Page 61 of The Summer Guests

“By paying him off?”

“It’s worth it.” He paused. “Although I still think it’d be easier to kill him. Who’s going to miss him? The world would be a better place with him dead.”

“I’m going to pretend I never heard you say that.”

“And will you bring the shovel?”

They looked at each other, and suddenly both of them laughed. Yes, this was the Luther she knew, the man who’d once saved her life on a snowy field. The man with whom her secrets were safe, just as his were safe with her.

“I don’t need to bring a shovel,” she said. “I have a better idea.”

Chapter 30

Jesse Bass lived on Lewiston’s Oxford Street, in an apartment building that was over a hundred years old and looked every bit its age. The white paint was peeling, the wooden balconies sagged, and the units probably featured threadbare carpets and rust-stained toilets. It was just the sort of place a man like Bass would end up in.

It had not taken long for Maggie and her friends to compile an extensive dossier on Bass. They knew he was a thirty-eight-year-old white male with light-brown hair and blue eyes, five foot ten and 160 pounds. At least, that’s how much he weighed when he was released from the MCI-Concord prison two years ago. For such a young man, he had already racked up a rap sheet that included criminal possession and trafficking of class B drugs, battery, burglary, and illegal firearms possession. Those charges had resulted in several stints in prison, which should have inspired him to consider one or more legitimate occupations. But no, Jesse Bass had not been reformed by the justice system; instead, he’d simply moved on to blackmail.

From their parked car across the street from Bass’s apartment building, Declan and Maggie monitored the front entrance, waiting for their subject to emerge. On Maggie’s lap was a mug shot of Bass, and it unsettled her to see the resemblance to Callie, who had inherited her father’s narrow jaw and high forehead and pronounced widow’s peak. While Callie bore the physical evidence of their shared genetics, Maggie did not see the sweetness, the kindness, of the girl she’d come to careabout in Bass’s cold-eyed stare. This man could poison the girl’s life, and like Luther, Maggie didn’t want Jesse Bass anywhere near Callie, who deserved a few more years of innocence. She was too young to learn about her father and how he’d contributed to the death of her mother. In time, perhaps, she’d be able to handle it, but not now. Not if Maggie could help it. Which was why she was now sitting in a car on a sweltering afternoon, watching a ramshackle apartment building.

“There. That’s him,” said Declan.

Jesse Bass had just stepped out of the building. He was dressed in a gray T-shirt and sagging blue jeans, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. He paused outside on the sidewalk, squinted up at the glaring sun, and slipped on dark glasses.

Maggie pulled on her headset microphone and said: “Ben, our boy just stepped out of the building. He’s now moving north, on Oxford Street. Heading straight toward you.”

Bass sauntered away from them, clearly in no hurry, walking down the center of the sidewalk as if he owned it. A woman in a hijab, pushing a toddler in a stroller, approached from the other direction, but Bass just kept hogging the sidewalk, forcing the woman to move aside.

Through the earpiece, Maggie heard Ben say: “I see him. On him now.”

With Bass out of the building, it was time for Maggie to move. She donned a ball cap, pulled the brim low over her forehead, and reached for the red DoorDash delivery bag.

“I’m not sure about this,” said Declan.

“We all agreed it has to be me.”

“Ididn’t agree. Let me go in.”

“They’d remember someone likeyou. But me, they won’t even notice. It’s my superpower, Declan.”

She stepped out of the air-conditioned car, into heat so thick it felt like she was wading through molasses. She slung the delivery bag over her shoulder and gave her shirt a tug, to make sure it covered the Walther that was tucked into her waistband. She hadn’t planned tocarry a weapon, but Declan had insisted. A gun sometimes complicated things. It could set off metal detectors, alarmed anyone who spotted it, and made you memorable when you were trying to fade into the woodwork. It also made you overconfident, and that might be the most dangerous complication of all.

She felt Declan’s gaze on her as she walked to the front door. She had several strategies to breach the entrance, from randomly pressing the door buzzers to waving her DoorDash bag at any tenant who was exiting or entering the building. They’d look at her and no doubt assume she was just a clueless granny hard up for cash, earning a few bucks toward her retirement. None of these strategies turned out to be necessary, because the door was conveniently propped open with a rock.

So much for security.

There was no one in the lobby to ask her questions, no one to witness her clueless-granny act. It was almost a letdown, how easy this was. She kept her head dipped, to avoid having her face recorded by any surveillance camera, but judging by theOut of Servicesign on the elevator, any cameras she did encounter would probably be out of service as well.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor.

On this suffocatingly hot day, many of the tenants had propped open their doors, hoping for a cross breeze to cool their stifling apartments, and the sounds of private lives spilled into the hallway: whining children and blaring televisions and running water. She arrived at Apartment 3F. Glanced up and down the hallway. No one was in sight.

The door was cheaply constructed, probably flimsy enough to give way with a few hard kicks, but the lock was surprisingly sturdy. It took her a full minute to pick it open. Either she was losing her touch, or Jesse Bass had invested in a far more expensive lock than his neighbors had. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

“I’m in,” she said into her headset. Both Ben and Declan were listening in on the channel. “Where’s our boy now?”

Ben answered, “He’s in a park by the river. It’s about a half mile from you.”

“Doing what?”

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