They moved close together. He put his arms around her waist and drew her closer still.
“In this vision I’m ridiculously attractive? Incredibly sexy?” he said.
“Not at all,” she said, deadpan. “You look just like you do now.”
He laughed a bit crookedly at that, and she found herself needing to touch his face. “We’re in this together.”
“But not in love,” he pressed.
She hesitated. She couldn’t say it, didn’t want to even think it, knew it was nonsense.
“Together,” she said at last.
She glanced at a clock scrolling by on a neon marquee. She had an hour. It would be tight, but Stern would wait.
Hide in plain sight. Keep the lie simple. And say the one thing sure to dissuade any male from asking follow-up questions.
“I need tampons,” Plath told Nijinsky. “There’s a Duane Reade down the block. I’ll be back in half an hour. Do you need anything?”
He frowned. Suspicious? No, just thinking. “ChapStick,” he said. “Plain, not cherry or whatever.”
Stern, in obedience to the note she had slipped him, was waiting in the shaving-supplies aisle, seeming to take his time choosing a razor. Stern did not look at her, nor she at him. They were back to back, him looking at razors, her looking at shampoo.
“Sadie,” he said.
“Mr Stern.”
“You’re in trouble of some sort.”
“I’m in trouble of every sort. Listen. My father and brother were murdered by Charles and Benjamin Armstrong. Is that idea a surprise to you?”
Three seconds of silence. “No,” he said at last.
“My father trusted you.”
His voice was husky when he said, “I was honored by his trust.”
She leaned back just enough to make the slightest contact, stretching her fingers back to touch his sleeve.
“Mr Stern, have you heard of something called BZRK?”
He was silent for what felt like a long time. Then he said, “I thought it might be that, when I saw the man with the, well, the fanciful hat.” He sighed. “I know some of it, not everything. Your father didn’t want McLure security getting involved with …with those people.”
“I don’t want you involved with them either,” she said, surprising herself with the force of her conviction. “I want you to work for me. Just for me.”
“Whatever you need,” he said.
Here it came. How much to ask? How much to trust?
“I want an escape route. For me and …and for the boy I was with earlier.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “The man in the hat. He’s on our side, but be careful of him.”
Stern said nothing.
“My father financed these people. I’m going to do the same. But Thrum is a traitor, she’s working for the Armstrongs. She’s going to trace my spending.”
“If that’s true, then yes, she certainly will.”
“So, I want to give Ms Thrum something to watch, Mr Stern. I want her and the Armstrongs to be unsure which side I’m on. I made it clear that I trusted you, so they’ll be watching you. I want you to start looking for a person who calls him- …or her- …self, Lear. For all I know it’s not a real person, or may be several people, but he, she, or it, is running BZRK. Spend some money on that search. Let Thrum see that you’re looking.”
She heard a soft, satisfied chuckle. “You’re capable of deviousness, Sadie. Your brother …I loved him because he was the boss’s son. But there’s more of your father in you.”
She fell silent at that and covered the silence by bending down to select a bottle of conditioner and appearing to read the ingredients label. Memories of her brother, Stone, had come rushing back. How had he been at the end? How had he felt knowing that the plane he was in would crash?
He had been brave, she was sure of that. She pushed away a sob and sucked in a sharp breath.
“In my father’s study, on the shelf, there’s a copy of Alice in Wonderland. In the spine, there’s a key. It goes to a safe deposit box at UBS, the bank, in Manhattan. My father said I’d remember it by thinking of You Bullshit Bank. You B.S. The box number is 0726, my mother’s birthday. They’ll ask you a verification question. It won’t matter what the question is, the answer you give is ‘pepperoni pizza.’ In the box are bonds worth two hundred million dollars. Let Ms Thrum watch the fifty she knows about. We’ll use the two hundred she doesn’t to keep BZRK going and to find me an escape route.”
“Aren’t you worried I’ll take the money and run?”
Her answer was bleak, not glib. “I have to trust you. I don’t want to, honestly, because I’m scared. I’m in a trap.But I have to, I have to trust someone. So it’s you.”
“And the boy,” he said.
“We’ll see about that,” she said. “Don’t follow me and don’t try to protect me. I know you’ll want to, but don’t. Caligula …the man in the fanciful hat? He’ll …he will resent it. Find me an escape route.” She started to walk away, hesitated, then over her shoulder added, “Something near the beach, in Africa.”
Billy the Kid had spent the night after the massacre at the foster home where he had not been in the three weeks since joining BZRK. He could think of nowhere else to go, and he felt hollowed-out and stretched very, very thin.