INVITATION
THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE
IS REQUESTED
BY GEORGE AND CHARLES BELLAMY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFICIAL
BELLAMY FAMILY REUNION.
SATURDAY THE 21
ST
OF AUGUST, 2010.
CAMP KIOGA, RR #47, AVALON,
ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
RUSTIC ACCOMMODATIONS PROVIDED.
C
laire had been mere inches away from believing love could change everything. What she’d found with Ross was that powerful, a seismic shift. As she lay in his arms, feeling safe and protected and adored, she was able to forget the whole world. How had she lived so long without this? How could anyone?
Once found, her love for Ross felt as necessary and as natural as breathing.
She thought she’d mastered the art of detachment long ago. She’d taught herself to keep her distance from people, and had accepted that this was the way it had to be. It was working well for her—until Ross Bellamy came along. He had undone all her hard work, taking away the wall around her heart.
And like an idiot, she’d allowed it. One night with Ross had turned her into a different person, filled with emotions she’d never dared to feel before. The timing of the call back to reality had been cruel in the extreme. She’d been drowsing in Ross’s arms, floating with happiness as she relived the night before.
The outside world had intruded in the form of a text message. She had glanced at her mobile phone where it lay on the floor by the bed, gleefully abandoned the night before. The message light was blinking insistently.
She had slipped from Ross’s bed with painstaking care, praying there had not been some crisis with George in the night. There hadn’t. This crisis was hers and hers alone. The message had come from Mel Reno many hours ago. She’d been so preoccupied with Ross that she hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t like her to be so careless.
Then again, she wasn’t herself at all where Ross was concerned. He turned her into someone entirely new, reinvented out of whole cloth. With Ross, she became someone she barely recognized—a woman filled with love and joy and vulnerability, a woman whose future looked completely different from the bleak self-isolation she’d once envisioned for herself.
It was all a fantasy, as delicate and friable as spun sugar. She should have known better, of course. She
did
know better, but with Ross, she’d encountered something much more powerful than reason. But then, one glance at the message had driven home the insanity of what she’d just done. It hadn’t felt crazy at the time, though. It had felt exactly right, and leaving him was like ripping a hole in herself.
She had gone quietly outside. The sun was just coming up, and a shimmery calm glazed the lake, reflecting the rich pink and amber light. The temptation to leave a note for George was almost overwhelming, but she had resisted. Though she’d come close to forgetting the rules last night, reality had slammed home with brutal force. The only way to stay safe and keep others from
being harmed was to leave no trace, no footprint in other people’s lives. She had tried calling Mel. Tried sending a text. There was no response. This was unheard of. He always responded, night or day, no matter what.
Though she purposely kept herself from knowing too much about him, she did have a number for his landlord. The guy was groggy, but the news galvanized her. Mel had been mugged. He was in the ICU at University Hospital. She called and frantically asked for a report.
“Are you family?” the receptionist had asked.
“I’m…” Not anything. She wasn’t anything to anyone. “His daughter,” she lied, scribbling the address and room number.
The report was bad. He’d apparently been left for dead and was in critical condition. There was not a doubt in her mind about why he’d been attacked. And not a doubt about what she had to do. She’d almost forgotten about the belongings she’d stashed by the resort exit. Almost, but not quite.
She retrieved the bag, caught an early train to the city and joined the anonymous stream of humanity, making her way on the subway from Grand Central to Penn Station and from there to Newark. She went straight to the hospital but outside the building, she balked. He’d almost been killed. By going to see him, she was exposing him to even greater risk. Still, she was a nurse. Perhaps she could fake her way in. She rummaged in her bag for her phone, but it was missing. She must have left it behind, or dropped it. Pacing back and forth near the round plaza in front of the hospital, she tried to remember what she’d done with it. Careless. She’d never been so careless. Falling in love with Ross had made her stupid
on top of everything else. It was a given that she couldn’t go back to Avalon. Ever. She’d never see Ross again, or any of the Bellamys. She wouldn’t be with George at the end, wouldn’t be there for Ross.
