to say. To be compared to Meryl and Audrey! These were words she had dreamed of hearing. But, at the same time, she found it hard to take it seriously, despite Gabriel’s earnest expression. She was torn between a base desire to believe him and allow herself to bask in the warmth of his praise, and another instinctive reaction: to reject what he was saying, to listen to the voice of self-doubt, the one that told her she would fail, the one that said she was nothing special. An unwanted brat. A girl who no one could really love.
‘I need to go inside,’ she said, suddenly dizzy.
‘Of course.’
They stepped back into the room and Gabriel pushed the buttons again. The balcony slid back with hardly a sound into the floor beneath their feet, and the windows swung slowly out and snicked closed. It was utterly insane, and beautiful.
They sat back at the table. She sipped at her coffee but it had gone cold.
‘I’ll get you another,’ Gabriel said.
‘No. Please. It’s fine.’
‘If you’re sure. Perhaps I should let you rest now. Think about what I said. I’m sure you’ll have lots of questions.’
She nodded.
‘But I’d like you to stay here a little longer, so we can have a chance to talk again once what I’ve told you has sunk in. And you should talk to Eden and Marie and the others.’
She found herself nodding.
He rose to leave.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m confused. You say you can help me. That you want me to join you. But I don’t understand what that means. What it entails. And I really don’t understand why I have to stay here.’
‘You don’t. Of course you don’t. But I wasn’t sure if you had anywhere else to go.’
‘I thought I’d go back to Mona and Jack’s.’
‘Ah.’ He frowned. ‘Eden didn’t tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘About what happened to Jack . . . I’d rather let Eden tell you.’
He opened the door – and Emilio almost fell into the room.
‘Is everything okay?’ Gabriel asked.
Emilio gathered himself. ‘Sorry, I was about to knock. I need to talk to you.’
‘Of course.’ Gabriel turned back to Ruth. ‘Apologies. I’ll send Eden in. But we can continue this tomorrow.’
To her surprise, he dashed back into the room and took hold of her hands, gripping them enthusiastically. ‘You’re so smart, Ruth. So special. Never let anyone tell you different. You deserve the world.’
He let go of her hands and moved towards the door, where Emilio was waiting, but then turned to her a last time.
‘And I can give it to you.’
PART THREE
Chapter 32
I got off the PATH at Newark Penn Station and took an Uber to the address Wanda had given us. It wasn’t her cabin this time, but a diner outside Newark.
‘Can’t risk you leading them anywhere near my place,’ she had said on the phone. Callum had told me Wanda constantly switched burner phones. ‘Not now you’ve raised the stakes so much.’
The Uber dropped me outside the diner and I went in, spotting Wanda in a corner booth. She seemed nervous but excited. She had her baseball cap on and, instead of the yellow-tinged glasses, a pair of aviator shades.
‘Are you one hundred per cent certain no one followed you?’ she said, checking over my shoulder.
‘As sure as I can be. I’m pretty sure they think I’m dead anyway.’ I told her about the message Callum had exchanged with Mona the night before, pretending to be Krugman. I also summarised what had happened in the woods. My muscles still ached from digging the grave in which we had buried the detective. By the time we’d finished I had been covered in dirt and sweat and the dead man’s blood. Luckily, the ground had been damp and quite soft, but I wondered if that would make it more likely that an animal would dig the body up. Last night I’d had a nightmare in which I’d been in the woods with Ruth, delighted to be with her again, telling her I thought I was never going to find her, and then Krugman had appeared, covered with mud, lurching towards us through the darkness.
I didn’t expect to sleep well for a long time. I had buried a man’s body. A cop’s body. And before that, I had been convinced I was going to die.
I knew there was darkness in my future. That one day I was going to have to deal with all this shit. But right now, I would simply have