"I"m not even going to get my shower, am I?" I asked.
"Not quite yet," she said, looking over her shoulder. She was checking out the traffic heading in the other direction.
"Okay, lay it on me. Where are you taking us?"
"Manhattan," she answered. "We need to get off at the next exit and turn around."
I glanced over at Sarah, smiling at the way her hunch-whatever it might be-was like a shot of pure adrenaline. Not just to her, but to the both of us.
I grabbed the wheel at twelve o"clock, then spun it like a top as we jumped the median into the southbound lanes. Then I straightened out the wheel and hit the gas like I was stomping out a fire.
"So where in Manhattan would you like to go?" I asked calmly.
Chapter 81
WITH BARELY ONE foot in the door, you couldn"t just hear the hum of the New York Times building. You could feel it.
Sarah and I walked quickly through the cavernous lobby, looking at the hundreds of small screens hanging from wires that were showcasing snippets of the news, the type flipping and scrolling in a seemingly synchronized dance.
After stepping off the elevator on the twenty-second floor, Sarah gave her name to a fresh-faced young woman wearing tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses and a white cardigan. It was a pretty safe bet that she was the only receptionist in Manhattan who was reading Proust behind her desk.
"Ms. LaSalle is expecting you," she said. "One moment."
She buzzed the editor"s office, and within seconds we were following another fresh-faced young woman through a busy hallway, its walls lined with photographs of some of the paper"s more than one hundred Pulitzer Prize winners.
"By the way, I"m Ms. LaSalle"s personal a.s.sistant," she announced over her shoulder.
The tone was confident, but it was also a false front. Her walking-on-eggsh.e.l.ls body language as we approached the corner office left little doubt that she was thoroughly intimidated by her boss.
It was easy to see why.
Emily LaSalle, editor of the New York Times wedding section and doyenne of Manhattan high society, was an unsettling one-two punch of prim and proper. Her hair, her makeup, her outfit-complete with a double strand of white pearls-seemed composed. In control.
That is, she seemed in control right up until her personal a.s.sistant closed the door and left us alone. That"s when Ms. Prim and Proper basically turned into a puddle.
"I feel so responsible," she said, tears suddenly streaming down her high cheekbones. "I chose those couples."
That was silly, of course. It was hardly her fault. Still, I could understand her being distraught. A serial killer was knocking off people on their honeymoons, people who had just one thing in common-they had all been featured in the Vows column.
"You can"t blame yourself," said Sarah, sounding like her best friend. "What you can do, though, is help us."
"How?" she asked.
"The past two weekends featured the Pierce and Breslow couples. But the Kellers, the latest ones, actually appeared nearly two months ago," I said.
"Yes, I remember," said LaSalle. "They were delaying their honeymoon. Law school graduation, right?"
"Exactly," said Sarah. "That means there"s a five-week gap between victims. We counted."
"Or, to put it another way, five weeks of other Vows couples who are still alive," I said.
"Why do you think they"ve been spared?" asked LaSalle.
"I don"t know. But first, we actually have to make sure that"s the case," I explained. "At least one of those couples could still be on their honeymoon."
"Oh, G.o.d," said LaSalle, the reality sinking in.
There was only one thing worse than three dead Vows couples.
Four dead Vows couples.
Chapter 82
"I"VE NEVER SEEN anything so beautiful," said Melissa Cosmer, approaching the top of Makahiku Falls in Maui"s Haleakal National Park.
"Me, neither," said her husband, Charlie Cosmer.
Only he wasn"t looking at the majestic two-hundred-foot waterfall. He was admiring his new bride of barely a week. He"d never felt so lucky, and in love, in his entire life. Melissa was his sun, moon, and stars all in one.
A gift from the heavens, he called her when they were interviewed for the Vows column in the Times.
Charlie"s only regret was that his parents, who had died in a plane crash five years earlier, never got to meet her. A real keeper, his dad would"ve called her. Charlie was sure of it.
"C"mon," said Melissa, smiling like a devil. "Let"s see how close we can get to the edge."
She took Charlie"s hand, and the two wove through the thick banyan trees and high gra.s.s drenched with mist. Maui"s weather was always spectacular, but on this day nature had really outdone herself. The sky appeared to be an almost neon blue.
Their tour group, and the official path to the waterfall-which they"d taken a slight detour from-was maybe a hundred yards away. It wasn"t a bad tour, the newlyweds thought; it was just a little crowded. Too many f.a.n.n.y-pack tourists. All they wanted was a little alone time amid so much beauty.
"Careful," said Charlie as the ground began to slope downward toward the edge.
But they were so close to the roar of the water now that they couldn"t hear each other.
"What?" asked Melissa, craning her neck toward him.
Never mind, he thought. He"d just hold on tight to her hand. Better yet, he"d hold on tight to all of her.