I’m sorry
, she thought, her throat aching.
I’m so sorry
.
She couldn’t let herself dwell on what she’d lost. She had work to do, arrangements to make.
The plaza of the hospital campus was jammed with pedestrians sweltering in the summer heat. She didn’t trust anyone in the department, but she couldn’t put this off any longer. She needed to buy another phone and minutes card with cash, find an Internet café she knew of and—
“You are one hard girl to find,” said a quiet male voice. “I suppose you know that.”
She spun around, already in defensive mode. At the same time, recognition clicked in. “
Ross
. What are you doing here?” she asked, ignoring an urge to tumble into his arms. “How did you find me?”
He handed over her phone. “You left something behind.”
He must have figured out where she was by the last number she’d called—the hospital.
Stupid
.
“And I flew, with Duke Elder,” he added.
The parachute guy.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, but she already felt herself wavering.
“Sneaking out of a guy’s bed isn’t exactly unheard of,” he said. “But I’m not stalking you. After last night, I thought…Claire, you can’t just take off without any explanation.”
She wavered some more. He looked wonderful to her. Tired and exasperated, but…wonderful. There was
something undeniably thrilling about having a guy come for her, so fast and decisively, driven by passion. Before she could turn soft and weak with emotion, she started walking briskly away. “I don’t think you’re stalking me. This has nothing to do with you. It’s a personal matter.”
“Wrong,” he said, falling in step with her. “It has everything to do with me. What’s going on?”
He sounded angry, hurt. He had every right to be. And she had every reason to distance herself from him. “I can’t explain, and I don’t have to. The situation with your grandfather wasn’t right for me.”
“How about the situation with me?” he asked. “Was that right for you?”
It was the best thing that ever happened to me
. She wished she could tell him. Falling in love had been a revelation, like seeing the ocean for the first time. In one incredible night, she’d seen a glimpse of a happiness so complete it brought tears to her eyes. “Last night was a mistake.” The lies scratched her throat like sandpaper.
“I don’t believe that for a minute, and neither do you.”
“You don’t know me,” she lashed out in desperation. “You have no idea what I believe.”
“Claire, I need answers to some basic questions. Like who the hell you are. I already know you appropriated the social security number of a child who died twenty-five years ago,” he said.
“That’s ridic—”
“And that’s just the start. I can go deeper, and I will, if—”
“Please don’t.” She whispered the plea, and to her horror, felt her eyes burn with tears. “Please…”
“Then talk to me. I need to know what’s going on.”
His smile was gentle now, tinged with sadness. “You’d be surprised what I know about you. Natalie checked out your background—”
“Natalie should mind her own business.”
“I asked her to. You’ve been on your own for a long time. You probably believe you’ll go through life alone. And that’s so insane, Claire, when all we both want is to be together.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “I’m not interested.”
I can’t be
. She felt a pounding sense of urgency. The longer he hung around here, arguing, the more danger he was exposed to. “Please go. I’m sorry for misleading you and giving you the wrong idea.”
“You’re apologizing?” He gave a bitter laugh of disbelief.
“Good point. I don’t need your forgiveness,” she said. “Goodbye, Ross. It’s best just to part ways now.” She felt the stares of passersby. Just what she needed—more attention. From the corner of her eye, she saw something. Police in uniform. They were looking around the crowded area, clearly in search of someone. One of them rested his hand on his holster.
Grabbing Ross by the shoulders, she drew herself into him, hiding against his tall, solid form. Forgive me, she thought, despite her earlier words. It was the quickest way she could think of to hide her face. As she held him close, she wished she could stay in his arms forever.
Instead she watched through slitted eyes. To her horror, the cops went inside the hospital.
She tore herself away. “I have to go.” She hurried into the main entrance. One of her former patients had been here, and she knew the way to the neuro ICU. To her
relief, the two cops were headed in the opposite direction, toward the emergency department.
