Mistress(51)

I jump out of my seat, grab my bag, and head for the door.





Chapter 57



“It’s Ben,” I say to the door. “It’s me. Open up.”

When Anne opens her door, my heart sinks. Her shirt, a button-down long denim thing, is ripped at the collar, and most of the buttons have been torn off. Her eyes are bloodshot, her eye makeup smeared, her lip bloody. Behind her, the living room looks like a tornado swept through it.

She quickly closes the door behind me and double-locks it.

“Let’s sit,” I say to her in the calmest voice I can muster, but my heart is shredded and my blood is boiling.

“O—okay,” she says, but she collapses to the floor before she can make it to the couch. She bursts into tears, her petite figure shaking uncontrollably. I sit on the floor and take her in my arms, as if I were rocking an infant to sleep. It’s a long time before she can speak, and I don’t rush her. I keep repeating, “It’s okay, I’m here,” as if that’s any comfort at this moment.

“It was…two of them,” she says, audibly gulping between sobs. “They said they were from…the government and…and they just wanted to…talk.”

“Did they have credentials? Badges?”

She shakes her head.

“You let someone in without—” I cut myself off. The last thing she needs from me is a lecture. I don’t know her all that well, but from what I’ve discerned so far, it seems just like her to be trusting enough to let strangers into her apartment.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”

The story comes out amid sobs and deep breaths. She stumbles around it, but I get the point. They forced their way in. They put a knife to her throat. They ripped off her shirt and pulled down her pants.

“They said, next time—they’d—they’d rape me and then slit my throat,” she stammers. “They said if Benjamin Casper doesn’t stop poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, it will be me who…pays.”

I hold Anne for a long time, my jaw set in a death lock, my body trembling with rage.

“You want me to stay?” I whisper. “I can sleep on the couch—”

“I want you to stop,” she blurts out. “I want all of this to…stop.”

A door closes in the apartment upstairs. We both jump at the sound. The goons who delivered this message probably won’t be back tonight. But maybe they knew I would come.

Anne looks up at me. “I know I don’t have a right to ask that. I know Diana was important to you. She was to me, too. But is it worth the cost?”

She’s right. It’s one thing to risk my own life. I don’t really have a choice in that. But I’m endangering people I care about. First Ellis Burk, now Anne—innocent victims, punished for nothing more than listening to me and trying to help me.

“I’ll think of something,” I tell her, which is about the emptiest promise I could give.





Chapter 58



I spend the night at Anne’s, sitting up on the couch, dozing off occasionally, but mostly watching the front door and trying to figure a way out of this mess.

In the morning, my head is cloudy, my limbs are shaky, and a permanent dull ache has taken up residence in my stomach. I use my prepaid phone to dial George Hotchkiss, who called my old cell phone twice yesterday but didn’t leave a message.

“George, it’s Ben Casper. I know you’re anxious to learn more about Diana. But I need more—”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say,” he says, interrupting me. “What I’m going to say is I want you to forget about what you told us. I don’t want to make any noise about Diana. I want to let it go.”

He wants me to let it go? “George—”

“She’s gone, Ben. And the sooner my wife and I accept that, the sooner we can move on with our lives. We’ve lost two children in the space of a week.”

I sigh. I can see his point, of course. But if there was a chance my child were alive, I’d chase that hope like I’ve never pursued anything in my life. Why wouldn’t George Hotchkiss do the same?

Oh. Oh, of course.

“They got to you, didn’t they, George? They—”

“Nobody did anything.” His voice is rising, as if in panic. “Nobody did anything, you understand? I still have a wife, and I don’t want to lose her, too. So I’m not going to ask the government to hand over Diana’s body or perform a DNA test or anything else, and I don’t authorize you to do those things, either. And I’m telling you that I want you to stop pursuing this. I want you to let this go. Diana is dead, okay? She’s dead.”