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  She fished out her phone, but still didn’t get reception.

  “What are you doing?” Stern asked.

  “I’m going to call my dad. Going to tell him everything’s okay.”

  Stern shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

  Kate looked at her phone. Still no reception.

  “You’re right. No bars.”

  More head shaking. “Not what I meant.”

  Stern stood up and walked around the stretcher. He reached out and put a hand on Kate’s shoulder.

  “In less than a month, I will have the most important day of my political career. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “The merger,” she said.

  “Right.” Stern took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Kate. Your father means a lot to me, and because of that, so do you. I’m going to make sure Jackson gets well. I promise. But you can’t tell anyone about this. I can’t be seen at the scene of a shootout.”

  Kate tilted her head. “Did you call the police?”

  “I will be poison. Everything I’ve worked for will be gone, do you understand?”

  Kate didn’t respond.

  “You called me, Kate. You asked me for help. We’re going to take Jackson out of this van, and we’re going to bring to a place where he can get better.”

  “Where are we?”

  Stern shrugged. “Somewhere safe.”

  “He’s my fiancée.”

  Stern squeezed her shoulder. “You have to trust me. We’re going to take you home, and—”

  “You are not.” Kate shrugged his hand off her shoulder. “You absolutely are not. I’m staying with Jackson.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll just get in the way. I promise I’ll keep you posted on his progress.”

  The back door to the van opened up. A man in a tank top stood in the street. Kate smelled sea water and heard the rush of waves. Stern got up and went to him. The doctor, the new man, and Stern began to roll Donne’s stretcher out into the street.Their movement kept Kate pinned against the van wall.

  She was able to quickly lift her phone and snap a picture of the man in the tank top. Beyond that, she was stuck.

  As soon as Jackson was off the van, the back doors slammed shut. Kate leapt up and ran to them. She pushed to open them, but they were locked. There wasn’t an interior switch to push to unlock them.

  Kate screamed.

  No one responded.

  She kept pushing on the doors with no luck.

  Five minutes later, she fell to the floor of the van as it peeled out and back on to the street.

  THEY ATE.

  Chicken parm sandwiches and mozzarella sticks for William. Jeanne and Martin took their time eating, trying to enjoy the momentary respite. Sarah and Leonard fussed, going back and forth between bites, trying to get the guest room ready. Martin didn’t want to tell them they weren’t going to stay.

  Not yet, anyway.

  If William overheard, it might shatter him. The kid had been through enough today. Jeanne finished eating first, and William took her to see his room. Martin wondered if it was instinct, how easily they got along together.

  As Martin was wiping the last bit of marinara from the corner of his lip, Leonard came in and pointed toward the back door.

  “You wanted me to answer some questions,” he said.

  Martin nodded, and they went out to the yard. Leonard tossed a crab trap into the lagoon. The muscles in his forearms strained as he tossed. As the cage splashed into the water, a coughing fit overtook him. Martin stared out at the water until he finished.

  “We never catch anything, but it’s fun to try,” Leonard said after he was done gasping for air.

  “When I was a kid, we used to catch eels in these cages. Of all the kinds of things you could catch, we caught eels.”

  “Did you eat ’em?”

  Martin shook his head. “Tossed ’em back.”

  “My mom—she was Italian—cooked them up. Everybody caught eels on these lagoons.”

  Martin shrugged. “At least you’re catching something.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments. A seagull swooped down and snatched something from the surface of the water. He gave his wings a quick flap and was ten feet in the air again, heading off out of sight.

  The sky was clear, and a cool breeze followed the gull down the lagoon. It wasn’t a true summer day—one with humidity and unbearable heat. This reminded Martin more of late spring, just before the schools let out. Driving down the highway with the windows open instead of the air-conditioner on. He and Jeanne would get to do that again. Eileen never wanted to.

  “How’d you do it?” Martin finally asked.

  Leonard nodded while staring in the direction the seagull had gone. “Did you read the police report?”

  Martin shook his head. “Car accident is all I know. My chief didn’t want me looking into it. I didn’t really want to. Not the way Jeanne had left. I was hurting enough.”

  It sounded more like wallowing than Martin had meant it to. Leonard let it go.

  “We burnt her car to a crisp. Only let the license plate survive.”

  “You weren’t there that night. You were out pretending to be suicidal to distract Donne.”

  Leonard shook his head. “It wasn’t that hard to pretend. My little girl was leaving us.”

  “I don’t get it. Who burned the car?”

  After rubbing his face, Leonard said, “We lived in Middlesex County a long time. Sarah and I have a lot of friends. We knew a few firefighters who helped out that night.”

  “No questions asked?” Martin kicked at a pebble. “I find that tough to believe.”

  “I was a computer programmer. Did a lot of work for the town, once wi-fi was in style. Was owed a lot of favors.”

  “What about DNA?”

  Leonard’s eyes got watery, but the tears did not give way to his cheeks. “We had to cut some of her hair. She lost a tooth.”

  “There was a second car.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t read the police report?”

  “People talk. It was a drunk driving accident.”