Ross was right behind her. “Claire, you’re acting crazy.”
“I’m here to see a sick friend, if you must know,” she said.
“You don’t have any friends,” he snapped. “Believe me, I checked.”
“You had no right to check on me,” she said, battling a fresh wave of tears.
“Excuse me?” He let out a laugh of disbelief. “Don’t you get it? I love you, Claire. I want to know everything about you. And I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
It was the
I love you
that broke her down. She swayed against him. “You have to,” she said, even though she couldn’t stop clinging to him. “You have to let me go.” She knew he wouldn’t. Not Ross. He embodied loyalty and caring; it was what she loved about him. Yes, loved. She wasn’t going to kid herself anymore. She thought about how safe and cherished she’d felt in his arms. How smart he was, how much she trusted him.
The world seemed to blur into the background. She didn’t see visitors and hospital staff walking by, didn’t hear the elevator bells or pages over the PA system or the sound of aircraft in the distance. She only saw Ross, and the way he was looking at her—expectant, insistent. As if he cared about her more than life itself.
With slow deliberation, she pulled a tissue from her bag and dried her face. What if she told him who she really was, and he changed his mind about her? On the other hand, how could they ever have anything real between them if she constantly lied about her history? By the time her tears were gone, she knew she was going
to let him in, come what may. You can never really escape who you are, she realized. You can change your name. Move to a new home. Make up a new story for yourself. But ultimately the person at the core couldn’t change. She had needs and desires that would finally catch up and overtake her. She had a heart that couldn’t help falling in love. The terrible reality was, she could not go on alone, not after meeting Ross.
“I do need to check on someone,” she said softly, and found the charge nurse on duty. Though expected to recover, Mel was in an induced coma and on a ventilator. Standing next to Ross and watching through a wall of reinforced glass, she didn’t recognize the draped figure surrounded by tubes and monitors. “He’s the closest thing I have to a real friend,” she said. “And this happened to him because of me.”
“What?”
“There’s a reason I don’t have any friends,” she whispered.
The charge nurse shooed them toward the exit. “You can call for a status check,” she said.
Once outside, Ross studied her closely. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But your grandfather—”
“Already warned me not to come back without you, Claire. Listen, whatever happened…you can level with me.”
“People who get close to me tend to get hurt,” she said.
“I’ll risk it.”
All right, she thought. He’d made it through two years in a war zone. He was as stubborn and tenacious as his grandfather.
“Let’s go in here,” she said, heading for an Internet café near the hospital. “I need to show you something.”
The atmosphere was dim and intimate, like a speakeasy. Although the webcam above the screen wasn’t enabled, she stuck a Post-it note over the lens, for good measure. He bought them each a soda and Claire typed in an address and an old, scanned photo came up, showing row upon row of flat pavers with grass in between. “Fairacre Burial Ground,” she said, and zoomed in on one of the pavers. The engraving was simple: “Mario and Joseph Balzano. D. 2001.” The sight of their names brought back echoes of the old horror. They’d just been a couple of kids. Then a man they’d trusted and respected had attacked like a cornered wolverine. “I’ve never gone to see their grave in person,” Claire told Ross. “I couldn’t risk it.”
“Who are they?”
She scrolled sideways to another paver marked “Clarissa Tancredi. D. 2001.” It always freaked her out, seeing it etched into a gravestone.
“And who’s that?” he asked.
“That,” she said, starting to tremble. “Is me.”
T
he reason Claire had never slept with a guy had nothing to do with a set of moral standards or lofty ideals. The reason she’d never done it before was that she was afraid to make herself vulnerable. Yet with Ross, she’d wanted to do exactly that—to surrender, trusting him with the intimate landscape of her body…and her heart, as well.
She hadn’t been prepared for how powerful it could be. In that long, magical night, she’d discovered that sex was not just sex. It was a way to show him who she was without saying a word. For someone who had been hiding her identity for so long, this was a gift beyond price.
