“So what are you really calling about?” I ask Dante.
“It is about Riona,” he says. “But not how you’re thinking . . . ”
3
Riona
My brother Callum shows up at my building in less than ten minutes. He rescues me from the apartment belonging to the Greenwoods just in time. Mr. Greenwood is becoming increasingly insistent that we call the police. Mrs. Greenwood also seems impatient, either because she’s missing the end of The Bachelor, or because she’s noticed her husband’s eyes flitting over my bare legs several times. The striped bathroom towel the Greenwoods provided was made for their modest proportions and doesn’t cover much more of me than my swimsuit did.
When they open the door to Cal, my brother strides into the apartment with Dante Gallo following along behind him. The Greenwoods retreat back to their couch, not wanting to be anywhere near a man who can barely walk through their doorframe without turning sideways.
A wave of relief washes over me at the sight of my brother, who looks as cool and competent as always, and Dante, who could have ripped that fucking scuba diver in half with his bare hands if he would have been in the pool with me.
I almost want to hug them both. Almost. But I’m not quite that far gone.
“Thanks for coming,” I say instead.
Cal doesn’t stand on ceremony. He puts his arm around me and squeezes me against his side. I think becoming a dad has made him soft. But also, it feels nice. Comforting.
“We already cleared your apartment,” Cal says to me. “There’s nobody there.”
“Let’s go back there, then,” I say to Cal, with a subtle glance toward the Greenwoods. No need for them to overhear any more than they already have.
“I don’t know how a mugger got in the building with Ronald at the door!” Mrs. Greenwood frets.
I told the Greenwoods that someone accosted me at the pool, but I was vague on details. Mrs. Greenwood assumed it was a mugging when I told her I’d have to use her phone to call my brother.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” I say to the couple.
“You go ahead and keep that,” Mrs. Greenwood says, nodding at the striped towel. I think she’d give me almost anything to get us out of her apartment.
We head back down the hallway to the elevators, my bare feet padding soundlessly on the carpet, while Cal and Dante walk on either side of me like bookends.
“Do you know who the diver was?” Dante says, in his deep, gravelly voice. “Did you see his face?”
“No.” I shake my head. “He had dark eyes. That’s all I saw. Most of his face was covered by the scuba mask. He was strong . . . ”
I shiver involuntarily, remembering how his arms locked around me and dragged me down under the water.
“Are there cameras up on the roof?” Cal asks me.
“I have no idea,” I say.
We take the elevator down from the thirty-second floor to the twenty-eighth. Even though Cal already went through my apartment using his spare key, Dante checks it again before we enter.
“I’m gonna shower real quick,” I say to them. “Help yourself to a drink, if you want.”
I turn the water on as hot as I can stand it and wash the chlorine smell out of my hair. As I turn my face into the spray, I feel another swoop of panic. I remember the awful heaving of my lungs, desperate for air. I shut the water off, drying off with my own properly-sized towel, and changing into yoga pants and a sweatshirt.
When I come back out to the living room, Cal and Dante are prowling around, checking the windows and balcony doors for any sign that someone might have broken in here earlier in the day.
“Does anything look out of place?” Cal asks me. “Is anything missing?”
“Not that I can see.”
I would notice. My apartment is minimalist in the extreme, clean and well-organized. My books are arranged alphabetically by author name. There isn’t a single dirty dish in the sink. I don’t have plants or pets—I don’t want anything living depending on me.
“Let’s have a chat with Ronald, then,” Dante growls.
Ronald is the main doorman. He and two others rotate shifts so there’s someone in the lobby 24/7, making sure nobody who isn’t a resident or guest accesses the building.
Ronald is middle-aged, bald, paunchy, and friendly. He has a hint of a British accent that may be real, or may be something he uses to endear himself to the tenants, who like the idea of a posh internationally-imported doorman.
At first he’s hesitant to show us the camera feed for the swimming pool without clearing it through building management. However, my brother is very convincing with his light blue eyes that cut right through you, and his title as City Alderman. Dante’s silent, imposing bulk is persuasive in an entirely different way.
Ronald takes us into a small back room with a single desk, chair, and computer monitor.
“You can watch the video feeds on here,” he says.
“We need to see all the cameras on the roof,” Dante says. “The ones that show the swimming pool.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ronald says, sitting down at the desk and clicking tentatively with the mouse. “We only got the security cameras this year, so I’m not entirely familiar with the system. I’ve only had to review the footage twice before, when Mrs. Peterson kept insisting someone was knocking on her door . . .”
“Were they?” Dante asks.
“No,” Ronald chuckles. “It was her cockatoo, inside her apartment.”
Ronald manages to pull up the swimming pool camera, winding back the recording to two hours earlier.
“Is that the only camera up there?” Callum asks.
“Yes. There’s only one per floor,” Ronald says.
The camera is mounted high in the corner, so almost the entirety of the pool is in view. We can see the lounge chairs on both sides of the pool, the cabinet that holds all the extra towels, and the entryway where people enter and exit on their way to the elevators. However, the lower-left corner of the swimming pool is cut off.
We watch the grainy footage as a mother and her two young children paddle around, then a group of teenagers lay on the lounge chairs while an old man swims laps. After that, the pool empties out, and for a long time there’s no one up there at all.
Finally, I see my own familiar figure come walking across the tiles. I watch myself turn on the music streaming to my waterproof headphones via my phone, then I set the phone down on the nearest lounge chair, atop a folded towel. Calm and oblivious of what’s about to happen, I stride over to the pool and dive in.
My heart rate quickens as the seconds count down to what I know is about to happen. I feel the ridiculous urge to call out a warning to myself. I watch my tiny figure swim back and forth across the pool, knowing that any second those steady laps are about to be interrupted.
What happens next looks strangely benign on the video screen. I simply drop down below the water and disappear. The camera is too far away and the resolution too weak to make out what’s actually happening. You can see churning in the water, and the dark shadow of a figure below, but it’s impossible to tell that there’s actually two people down there, locked in a deadly struggle.