Chapter Thirty-Five

Thirty-Five

Elspeth went with Spike to his restaurant, where she'd stay under his watch and, as he put it, "eat some of the best lobster mac and cheese in Boston," until closing time. From there, she'd go to his place, mine, Spike's boyfriend, Flynn Tipton's, or Elspeth's mom's in Newton (in which case Elspeth would probably have to let her in on exactly what was going on). We weren't sure which home would be safest, so we all decided to play that one by ear. I agreed not to tell the cops—Dylan was already on their radar because of Sky's account of her shooting, so this new information wasn't vital. Not now. But if we or the police couldn't find him within the next twenty-four hours, I warned, I was ready to go back on my word. The police could work with Elspeth's phone company to trace that blocked call. Even if it turned out to be some discarded burner phone, I told them, it was worth a shot.

After the two of them left my office, Sky texted me her address with instructions on where I'd find her sneakers and sweats, telling me she was going to be discharged soon. I thumbs-up'd the text but sent no reply beyond that. I didn't want to ask her about the reporter again. At this point, I wasn't even sure if she was lying about the interview—or what the significance was, if that was indeed the case. What if she had, in fact, been communicating with Dylan rather than a reporter? And due to either her faulty memory or her simply wanting to keep that a secret, she'd chosen to tell me otherwise. It didn't change the fact that moments later, Dylan had nearly killed her.

The only option, it seemed, was to wait on it, see what else Sky remembered about that vague period before she was shot. As my dad once told me, The truth is like a splinter. It has a way of working itself out, in time.

I sighed heavily. My dad, the ever-patient and dogged Phil Randall, had apparently never heard of tweezers.

—

Just in case anyone needed further proof that my beloved town was too small for its own good, Sky's apartment was in the exact same Back Bay high-rise that Blake used to live in, when he was a macro-influencer and I was hired by his then manager, Bethany Rose, to protect him from a stalker.

Walking toward the security station, I was practically woozy from déjà vu. Save for the massive Christmas tree with its bulbous gold and silver ornaments, the lobby looked the same—like Donald Judd had spent some time renovating a jet hangar and then threw in a boatload of mirrors at the last minute to appease the building's appearance-obsessed tenants.

The new doorman/security guard was named Roger. While he was suitably large and terrifying in appearance, Roger's personality was a lot more pleasant than that of his predecessor, Eddie Voltaire. You might even say he was respectful. When I let him know I was a friend of Sky's, Roger said, "Oh, you must be Sunny," and shook my hand. He told me Sky's apartment number and that he knew I'd be coming, as Sky had called in advance. "It's just awful, what happened to her," Roger said. "Heavens to Betsy. You can't be safe anywhere these days."

He was the first person I'd ever met under the age of eighty to say "heavens to Betsy," and I had to say, I found it impressive.

I shook my head. "It's a dangerous world."

"Ain't it the truth, sister," Roger said.

Another bonus: During this entire hospitable exchange, Roger didn't once use his height advantage to sneak a peek down my blouse. It was a distinct improvement from what I'd come to expect from security at this place. And I was here for it. As he rode the elevator with me, he praised Sky for her friendliness, her generosity around the holidays, and how, unlike so many of her neighbors, "Sky Farley has never, not once, thrown one of those noisy GD parties."

It wasn't until he was walking me to Sky's apartment that I realized "GD" wasn't some sort of drug or sexual activity I was too uncool to know about—it was just Roger's G-rated way of saying "goddamn."

Sky's place was on the eleventh floor—one floor down from Blake's old digs. At Mass General, Sky had mentioned she'd lived here for nearly two years—which meant she was a resident six months ago, when the building became a crime scene. I tried to remember if I'd seen Sky back then—she easily could have been one of the terrified young tenants clustered in the lobby, whispering to one another, asking the uniforms when it would be safe to return to their homes.

And now Sky was a crime victim herself, the perp her best friend. Dangerous world, indeed.

As Roger unlocked Sky's apartment for me, I kept thinking about what Lydia had said back at the hospital: At least we know Dylan's close by. As poignant as I found it at the time, the statement was, more important, true.

