I stood up fast, with a two-hand grip on the Glock, ready to fire—but I never got that far. At the moment I came eye to eye with Guidice, another shot sounded from farther off.

Guidice stumbled hard and fell, face-first onto the street with his arms splayed out in front of him. He didn’t even try to catch himself.

“Alex!”

I looked over and saw Bree coming down the front steps of our house. Her own Glock 19 was up, still pointed in Guidice’s direction where he lay.

“Are you all right?” she shouted.

“I’m fine,” I said.

She’d gotten him in the neck, I saw. Probably hit the carotid artery, too, from the way his blood was pumping. A pool of it had started to spread on the pavement around him.

Sampson was outside now, too, close behind Bree. “EMTs are on the way,” he said, and stopped short when he saw Guidice.

I tore my shirt off and pressed it to the wound at his neck, but there was no way to stop the bleeding. Not with a shirt. I think Guidice knew it, too. He struggled to roll over and looked me in the eye, where I was kneeling next to him.

“Congratulations,” he slurred out. “Didn’t think you had it in you—”

“Yeah, well think again,” Bree said, her own voice shaking.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Where’s Rebecca Reilly? Did you take her, Guidice? Was it you? Are you Russell?”

I was still putting the pieces all together, but if I was right about this, I also knew I didn’t have much time here. He was nearly gone already.

Guidice grabbed my arm then, and pulled himself a few inches off the pavement. He tried to swallow back whatever was clogging his throat, and his jaw went slack.

“Tell my girls…tell them—”

“Answer my question first!” I said. Even then I was fighting my own feelings. It was everything I could do to keep from stepping back and letting him bleed all the way out.

Before I could say anything else, Guidice convulsed. He spit up a large amount of blood all over himself, shuddered one more time, and then went still. When his head fell back on the street, his eyes were open—still on me. At least, it seemed that way.

I could hear a siren somewhere, coming closer.

“That’s it,” Sampson said. “He’s gone.”

“He can rot in hell,” Bree said.

When I looked at her, she had an expression on her face I’d never seen before. She’s the most caring person I know. In a way, it was as if everything I’d been feeling had shifted to her.

She was crying again, too. Thinking about poor Ava, no doubt. Whatever else Guidice may have done, he’d used her as nothing more than a pawn, just to get back at me.

The most we could say now was that no more lives would be wasted in Ron Guidice’s name. I suppose if this were any other case, it might feel good to know that.

But not this time. Rebecca Reilly was still out there somewhere. And Ava was dead. Nothing was going to make us feel better about how all of this had gone down. Certainly not right away. We’d have to get there on our own, and in our own time.

Still, somehow, I knew we would.

Epilogue

CIRCLE OF LIFE

CHAPTER

109

NOT LONG AFTER RON GUIDICE DIED, HIS FULL SITUATION CAME TO LIGHT. It was his mother who called the authorities, when her son’s name became a national headline.

It took another five days after that and two independent DNA tests to confirm that the baby in Lydia Guidice’s care was in fact Rebecca Reilly. Also, that her sister, Emma Lee Guidice, was the biological daughter of both Ron Guidice and Amanda Simms, the first pregnant girl in our pregnant girl cases.

It brought up all kinds of reverberating speculation about Ava, and what Guidice might have had planned for her before she died. But Ava’s cremation was already behind us now. A small, intimate memorial service had been held. She had no dental records at all, and her remains had been identified to the extent that they could.

But that was it. None of us were prepared to confront the possibility that she’d been pregnant at the end. That question was just going to have to fade off into the great unknown, which was probably for the best.

But I’ll always wonder, of course. I’ll wonder about a lot of things from this case.

When Child and Family Services took custody of Guidice’s two daughters, Bree and I worked with the agency to make sure Mrs. Guidice could see the girls from time to time. She may not have been competent to raise them, but she also wasn’t criminally negligent here. I felt sorry for her more than anything.

Stephanie agreed to shepherd their case, and she also promised not to give up until she found a home where both girls could live together. In the meantime, they were placed into emergency foster care at a small, well-run facility in Foggy Bottom.

Taking in Rebecca and Emma Lee ourselves wasn’t something we could even contemplate, starting with the fact that we’d just lost Ava. But Bree and I did make several visits to the home in those early months.

“Look at you,” I said, the first time Bree actually met Rebecca. She was cradling the baby in a rocking chair, going slowly back and forth like she’d done it a million times. “You’re good at that.”

Bree just shrugged and kept her eyes on Rebecca in the way that—yes, I’m going to say it—only a woman can look at a baby.

The subject of having our own kids wasn’t really on the table anymore. We’d talked about it before we got married, and had already put it behind us. But life’s a circle sometimes, isn’t it? The thing you thought you left behind can come back around, until it’s sitting right there in front of you, all over again.

I’m not saying Bree and I made any kind of new plans that day, or even that there were going to be any new plans. But if I had to guess, I’d say that we were probably feeling some of the same things as she sat there, rocking Rebecca back to sleep.

After a while, Bree looked up and caught me staring at her.

“What is it?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

She smiled like she could read my mind. “Nothing, huh?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “You just look really beautiful right now,” I told her. “That’s all.”

“It’s this little girl,” she said. “She looks good on me.”

And I couldn’t argue with that.

CHAPTER

110

“ALEX, COME ON IN. HAVE A SEAT. IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU.”

I admire Adele Finaly quite a bit. I think she’s one of the finest psychotherapists I’ve ever seen in action.

I guess that’s why I put up with her No Shoes rule during sessions. I didn’t even think about it anymore. I just left my trainers on the mat by the door of her plant-filled office, and went to sit in my usual spot on the couch.

“It’s been a while,” she said, settling into her own flowered armchair. “Was there anything specific that precipitated this call?”

She reminds me of Audrey Hepburn, or Lena Horne. Adele has a way of being incredibly smart and accessible at the same time.

“Just the oldest question in the book,” I said. “My book, anyway.”

“Ah.” She smiled sympathetically. “That one.”

I spent a good chunk of the session with her just explaining everything that had happened in the last month. She knew who Ava was, but not how badly it had all turned out.

I told her about Ron Guidice, too. Not just what he’d done, but what had happened to me on that last day—and also what might have happened if things had turned out differently. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so consumed by my own hatred of someone before, and it scared me.

“I tell myself it was different this time,” I said. “It was personal. Having Ava involved changed everything, and I got in over my head. That’s not even accounting for the two other major cases I had going.”