John had firsthand experience with the run-and-hide reflex. He knew what it took. Everyone thought it was the go-to move when things fell apart, but that was only for people who’d never actually had anything truly fall apart. It wasn’t just a response. It was a commitment. Evaporating out of the twenty-first century wasn’t easy.
Jonathan Spera had found an old painting. That bit of good luck met three things: a gap in his knowledge, a gorgeous art dealer, and an idiot called Roy Dorring. These ingredients, when blended together too fast, made a disaster that, at first, looked like easy money.
Jonathan Spera’s mistake had been in thinking he could unmix the batter and rethink the recipe after the oven door was closed.
He’d offered Roy $5,000 to scuttle the sale. Five thousand dollars was ten times more money than that witless weed had ever had to his name at any given time. If Roy had just shown up and disrupted the meeting, just enough for Jonathan to back out so he could rethink and renegotiate without Marcelline, he would’ve gotten paid.
But that’s not what Roy did. Roy had shot two men in a panicked sort of on purpose—and Marcelline entirely by accident.
That night, after the gunfire, Jonathan had escaped with more than he’d intended to. The cash was a lucky stroke, but no one was supposed to get hurt except maybe Roy.
No one giving chase knew who Jonathan was. They didn’t know where he lived or worked. They didn’t know how to contact him. They didn’t know his last name.
So he could use his credit cards. He did use his credit cards. He’d used them to get off the street and watch from a hotel room’s television all that next day to see if anything would rise to the level of the local news from the mess he’d left.
But there was nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened. And it wasn’t even a little bit reassuring. All it made him know for certain was that the people he was dealing with could make a bloody, noisy open-air firefight vanish, and a parking lot littered with dead bodies somehow unnewsworthy.
Back then, he’d been able to unplug from his life legitimately. Sell his condo. Quit his job. Move. Change his name the proper way and do it far away from anyone who might care. And still, it was nerve-racking.
John Cooper had thoroughly unanchored from Jonathan Spera, which should have made John Cooper more likely to get hit by a bus than caught.
The only loose end had been Roy.
Roy Dorring was the only one who knew John Cooper used to be Jonathan Spera. Roy was the only one who’d known Jonathan Spera was connected to the painting.
But he could handle Roy. Roy was an idiot. Roy would always be an idiot. John was pretty sure that it would take him all of six minutes to convince Roy that the earth was actually flat and spinning through the universe like a fucking Frisbee.
Four years ago, John had told him a different, more useful lie about how the world worked. John told Roy that he hadn’t been able to retrieve the painting. He told him they were safe because the buyer’s guy, the one Roy didn’t get a chance to shoot, took it.
If they kept their heads—meaning if Roy did what John told him to do—they could make it. Roy had believed him, and John had spent the last four years trying to scrape him off his shoe.
Roy’s blundering had put John’s life on hold. But now the video.
It might be better if they just had it out. Waiting and wondering what Roy was thinking, however pale and pointless his thinking ever was, wasn’t going to do anything good for John’s mood.
Roy needed to get it out of his head, right fucking now, that he was getting anything out of this catastrophe. John felt it might, for once, come down to physically knocking the idea out of Roy. With a wrench on his skull, if need be.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since any possibility of anyone connecting John Cooper to the painting, and already he was exhausted by the whole thing.
You can pay for a hotel room in cash, but they’ll notice you. It wouldn’t do to be remembered when the type of people looking for you can keep mayhem off the news. He didn’t have time to outrun his new name. If he had to run, this time it would be cash running, which was the hardest kind.
The painting had to come down out of sight. If there was going to be any margin to find, any hope to try to sell it or disappear with it, it couldn’t stay on the wall. He had to be cool about it. If he could manage to walk away instead of run, he might be able to make this work again.
The plan, when he got home, was to redecorate the foyer. He would replace everything and take down the painting from where Donna had insisted on hanging it.
