WHEN HE ARRIVED BACK HOME, THE LIVING ROOM WAS PACKED WITH ten women from Beth’s yoga class. All of them wore their pink Team Beth shirts. Gary greeted everyone and grabbed his own pink shirt from the bedroom. He put it on and sat down at the edge of the room, next to Beth.
“I didn’t realize we were having visitors,” he said.
“I didn’t, either,” Beth said. “The doorbell rang this morning, I answered it, and this crew was waiting outside.”
Gary recognized a few of them, but the only name he knew was that of Sarah, Rod’s wife, the owner of the yoga studio. She sat on the couch, head held high, her short black hair fashioned in a tousled bob. The odd couple, Beth always called Sarah and Rod. The Beauty and the Beast. Sarah was confident and poised, the polar opposite of Rod, the grown child who’d won her over with nothing more than his juvenile charm.
“How was the store?” Beth asked.
“The store?” He’d forgotten all about the note he’d written for Beth before he left. “Nothing special. It was fine.”
“With Rod in charge, I’m surprised the place isn’t trashed,” Sarah said. “I don’t think Rod has ever once cleaned up after himself since we started living together. I feel like I’m married to a teenager sometimes.”
Beth smiled. “Oh, he never cleaned up after himself when he lived with us, either. Months after he moved out, I was still discovering his dirty laundry all over the house. I can’t tell you how many pairs of his socks I found crammed under our couch cushions.”
“At least it wasn’t his boxers.”
Laughter all around.
“We were just talking, Gary,” one of them—something with an M; Melanie? Mary?—said. “Talking about this treatment in Germany.”
“It’s a miracle. At least, we hope so.”
“We’re here to help,” Something with an M said. “Do anything we can to raise the money.”
“Speaking of . . .” Beth said.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and looked at the Kickstarter-style fund-raising page they’d set up last night. Beth’s picture was at the top of the screen—her smile full and wide, her head slightly tilted to the side, her hand placed over her belly. The title SAVE BETH FOSTER was under the photograph. In the middle of the page was a short summary of her story. Farther down on the page was a horizontal thermometer stick with notches in ten-thousand-dollar increments.
GOAL: $200,000 read the inscription on the right side of the thermometer.
CURRENTLY AT: $2,237 read the inscription on the left side of the thermometer.
“There’s more than when I last checked,” Beth said. “People must have seen the article this morning.”
“That’s great.”
“It’s a start; that’s all it is. Truly great news would be if someone showed up and just handed us a bag with all the money.”
Everyone except Gary chuckled.
They spent an hour brainstorming names of people who might be able to help with the money. When they finished, they had a list that numbered well over a hundred people. Friends from the community. Old acquaintances. Former coworkers.
“If we cast the net wide, there’s a chance,” Beth said. “Get a couple thousand dollars from some people, a couple hundred from others, and the money could add up.”
• • •
ALMOST SIX HOURS LATER, GARY AND BETH SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM, STILL in their pink Team Beth shirts. Of the group of friends, only Sarah remained.
The laptop was set up on the coffee table, displaying the fund-raising site.
GOAL: $200,000 read the inscription on the right side of the thermometer.
CURRENTLY AT: $8,417 read the inscription on the left side of the thermometer.
They all three stared at the screen, their faces grim.
“It’s better than nothing,” Gary said. Even to himself, the words sounded insincere.
The day had been long. Beth’s yoga friends had stayed at the house all afternoon, making phone calls, sending off texts, posting the link to the fund-raising site on social media. Doing everything they could to raise money.
After all that work, they didn’t even have ten thousand dollars to show for it.
“It’s frustrating,” Beth said. “I want to be angry, but who’s there to be angry at? Those who could help with the money did what they were able to. Those who couldn’t just didn’t have any money.”
Gary nodded. Most people he’d talked to were polite, apologetic, genuinely sorry they couldn’t do more. They offered to help by cooking dinner, by praying, by offering any sort of moral support needed. But they couldn’t help with money and that was the only thing that mattered. He had spoken to at least fifteen people who’d been left unemployed when the Lorimer Brake Pads manufacturing plant closed last year and devastated the local job market. How could they expect people to help if they could barely make their mortgage payments or put food on the table?
“We’ll find the money,” Gary said. “It’s still early.”
There was no reaction from either woman, no enthusiastic rallying cry or passionate words of encouragement. Not that Gary expected anything. They both looked drained, totally spent.
• • •
AFTER SARAH LEFT, BETH AND GARY SAT DOWN TO EAT DINNER. BEFORE THEY started, Beth closed her eyes and massaged her temples.
“I have a headache,” she said.
A headache. The word always caused a pang of fearful uncertainty. Beth had gotten headaches on and off during her treatment. And every time, Gary felt that knot in the pit of his stomach, that helpless feeling of not knowing how serious it was.
“Bad one?” he asked.
Beth winced. Kept her eyes closed for a moment.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just need to lie down. Today has been exhausting.”
Gary helped her out of her chair and led her into the bedroom. She curled up on her side of the bed and Gary tucked her in. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“We can go to the hospital if you need to,” he said.
She weakly shook her head in response.
• • •
BETH STAYED IN BED ALL EVENING. GARY CHECKED UP ON HER PERIODICALLY. He offered to bring her soup but she declined. A glass of water he’d set on the bedside table remained untouched.
Later in the night, after she’d fallen asleep, Gary walked into the baby’s soon-to-be bedroom and sat down at the computer. He opened the Internet browser and typed Devon Peterson into the search bar.
He paused before hitting Enter.
He told himself it was harmless to search for more information about Devon Peterson, the man Shamrock wanted him to murder. Simple curiosity—that’s all this was. Nothing more than that.
He knew that was a lie.
They had barely anything to show for an entire day spent reaching out to friends. Only now that they’d started to try to raise the money did Gary realize just how difficult it would be. Two hundred thousand dollars: it was an enormous, mind-boggling figure.
All day long, as the twenty- and fifty-dollar donations and apologies for not giving more piled up, the offer had lingered in the back of his mind. Right now, the voice in Gary’s mind said, he could take care of everything. He could have the money they needed for the treatment.
He owed it to Beth, he owed it to himself, owed it to their unborn son to reconsider the offer. His earlier decision to decline was made in the heat of the moment, immediately after his meeting with Shamrock. He wasn’t thinking straight at the time—the sheer shock at being presented with such an unbelievable offer had clouded his judgment, made it impossible to look at everything objectively.
He’d spent an hour considering the offer then. An hour was nothing. No, for a decision with so much at stake, he had to take his time. He had to examine all of the facts and put far more than an hour’s worth of thought into his decision.
First up: He wanted to learn more about Devon Peterson.
He wanted to learn who he was.
He wanted to learn what he did.
He wanted to learn why someone was willing to pay an enormous amount of money for his murder.
Gary tapped Enter on the keyboard. A moment later, the search results appeared. Text links filled the lower half of the screen but Gary focused on the thumbnail photos above the links.
The first photograph was small, yet he immediately recognized Devon Peterson’s fleshy, thick face and buzz-cut hair. It was a head shot that looked similar to the picture on the photocopied driver’s license, maybe a few years more recent. In it, Devon wore a black short-sleeve button-up shirt that was skintight against his large frame, hugging against his chest and riding up on his large, burly arms. Even though the photo was a thumbnail, Gary could see the gold badge pinned to the chest of his shirt.
The horrifying reality instantly became clear.
Devon Peterson was a police officer.