Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER
Twenty-Seven
For somebody in the process of being abducted, I felt remarkably calm.
I had armed security, who was following at a safe distance; if things went too far, he’d step in.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked over my shoulder.
The assailant was wearing one of those sheer black stocking things pulled over his—because it was definitely a him—head.
The nerves that had been dancing in my stomach zipped and zapped with electricity.
The mask was a decent sign, right? It meant he was worried that I’d eventually identify him, once I was away from here and presumably alive?
“I have a lot of money, you know. I can pay you.”
“I don’t want your money,” said the assailant, voice muffled. I didn’t recognize it, but that wasn’t surprising, considering the muffling. “By the way, I’ve taken care of your security guard. You didn’t think I’d be that stupid not to see him following, did you?”
I stopped, rigid in my tracks. The assailant bumped into my back, the gun digging in hard. He’d “taken care of” my security guy? What did that even mean? “Did you hurt him?”
“Don’t worry about that,” the assailant said, voice low and menacing. Not helpful: I was worried! Very worried!
I was suddenly much less remarkably calm. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you with my money?”
Apparently not. He said, “Walk left. I won’t hurt you as long as you cooperate.”
To my left was an opening in the stone wall that surrounded Central Park.
Beyond it loomed the park itself, dark and ominous and spooky without its usual daytime or early evening crowds of people.
The occasional standing streetlamp made pools of light along the paved paths, but otherwise there was nothing there. Nobody to rescue me.
Still, what choice did I have? I held my head high as I marched into the park, guided by the man with the gun.
It felt like an out-of-body experience; I could almost see myself from above, still in my dress and my sleek gala hair, walking stiffly down the path and into the gloom.
He steered me past a playground, where one of the swings creaked back and forth as if a ghost were kicking its legs, and into the dense thicket of the Ramble.
Trees knotted together overhead, blocking any light from the moon.
The trickling of a stream sounded somewhere in the distance.
My entire body was stiff with tension. The assailant released me, and I lurched forward, but I couldn’t see enough around me to find a safe place to land my feet.
I spun to face him. It turned out that the mask he was wearing was sheer, one meant to shield him from cameras but not necessarily from human eyes.
I could see him right through it. The steely blue eyes.
The straight nose. The determined cut of his square jaw.
That thing I’d thought earlier about it being a good thing he didn’t think I’d be able to identify him if I walked free lurched back unpleasantly into the front of my mind.
“Good evening, Kevin,” I said, trying not to sound weak and scared.
Kevin Miller stared silently back at me, his lips pressed together.
Hilariously—if anything could be hilarious right now—he was still wearing his gala tuxedo, though he’d also changed into sneakers.
Black, of course. “What did you do to my security guy?”
Kevin pulled the black sleeve off his face with the hand not holding the gun, then sighed with what sounded like relief. It had to be hard to breathe through that thing. “I didn’t hurt him. He’s just been… detained.”
I cringed a little at that. Assuming we all made it out of here, I’d have to give him an enormous tip. “Well. Thanks for not hurting him, I guess.” Hopefully that boded well for me too?
“I’m not going to hurt you either,” Kevin said, flicking some beads of sweat from his brow. For all he was saying, the gun didn’t waver. “I mean it, Pom. I don’t want to hurt you. And I promise I won’t, as long as we can come to an… understanding.”
Something hooted overhead. An owl? I didn’t know owls even lived in Central Park. “What kind of understanding?”
He shifted back on his feet. With the lack of light, it was hard to see anything of his eyes but a glint.
I couldn’t tell if he was panicking, or cocky, or calm.
“The building. Pom, you’re going to come out tomorrow and tell everybody that you’re very sorry, but you have to backtrack on your plan to donate the building and its archive because you’ve already signed the deed over to me.
For a fair price, of course. Above market, even. ”
I furrowed my brow, though I wasn’t sure if he could see it, and made sure to infect my voice with as much of Old Pom as I could still manage. Sometimes it was useful to have the entire world think you were stupid. Probably it was half the reason I was still alive. “I don’t understand.”
