and exiting at Broadway.

"Broadway south and down around Flushing Avenue," Wally said, and Tevin followed her instructions. This route led them south of Williamsburg toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but they turned off Flushing before then, heading toward the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Carlton in Fort Greene.

"Mail boxes," Tevin read out loud, pointing to a sign over a small storefront on Myrtle.

"That's the address," Wally said. "Park back there ..." She pointed to a spot on Carlton where they could park with a good view of the PO box store but remain out of sight. Tevin did a U-ey and grabbed the parking spot, then shut off the engine.

It was just after noon by then, and the neighborhood shoppers were out on Myrtle, many of them seniors pulling their little rolling shopping carts and ducking into the bodegas that lined the street. The PO box store had an all-gla.s.s front, with several hundred mailboxes covering the walls of the main room and a service desk to the side with one clerk sitting by, a smallish freckled woman with short-cropped red hair and a tat creeping up from under her shirt collar-a club chick daylighting as a store clerk.

"Stay with the car, okay?" Wally said to Tevin. "I'm going to check the box." She climbed out of the car, b.u.t.toned her coat against the cold air, and crossed Myrtle, walking straight into the shop as if it was a part of her daily routine. She headed directly to Box 310. Wally had to bend down a bit to get a look and was disappointed to find that there was no small window on the box to reveal whether or not there was mail waiting inside. The s.p.a.ce behind the boxes was lit, however, and in the light squeaking through the side of the box door, Wally thought she could make out the shadow of at least one letter inside.

"Can I help you with something?" the clerk asked, bored as she looked up from some ink drawings she was scribbling on an art pad. "That's not your box, right?"

"No," Wally answered, and turned to the clerk without hesitation. "It used to be a friend's and I haven't been able to figure out if she's still in town. ... The thing is, she was with this guy who was. .h.i.tting her and all of us kept saying she should get a restraining order and she kept saying she would but in the end she would just go back to him and-"

"Christ ..." moaned the clerk, exasperated already, "tell me what box number."

"310."

The woman typed into her computer monitor. "What's your friend's name?"

"Oh ... it's Yalena, but she was having her mail sent care of a friend so the a.s.shole who was beating her wouldn't be able to-"