Chapter 10

While Philé was licking her lips over the last of an over-sugared coffee, Caro was huddling into the sheets of her hotel bed. She had tried the door many times over the past ten hours. The phone was, predictably, disconnected, and she supposed there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, but she didn't know how anyone could ignore her yelling, pounding, even breaking the mirror on the closet door. She regretted the mirror, now. Seven years' bad luck was just more that she didn't need.

The hotel check-in had gone smoothly, despite the overcrowded lobby that suggested high tourist season. The Art Deco surroundings had calmed her. Lulled by the white-glove treatment and the exquisite suite, she had begun to persuade herself that the earlier — kidnapping, wasn't it? was simply a figment of her imagination. Surely there had not been a gun. Had she actually seen the gun? Caro was all too aware that her memory was not entirely reliable.

But twenty minutes after she had checked in, when she was in the black marbled bath, leaning back into warm water and trying to rub the swelling out of her eyes, the noise started. It sounded like someone was trying to break into her room with a drill; she stiffened, reached for a towel. Her reflexes were always slow now, her aim always a little poor, and she knocked the towel onto the floor, but she managed to get out of the tub and wrap herself in the thick cotton. She stayed in the bathroom, listening, her back pressed against the towel bar.

After a few minutes the noise stopped, and Caro edged cautiously out. There was no one in the suite, unless they were hiding; she checked the closets and under the bed. No. No one. She dried herself, got dressed a little shakily. Still nothing.

It was not until an hour later that it occurred to her to try the phone, and then the door.

Thank goodness it was a suite, and there was a small mini-bar and fridge. She didn't miss the food — oh, there were nuts and other nibbles, anyway. There was chilled sparkling wine, small graceful bottles of vodka. After the first hour she had forgotten to be afraid.

After the second hour she started to vomit.

What was in the drink? Or was it something from the plane? Caro didn't know, only knew that she couldn't drink, couldn't eat, couldn't get warm even in the luxuriously heated apartment, even burrowed into the duvet wearing her thickest socks and coat. Sometimes the room blurred for a while, sometimes it calmed and she began to think she was all right; the illusion shattered every time she got out of bed. She had made it to the bathroom several times, even so; but now she shuddered as she hauled herself out of bed once again and faced the cracked mirror, her reflection sundered by a missing triangle of glass. One step, two steps and then—

The noise again. Like a drill. Coming from the door, and only inches away. Caro backed up, knocking over a chair just as the door shuddered open.

A woman pushed into the room, past the man holding the electric screwdriver, who quickly withdrew. Caro could see the suppressed look of disgust on the other woman's face — she knew the room must smell bad, she didn't try to think what she must look like. She watched the unknown, olive-skinned beauty take in the room and Caro, then make her assured way to the most comfortable chair. Drained, Caro sat down on the end of the bed, leaving the chair she had dislodged on the floor with its legs in the air.

"I'm Philé." The woman pulled a cigarette holder from her handbag and lit up, not offering Caro a smoke. "We don't have much time. I need you to tell me all about the deal with Eddie Roberts."

"The deal?" Caro faltered. "What deal?" But even as she said it, she knew she was fooling no one. Eddie did deals, of course, hundreds of deals, with his snake-sweet manner and his hidden bank accounts and who knew what else. But she didn't think Philé was asking about those.

No, they meant the apartment, the police, and ultimately Ryan and the Big Betrayal: the deal that Caro had buried far back in her head and drank her weight in vodka to try and erase.

Caro tried to muster her thoughts, to find enough clarity to plan her response. It was so very long ago. She was in her twenties then, and everything had still seemed possible. Even after she'd discovered her first husband was a bore and a disappointment. Even after the humiliating court proceedings where she'd lost custody because of the alcohol, even after he had disappeared into the countryside with her baby. Even after Eddie got married, she had hoped.

But then she had surprised him one day in the act of smacking Eva into unconsciousness, and the old feelings had disintegrated in an instant. She had walked out, then, but she had not forgotten. Her brain was bright then, bright with fire, and she had gone to work and not stopped until she had every shred of the information that would ruin him.

"Caro." The voice was insistent. "We know about the package. We know about the apartment." The apartment she'd used as an office, never letting Ryan or anyone else suspect the address. And the package, of course. The package she'd delivered to the police, as neatly wrapped as it left Eddie.

She glanced up. Philé rested in the chair, her lovely face almost expressionless. "Look, if you know, then why do you need to talk to me?"

"Because Ryan — Ryan didn't know, did he?"

Caro, mute, shook her head.

"And he still doesn't know?"

Caro said nothing.

"You let him think he did it, didn't you." There was a note of triumph in the woman's voice. "Let him think his phone call wrecked his best friend's life. And he still thinks he did it. Look at you." Caro could hear the sneer. "What a lovely way to treat the man you love. You do still love Ryan, don't you, Caro?" Without waiting for an answer, Philé got up and walked across the room. She opened the blackout curtains, letting the late summer sun blare into the room. Caro tried to turn to look at her, but found she couldn't face the light.

"Ryan's in Los Angeles, trying to find Eddie." A dry laugh. "To apologize. Can you believe that? Amazing. But he doesn't know his wife was the one who made all the trouble, all those years back. And he doesn't know his wife still knows what even Eddie doesn't."

She walked around again until she was facing Caro, the blazing sunlight on her face. Caro saw that she was smiling.

"But I know what you know.

"You know where the money is."