Before Cara even opened her eyes, she felt a throbbing pain in her leg. Her right thigh felt like it was on fire. Her neck was crooked, leaning to the side while her arms hung limp. Something metallic lingered on her tongue that she couldn’t remove. She blinked away some fuzziness. A ceiling fan slowly spun above her.
There was a smell of incense in the room, a familiar smell of death. A moment later, she realized it was marijuana. Before she even tried to move her head, she reached between her legs to see if she was raped. She wasn’t.
“Hey,” a male voice said. “I think she is horny.”
That forced her to fight down the nausea and lift her head. A man wearing a green sweatshirt and jeans sat against a wall below a covered window. A gun dangled from his hand like a Christmas ornament.
She dropped her head and shut her eyes. Something inside of her wanted to float back to where she was. The silence and the dreams. Thoughts of her father reaching for her. She was ready. There was nothing here for her. Then another thought crept into her mind. Something new and essential.
“Tommy,” she uttered.
“Ah, the boyfriend,” another voice said.
With her eyes still shut, she said, “You’re the one who killed my father.”
There was a pause, then the second voice said. “Not us, but the guy who did it will be here soon.”
The first thought that came to her mind and found its way to her mouth was, “Why?”
* * *
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Matt pushed Nick up against the wall. They were alone in a conference room across from Thiel’s office with the door shut.
“I was being honest,” Nick said.
“By telling the Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix field office that you’re ready to murder someone. Are you out of your mind?”
“Maybe.”
Matt pointed to Nick’s pants pocket. “Don’t you have a pill or an injection or something to get you through this?”
Nick clenched his teeth. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, no?” Matt said, rage coming into his eyes. “I don’t know grief?”
Nick suddenly realized what he’d just done.
“When Jennifer Steele was murdered, the only woman I ever loved,” Matt said, staying in Nick’s face. “I spent a month sleeping in your guest bedroom. You forget about that? You forget about the months of drinking until dawn and sleeping until noon? Really? I wouldn’t understand? The fuck are you talking about?”
Nick had nothing for that.
“Do you remember what you said to me when I wanted to quit my job?”
Nick said a lot of things hoping something would stick.
“You told me that Jennifer was dead. She wasn’t coming back. But the last thing she would want her death to do was to kill me too. If she would’ve known I was going to live the remaining years of my life in despair and hopelessness, she would’ve been really pissed off at me. Do you remember that?”
Nick nodded.
“You have to ask yourself, what would Sal want. Would he want his death to put you in jail or in despair, with Julie and Thomas living virtually alone? Is that what he would’ve wanted?”
Nick tried to eliminate his family from his thoughts, but Matt wasn’t having any of it. He was going to smear that focus right back into his mind.
Nick shook his head.
They stood there in silence for a minute.
“This is a hard moment,” Matt finally said. “But we will get through this. The pain won’t disappear, but it’ll eventually turn into a scar. A scar that will always be sensitive to the touch. Don’t be afraid to feel it whenever you like. Just don’t pick at it though. Because it’ll just make the pain take that much longer to subside. I know.” Matt turned away and his voice trailed off as he said, “Because I pick at it every fucking day of my life.”