“I want that building. No, I need that building.” He sounded patient, like all of my teachers had the first time they tried to explain something to me. “And I don’t want there to be any more violence in that process.”
“You killed Conrad,” I said grimly. I was already here at gunpoint. He knew I’d put it together eventually, even if I didn’t know now. Assuming he let me go.
He was silent for a moment, probably thinking about whether he should admit to it or not.
But remember: He thought I was stupid. Yes, I’d solved one murder, but everybody thought I’d blundered my way into the solution.
He sighed, air leaking out of a punctured tire. “Just sign the building over to me.”
“Why did you do it?” I persisted. “Did he hit you, and you hit him back?” I knew that Kevin hadn’t hit Conrad; my dad had. But Kevin didn’t know I knew that. Kevin didn’t know I knew anything. “In that case, it’s self-defense. Right? You wouldn’t go to jail for that.”
He was silent again, another long moment. Something scurried in the brush around us. He said, finally, “I didn’t hit him. He didn’t hit me. It was…” Pause. Nothing scurried this time. The entire world hung silent, suspended, as if it, too, were holding its breath. “He fell.”
“But he didn’t just fall, right?” I scrunched up my brows even more. “I remember the police said he had to have been pushed, or he wouldn’t have hit the sculpture with enough force for it to pierce his body the way it did.”
“I didn’t mean to push him!” The words burst out.
I actually took a step back from the force.
“He just… He wouldn’t shut up. It was only supposed to be a little shove to make him stop talking.
” You didn’t mean to push him, or it was only supposed to be a little shove?
It probably wouldn’t be helpful to clarify that right now.
“I didn’t realize…” A hard swallow. “I didn’t realize he was so close to the railing, or that the railing was so low.
” A pause. “If anything, this is the venue’s fault.
What kind of safety rating is that? It’s unconscionable. ”
“He wouldn’t stop talking.” I brought him back to earlier in the conversation, before we started talking about historical buildings and grandfathered-in accessibility ratings.
“About what?” I let the words hang there.
When it didn’t sound like he was eager to go on, I tossed him a crumb.
“It was because he put two and two together from his last look around the building, didn’t he?
You’d seemed desperate to take it off his hands. He must have wondered why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded… tired.
Because he did know what I was talking about. And he knew that I knew what we were talking about.
And he’d already killed one person to cover it up.
“I think you do.” We both knew it. I might as well stop being coy. “William.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “How did you figure it out?”
“There’s only so long you can pretend to be someone you’re not,” I said somberly.
“That’s something I learned firsthand.” I paused to let my profound wisdom sink in.
“Also, the way you were trying to use my brother. I thought it was weird that my brother cared so much about what I did with that house, but then, after I learned the two of you were collaborating, I talked to him more. You told him you’d help him take over Afton Hotels if he got me to sell you the building.
That’s why you were so interested in whether Gabe wanted to be part of the business, weren’t you?
So that you could use him instead, since he’s closer to me.
You were so interested in that building.
“It made me take another look at the records. Isaiah, the artist, said that you’d wanted his painting of all those superheroes.
And I remembered that William, the kid who’d lived in the brownstone, had doodled superheroes that wound up in the rec-ords.
And under the wallpaper. And all over that house.
Your parents must have been annoyed they had to wallpaper over your big, looping signature.
I did a little more research, and found out the truth. ”
His mouth opened, as if ready to accuse me of lying, then closed again when he realized I’d told him I had receipts.
“That’s how you got into the house the day you went after me and Vienna and then out of the basement, isn’t it?
” I gestured at his head. He still had on that wig Persimmon told me he was wearing to disguise balding, though in reality it was probably to cover up the big bruise or bump I’d given him when I smashed him with the filing cabinet.
“You still had the keys from the old days, when you lived there.”
He hissed. Literally hissed, like a cat. He probably wasn’t used to people telling him he had to do things he didn’t want to do. Not then, not ever.
I sighed. “It’s over, William. You should just admit to it while you have some dignity left.”