Even if, as I'd speculated, Dylan did have an accomplice who had been able to steal Elspeth's phone at the Loews party and was somehow slipping him cash and food, there were the stalker pics, taken outside Elspeth's apartment and mine, there was Sky's admission that Dylan had been the one to shoot her this morning—and the audio message he'd sent Elspeth, in which he basically confessed to killing Trevor Weiss.

If Dylan had done any single one of those things, then he was close by. Yet the police couldn't find him. I couldn't find him. Not even the Mob could find him. He hadn't been caught on surveillance cameras. No one in the Winthrop Center had seen him take an elevator to one of the top floors. No one had spotted him entering or leaving the Gonzo manufacturing plant, before or after Trevor's murder.

No one had witnessed Dylan anywhere, doing anything, in two weeks.

It was baffling to me. When I last saw Dylan, he hadn't even been able to figure out how to pull the trigger on his own gun while remaining upright. And yet somehow, within the past six months, he'd transformed into "the Fugitive."

Once Roger left, I looked around Sky's apartment, which was yet another surprise. Judging from her personality and appearance, I'd have expected her home to be sweet and welcoming—maybe even a little messy. But this lair—and I would have absolutely called it a lair —was none of those things. At first glance, it seemed similar to her office, in that it was a minimalist space built around a stunning view. But somehow it wasn't quite as tasteful or warm as Sky's office, or even Blake's old place—which wasn't saying much at all. Hell's waiting room. That was one way to describe it—spotless and sterile and slightly torturous, with an intimidating vibe and a rigidly enforced color scheme.

Against the wall on the left, there was a white leather couch I was terrified of going anywhere near for fear of staining it, set alongside a red enamel coffee table with matching chairs that looked incredibly uncomfortable. Parked close to the floor-to-ceiling window was a white enamel dining room set, a gleaming chrome bowl at the center filled with fake red roses, and beyond that stood a small open-air kitchen, all in white, save the red knobs on the cupboards, the scarlet stovetop, and the crimson fridge, which sported silver handles. On the living room walls hung a smallish wide-screen TV betwixt a series of rather generic-looking abstract paintings—all of them in (you guessed it!) white and red. And don't even get me started on the red-and-white polka-dot curtains.

Gonzo colors.

Except for the view, I found it all pretty vomitrocious. And it hit me that, serious and brilliant as she clearly was, it most likely was Sky who had chosen Gonzo's corporate office décor.

People are complicated. And they keep proving it again and again and again.

I moved from the living and dining room area into the bedroom, which was much easier on the eyes, if plastered in pastel. For Sky's sake, I hoped she spent most of her time here, and when I saw the desk in the corner—which housed a computer that made the one in her office look antiquated—it was clear she did.

I noticed two framed pictures on the desk—one that looked to be taken in the nineties, of a pregnant woman in a sundress with a smile identical to Sky's. Obviously, this was her late mother.

The other framed picture was the same Gonzo staff photo that I'd seen on Dylan's phone. I picked it up and gave it a closer look. The happy group picnicking in the Common, toasting the camera with their then-brand-new product. Besides Sky and Dylan, I now recognized Elspeth, Kaitlyn and Henry from Marketing, Maurice Dupree, and even Martin Jennings, the dour CFO.

It was always interesting to me—which pictures people chose to go that extra mile for, framing and displaying them in their offices and homes. In Sky's case, her most cherished images were of a mother she'd barely known, and her work friends. It was a little sad.

I gazed at Dylan. He looked so different in the staff pic. Healthy and happy, with Sky to his right, Elspeth to his left, all of them relaxed, Dylan's blond curls gleaming in the sun. It made me think: Maybe it wasn't these people that Sky cherished. Maybe it was the day—that long-ago springlike day in the Common, when Dylan appeared to be sober and everyone was in good spirits, Maurice's arm around Sky, Sky's arm around Dylan. A photo taken before Rhonda's daughter had died, back when Gonzo was a brand-new start-up and no one could imagine a metal detector in the corporate offices or a young chemist found dead on the factory floor, when these disparate people shared the same silly dream and the only thing anyone was guilty of was being overly optimistic about that dream's chances at becoming real.

I put the photo down. I was giving Sky's life way too much thought. She wasn't the one I was looking for, after all. It was Dylan. Where was Dylan? Would I be able to find him before he destroyed more lives?