Believe Me is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Shippen Productions Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
The author published an earlier version of this story as The Decoy under the name Tony Strong.
Excerpt from Casablanca granted courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Delaney, JP, author.
Title: Believe me: a novel / JP Delaney.
Description: First edition. | New York: Ballantine Books, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009618 | ISBN 9781101966310 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781524798833 (international edition) | ISBN 9781101966327 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3569.T717 B45 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009618
Hardback ISBN 9781101966310
International edition ISBN 9781524798833
Ebook ISBN 9781101966327
randomhousebooks.com
Designed by Debbie Glasserman, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Carlos Beltrán
Cover photographs: DreamPictures/Getty Images
v5.3.1
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part Three
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By JP Delaney
About the Author
You act with your scars.
—Shelley Winters
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
PROLOGUE
On the day of departure, guests are requested to vacate their rooms by noon.
By eleven o’clock the sixth floor of the Lexington Hotel has nearly emptied. This is Midtown Manhattan, where even the tourists are on busy schedules of galleries and department stores and sights. Any late sleepers have been woken by the noise of the maids, chattering to one another in Spanish as they come and go from the laundry room beside the elevator, preparing the rooms for another influx this afternoon.
Dotted down the hallway, discarded breakfast trays show which rooms still have to be cleaned.
There’s no tray outside the door of the Terrace Suite.
Each morning, a folded copy of The New York Times is delivered to every room, with the hotel’s compliments.
In the case of the Terrace Suite, the compliment has been refused. The paper lies on the mat, untouched. A DO NOT DISTURB tag hangs from the handle above it.
Consuela Alvarez leaves the Terrace Suite till last. Eventually, when all the other rooms are done, she can leave it no longer. Wincing at the ache in her lower back—she’s changed a dozen sets of linen already this morning, and scrubbed a dozen shower stalls—she taps on the door with her pass card, calls “Housekeeping,” waits for a reply.
None comes.
The first thing she notices as she lets herself in is the cold. An icy draft is blowing through the drapes. She clucks disapprovingly as she goes to the window and hauls on the cord. Gray light floods the room.
<
br /> The place is a mess. She bangs the window shut, a little ostentatiously.
The person in the bed doesn’t stir.
“Please…You have to wake up now,” Consuela says awkwardly.
The sheets have been pulled right up over the face. Smoothing the body’s contours, like something buried under layers of snow.
Looking around at the debris—a tipped lamp, a broken wineglass—Consuela has a sudden sense of foreboding. Last year, there was a suicide on the second floor. A bad business. A boy overdosed in the bathroom. And the hotel was fully booked: They’d had to clean the room and get it ready for the next occupant at five.
Now that she looks again, there are several things that seem unusual, even strange, about the Terrace Suite today. Who goes to bed leaving broken glass on the carpet, where they might step on it next day? Who sleeps with sheets covering their head? Consuela has seen a lot of hotel rooms, and the scene in front of her seems somehow unnatural.
Staged, even.
Consuela crosses herself. Nervously, she puts her hand on the bedcovers, near where the shoulder must be, and shakes it.
After a moment, where her hand has pressed, a red flower blooms on the white linen.
She knows there’s something wrong now, something very bad. She touches the bed again, pressing with just a finger this time. Again, like ink spreading through tissue paper, a red petal blossoms on the sheet.
Consuela summons all her courage and, with her left hand, yanks the covers back.
Even before she takes in what she sees there, her other arm is reaching up to cross herself again. But this time the hand that darts to her forehead never completes the gesture. It comes down, trembling, to stifle her scream instead.
1
My friend hasn’t showed yet.
That’s what you’d think if you saw me here, perched at the bar of this corporate-cool New York hotel, trying to make my Virgin Mary last all evening. Just another young professional waiting for her date. A little more dressy than some of the other women here, maybe. I don’t look like I just came from an office.
At the other end of the bar a group of young men are drinking and joshing, punching one another on the shoulder to make their points. One—good-looking, smartly dressed, athletic—catches my eye. He smiles. I look away.
