Heather stared at her for a moment and then she shook her head. “That’s crazy. There’s no way that Ray is the one who took those photos. No way.”
“I should have figured it out,” Alison said. “It had to be someone who recognized us or knew that we were going to be there. Someone who could get our names and addresses. Our phone numbers. You must have been on the phone to him before we got to your house that night, right? You called him after you shot Viktor? What I want to know is when you thought up the whole plan.”
“Jesus Christ, I didn’t think any of it up!” Heather exclaimed. “I paid my five thousand dollars just like you did.” She looked from one to another of us wildly, twitching like a nervous Thoroughbred. “You’ve got to believe me.” She seemed sincere, but she’d lied so often and for so long that I couldn’t tell. “Look,” she said, leaning over the side of the bed and stretching to reach a plastic hospital bag stuffed with her belongings. She jerked it up onto her lap and rooted around in it. “I got the same texts you did.” She found her phone and offered it to Alison, who wouldn’t take it.
“That proves nothing,” Sarah said. “Of course you’d make sure that he sent the same letter and texts to you, so we wouldn’t suspect.”
“No,” Heather insisted, shaking her head. “I didn’t do that, I swear.” She looked from one to another of us and her face was stricken. “I don’t believe it. He’s the one who sent the letter? The photos? It can’t be.”
“Well, it is,” I said. “It’s him.”
At that moment a nurse poked her head around the curtain. “Ladies, I’m going to have to ask you to step out for a minute so I can get her vitals.” We moved out of her way, waiting on the other side of the curtain. An orderly came down the hall pushing a folded wheelchair and stopped by us.
“Knock, knock,” he said before pulling back the curtain. “Ready for your ultrasound?” he said to Heather, in an obscenely cheery voice, as if he were talking about going to a spa. The nurse helped Heather out of bed and I felt another pang of sympathy as I watched her skinny, pale legs wobble as she stood up. They helped her into the chair while we stood around and the nurse placed Heather’s bag of belongings in her lap.
“You ladies will have to go back to the waiting room,” she said. “Your friend will be back soon.”
“Can’t we go with her?” Sarah said as the orderly lifted Heather’s listless feet onto the metal footrests and released the brakes.
The nurse shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait out there.” She steered us away while the orderly popped a wheelie to turn back the way he’d come. Heather didn’t look back or say good-bye.
The waiting room was blessedly quiet, the screaming child gone, and I wondered where, since we hadn’t passed him or his mother in the ER. We plopped down in chairs in a corner and I considered asking for an ice pack for my throbbing ankle, but decided against it since that would involve talking to the grumpy Penguins fan at the front desk. “At least I don’t have to lie about where we are,” Alison said in a low voice, as she pulled out her phone to text her husband. I dug in my own purse for mine, wondering if Brian had tried to call, but there was only a message from the temp nanny asking when I’d be home. I texted her, explaining the situation, and then there was nothing to do but wait. I stared numbly at the TV where Dateline was playing, covering the case of a man who’d shot his wife so he could be with his lover. A little too close to home. I shifted in my seat, wishing they’d change the channel. Sarah was flipping rapidly through a cooking magazine, pausing on glossy photos of elaborate desserts. Alison was reading something on her phone. I started going through my email.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. And forty. “She’s got to be done by now,” Sarah said, tossing her fifth magazine aside. “Let’s go back.”
“That nurse said she’d come and get us.”
“Look, I don’t want to sit here all night.” She got up without waiting for us and headed back toward the doors into the ER.
“We’re just going to be told to wait again,” Alison said, but she got up and followed after her and I did, too. As we passed through the doors, we saw Sarah in conversation with the nurse we’d spoken to before. Sarah looked agitated and I wondered if she was arguing with the woman.
“She’s gone,” Sarah said as we approached, sounding shocked.
“What? How?” For a horrified moment, I thought she meant that Heather had died.
The nurse patted my arm. “I’m sorry, but your friend checked herself out. We wanted to keep her overnight for observation, but she declined.”
“She just left?” Alison said, looking around. “How did she get out of here without us seeing her?”
“She must have gone out another exit,” the nurse said. “I guess she just wanted to be alone. I’m sorry.” She gave us a sympathetic smile before continuing on her way.
We hustled out to the parking lot, looking for Heather as we walked toward Alison’s car. “Where did she go?” I said. “You don’t think the police came back and got her, do you?”
“No,” Alison said. “But how did she leave? She doesn’t have her car.”
“Maybe she called Ray,” Sarah suggested in a dark voice.
We thought about driving back to his apartment to look for her, but I was afraid to go there, not least because we still had his phone. With nowhere else to look, we decided to drive to Heather’s.
It was almost ten by the time we turned in through the stone pillars and made the steep climb toward the dark house at the top. The headlights caught tiny buds forming on the forsythia bushes. I thought of that drive barely two months earlier when I’d raced up this hill in the night, unsure of what I’d find at the top, but knowing it would be bad.
We pulled into the circular driveway, the house still and silent. The light was on over the front door, but no one answered even as Sarah rang the bell again and again. Had Heather gone off with Fortini? Where the hell was she? We decided to wait, Alison moving the car to the side of the farthest bay in the garage, the darkest corner of the drive. It was freezing, gusts of frigid wind shaking the trees, but adrenaline fueled us and we waited next to the car. I kept obsessively checking my phone for the time. Three minutes passed. Five. The sweep of headlights climbing the hill startled us and it occurred to me that it might be Fortini. “What if it’s him? We should get in the car,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
“Just wait,” Alison said, stopping me. We shrank back and watched as an unfamiliar sedan pulled up out front and Heather stepped out of the backseat.
“Thank you,” she said to the driver, the slam of the car door echoing in the night.
We waited until the unseen driver had pulled away and Heather had her key in the lock before we stepped out of the shadows. “Was that an Uber driver or another lover of yours?” Alison said, and Heather leapt, dropping her purse as she whipped around.
“What are you doing here?” she said in a nasty voice, but she looked pale and shaken. She’d changed out of the hospital gown, but in her haste she’d put her sweater on inside out and backward. I could see the seams running along her arms and the tag tickling her neck, but she didn’t seem to notice. There was a large dark stain on her jeans and I realized it was blood and remembered how she’d met us outside wearing bloodstained clothes on that other, awful night.
Sarah snorted. “Where have you been? You left the hospital before we did.”
Heather didn’t respond, but the nervous look on her face answered for her. Alison said, “You went to see him, didn’t you?”