Page 72 of Secret Weapon

“Indeed.Strange how the world works, isn’t it?”

“You think she stayed local?”

“I have no idea where she might be.”

“Tell me about the last time you spoke to her.”

“I was leaving my lawyer’s office in New York, and there she was on the sidewalk.And she looked so much like her mother that I just stared, and she must have felt my gaze on her because she turned her head, and then she recognised me.And she smiled.So I invited her to join me for lunch, then regretted it because I didn’t need that reminder of the past.”Nico kept his eyes focused on the window, but I could see him reflected in the glass.He looked anything but happy.“I went to a therapist once—just once—and she told me I wasn’t responsible for the sins of my father.But she wasn’t there, in Russia, and I was.I did things I’m not proud of, but I can’t change the past.”

“Only the future.”

“The future… Kaylin had become a model, following in her mother’s footsteps.She showed me her portfolio—all small stuff, but she seemed happy with the way things were going.Said she’d get her big break soon.I should have hired her, used her in an ad campaign or had her do some promo shots, but the guilt was eating away at me, so I paid the check and wished her well.And then I waved goodbye.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Five years, give or take.”

So the trail was nice and cold now.Fantastic.

“That was the last contact you had, and then you heard she’d got into a spot of legal trouble?”

“It was the last time I spoke to her, but it wasn’t the last time she spoke to me.”

“You’ll have to elaborate.”

“Before she left the restaurant in New York, I handed her my card.Said if she ever needed anything, she should give me a call.”Finally, he turned to face me.“That was the guilt talking again.In truth, I never expected to hear from her.It was the sort of comment you make to a barfly on vacation—call me if you’re in town, we’ll hook up.You know?”He studied me.“Or perhaps you don’t.”

“I’ve never been one for bars or hook-ups.When did you hear from her?”

“A little over three years ago.She left me a message, but I was travelling at the time, and I didn’t pick it up for twenty-four hours.When I got there, I found that I was too late.”

“Got where?Too late for what?What did the message say?”

“That she’d run into trouble, and she didn’t know who else to turn to.She sounded, well…terrified.She asked me to meet her in a hotel in Manassas, but by the time I’d chartered a jet and flown there, she’d gone, and the place was festooned in crime-scene tape.”

“Who died?”

“An off-duty cop.They say she ran him over and left him for dead, but Kaylin wasn’t a killer.Not the girl I knew.She was the only ray of sunshine in a house of darkness.When her mother was entertaining Papa, Kaylin was left to her own devices, and she’d follow me around, telling me stories and showing me drawings, and of course I acted annoyed, but she was always so cheerful about the small things that it was hard to keep up the pretence.”

“People change as they get older.”

“She didn’t.The Kaylin I met in New York was still an eternal optimist.”

“What’s her last name?”

“La Rocca.Kaylin Marie La Rocca.”

The case rang a bell.I’d seen the story on the news.An off-duty cop had left a family dinner to walk home one night, and his colleagues stumbled over him in the gutter the next morning with a tyre track across his chest.

“They found the car that hit him, didn’t they?And it was registered to her?”

“So they say.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I don’t believe the story the police told, no.”

“So what do you think happened?”

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