“Wonderful. So, pray tell, what are Crisp and your brother up to?”

“Truth? I don’t know. But it might explain where a lot of Herman’s money came from. When the RICO guys came crashing down, they froze all our assets. Herman had a cash cow somewhere paying for the lawyer and, hell, for Crisp. It could have been Gabriel Wire, why not?”

“Could you ask?”

“Ask Herman?” Frank shook his head. “He don’t visit much.”

“Ah, how sad. You two used to be so close.”

That was when Win felt his cell phone double-vibrate. The double-vibrate was a specific setting for emergencies only. He took out the cell phone, read the text, and closed his eyes.

Frank Ache looked at him. “Bad news.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have to go?”

Win rose. “Yes.”

“Hey, Win? Come back, okay? It’s good to talk like this.”

But they both know that he wouldn’t. Pathetic. Twenty-three hours in a cell alone. You shouldn’t do that to a man, Win thought, even the worst. You should take him out in the back, put a gun behind his head, and fire two bullets into his skull. Before you pulled the trigger, the man, even one as broken as Frank, would beg for his life. That was how it worked. The survival instinct always kicked in—men, all men, begged for their lives when faced with death. Still, putting down the animal was cost-effective, wiser, and in the end, more humane.

Win nodded to the guard and hurried back toward his plane.

16

Myron watched Kitty walk tentatively through the mall, afraid the ground might give way. Her face was pale. Her once-defining freckles had faded away, but not in a healthy way. She kept cringing and blinking, as though someone had raised a hand and she was bracing for the strike.

For a moment, Myron just stood there, the tinny mall acoustics roaring in his ears, flashing back to those early tennis days, when Kitty was so confident, so sure of herself, you just knew that she was destined for greatness. Myron remembered taking Suzze and Kitty to a mall like this one when they had downtime before a tournament in Albany. The two budding tennis greats strolled the mall like, well, two teenage girls, dropping the adult pretenses for a while, using “like” and “you know” in every sentence, talking too loudly, laughing about the dumbest things, just as two teenage girls should.

Would it be too hackneyed to wonder where it all went so wrong?

Kitty’s eyes darted left and right. Her right leg started to shake. Myron needed to make a decision. Should he make a gradual approach? Should he just wait and follow her back to her car? Should he try direct confrontation or something subtler?

When her back was turned, Myron started walking toward her. He hurried his step, afraid she’d turn, see him, and bolt. He angled himself to block any such quick getaway, heading toward a corner between Macy’s and Wetzel’s Pretzels. He was two steps from Kitty when he felt his BlackBerry vibrate. As though sensing his approach, Kitty began to turn toward him.

“Good to see you again, Kitty.”

“Myron?” She recoiled as though slapped. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What . . . how did you find me?”

“Where’s Brad?”

“Wait, how did you know I’d be here? I don’t understand.”

He spoke quickly, wanting to get past this. “I found Crush. I told him to call you and set this up. Where’s Brad?”

“I have to go.” Kitty started past him. Myron stepped in her way. She moved to her right. Myron grabbed her arm.

“Let go of me.”

“Where is my brother?”

“Why do you want to know?”

The question made him pull up. He was unsure how to answer. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? He’s my brother.”

“And he’s my husband,” she said, suddenly standing her ground. “What do you want with him?”

“I told you. I just want to talk to him.”

“What, so you can make up more stuff about me?”

“Me make stuff up? You’re the one who said I—” Unproductive. He made himself stop. “Look, I’m sorry about everything. Whatever I said or did. I want to put it in the past. I want to make amends.”

Kitty shook her head. Behind her, the merry-go-round started up again. There were maybe twenty children on board. Some parents joined them. They stood by the horse, making sure that the offspring were secure. Most watched from the sidelines, their heads moving in small circles so they could watch their child and only theirs. Each time the child circled around, the parent’s face would light up anew.

“Please,” Myron said.

“Brad doesn’t want to see you.”

Her tone was that of a petulant teenager, but the words still stung. “He said that?”

She nodded. He tried to meet her eye, but her gaze was everywhere but on him. Myron had to take a step back and put his emotions on hold. Forget the past. Forget the history. Try to connect.

“I wish I could take it back,” Myron said. “You have no idea how much I regret what happened.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. I have to go.”

Connect, he thought. You have to connect. “Do you ever think about regrets, Kitty? I mean, do you ever wish you could go back and do one little thing differently and then everything, your whole world, would be something else? Like if I made a right turn instead of a left at a stoplight. If you hadn’t picked up that tennis racket when you were, what, three years old? If I didn’t hurt my knee and then I wouldn’t have been an agent and then you would have never met Brad? You ever wonder about stuff like that?”

It may have been a ploy or line on his part, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. He felt drained now. For a moment they both just stood there, their world gone quiet while the mall rush raged about them.

When Kitty finally spoke, her voice was soft. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Everyone has regrets,” she said, looking off. “But you don’t want to go back. If I made a right instead of a left or if I never picked up a racket, well, I wouldn’t have met Brad. And we would have never had Mickey.” At the mention of her son, her eyes welled up. “Whatever else happened, I could never go back and risk that. If I changed one thing—even if I got an A in sixth-grade math instead of a B—maybe that chain reaction would have changed one sperm or one egg and then there would be no Mickey. Do you see?”