Chasing Tomorrow

Jean Rizzo nodded grimly. “Let’s get out of here.”

EIGHT HOURS LATER, TRACY was in her hotel room, packing, when Jean Rizzo knocked on the door.

He’d been at the crime scene all night and was still wearing the same shirt he’d had on at the restaurant. He looked close to tears.

“You need some sleep,” Tracy told him.

“It’s our man, no question.” Jean collapsed into a chair. “The girl’s name was Lori Hansen and she’d been dead at least thirty hours by the time anyone found her. Raped, tortured, strangled. The apartment was immaculate, the corpse too. And that damned Bible . . .”

Tracy put a hand on his shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“Of course there was,” Jean exploded. “I could have stopped him! I could have found him and stopped him in time. It is Daniel Cooper, it has to be. Elizabeth told Buck the guy was always spouting religion at her.”

“I’ll admit, it is starting to look more likely.” Tracy closed her suitcase.

“She also told him Cooper was obsessed with you and Stevens. That he deliberately planned their jobs to copy your methods. It was Cooper who paid Elizabeth to seduce Jeff and break up your marriage.”

Tracy had pulled a picture of Nicholas out of her wallet and was staring at it like it was a talisman, trying to block Rizzo out. Her son represented peace and goodness and sanity. She longed to return to him, to feel his small, strong body in her arms, to smell the clean, soft smell of his cheeks. She did not want to hear about Daniel Cooper anymore, or about Jeff friggin’ Stevens. This morning at breakfast she’d seen a report in the newspaper about a stolen Byzantine coin collection—some Russian girl had been robbed while she was at the Winter Wonderland Ball. Tracy knew it was Jeff who’d been the thief, and the report had made her feel momentarily close to him again, and then angry and then bereft. She had to get out of here, out of this city, away from Jeff and all of the madness that she’d worked so hard, so very hard, to escape.

Jean Rizzo said, “I think Jeff Stevens was dead right. I think Daniel Cooper was in love with you.”

Tracy lifted her case off the bed.

“I think he still is in love with you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Tracy moved toward the door, but Jean put a hand out to stop her.

“No, it’s not. It’s not ridiculous. I knew you were at the heart of this, Tracy. I knew it and I was right. He’s going to come for you, you know. Eventually.”

“I have to go.”

“Go? No. You can’t go,” Jean told her. “You have to stay, now more than ever. We’re so close! Please, stay in New York, at least for a few more days. Cooper may still be in the vicinity.”

“He may also be anywhere else on the planet.”

“Tracy, please. With your help we have a chance of—”

“Jean.” Tracy spoke kindly but firmly. “I’m not staying. Not another day, not another minute. You can threaten to tell Nicholas till you’re blue in the face. Who knows, maybe you’ll even carry out on your threat. But it’s Christmas and I’m going home to my son.” Pushing past him, she opened the door. “You have my number if you need it.”

Jean Rizzo stood and watched her go. He felt bereft, and not just because of the case. With Tracy around, he felt hopeful, energized, empowered. Without her, all the despair and emptiness came rushing back. How the hell had Jeff Stevens let a woman like that slip through his fingers?

“Don’t you have a home to go to?” Tracy stopped at the door. “You have kids, right?”

Jean thought about Luc and Clémence. He realized guiltily that he hadn’t given them a thought in days.

“I’ll call you,” Tracy said.

She was gone.

BLAKE CARTER DRIED THE dishes slowly and carefully. It was the same way he did everything else, the way his father had taught him. Blake’s father had a saying he was fond of. “God made time, but man made haste.” William Carter had been a good man, the best. Blake had often wondered what he would have made of Tracy Schmidt. Would he have understood Blake’s love for her, with her warmth and kindness and beauty, her secrets and sadness and pain? Probably not. William Carter had lived in a world of moral absolutes, of right and wrong, black and white. There was much that Blake didn’t know about his employer, the woman whom he’d loved silently and steadfastly these past ten years. But he did know that the world Tracy had come from before they met her was a world of gray. Nothing was black and white with Tracy. Nothing was what it seemed.

Jean Rizzo had come from that world. Ever since Tracy took Nicholas to L.A. in the summer, Blake had watched the gray world of her past come back to haunt her. But since the day Rizzo had shown up at the door, things had gotten exponentially worse. Blake had watched Tracy grow tense and fearful, jumping every time the telephone rang. She’d returned from her “Christmas shopping trip” to New York looking haggard and thin—and without any purchases. Blake knew he had to say something. He just didn’t know what, or when, or how.

It was nine P.M. on Christmas Day, and Tracy was curled up on the couch in the family room with Nicholas watching The Polar Express for the nine hundred and eighty-eighth time. That’s another paradox about her, Blake reflected. She’s practical and tough but she’s wildly sentimental too. Blake Carter’s own mother had died when he was young. That was probably one of the reasons why he’d never married, and learned to rely only on himself. Tracy’s maternal side exerted a huge pull over Blake. Who am I kidding? Every hair on her head exerts a huge pull. Blake Carter had never been in love before. He was not enjoying the experience.

Tracy caught him staring. “You okay in there?”