Now she had to use her words. Now, in order to tell him who she was, she had to tell him her terrible secret. Maybe if he understood who she used to be, he’d understand who she was. This was a leap into the unknown for her. She had done it before, to save her own life. This time, she was saving herself from something else.
She led the way outside and scanned the area, then headed toward a shady parking lot. There were security
cameras here and there, but she kept her back to them. She looked up at Ross, seeing nothing but love and acceptance in his face. Then she inhaled a long, slow breath, as though preparing to jump off a high dive. “There’s something you have to know before I go on. If I tell you these things, you might be facing the same risk as I am.”
“What kind of risk?”
“There’s a guy who’s out to kill me. I’ve been hiding from him since I was seventeen. I think he might be behind the attack on Mel.”
“Whoa, hang on. Some guy wants to kill you?”
“Because of what I saw. Because of what Clarissa Tancredi saw.”
“And what was that?”
“A double murder.”
“You saw a double murder?”
Every night in my dreams
, she thought. Even now.
She nodded, her heart speeding up as she realized what she was about to do. “The girl named Clarissa ceased to exist one sunny morning. I was reborn the next day in an alleyway behind a bar, when I walked away with nothing but a backpack and a large envelope filled with official documents. It was, um, the strangest, most radical thing you can imagine, dumping everything I’d been up until that point and becoming someone with a whole new story.”
“You switched identities? Are you telling me you’re in the witness protection program?”
“It’s not like the ones you see on crime shows. Those programs are for people who’ve seen a federal crime. In the absence of a federal investigation, there’s no program,
regardless of what I saw. Murder is a crime against the state, so it’s up to the state to protect any witnesses—or not.”
He took her hand, carried it to his mouth and pressed a kiss there. “I want to hear this, Claire. And then we’ll figure out what to do.”
Her heart pounding even faster, she started from the beginning. The story came out in quiet whispers, like a slow leak of air from a balloon.
From the day she’d entered the foster care system until she was sixteen, the program had worked for Clarissa Tancredi. Thanks to the compassion and dedication of her case worker, Clarissa was cared for by families that enriched her life.
At sixteen, she’d been placed with a foster family deemed ideal by every standard of the state system. Her new family consisted of a work-at-home mom, Teresa Jordan, and her husband, Vance, a police detective. There were already two foster brothers in residence—Mario and Jo-Jo Balzano. The Jordans lived in Forest Hill, a venerable old neighborhood that defied everyone’s preconceptions about Newark. Its historic mansions, tree-lined avenues and good schools made it a haven for prosperous families. The big house on Ridge Street was not the kind of place someone could live on a cop’s salary, but it was said Vance’s wife had money. She worked as a freelance theater set designer, more for the glamour than for the income. She was an aspiring playwright, though she’d never had anything produced. Her plays were intricately plotted, full of unexpected twists and turns. “I hate being predictable” was her motto.
When Claire was placed with the Jordans, she had every reason to expect the peace and security of a nurturing family life. That was what she’d been promised, anyway.
Vance and Teresa seemed like the perfect couple—affectionate and communicative, incredibly good-looking, interested in the kids. Perhaps their only fault was that they were a bit too indulgent, but they made no apology for this. Teresa had confessed that they were unable to conceive a baby. They decided to become foster parents, hoping in some small way to do their part for the community’s less fortunate.
Being childless did have its benefits. While other parents were running themselves ragged, keeping up with all their kids’ activities, Vance and Teresa put all their love into each other. A birthday or anniversary might be marked with an extravagant piece of jewelry. For his fortieth birthday, Teresa surprised Vance with flying lessons, and he ended up getting a pilot’s license. After that, they took weekend float plane trips to Pier 8 in the city, or sometimes to remote lakes in the Poconos. It seemed like a dream life.
Yet in time, it became clear that all wasn’t quite right. There seemed to be something almost obsessive, smothering, about the way Teresa loved her husband. Clarissa didn’t know much about marriage, but she sensed Teresa’s adoration of her husband was over the top. Then again, maybe it was a rare and lucky thing to be loved like that.
