Whatever the outcome, whether in his favor or not, it hadn’t come cheaply. He had achieved worldwide acclaim, yet no one knew his name. He had sacrificed fame in exchange for anonymity. He had money but nothing to spend it on. He owned a beautiful house, but it wasn’t a home. He shared the empty rooms with only a hanging man’s ghost. His need for vengeance had cost him his one true friend. Ultimately it had cost him Maris.
He missed her with a physical ache. If he were a woman or a child, he would cry himself to sleep each night. He moved through the house touching things he had seen her touch, inhaling deeply in the hope of catching a whiff of her fragrance. He was pathetic, as daffy as Professor Hadley’s jilted aunt who lived in the attic with only bittersweet memories and her fear of fresh fruit.
Maris had been essential to his plot, but he hadn’t expected her to become essential to him. In the brief time she had been in his life, she had become the most important element of it.
Second most important, he corrected.
If she were the most important, he would leave Noah to the devil as Mike had advised and spend the rest of his life loving her and letting himself be loved. At night when he couldn’t sleep, he’d get downright sappy. He envisioned them on the beach, tossing a stick to a golden retriever and supervising a couple of sturdy, laughing kids building a sand castle. A greeting-card tableau. A Kodak commercial.
Too often for his mental health, he relived making love to her. God, it had been sweet. But perhaps the sweetest part had been holding her. Just that. Holding her close. Feeling her heartbeat beneath his hand, her breath against his skin. Allowing himself to forget for a few moments that he had only this one night with her and that, come morning, he would hurt her terribly and irreparably.
Maris was the one plot element that might have caused him to change his outline and end the thing differently.
But he couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. Because the revenge he sought wasn’t only for himself. It was for Mary Catherine. He might not deserve restitution, but Sheila damn sure did. By most moral measuring sticks, she would come up short. But he knew better. That spectacular body had been home to a kind and generous spirit. In many respects, she was innocent.
And Noah had killed her.
As surely as he had killed Daniel Matherly.
Parker hoped that Maris and the authorities were thoroughly investigating Matherly’s death, because Noah’s account of it smelled to high heaven. It stank of Noah. It was doubtful they’d find anything that implicated him. He would make certain they didn’t. He would have made the old man’s death look like a tragic accident, and his explanation for how it had come about would be perfectly plausible. He was gifted that way.
Overt aggression wasn’t his style. He was smarter and more subtle than that. Oh, he could hold his own in a fistfight. Parker still had the scar above his eyebrow to prove it. But Noah’s real power wasn’t physical. It was cerebral. His strength was his cunning. He maneuvered insidiously. You didn’t see him coming until it was too late. Which made him the most dangerous kind of animal on the planet.
But he had a major flaw: his intolerance for anyone getting the best of him.
When Noah read the Envy manuscript, he would come south on the next flight. He’d be unable to resist. The book would be a red flag waved in his face, and it simply wasn’t in Noah Reed to ignore it.
During these intervening years, if Noah thought of Parker at all, he had probably imagined him as he’d last seen him—a vanquished enemy, a threat he had eliminated.
If for no other reason, he would come to St. Anne out of curiosity. He’d come to see how old Parker had fared. He would come to see for himself what his wife had found so interesting about his former roommate.
Noah would come.
And when he got here, Parker would be waiting.
* * *
Eight o’clock classes were just about to convene when Maris parked her rental car in a lot reserved for campus visitors. It was the summer session, so there weren’t as many students rushing into the classroom buildings as there would be when the fall semester began after Labor Day.
Although she had never been here before, she didn’t need to be oriented or to ask for directions. The university campus wasn’t similar to the one described in Envy. It was the one described in Envy.
And it was a long way from the police station in rural Massachusetts where she had been less than twenty-four hours ago.
With Noah’s words replaying inside her head, his death was convenient, she’d driven back to New York with a sense of urgency. Using her cell phone, she had reserved her airline ticket to Nashville as she sped down the parkway, breaking every speed limit between Chief Randall’s police department and the Matherly Press offices in Midtown Manhattan.
She had planned to be in the office only long enough to consult briefly with her assistant and check her mail, before returning to Daniel’s house to pack, then to dash to the airport in time for the late evening flight.
It didn’t quite go according to plan.
Her appearance in the office had galvanized her assistant. “Thank God you’re here. I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell.”
“My battery ran out about an hour ago.”
“Don’t move.” The secretary placed a call. “Tell Mr. Stern she just came in.” She depressed the hold button. “He told me it was mandatory that he speak with you today, Maris.”
“Concerning what? Did he say?”
“No, but he’s been calling since early morning. He assumed you’d be coming in.”