So how did she fall into this?

The truth was, there were advantages to starting online. It didn’t matter what you looked like (other than in photographs). Your hair could be messed up, your makeup all wrong, something stuck in your teeth—it didn’t matter. You could relax and not try so hard. You never saw disappointment on your suitor’s face and always assumed he was smiling at what you said and did. If it didn’t work out, you wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him at the grocery store or local strip mall. It gave it enough distance so you could be yourself and let your guard down.

It felt safe.

How serious could it get, after all?

She suppressed a smile. The relationship had heated up—no reason to go into details—and moving into more and more intense areas, until finally, Michael Craig wrote in an IM: Let’s chuck it all and meet!

Martha Paquet remembered sitting at the computer in full blush mode. Oh, how she longed for real contact, for the kind of physical intimacy with a man she had always imagined. She had been lonely and afraid for so long, and now she had met someone—but did she dare take the next step? Martha expressed her reluctance to Michael. She didn’t want to risk losing what they had—but then again, as he himself finally said in his own understanding way, what did they have?

Nothing when you thought about it. Smoke and mirrors. But if they met in person, if the chemistry was anything like it was online . . .

But suppose it wasn’t? Suppose—and this must happen more times than not—suppose it all fizzled away when they finally met face-to-face. Suppose she ended up being, as she expected she would, a complete disappointment.

Martha wanted to postpone. She asked him to be patient. He said he would be, but relationships don’t work like that. Relations can’t remain stagnant. They are either getting better or getting worse. She could feel Michael starting to pull back ever so slowly. He was a man, she knew. He had needs and wants, just as she did.

Then, odd as this may now seem, Martha had visited her sister’s Facebook page and seen the following aphorism posted against a photo of waves crashing on the shore:

“I don’t regret the things I’ve done. I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”

No one was credited with the quote, but it hit Martha right where she lived. She had been right in the first place: An online relationship isn’t real. It could work as an introduction maybe. It could be intense. It could bring pleasure and pain, but you can live in a fake reality only for so long. In the end, it was role-playing.

There seemed little to lose and so much to gain.

So yes, as Martha stood by the door watching the chauffeur make his approach, she was both terrified and excited. There was also another damn quote on Sandi’s wall, something about taking risks and doing one thing every day that scares you. If that was in any way the meaning of life, Martha had managed to never live even a single moment.

She had never been so scared. She had never felt so alive.

Sandi threw her arms around her. Martha hugged her back.

“I love you,” Sandi said.

“I love you too.”

“I want you to have the best time in the whole world, you hear me?”

Martha nodded, afraid that she’d cry. The chauffeur knocked on the door. Martha opened it. He introduced himself as Miles and took her suitcase.

“This way, madame.”

Martha followed him out to the car. Sandi came too. The chauffeur put her suitcase in the trunk and opened the door for her. Sandi hugged her again.

“Call me for anything,” Sandi said.

“I will.”

“If it doesn’t feel right or you want to go home . . .”

“I’ll call you, Sandi. I promise.”

“No, you won’t because you’ll be having too much fun.” There were tears in Sandi’s eyes. “You deserve this. You deserve happiness.”

Martha tried very hard not to cry. “I’ll see you in two days.”

She slipped into the back. The driver closed the door. He got into the front seat and drove her toward her new life.

Chapter 27

Chaz drove a Ferrari 458 Italia in a color he insisted on calling fly yellow.

Kat frowned. “Label me unsurprised.”

“I call it the Chick Trawler,” Chaz told her, handing her a Superman key chain.

“A better name might be the Overcompensation.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

Three hours later, when the female GPS voice said, “You have arrived at your destination,” Kat was sure it was some kind of mistake.

She double-checked the address. This was the place—909 Trumbull Road. Northampton, Massachusetts. Home, according to both the web and online yellow pages, of Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell Investments and Securities.

Kat parked on the street between a Subway and a beauty salon called Pam’s Kickin’ Kuts. She had expected the office to be something akin to Lock-Horne Investments and Securities, albeit on a small-town scale, but this place looked more like a weathered Victorian B&B, what with the salmon-pink door and the browning ivy climbing a white lattice.

An old lady in a housedress rocked on the lemonade porch. Her legs had varicose veins that could have doubled as garden hoses.

“Help you?” she said.

“I’m here to see Mr. Chuback.”

“He died fourteen years ago.”

Kat wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Asghar Chuback?”

“Oh, right, Chewie. You say mister, I think of his dad, you know what I mean? To me, he’s just my Chewie.” She had to rock the chair a bit to make her way to a standing position. “Follow me.”

A fleeting wish that she had brought Chaz with her as backup whisked through her. The old lady brought her inside and opened the basement door. Kat didn’t reach for her gun, but she was very aware of where it was and rehearsed in her head, as she often did, how she’d pull it out.

“Chewie?”

“What, Ma? I’m busy down here.”

“Someone here to see you.”

“Who?”

The old lady looked at Kat. Kat shouted, “Detective Donovan, NYPD.”

A big mountain of a man lumbered over to the bottom of the basement stairs. His receding hair was pulled back into a tiny ponytail. His face was wide and sweaty. He wore baggy cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read TWERK TEAM CAPTAIN.

“Oh, right. Come on down.”

The old lady said, “Would you care for an Orangina?”