A moment later, Thomas came to the doorway. All three of them were together now—“my boys,” as Corinne always called them, joking that Adam was just her biggest child. They stayed in the room, unmoving, and Adam realized something simple but somehow profound: Corinne loved her life. She loved her family. She loved the world she had fought so hard to create. She loved living in this town where she’d started out, in this neighborhood she cherished, in this home she shared with her boys.

So what had gone wrong?

All three of them heard the car door slam. Ryan’s head snapped toward the window. Adam instinctively went into protective mode, getting to the window fast and positioning his body in such a way as to block his boys’ view. The block didn’t last long. The two boys came up to him, each on one side, and looked down. No one cried out. No one gasped. No one said a word.

It was a police car.

One of the officers was Len Gilman, which made no sense because the side of the vehicle read ESSEX COUNTY POLICE. Len worked for the town of Cedarfield.

Coming out of the driver’s side was a county officer in full uniform.

Ryan said, “Dad?”

Corinne is dead.

It was a flash, no more than that. But wasn’t that the obvious answer here? Your wife goes missing. She doesn’t communicate with you or even her children. Now two cops, one a family friend, one from the county, show up at his doorstep with grim faces. And really, wasn’t that the logical assumption all along—that Corinne was dead and lying in a ditch somewhere and these grim-faced men were there to deliver that news and then he’d have to pick up the pieces and carry on and grieve and be brave for the boys?

He turned and started down the stairs. The boys fell in line behind him, Thomas first, then Ryan. It was almost as though there had been an unspoken adhesion, a bond formed by the three survivors to stand together and take the oncoming blow. By the time Len Gilman rang the bell, Adam was already turning the knob to open the door.

Len startled back and blinked.

“Adam?”

Adam stood there, the door half-opened. Len looked behind him and spotted the boys.

“I thought they’d be at practice by now.”

“They were just about to leave,” Adam said.

“Okay, maybe you could let them go and then we could—”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s better if we talk at the precinct.” Then, clearly for the benefit of the boys, Len added, “Everything is fine, boys. We just have some questions.”

Len met Adam’s eye. Adam was having none of it. If the news was bad—if it was going to devastate them—it would be just as devastating if they heard now or after practice.

“Does this have something to do with Corinne?” Adam asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think?”

“Please, Adam.” He could hear the plea in Len’s voice now. “Get the boys off to practice and come with us.”

Chapter 40

Kuntz spent the night in his son’s hospital room, semi-sleeping on a chair that half folded out into what no one would really call a bed. When the nurse saw him trying to stretch his stiff back in the morning, she said, “Not very comfortable, is it?”

“Did you guys order these from Guantánamo?”

The nurse smiled at him and took Robby’s vital signs—temperature, heart rate, blood pressure. They did that every four hours, awake or asleep. His little boy was so used to it, he barely stirred. A little boy should never get used to something like that. Never.

Kuntz sat by his son’s bedside and let the familiar horror of helplessness wash over him. The nurse saw the distress on his face. They all did, but they were wise enough not to patronize or soothe with comforting lies. She merely said, “I’ll be back in a bit.” He appreciated that.

Kuntz checked his texts. There were several urgent ones from Larry. Kuntz had expected as much. He waited for Barb to arrive. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “Gotta go for a bit. Business.”

Barb nodded, not asking or needing details.

Kuntz grabbed a taxi and headed to the apartment on Park Avenue. Larry Powers’s pretty wife, Laurie, answered the door. Kuntz never understood cheating on your wife. Your wife was the woman you loved more than anything in the world, your only true companion, a part of you. You either love her with all your heart or you don’t—and if you don’t, it was time to move along, little doggie.

Laurie Powers always had a ready smile. She wore a pearl strand necklace and a simple black dress that looked expensive—or maybe it was Laurie who looked expensive. Laurie Powers had come from old-world money, and even if she wore a muumuu, you’d probably be able to see that.

“He’s expecting you,” she said. “He’s in the study.”

“Thanks.”

“John?”

Kuntz turned toward her.

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Powers.”

“Laurie.”

“Okay,” he said. “And how about you, Laurie?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m fine. But Larry . . . he hasn’t been himself. I know it’s your job to protect him.”

“And I will. Don’t give it another thought, Laurie.”

“Thank you, John.”

Here is one of life’s little shortcuts: If someone is meeting you in their “study,” they have money. Normal people have a home office or a family room or maybe a man cave. Rich people have studies. This one was particularly opulent, loaded up with leather-bound books and wooden globes and Oriental rugs. It looked like someplace Bruce Wayne would hang out before heading down to the Batcave.

Larry Powers sat in a burgundy leather wing chair. He held a glass filled with what looked like cognac. He’d been crying.

“John?”

Kuntz came over and took the glass from his hand. He checked the bottle and saw that too much of it was gone. “You can’t be drinking like this.”

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been taking care of our problem.”

The problem was both devastating and simple. Because of the somewhat religious connection to their product, the bank issuing the IPO had insisted on moral clauses, including one involving adultery. In short, if it got out that Larry Powers frequented a sugar babies website and had, in fact, used it to secure the sexual services of college students, bye-bye, IPO. Bye-bye, seventeen million dollars. Bye-bye, best health care for Robby. Bye-bye, trip to the Bahamas with Barb.

Bye-bye to it all.

“I got an e-mail from Kimberly,” Larry said.

He started crying again.

“What did it say?”

“Her mother was murdered.”

“She told you that?”

“Of course, she told me. Jesus, John, I know you—”

“Quiet.”

The tone in his voice stopped Larry like a slap across the face.

“Just listen to me.”

“It didn’t have to be this way, John. We could have started again. There might have been other opportunities. We would have been okay.”

Kuntz just stared at him. Right, sure. Other opportunities. Easy for him to say. Larry’s father had been a bond trader, made nice cash his whole life, sent his kid to an Ivy League school. Laurie came from huge money. Neither of them had a friggin’ clue.

“We could have—”

“Stop talking, Larry.”

He did so.

“What exactly did Kimberly say to you?”

“Not say. It was by e-mail. I told you. We never talk on the phone. And it’s not my real e-mail. It’s via my sugar babies account.”

“Okay, good. What did her e-mail say?”

“That her mother had been killed. She thought it was some kind of breaking and entering.”

“Probably was,” Kuntz said.

Silence.

Then Larry sat up and said, “Kimberly isn’t a threat. She doesn’t even know my name.”

Kuntz had already gone through the pros and cons of silencing Heidi’s daughter, Kimberly, but in the end, he decided it would be more dangerous to kill her. Right now, the police would have absolutely no need to connect Heidi Dann’s murder to Ingrid Prisby’s. They were separated by more than four hundred miles. He had even used two different guns. But if suddenly something also happened to Heidi’s daughter, that would draw too much attention.