Soon after, a table becomes free near the back, and I take my drink over and sit at it. Where, suddenly, this little scene unfolds:
INT. DELTON HOTEL BAR, W. 44TH ST., NEW YORK—NIGHT
MAN
(belligerently)
Excuse me?
Someone’s standing in front of me. A businessman, about forty-five, wearing an expensive casual-cut suit that suggests he’s something more than the usual executive drone, the collar lapped by hair that’s just a little too long for Wall Street.
He’s angry. Very angry.
ME
Yes?
MAN
That’s my table. I just went to the bathroom.
He gestures at the laptop, drink, and magazine I somehow managed to miss.
MAN
That’s my drink. My stuff. It was pretty clear this table’s occupied.
Around us, heads are turning in our direction. But there’s going to be no confrontation, no eruption of New York stress. Already I’m getting to my feet, pulling my bag onto my shoulder. Defusing the drama.
ME
Sorry—I hadn’t realized. I’ll find somewhere else.
I take a step away and look around helplessly, but the place is busy and my previous seat has gone. There is nowhere else.
Out of the corner of my eye I can sense him taking me in, running his eyes over Jess’s Donna Karan jacket, the expensive one she keeps for auditions, the soft dark cashmere that sets off my pale skin and dark hair. And realizing what a stupid mistake he’s making.
MAN
Wait…I guess we could share it.
He gestures at the table.
MAN
There’s room for us both—I was just catching up on some work.
ME
(smiling gratefully)
Oh—thank you.
I put my bag back and sit down. For a while there’s a silence I’m careful not to break. This has to come from him.
Sure enough, when he speaks his voice has changed subtly—it’s huskier, thicker. Do women’s voices change the same way? I should experiment with that, sometime.
MAN
Are you waiting on someone? Bet he’s been held up by the snow. That’s why I’m staying an extra night—it’s chaos out at LaGuardia.
And I smile to myself, because it’s actually pretty neat, the way he tries to find out if this person I’m meeting is a man or a woman, and at the same time let me know he’s here on his own.
ME
Guess I could be here awhile, then.
He nods at my now-empty glass.
MAN
In that case, can I get you another one of those? I’m Rick, by the way.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…
ME
Thank you, Rick. I’d love a martini. And I’m Claire.
RICK
Nice to meet you, Claire. And, uh, sorry about just now.
ME
No, really, it was my mistake.
I say it with such offhand nonchalance, such gratitude, that even I’d be surprised to discover it’s a lie.
But then, this isn’t lying. This is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Which, as you’ll discover, is very different.
The waitress takes our order. As she leaves, a man at the next table leans across and gives her a hard time about a missing drink. I watch as she sulkily tugs a pen from behind her ear, almost as if she can pull the customer’s words out and flick them to the floor.
I could use that, I think. I put it away somewhere, deep in the filing system, focus my attention back on the man opposite.
ME
What brings you to New York, Rick?
RICK
Business. I’m a lawyer.
ME
I don’t believe you.
Rick looks puzzled.
RICK
Why not?
ME
The lawyers I meet are all ugly and boring.
He matches my smile.
RICK
Well, I specialize in the music business. Up in Seattle. We like to think we’re a little more exciting than your average criminal attorney. How about you?
ME
What do I do for a living? Or do I think I’m exciting?
To our mutual surprise, we’re flirting now, a little.
RICK
Both.
I nod at the waitress’s departing back.
ME
Well, I used to do what she does, before.
RICK
Before what?
ME
Before I realized there are more exciting ways to pay the rent.
It’s always in the eyes—that slight, almost imperceptible stillness as an idea dawns behind them. He turns the possibilities of what I’ve just said over in his mind. Decides he’s reading too much into it.
RICK
And where are you from, Claire? I’m trying to place that accent.
It’s Virginia, damn you. Hence the way I rhymed the law in lawyer with boy.
ME
I’m from…wherever you want me to be from.
He smiles. A wolfish, eager smile that says, So I was right.
RICK
I never met a girl from there before.
ME
And you meet a lot of girls, ri
ght?
RICK
I do combine my business trips with a certain amount of pleasure.