Read Online Triple Threat by Jeffery Deaver - Free Book Online Page B

for thirty years. The woman had fallen asleep last night thinking about the She-Beast and the He-Beast and she’d awakened thinking about them. She’d thought about them all morning and she thought about them still.
    She sipped her tea and took some small pleasure in the sliver of autumn sunlight resting on her hands and arms. The flicker of gingko leaves outside, silver green, silver green. Was that all she had left? Minuscule comforts like this? And not very comforting at that.
    Fear…
    Sarah Lieberman hadn’t quite figured out their game. But one thing was clear: Taking over her life was the goal—like a flag to be captured.
    Three months ago Sarah had met the Westerfields at a fundraiser held at the Ninety-second Street Y. It was for a Jewish youth organization, though neither the name nor appearance of the two suggested that was their religious or ethnic background. Still, they had seemed right at home and referred to many of the board members of the youth group as if they’d been friends for years. They’d spent a solid hour talking to Sarah alone, seemingly fascinated with her life in the “Big Apple” (John’s phrase) and explaining how they’d come here from Kansas City to “consummate” (Miriam’s) several business ventures John had set up. “Real estate. That’s my game. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”
    They’d had dinner at Marcel’s the next night, on Madison, with John dominating the five-foot-tall woman physically and Miriam doing the same conversationally, flanking Sarah in a booth in the back. She’d wanted her favorite table, which had room for three (yet was usually occupied by one) at the window. But the Westerfields had insisted and, why not? They’d made clear this was their treat.
    The two were charming, informed in a Midwest, CNN kind of way, and enthusiastically curious about life in the city—and about her life in particular. Their eyes widened when they learned that Sarah had an apartment on the ground floor of the townhouse she owned on Seventy-fifth Street. Miriam asked if it was available. They’d been looking for a place to stay. The Mandarin Oriental was, Miriam offered, too expensive.
    The garden apartment was on the market but was priced high—to keep out the riff-raff, she’d said, laughing. But she’d drop it to fair market value for the Westerfields.
    Deal.
    Still, Sarah had learned about the world from her husband, a businessman who had successfully gone up against Leona Helmsley at one point. There were formalities to be adhered to and the real estate management company did their due diligence. They reported the references in the Midwest attested to the Westerfields’ finances and prior history.
    There was, of course, that one bit of concern: It seemed a bit odd that a fifty-something-year-old mother and a son in his late twenties would be taking an apartment together, when neither one seemed disabled. But life circumstances are fluid. Sarah could imagine situations in which she might find herself living with a family member not a husband. Maybe Miriam’s husband had just died and this was temporary—until the emotional turbulence settled.
    And Sarah
certainly
didn’t know what to make of the fact that while the garden apartment featured three bedrooms, when she and Carmel had brought tea down as the two tenants moved in, only
one
bedroom seemed to be put to that purpose. The other two were used for storage.
    Odd indeed.
    But Sarah thought the best of people, always had. The two had been nice to her and, most important, treated her like an adult. It was astonishing to Sarah how many people thought that once you reached seventy or eighty you were really an infant.
    That you couldn’t order for yourself.
    That you didn’t know who Lady Gaga was.
    “Oh, my,” she’d nearly said to one patronizing waitress. “I’ve forgotten how this knife works. Could you cut up my food for me?”
    For the first weeks the Westerfields seemed the model