Kate sat on the staircase, trembling. She couldn’t remember any more words. Only pieces, coming to her like images in a photographic flicker book. There was something totally different and foreign about him, about his eyes. This wasn’t her father. Her father wasn’t like this. He was soft and kind.

Her mother, standing up in front of him. “We’re your family, Ben, not them.” She shook her head, just inches away from him. “You have to choose, Ben. Now!”

Then her father did something, something Kate never saw him do again. Why was it coming back to her now? She turned her face away, just as she had done on the staircase maybe twenty years before. Before she buried it-the violence in his eyes, what he did-in the lifetime of happier memories that she thought were real.

He hit her mother in the face.

He wanted this.

That’s what Kate suddenly understood. Stepping off the train. Climbing up through Penn Station and onto the street. In a complete daze.

Her father wanted this.

That’s what Howard told her. He wanted to be exposed-his longtime dealings with the Mercados brought into the light. To testify against his friend. To go to jail. To put the family he supposedly loved above everything else at risk. Why? He’d engineered his comfortable, picture-perfect life to self-destruct.

And he was capable of it. That’s what scared Kate the most. That’s why the flashback on the train was so chilling. However buried this memory was, she had seen it in him before.

Kate walked against the crowd down to Fourteenth Street. She headed east, all the way to the Lower East Side.

Did the WITSEC people know any of this? About the photo she’d found, his past connection to Mercado? Did they know who he really was? What he was capable of? Those awful photos of Margaret Seymour. Had Mercado’s people ever really wanted to kill him after all?

Do they know he brought his own life crashing down?

Her cell phone rang. Kate saw that it was Greg calling. She didn’t answer. She just kept walking. She didn’t know what she could say.

All of a sudden, the whole of her life had to be rethought. Why would her father have wanted to harm Margaret Seymour? What information could he possibly have needed from her? Why would her father want to bring this on himself? How could he have wanted to hurt them all? Sharon, Emily, Justin. Kate herself.

It was like the coda from some discordant, symphonic finale crashing in Kate’s head.

All along, this was his plan.

Greg was on the couch watching a soccer match when she arrived back at the apartment.

“Where you been?” He spun around. “I tried to reach you.”

Kate sat across from him and told him about her meeting with Howard. She shook her head in disbelief and felt numb, uncomprehending.

“Dad set it up,” she said. “He set the whole thing up. He paid Howard a quarter of a million dollars to go to the FBI. He said he was closing the business and turning himself in. Howard needed the money. He had a son who was in bankruptcy. There never was any sting by the FBI. It was all my father. He did it himself.”

Greg sat up, his expression both incredulous and worried. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. Why would he want to hurt us like this? Why would he want to bring this on himself? It was like it was all part of some kind of plan. I don’t know what to fucking believe anymore. My mom is dead. We’re hiding out like animals. I’m starting to think they’re right, the FBI. That he did kill that agent. I loved my father, Greg. He was everything to me. But I know now…he came home every goddamn night my entire life and he lied to us. Who the hell was my father, Greg?”

Greg came over and sat beside her. He cupped her face in his hands. “Why are you doing this, Kate?”

She shook her head, glassy-eyed. “Doing what?”

“Putting yourself right back in the middle of all this again. Sharon ’s dead, baby. You’re just lucky as hell you weren’t killed yourself. These people are animals, Kate. They tried to kill you, too.”

“Because I have to know!” Kate shouted, pulling away. “Don’t you understand? I have to know why my mother died, Greg. What she was trying to tell me…?

“No one ever went to jail, Greg. Not Concerga, not Trujillo. None of the people my father testified against. No one except Harold, his stupid friend. They all got away-everyone the government really wanted. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Then he just disappears after a couple of months and that woman agent ends up being horribly killed. He lied to us, Greg. For what? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Greg put his arm around her shoulders and held her close. “We can’t just keep living with this hanging over our heads our whole lives. All that’s going to happen is you’ll get yourself killed. Please, Kate, let’s get back to our lives.”

“I can’t…”

“And I can’t go there with you, Kate. Not like this. Not forever.” He lifted her face. “I tried to reach you a while ago. I have some news.”

“What?”

“New York-Presbyterian called. They offered me the position.” His face widened into a proud grin. “I got in!”

As an attending. In children’s orthopedics. The Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital was one of the best programs in the city. This was great news. A few months before, Kate would have leaped for joy. But now she just put her hand on his cheek and smiled. Now she wasn’t sure.

“We can stay in New York. We can start a life. I love you, baby, but I can’t do this every day and think of you putting yourself in danger. We have to set this aside. If we stay, we have to face the future. Both of us, Kate. They want to know if I’m taking it. Are we going to stay or leave, honey? Are we going to go forward and live our lives? It’s up to you, Kate. But I have to give them an answer soon.”

CHAPTER SIXTY

The laundry truck turned down the sleepy street for its last stop around 8:00 P.M. It braked in front of the blue-shingled ranch, blocking the navy Taurus parked on the curb. One last delivery to make.

With some shirts draped over his finger, Luis Prado climbed out of the cab.

The street was dark, illuminated by a single streetlamp. People were in their homes, cleaning up after dinner, watching American Idol on TV, chatting online.

Luis had already killed the young driver with a single shot to the head, stuffing his body in a pile of dirty linens and laundry bags in the back of the truck. He nodded with a wave to the two figures hunched in the Taurus as if he’d seen them before, heading up the walk toward the neighboring house. Then, as he came even with the Taurus, he drew his silenced Sig nine-millimeter from behind the hanging shirts.

The first shot splintered the passenger window with a muffled thud and hit the agent closest to Luis in the forehead, just as he exhaled a plume of smoke, leaving a round, black burn between the agent’s eyes. He keeled silently into his partner, whose face became a contorted mask of alarm, groping inside his jacket for his weapon, reaching for the radio with some garbled, final cry.

Luis squeezed the trigger two more times-the nine-millimeter bullets crashing squarely into the agent’s chest, spitting blotches of red over the windshield, immobilizing him with a gurgling groan. Luis yanked open the door and placed a final round in the agent’s forehead, removing any doubt.

He glanced around. The street was clear. The laundry truck was blocking anyone’s view. Luis took the shirts and headed up the steps to the blue-shingled house. Concealing his gun behind them, he rang the bell at the door.

“Who’s there?” someone called from inside. A woman.