The only thing was, Vance was having an affair with his partner at work, a junior detective named Ava Snyder. The boys had told Clarissa shortly after she’d moved in.
They fancied themselves amateur detectives and tended to snoop around. They got away with everything because on the surface, they were just goofy kids who had been left behind when their mother, an undocumented worker, was deported. No one ever thought they had the smarts to solve a mystery or get away with spying on people, but that was exactly what they did. They’d seen Vance sneaking around with his partner, had hacked into his computer and tailed him like a couple of pros. Vance swore he would dump Teresa and marry Ava Snyder as soon as he could save up enough to break free of his wealthy wife.
If Teresa ever got wind of the affair, she’d freak out.
Or maybe not. She had a flair for drama, and a habit of saying, “I always have a plan B.”
As things turned out, Clarissa was the one in need of a plan B. By seventeen, she’d had everything taken from her, including who she was—her name, her past, the few connections she had to people who cared about her, everything.
She didn’t dare complain. At least she was alive.
Mario and Jo-Jo, her two foster brothers, had not been so lucky. They’d discovered Vance was stealing evidence and forfeited drug money. Apparently that was his plan for gaining freedom from his wife. Claire had been horrified, even though everyone knew police corruption was common and pervasive. It seemed like such a breach of the public trust. She and the boys approached Teresa about it, and Teresa was shocked, as well. “I can’t rat out my own husband,” she’d said, looking heartsore, “but you do what you have to do.”
She’d given them the address of a substation in a
South Ward neighborhood, and told them to wait there for an internal affairs guy who would help them do the right thing. Clarissa had missed the bus; she’d called the boys to say she’d be arriving late to the meeting. By the time she arrived, it was nearly dark. Boarded-up houses, forbidding-looking brick buildings and steel garage doors topped with razor wire dominated the deserted streets. At first she thought she’d missed the meeting. Then she saw three guys halfway down the block. She’d nearly called out to them until she realized something wasn’t right. Vance Jordan was herding the boys into an adjacent alley. He was yelling at them, and they were acting scared. She heard Vance demanding, “Where’s Clarissa?”
“She don’t know a thing,” Mario had said. “Swear to God.”
She froze and shrank into the shadows while the shouting continued. She found a rusty iron fire-escape ladder and hoisted herself to the first level, crouching on a grill overlooking the alley. She had no idea what her next move would be, so she made herself as small as possible and didn’t make a sound. There was a flash and popping noise, and Jo-Jo dropped to the damp, grease-stained pavement.
The thing about killing two people was that you could only do one at a time. Mario fought back. He had a knife, maybe a utility knife. But it didn’t matter. A second later, he was as still as his brother. She nearly passed out, trying to keep from making a sound. A thousand screams and sobs were trapped in her chest, clawing to get out. He’d shot the boys, one and then the other, with no more emotion than if he’d been swatting a fly. The boys had
loved Vance. They’d idolized him, dreaming of one day being detectives themselves.
Vance Jordan scoured the area, removing traces of himself.
Don’t look up
, she prayed.
Don’t look up
.
Jordan’s hand was bleeding; maybe it had been cut with the knife in the struggle. He wrapped a cloth around his hand, but the cloth kept unraveling. With jerky movements, he nudged the boys onto their backs and emptied their pockets, maybe to make it look as though they’d been robbed. He used something to cut the pocket from Mario’s jeans. Of course he would do that. A police detective would know exactly what evidence to look for at a murder scene, and exactly what he needed to remove.
Clarissa realized he was removing traces of his own blood. As he made his way to his car, something dropped from his bundle and fluttered to the curb, unnoticed. He jumped in the car and drove off. Clarissa let out a series of terrified sobs, still so shocked that she could barely think. She half jumped, half fell from the fire escape. At the edge of the alley where the bodies lay, she paced back and forth, hugging herself and shaking.