When they had bought the house and moved in together, she’d found it wrapped in blankets during the bustle of combining his meager belongings with hers and Carly’s. She’d nailed it up before he could stop her.
Oh, wait. I didn’t have that out. Don’t . . . I mean, do you really want that there?
It goes great! Look, it’s perfect. I didn’t figure you for an antique-y type.
I’m not. It’s not really my taste.
Don’t get defensive. It’s sweet. Do you really not like it? Is it just a sentimental thing? A gift from an old girlfriend or something?
No, no, nothing like that. It’s just . . .
A family heirloom? Hang on, is this thing a real antique?
No! It’s . . . it’s fine. It’s just a little embarrassing. Yeah, I bought it. Some people have comfort food. I’ve got comfort . . . colors.
Well, I like it. And I like that I learned something new about you just now. And that it wasn’t some deal breaker that I’d have to do something drastic about. It’s adorable.
She’d kissed him, a little turned on by the softer side of him that really wasn’t. And that was that.
It didn’t really look like anything more than a wall hanging from a fake-cinnamon-smelling décor-and-knickknack shop. He’d had no choice but to laugh along. She’d thought it looked perfect there and John hadn’t been able to think of a way to make the case against her happy discovery without turning it into a topic of contention or, God forbid, further conversation.
To keep Roy from pissing his pants every time he came up against the next thing he couldn’t manage in his life, John had invented the emergency measure of the call system.
John designated three spots he’d always use at the Y or his office so that Roy could signal him, if he could just hold himself together long enough to find the car. He’d made it plain to Roy that he would actually, physically kill him if he ever attempted to contact him at home or on the telephone.
John had been convincing to an easily convinced moron, but he idly doubted that he’d be able to bring himself to really hurt Roy. It was useful to give him a scare every now and again, a little peek under the lid of John’s temper when plain words wouldn’t do. But John wasn’t a killer. Probably. Sometimes that was a relief and sometimes it was a speed bump.
The passing of time wasn’t improving his opinion of the idiot or tamping down how irritating he found Roy’s sad-sack face. John tried not to think about it. Thoughts became things and he didn’t know how to end anyone’s life outside of a daydream. But as the months turned to years, he found that he wasn’t any less inclined to kill Roy.
If John found a coin, he was supposed to meet Roy at 6:00 p.m. or 8:00 a.m.—whichever he could manage within the next day—in the back parking lot of the closest McDonald’s.
With Roy’s latest signal weighing like a lead sinker at the bottom of John’s otherwise empty pocket, he wandered around the housewares section of Target. Necessity would get him over the hurdle of his lack of imagination. With exactly one exception, he didn’t give a shit about what hung on the wall.
Once home, he put the painting in the back of the guest-room closet and nailed up a three-panel metal scrollwork in its place.
“Wow.” Donna waved her hands at the frenzied wreckage of cardboard boxes burst at the staples. “What are you doing? What’s all this?”
John startled and nearly swallowed the last nail he’d stashed between his lips while he worked.
“I thought a change would be good. I got a different mirror, too, see? After I get this up, I’m going to put that new bench together.” He pointed to the long box leaning against the wall. “Goodwill is scheduled to swing by tomorrow to pick up all the old stuff. This place feels all bad mojo now. Thought I’d try to make it feel new. None of us needs to be reminded what happened every time we walk through the door.”
Donna came to stand beside him. “It’s really nice. I like it. I’ve always said you have good taste.”
John dipped his head, surprised that the satiny stroke of the small compliment even registered in the moment.
Donna tapped her lip, thinking and turning a circle in the foyer. “But maybe the other picture would look really good over the fireplace. What do you think?”
John’s heart kicked his sternum. “I’m just going to get rid of all of it. The whole point is that Carly has to live here after all of this. I don’t want her to see the same things she saw when . . . I want to do this for her, okay? We can paint in here, too, if you want.”
Donna touched him for the first time in more than a day and a half. “Okay. That’s very sweet.”