Page 123 of Goodbye Girl

That came as a relief. “When can I talk to her?”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

“Why?”

“She left almost an hour ago.”

Theo sprang from his chair. “What the fuck?”

“It was her choice.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You’re very lucky that sniper missed last night. Can you blame an eighteen-year-old girl for not wanting to hang around and see if the second time’s a charm?”

Theo settled back into his chair. It was like losing a friend without a proper goodbye. But he understood. And he certainly couldn’t blame her.

“What’s going to happen to her?”

“She’s eighteen,” said Coffey. “It’s up to her.”

“Judge threatened to come back to London and kill her if she talked to the police.”

“She made us aware of that threat.”

“Are you protecting her?”

“In my humble opinion, you should be more worried about what’s going to happen to you.”

Theo read between the lines. “Telling you everything she knows about Judge took an incredible amount of courage.”

“I agree,” said Coffey.

“But you’re not going to do a thing to protect her, are you?”

“She’s not even a U.S. citizen. It’s time for you to focus on protecting yourself.”

“I don’t operate that way.”

“Then you have a choice,” she said. “You can stay in London and dodge bullets from a sniper who could be anywhere. Or you can let us drive you back to Heathrow, and you can fly wherever you want to go.”

“And where can I go that they won’t eventually find me?”

No answer.

“Not much of a choice,” said Theo.

“No. Not much of one.”

Theo rose, put on his coat, and did his best impersonation of a character fromDowntonAbbey. “Cheerio, old chap.”

“That’s the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.”

Theo smiled, left the room, and left the embassy. He knew Gigi’s—Kelly’s—cellphone number. He walked around the corner in search of a red booth.

Andie saw the sunrise over Lake Michigan on Sunday.

Rumors of another victim in the Chicago area had proven true. Andie had flown straight from Kingston to O’Hare. She’d spent the rest of the night at the floating crime scene in Monroe Harbor, battling the cold November winds off the lake, the lights of the Chicago skyline glistening in the dark, choppy waters. Andie presumed that, had it been summer, or at least milder autumn weather, someone might have spotted the gibbeted corpse chained to one of the harbor’s nearly four hundred moorings. As was the pattern, it took another anonymous tip for police to discover the body, “thrice washed by the rising tide.” Except this time there was a twist.