girl behind the counter nodded. “That’s Emily Geller.”
“What?”
“Emily Geller,” the girl said. “She’s one of our best players. She moved here from back east.”
Kate’s blood surged in shock and exultation.
Geller. The name went through Kate’s mind, as she told the taxi to come to a stop a way down the block from the white clapboard house that backed onto the lake, off Juanita Drive in Kirkland.
Nice house, Kate thought. Even in the dark, there was something about it she liked immediately. It could be anybody’s house. The family next door. Just knowing that her mom and Em and Justin were inside made her smile. Geller.
“This where we’re going, miss?”
She thought back to the day they all saw their house in Larchmont for the first time. Mom just stood in the giant vestibule, eyes wide. “It’s so big.” Dad took her to the windows overlooking the Sound, beaming proudly. “We’ll fill it, Sharon.” Em came back in and grabbed Kate’s hand. “You’re not going to believe this”—her eyes excited—“it even comes with a turret.”
“We’ll fill it, Sharon.” Then we’ll leave it all behind.
“You want me to pull in?” the turbaned taxi driver turned around and asked.
“No,” Kate said, unsure what to do, “just pull over here.”
The taxi drew up to the curb in front of a modern cedar-and-glass house under tall evergreens, two houses down. Kate was nervous. She spotted some cars on the street. She knew there were probably WITSEC marshals all around, that they were probably alerted to her, too, and that if they found her, she’d be in cuffs in thirty seconds flat.
But the fact that her family was this close, just beyond her reach, made her know she couldn’t pull back now. She hadn’t seen them in over a year. Suddenly Kate wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t know if there were agents inside. If their phones were bugged. Maybe she should wait for them at the squash club? Maybe she should turn around and do this another day?
“What do you want to do, miss?” the driver asked, pointing toward the meter now.
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure.”
Finally she took out her cell phone. Her fingers were trembling a little, sweaty, and she felt like she was back in her shell, grabbing hold of the oars at the start of an important race. Nervously, she punched in the number the girl had given her at the squash club. It started ringing. Her stomach was knotted. Any second she expected voices to start shouting and lights to go on.
It was Emily who picked up. “Hullo.”
Kate could barely contain herself. “I was just wondering what you might say to an all-expense-paid dream date with Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind?”
There was a pause. “Kate?”
“Yeah, Em …” Kate felt her eyes well up. “It is. It’s me, baby.…”
Suddenly she heard Emily break out screaming, “It’s Kate! It’s Kate!” It was like she was tearing up the stairs through the house. “Mom, Just, Kate’s on the phone! How did you find this number? I can’t believe you’re calling here! What are you, totally crazy?”
Kate laughed, giddy. “I don’t know.… Maybe I am.”
She heard voices in the background. Her mother and Justin surrounding the phone. Em didn’t want to give it up. “God, it’s been so long.… There’s so much I have to tell you, Kate. Where are you?” Emily asked.
Kate stared at the house. For a second she had to dig deeply to find her voice.
“I’m right outside.”
Kate told the cabbie to turn off his lights and wait, which, assuming he was no more than an unwitting player in some tearful family reunion, he grudgingly agreed to do.
Then, couched in darkness, she ducked down a pathway her mother told her about that ran past the cedar-and-glass house. It was a local lane down to the lake, with a short pier at the end.
Kate realized she couldn’t exactly ring the bell at the front door and let them all leap into her arms the way she’d always pictured. Not with these WITSEC watchdogs creeping around. For all she knew, there was some kind of manhunt going on. And at this point she wasn’t quite sure if they were there to protect her family from a hit or if they were waiting for her father or her to appear. Anyway, these guys were about the last people she was inclined to trust right now.
She wasn’t turning back.
A white picket fence led along the property, separating the two lots with a line of dense hedges and pines. Lights were visible from inside the neighboring house. Kate could see a woman in the kitchen wearing a striped, Adidas-style warm-up top, feeding two young kids at the island.
All of a sudden, Kate felt movement on the other side of the fence.
Footsteps crunching on the gravel driveway. The unexpected sound of a car door opening, and a light flashing on. Kate’s heart came to a dead stop. She crouched as low as she could beneath the hedge line.
Her family’s house had one of those freestanding garages, set back from the house. There was a car there, and someone stepping out of it. She heard the crackle of a radio above her, only a few feet away. “Kim here … I’m just going around to check out the front.”
Kate stiffened.
She pressed herself deeper against the hedges, clinging to a branch for support. Until the branch began to give way.
Kate held there, motionless. For a second she was sure she was about to keel over. I might as well sound a goddamned alarm. She sucked in her breath as tightly as she could, trying to work through how she would explain herself with the lights on and the guns drawn if she was caught sneaking around someone’s property.
After a while she heard the sound of the radio again, the footsteps receding up the drive. “Kim, again, I’m coming back to the house.…”
Kate’s whole body seemed to exhale in a spasm of relief. At the sound of the screen door closing, she started to scurry in a tight tuck toward the backyard. She found a gate and quietly unlatched it. The yard was large. She could make out a pool and a trampoline. Even a half-pipe for in-line skates. A goddamn amusement park. The picket fence continued along to the lake.
Now the coast was clear. Kate scurried low along the fence to the end where the property sloped down to the lake. She squeezed through an opening in the brush and was able to yank aside a wire mesh backing on the fence and pull herself through.
