“Do you believe me now?” said Cassie Jenner.

It took Hazel a moment to register who Jenner was talking to. She saw Commander LeJeune returning the cellphone to the constable. LeJeune came forward and looked into the van.

“Well,” she said. “Isn’t this a surprise.”

Ronnie met Wingate at the inner door. “Mr. Arsenault,” he said. “Welcome back.”

The casino was almost empty. A couple of diehards, including the woman he’d seen last time at the blackjack table, were hard at work gambling. He guessed the operation also catered to people who couldn’t stop, and for whom the will or desire to lose everything was strong.

“You brought the money?” Plaskett asked. Wingate handed it over. “Cherry’s ready for you.”

He led Wingate through the door in the roulette room that opened onto the continuation of the riverbed, which connected the casino to the rooms beyond, and Wingate followed him. He thought of the matchbook-sized device planted under the sole of his right shoe and willed it to send its beacon back to Howard Spere’s computer loud and clear. His muscles were twitching in his forearms and his calves. For a moment, he wondered if he shouldn’t try to take the man out here and now, between the two populated parts of the site, but if he went alone through the door that Gene was watching, he might not get another chance at Plaskett. He had to wait.

“After this, you can come back and try someone else,” he said. “We’re expecting some new stock as early as next week.”

The sound of Plaskett’s voice intoning these details so casually filled Wingate with rage. But as René Arsenault, he forced himself to say, “I can hardly wait. If Cherry is anything to judge by, you can expect to see a lot more of me.”

“I like to hear that,” Ronnie said. “We like to keep our customers happy.”

They had reached the door in the earthen wall and Ronnie ran his card through. The door swung open and almost right away, there was a second sound, a louder one, and Plaskett flew backwards, a spume of dark red blood tracing his descent. He hit Wingate flat on, driving him backwards. Wingate twisted, scrambling to the side, trying to make himself as small as possible against the curved wall behind him. He heard footsteps coming forward.

“Detective Wingate?” came a woman’s voice.

In a dark patch in front and to the side of the door, he was trying to control his breathing.

“I know you’re there. It’s okay, come out.”

He waited a moment and then emerged. The woman standing in the doorway held a Ruger in her hands. He recognized it as a single-shot model of the kind that likely killed Jordie Dunn. “I’m unarmed,” he said.

“I know,” the woman replied. “I’m Constable Lydia Bellecourt.”

“Thank God,” he said, coming forward, breathing a sigh of relief. “Did you guys come in from the Eighth Line?”

“No,” she said.

“Well, I’m just glad you came when you did. Do you have a radio?”

“What do you want a radio for, Detective Constable?”

Something in her tone made him realize he’d been operating under a presumption borne out of the fear he’d felt when her gun had gone off. Now he saw she was still holding the gun, and holding it on him.

“What’s going on here?”

“Who do you think told Ronnie to give you a new membership card? And told her commanding officer that the casino might be doubling as an outlet for fake IDs? She has no idea what for, of course, but she’s probably taken down the other half of your raid by now. No one is coming, Detective Wingate.”

Hazel had wondered out loud if Dunn’s murder had been a warning to them, and it had. But in reading the warning the wrong way, they had played into Bellecourt’s hands. She’d been a step ahead of them the entire time.

“Come on in back,” she said. “You can join the party.”

] 29 [

She finished her run with the top of the house in view over the trees, and she rested. She didn’t have any way to tell the time accurately, but judging by the position of the sun, it was coming up to five o’clock. If, for whatever reason, Sugar had gone out, he’d be back by six. It would be a good idea to find a vantage on the driveway and keep an eye out for the delivery boy.

She dipped back down below the house – the address was 175 Highland Crescent – crossed the road quickly, and ran back up to a position across from it. And like clockwork, about forty minutes later, a car pulled up the drive and parked at the top of the curve. A man with a large brown paper bag knocked on the door, and she watched Sugar open the door and pay the man in cash. She saw the delivery boy look down into his hand – no doubt Mr. Sugar was a poor tipper – and he got back into his little car and came out the other end of the driveway.

How much did that house cost? Why do people who have everything want more? They get bored. Money shows them what’s available, and after a while, they start wanting what isn’t available. She’d known wealthy people back in Ukraine, it was impossible not to at least know someone who knew an oil magnate. Ukraine was lousy with oil magnates, and they were obsessed with tax dodges. There was another story in the newspaper every week.

She waited for the lights to go on in the TV room at the side of the house she could see, and then she crept up through the trees and crossed to the other side of the house. There were doors and windows everywhere in this place. He’d spared no expense. But at the same time, he’d created about twenty ways into his home.

She’d checked just three doors and two windows before she spotted a slip of curtain flapping lightly in the breeze on the wrong side of the wall. A window was open a couple of inches. She listened for any sounds beyond, then raised the pane as silently as she could. When she was able to fit her body through, she immediately dropped to the floor and stayed still. This was a study of some kind. She’d never been in here. She could only presume that if Sugar ever got his way and kept her forever, eventually she would have been raped in this room, too. But this was the first and last time she was ever going to see it.

Sugar loved carpeting and walked barefoot everywhere in the house – this was an unexpected boon to her now. Barefoot herself and raw from the run, she was grateful for the softness and cool of the carpets. And, of course, they muffled her steps.

She opened the study door a crack and looked into the hallway. She could hear the drone of Duffy’s television, a repeating cycle of intonations with just enough variety that you knew a human was speaking. The house smelled of pizza and her stomach wrenched. She was starving, but her body was craving real food: fresh vegetables, fruits, brown rice, good coffee, chocolate. The smell of fast-food cheese sickened her. In the hallway, she oriented herself to the sound and determined that she could get around the back of the house to the cold storage, and through it, into the back hall and then the TV room.

She moved down the hall toward the back of the house and realized she was going to have to pass Duffy’s guest bedroom. He was strangely fastidious about his own room, and she had never been brought into it. It was the guestroom where she was attacked most frequently, and where he kept most of his paraphernalia. She went past it silently and didn’t look into its open door.

Ten days ago, she’d had no hope at all, and now she was almost a free woman. They’d tried to trick her, or test her loyalty, but she’d been too clever for them. She’d heard that Bochko liked to test the girls, to see if he’d truly broken them. He tempted them. Those who failed weren’t heard from again. Eventually, all of them were never heard from again.

A man had been waiting for her in one of the bedrooms, someone new. Bobby was standing in the doorway behind her, telling the new man to have a nice time. Kitty was still fresh, he said. Talented.