I grabbed a stone statuette and smashed it into the side of his face. Harris staggered back.

“Sorry, I’m a little out of practice,” I said, my voice strained. “I used to do this a lot.”

I struck him again, and there was a sickening crunch from his mouth.

“That was for Mirelle,” I said. “Believe me, you deserve far worse.”

As I walked out of the study, Harris was spitting out blood and a tooth onto the fine Persian carpet.

CHAPTER 41 DEIRDRE

CHAPTER 41

DEIRDRE

The smart play was to head home, rest, and plan a new line of attack for the next day. Or I could go to Ben’s and demand answers. Since when had I ever been smart?

I’d tried to get into his Tudor City apartment before and failed. I knew from that first visit there were no alternative entrances. Before I got on the subway, I reached out to the Snapp network of marathoners, asking if anyone had ever dropped off bags at the building. By the time I got to Forty-Second Street, I had a helpful answer. I bought a pair of large paper bags at Walgreens and headed east to Tudor City. I ducked under the scaffolding latticed in front of Ben’s building and smiled at the masked doorman.

“Hi, I’m Deirdre from Snapp. I’ve got a delivery for the Palansky family in 11C. I have keys.”

He nodded, and I hurried to the elevator. I headed up to the eleventh floor—where the family lived—and took the stairs up to the thirteenth floor and knocked on Ben’s door.

I heard him rattling around inside for a minute before he opened the peephole. We had a silent staring contest—I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there. Finally, the lock turned, and he opened the door. “How did you get up here?”

“You want your neighbors to hear this?”

He let me inside. Ben’s apartment looked like it was auditioning for a Ralph Lauren commercial. The living room was light and airy, with white walls topped by elegant moldings. A series of arched windows granted a view of the New York Public Library in all its glory. Every piece of furniture looked like an antique; across one wall was a towering row of bookshelves. I expected a Labrador retriever to bound in at any moment.

“Wow, this was your parents’ pied-à-terre? Nice digs.”

“Who told you that?”

I thought back; it had been Jude, but I didn’t feel like revealing that. “Who knows? But you really lucked out.”

“I guess anything seems nice when you live in a basement,” Ben said.