  “One of the guys we used to light the fire was junking his car anyway. A couple of bottles of Jack, spill some on the front seat, you’re good to go.”

  Martin’s gut was churning, and it wasn’t from the chicken parm. This was amateur hour, and he missed it. Too busy caught up in his emotions, too busy hating Jackson Donne for winning and holding on to her. He could have caught up with this and been with her. Helped her.

  “It wasn’t a foolproof plan,” he said. “Not even close.”

  “It didn’t have to be, we didn’t think. We were grieving parents. We didn’t care about the guy driving the car. We made that clear. We just wanted to remember our daughter.” Leonard exhaled. “The police always have bigger issues. We gave them their out. All we had to do was fool you and Jackson. But Jackson was a drunk, so that wasn’t hard. I’ve been lying to Jackson about a lot of things. Even about you.”

  “She didn’t go to Arizona right away, did she?”

  Leonard nodded. “We took her to Maryland. She had the baby with a midwife there. Water birth. It was disgusting and scary, but William ended up fine.”

  “And you agreed to take him?”

  “It wasn’t easy. For any of us. But she was so scared. She had to do this.”

  “Why did she have to do it? She mentioned the senator. Stern.”

  Leonard looked back at the house. Martin followed his gaze. Sarah was looking through the back door. She nodded at them.

  “You’d have to ask my daughter,” Leonard said.

  “You know though, don’t you?”

  Leonard didn’t answer. He started to walk back toward the house. Martin took a step forward, but movement between their house and the neighbor’s caught his eye. A car had pulled out of the driveway and was rolling down the road. One of the Bakers’ cars.

  “What the hell?” Martin started to run and caugh
t a glimpse of Jeanne in the driver’s seat.

  William was in the back.

  By the time Martin got to the front yard, the car had disappeared down the road. He was getting slow.

  Leonard came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  “She’s not safe.”

  Leonard squeezed. “She will be. Jeanne did this for six years. She’s got William now. It will be okay. I promise.”

  Martin shook his head. His heart was pounding. “I’m not going to lose her again.”

  KATE RANG her father’s doorbell at seven the next morning.

  The van had dropped her off at Jackson’s apartment about three hours earlier, and she had tried to lie down for a few hours. Sleep never came. Instead, she stared at the ceiling of the bedroom. She alternated between crying and praying for Jackson to make it through the night. Once the sun started peeking through the venetian blinds, she got up and made a pot of coffee. The ache in her stomach didn’t make it easy to drink, but she forced it down—fearing she’d fall asleep on the road if she didn’t.

  She parked in front of her father’s Milltown house and trudged up the steps, her legs feeling like they were trapped in quicksand. He opened the door only seconds after she rang the bell. Once she saw him, unshaven, in a robe, reading glasses balanced on the edge of his nose, she fell into his arms and wept. Her shoulders shook against him, and tears soaked into the fabric of his robe. Dad pulled her in tight and rubbed her back.

  Kate didn’t know how long they stood there. She didn’t care.

  Finally, when no more tears would come, she pushed her self away from her father.

  “Jackson?” her father asked.

  She nodded.

  “Come inside.”

  Kate’s mother died four years ago of lung cancer. She had never smoked a day in her life. With each passing month, the home her father lived in unraveled, becoming more and more overrun with her dad’s case files. When she started to work for him after graduating Seton Hall Law, Kate made it a point to organize his files and keep them in the basement. She remembered how, before Sandy hit, she, her dad, and Jackson lugged all the boxes out of there before it flooded. The basement never flooded, but the boxes still sat in the living room. She noticed the Gunderson case—a hit and run lawsuit—had files pulled from it.

  She had forgotten about work. About her dad making her promise not to call in sick.

  Now he sat on the couch and waited. Kate sat next to him, her breath coming in short gasps. She looked at her dad and tried to smile. He turned red.

  Kate had rolled it all over in her head, telling her father everything—about Jackson, the gunshots, the weird van ride—and letting him pick up the pieces. It was what she’d done as a kid, and her instinct was screaming her to do the same thing.

  Dad will make it right.

  Instead, she said, “Tell me about Henry Stern, Dad.”

  Her dad sat back and looked at the ceiling. He rubbed his chin.

  “How is that about Jackson?” he asked.

  “I’m not talking about Jackson right now. Tell me about Stern.”

  “You’ve known him for years. Did he call you like I asked?”

  Kate rubbed her palms together. “He called.”

  “Did he—can he help?”

  The room smelled like an old book. All the files, the papers, the reports sitting in the office made it feel like a used bookstore. The pot of coffee her dad was percolating made the feeling stronger.

  “I want to know about him, Dad. I don’t mean the political him.”

  Her father straightened his glasses then rubbed his chin. Myron Ellison could look smart even in his pajamas.

  “He was a military man. That’s how I met him. I was representing a case at Fort Dix and he was one of our witnesses. We become friends.”

  “It’s all over the place that he was military. What happened next?”

  “He went to Afghanistan for a year. Rumor had it he worked with the CIA trying to turn terrorists into informants. We lost touch for a while.”

  “And when he came back?”

