side like a small, determined hedgehog. Or maybe a barnacle was a more apt description. Don’t wake up, she thought, reaching for the phone. Please don’t wake up.
It was another text from Zoey.
OMG. Evan showed up at my work today, yelling and carrying on about how I better tell him where you are. He almost got me fired. And then a cop came and asked a bunch of questions too. I told them I don’t know anything, because I don’t. They think you killed your sister. It’s crazy. Be careful, please.
Letty stared at the text, then deleted it without a response. She’d already disabled the GPS on her phone. She’d been debating getting rid of it, buying one of those cheap burner phones they sold in convenience stores, but she wasn’t ready to give up the lifeline her phone represented. Yet. She switched it off and willed herself back to sleep.
We’re safe, she thought. Nobody would look for them in this out-of-the-way town. She had been careful not to leave any tracks that could lead Evan to a place like the Murmuring Surf. The door was locked, the dead bolt engaged. Tanya’s go-bag, with the money and the ring, was hidden away. They were hidden, too. Maya was safe. She stroked the little girl’s curls, and listened to the reassuring sound of the child contentedly sucking on her thumb.
True, there was a cop sniffing around, asking prying questions. But Letty had questions of her own, so she intended to stay put and stay vigilant.
Letty still didn’t know how much her niece understood about what had happened to her mother, or how much she’d witnessed. Her prayer was that Maya had slept through Tanya’s violent murder, because she couldn’t bear to think about the alternative. At some point, she thought, she would need to get Maya counseling.
Tomorrow, Letty vowed, she would make a plan. Start thinking about finding a job and a better place to live. A ratty motel room was no place to raise a child. Was that what she was going to be doing now? Raising a child? It was a deeply unsettling idea. Letty had always harbored some vague notion that someday she would have the normal things that normal people had: a career, a stable marriage, a mortgage, a dog, and yes, even a child of her own. Preferably in that precise order.
But there was nothing normal about her life on the run.
* * *
She was waiting tables at a diner in Tribeca, sharing a crappy apartment in Queens with three other girls she’d met through a Craigslist ad. Evan was a regular customer. He had the kind of looks that, if you passed him on the street, you’d turn around and take another look. He was on the short side, yeah, maybe five foot ten, but he had these arresting amber-colored eyes, a square jaw, hair with the beginnings of a silver streak.
He was a regular customer at the diner, always sat alone at table 2, in the window, dressed casually in fashionable designer jeans, and a heavily starched dress shirt, Gucci loafers, no socks; the only jewelry a wristwatch and heavy gold signet ring on his right hand.
Although he frequently had business meetings, with clients filtering in and out over the space of a couple hours, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that Table Two, as the girls all called him, was rarely joined by a woman.
Later, she learned from one of the other waitresses that he owned half a dozen apartments in the neighborhood, and was using the diner as a de facto office. Zoey said he had an understanding with Arthur, their manager, so they left him alone, kept him supplied with coffee and his standing order: a poached egg on unbuttered rye toast, bacon crisped but not burned, and a small glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice. He was a great tipper, polite, but somewhat aloof.
She’d been late to work that wiltingly hot morning in August, had survived a tirade from Arthur where he’d threatened to fire her, and was confiding to Zoey about the fact that her roommates were kicking her out, and she had no idea how she’d find an affordable place to live before the end of the month.
“Excuse me,” the customer at table 2 said, when she stopped to refill his coffee. “I uh, overheard you telling your friend that you need a place to stay.”
Letty regarded him warily. She was used to being hit on by customers, but Table Two