CHAPTER 35

The street address that had been scrawled on the hospital’s notepaper didn’t lead him to another of the so‑ called safe houses that Molly had described. When Noah looked up as the cab pulled to a stop he found he was outside what looked like a quaint family‑ style eatery, the Buccaneer Diner on Astoria Boulevard in Queens, about a mile from La Guardia Airport.

Inside the restaurant the lunchtime rush was winding down, with most of the tables emptying out and the floor staff busy doing cleanup and taking care of departing patrons at the register. But sitting alone in a booth near the back, in the nearest thing to a dark corner that was available in such a place on a sunny Monday afternoon, was the young woman he’d come to see.

When Molly looked over and saw him walking up the aisle she stood and was suddenly overcome by a flood of tears she must have been barely holding at bay. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms.

In the cab on the way he’d given a great deal of thought to what he might say to her if he actually found her waiting at the end of the ride. Now that he was facing her all of the mental dialogue he’d rehearsed had winked right out of his mind. Nothing in his long history of skin‑ deep relationships provided any clue as to where to begin.

Not only did you break my heart, but you and your friends could have killed me with an overdose, all in the name of a hopeless cause.

I care about you, I was starting to believe in you, and now I don’t know if a single thing between us was real.

And of course, there was this one:

I think my father must have ordered your mother to be murdered, just as easily as he’d ordered his breakfast that morning.

There was too much, so Noah said nothing. Neither forgiving nor forgetting, he put it all aside for the time being and just held her for a while.

She’d asked about her mom in a voice that said his answer should be limited to any hopeful news. Noah told her that her mother was awake and speaking when he’d seen her, and that, despite her concerns for the welfare of her precious daughter, her spirits seemed good.

Molly took that in with a solemn nod, and then she laid out her situation.

Her traveling companions had gone on ahead to test the waters at La Guardia in preparation for their flight west toward less hostile environs. According to the news the DHS had taken the nation to high alert over the weekend, and that put the airports at the very highest level; this was obviously cause for concern. Sure enough, word had reached her that the first of her friends to pass through the TSA checkpoint had been singled out and pulled aside. They weren’t just searched and harassed, as had often been the case in recent years; this time they were arrested and detained.

Molly explained that she had to get out of town and make it to a rendezvous across the country as quickly as possible. Driving wouldn’t do; she had to fly in order to make it. The problem was how to get her safely onto a flight when her name might very well have made it to the top of the swelling watch lists of Homeland Security by now.

Noah was listening, and he was also studying her face as she spoke. The passing resemblance to that picture of his mother was almost gone now that she’d ceased to maintain it. That likeness had been subliminal at best, just enough to hook into his subconscious. But now, as they sat under the bright fluorescent lights of a Queens diner, he realized that there was absolutely no denying who Molly did look like.

And that gave him an absolutely brilliant idea.

⇐ Предыдущая 32 33 34 35 363738 39 40 41 Следующая ⇒