  “Left the army. Got married. Got divorced. Twice. He went to work at Rutgers—taught some poli sci before running for the senate seat.”

  Kate pulled out her phone and brought up the picture of the man who had driven the van. She handed it to her father.

  “Do you know that guy?”

  Her father took off his glasses and brought the phone close to his nose. Squinted. Kate’s stomach burned, and she could taste coffee in the back of her mouth.

  Dad gave the phone back.

  “Never seen him before.”

  “Something bad is going on, Dad.” Kate put the phone back into her purse. She pulled out a band and tied her hair back into a ponytail.

  “Did Jackson find his fiancée?”

  The words shook Kate. She was his fiancée.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why are you so upset? Where is he?”

  The words didn’t come. The image of Jackson, bleeding, eyes wide, ran through her head. Jackson’s face morphed into her dad’s. Henry Stern had warned her to stay quiet, that he was going to take care of everything. The churning in her stomach turned into a fire.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” Kate stood up. “I’m not going to be able to work the Gunderson case. I need some time off.”

  He stood up with her and put a hand on her forearm. “You can tell me.”

  Kate’s eyes burned again, but she fought the tears back. “No,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  She shrugged his hand away. And went toward the door.

  “Kate!” he called.

  She turned back toward him. Dad stood in front of the couch, shoulders slumped, arms at his sides.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said. “Let me help.”

  “This is on me,” she said. “I can’t put this on anyone.”

  “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Coming here was a mistake.”

  “I’m your father.” His voice was soft, the same tone as when he told her Mom had died during the night.

  Kate didn’t respond. She opened the door and walked out into the morning.

  SOMEONE BOUNCED a basketball.

  It thudded four times against the ground and stopped. A second later, a swish of the net. The dribbling started again. There were voices, muffled and out of breath. Another swish of the net.

  Jackson Donne opened his eyes. The world blurred. He blinked it back into focus. His eyelids were dry and sticky.

  He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice cracked. It felt like he’d been on a bender. His mouth was as dry as a saltine. His head throbbed behind his eyes.

  He tried to sit up, but it felt like someone put an anvil on his chest. He put his hands beneath him and pushed. It felt like the skin against his chest was going to tear away. He screamed, but only a hiss of air escaped his mouth.

  The ball stopped bouncing and someone said, “Hey, look who’s awake.”

  Donne turned his head and realized he was in a church. It wasn’t an active church. All the pews had been pulled out and the tile floor was bare. Where the altar should have been was a portable basketball hoop, the kind kids had in their driveways.

  His chest felt like it was about to explode. His shoulder was on fire as well. No matter how many muscles he tried to tense, Donne couldn’t get his body to stop shuddering. The beeping sound he heard earlier was loud now and the beeps were closer together.

  A man put his hands on Donne’s shoulders and eased him back into a lying position. The mattress beneath him sagged.

  “Calm down, buddy. You’re okay.”

  Donne’s eyes were wide. He looked at a stained glass window, an image of Jesus passing fish out to the apostles.

  “Here. Drink some water.”

  Someone put a straw into his mouth, and a stream of water followed it. It was cold, and his tongue absorbed i
t, like a starved plant. He sucked some more. The cold felt good on the back of his throat.

  “Slow down.”

  Donne didn’t take the advice and took another big sip. The water caught at the back of his throat, triggering his gag reflex. He coughed hard, and the water spilled out over his chin and on to his chest. He gasped for air and coughed some more. The hacks twisted his whole body. The pains in his shoulder and chest contracted, and again Donne felt water form in his eyes.

  “Slow, deep breaths.”

  Donne closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. It was a reflex from his days as a jogger. He could focus on something other than the pain. He could focus on the breathing.

  His body stopped shuddering, and his aches lower their intensity. He opened his eyes again and looked up at the man helping him. He was wearing a white coat and wore plastic gloves. There was a silver plate clasped to his pocket, but Donne couldn’t read it. His eyes weren’t focusing correctly.

  “Can you talk?” the man asked.

  Donne moved his lips. At first it was just air, then he found it. “How long?” His voice was raspy and the words were broken up by phlegm.

  The man shook his head. “Three days.”

  Donne closed his eyes again. Seventy-two hours, more or less. A lot could happen in that amount of time. Jeanne could be dead. Or she could be with Martin.

  “How bad?” He wanted to spit, but the moisture from the phlegm felt good on his tongue.

  The man inserted the straw from the water bottle into Donne’s mouth again and squeezed. Donne took the water slower this time.

  “You’ve been shot twice. Once in the right shoulder and once on the right side of your chest. You lost a substantial amount of blood. We had to remove the bullet from your chest before it migrated. The one in the shoulder tore right through. There was a third shot. The men found it embedded in a wall, about head high. Whoever shot you went for the kill and missed.”

  Donne forced himself to breathe slowly. His mind was running too quickly, and if he let his thoughts take over, he’d have a panic attack. The air felt like it was getting caught somewhere in his throat, but he kept inhaling and exhaling. Jogging, he’d found, was like yoga. When you breathe correctly, the discomfort goes away.