A car or two passed, one a low-riding clunker emitting loud music, another a sedan driven by a driver barely tall enough to see over the dashboard. She held her breath, nearly fainting as she waited for someone to notice her, or to see the bodies, or…
She spotted the object Vance had dropped in his haste. Every nerve of her body vibrated as she realized it was a pocket cut from the boy’s jeans.
The fabric was stained with blood, most likely from Vance Jordan’s cut hand. That’s why he hadn’t left it
behind. She knew evidence shouldn’t be handled too much. Holding it gingerly, she dropped it into a zipper pocket of her backpack. Her hand shook so much as she took out her phone that she couldn’t dial. That was something they didn’t show you on police shows—that in reality, your hands and fingers stopped working when you were scared. It took her several tries to dial 911. Her shaking thumb hovered over the send button.
Send.
Send what, exactly?
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
Another thing that stopped working—her voice. She felt as though she was being strangled.
“Hello? What’s your emergency?”
She found her voice, formed words she never dreamed she’d be speaking: “I just saw a murder. Two boys—Mario and Jo-Jo Balzano. He…he killed them.” She’d watched enough crime shows on TV to know this was an open-and-shut case. She knew the killer. She had a piece of physical evidence.
“Are you safe?”
“No…yes…I guess, for now. Please…”
“What’s your name?”
Something kept her from saying it. “He…I saw who did it.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“It was Vance Jordan.”
There was a pause, pulsing with disbelief. Then the dispatcher said, “Could you repeat that, please?”
Clarissa hit End. It should have been a simple matter to make a statement to the police. Instead it began a long nightmare that had no end.
A few minutes later, her phone vibrated—Caller
Unknown. Now what? NowwhatNowwhatNowwhat? The words bounced around in random panic. Her first instinct was to go home. But home was where the killer lived. She forced herself to think things through.
It occurred to her that the call from her mobile phone had been recorded. She knew this for certain when the next call came in from Vance Jordan. The dispatcher must have alerted him. “Clarissa, let’s talk.” His voice sounded the same as it always did. Calm. Fatherly. “It’s not what you think.”
“I’m not thinking anything. I know what happened.”
“Kiddo, you’ve got it wrong. What happened is this—some lowlife dealer popped those boys. I’m sure the scumbag’ll be arrested tonight, and it’ll all be over tomorrow.”
“That’s a lie,” she said. “I saw, and I can prove it.”
“You can’t prove shit, girlie. And the entire department’s on my side. Hell, I play golf with the other general assignment detectives. I’m the fucking godfather of the primary investigator’s firstborn, and the duty sergeants report to me.”
She knew it was true. He was a golden boy in the department, surrounded by layers of allies. “I can prove it,” she repeated stubbornly.
“Why, because you saw something? Do you know what a joke a single eyewitness is? Even the stupidest public defender would rip you to shreds. Nobody convicts based on a single witness, especially a girl like you. You’d probably end up doing time for perjury. So come on home, and we’ll figure this out. Those boys were trouble—
they
would have hurt you if they hadn’t been stopped. Come on, Clarissa. You know me. I’d never hurt you.”
That was when she knew he’d kill her. There was something in his tone. She tried to sound normal when she said, “All right. I’ll come home.” She ended the call.
The phone vibrated again, its display window lighting like a beacon.
A beacon
. Some mobile phones were like tracking devices. Their whereabouts could be detected. She dropped it as though it were a live snake and turned to run. Then she changed her mind, ran to the next block and placed the phone under a seat on a transit bus. Maybe that would buy her a little time.
She spent the night in a gas station ladies’ room, not sleeping, but shivering and crying and trying to figure out what to do. In the morning, she dragged herself out into the open. Jabbing coins into a pay phone, she called her case worker and babbled out her story. Sherri told her to calm down, and they arranged to meet. Sherri never made it to the meeting. She’d been taken to the hospital, the victim of a hit-and-run accident. She was not expected to live.