Measure of Darkness Read Free Page A

notice of how I managed the office. One time her appointment coincided with me having red eyes from days (and nights) of crying and she asked what was wrong and for some reason I told her, which was strictly against the office rules (written by me) of sharing personal or family troubles with patients(we were there to serve, not kvetch), and Naomi said she’d see what she could do, and I said my husband has vanished and my savings account is empty, what can you possibly do?
    She’d smiled and said, let me get back to you.
    Two days later she called me into the Back Bay residence—sent a driver for me, actually—had me take a seat and then proceeded to explain, very calmly and deliberately, that my husband wasn’t the man I thought he was, and for that matter my marriage had never been legal. The man I knew as Robinson “Robbie” Reynolds was in reality a handsome, charismatic con artist born William J. Crockett—“Wedding Willy” to the bunco squads—who wooed and married two or three victims at a time, then drained their assets. My assets had been a personal savings account (fairly substantial because I’m very careful with money and always keep to a budget) and my parents’ four-bedroom home in Newton, which I’d been managing as a rental since Mom died, the income being split between my sister and me. Somehow or other Robbie had got my signature on a legal document and he’d sold the big house in Newton, as well as our small but very comfortable condo in Arlington, cleared the bank accounts and then vanished. Leaving me more or less homeless and with my sister ready to kill me because she’d “always known Robbie was bad news,” although I’d never noticed that, what with her giggly jokes that were variations on “if you ever get sick of my little sister, you know where to find me!” Can’t blame her, really, Robbie was irresistible. I’m the living proof.
    Anyhow, Naomi saw to it that he’d been arrested in Toronto on a similar charge—yet another “marriage”—where he’s currently serving time and supposedly writing a book about his exploits. None of the money was ever recovered because aside from his habit of proposing to foolish females who had a few bucks socked away, Robbie liked to trade on the currency markets, highly leveraged, and he lost every penny.
    So, that’s my sad little story, and the upshot is that Naomi offered me a job managing her office, at twice the salary and double the benefits, and that’s how I happened to find myself face to the floor, and boss lady somewhere above me demanding, “Show us the warrant! Where’s the paper?”
    During and after the snatch-and-grab of Randall Shane, Naomi Nantz is highly indignant, demanding legal justification for the home invasion. None is forthcoming, because no one on the assault squad ever says a word. They simply do not respond. Not a word. Not to Naomi, not to anyone. That kind of black-masked silence is truly scary, in a way much scarier than the invasion itself.
    The only good thing about the whole awful mess is that it’s over in less than two minutes. They break in through the windows, seize our client and seemingly vanish into thin air, back out the same way they came in. By the time we call Beacon Hill Security and tell them not to bother sending a car, the crisis is already over.
    As the security alarms cease whooping, I get up from the floor, still shaking. “Where’d they go? For that matter, where’d they come from?”
    When Jack Delancey finally speaks—not a peep of protest out of him during the snatch, and no show of resistance—he says, tersely, “Had to be stealth helicopters. No other explanation.”
    Naomi grunts, as if she hates the very idea.
    â€œHey! What happened?”
    Standing in the doorway, looking as befuddled as a child, is our resident computer genius, Teddy