My fingers itched as I walked past my office. I’d felt stuck after I’d written the scene in the garage. I’d had no idea what was supposed to happen next until this new revelation about Theresa’s involvement had opened a door to the next chapter of the story. This plot line made sense. All the pieces seemed to fit. And I had less than a month to finish this book without implicating myself in the process.
Even if I changed their names, Theresa and Aimee couldn’t be the murderers in my story. It would be foolish to skirt so close to the truth. No, the story had to lead somewhere else. Somewhere less believable. The killer had to be some larger-than-life character, some archetypical villain people could believe I had made up because they’d already seen him play out on a TV or a movie screen. And the only other person I could picture playing the part was the real-life villain I planned to feed to Detective Anthony.
Feliks Zhirov was virtually untouchable. According to Georgia, he’d never spent a day in jail even though he was guilty as sin. If Feliks smelled an investigation—even one he wasn’t directly involved in—I was pretty sure he’d bring the case crashing to a dead end. He was my safest option. And maybe the only person capable of keeping me and Theresa out of jail.
I sat down at my desk and opened the draft of my story, skimming the scenes I had written so far: A seasoned contract killer takes a job to kill a problem husband. She vets the target, stalks him in a bar, drugs him, and takes him to the dump site in an abandoned underground garage.
I dropped my head against the desk, kicking myself for sending this draft to my agent without thinking it through. The details were all steering far too close to home. But maybe I could get away with tweaking it a little.
I dove back into the manuscript, picking apart what I had written so far, making subtle changes to the characters and setup: The problem husband is an accountant working for a high-profile mob boss. He also happens to be super wealthy with a sizable life insurance policy that will go to his wife. Sometime between the first drink and the drugged one, my heroine realizes the wife never transferred payment into her offshore account as agreed upon. Too late to change direction, my heroine loads her mark into a utility van and drives him to the underground garage to let him sleep it off. The assassin steps outside to call the wife, to tell her the job is off for nonpayment. Meanwhile, someone else slips in behind her and uses a silencer to put a bullet between the husband’s eyes. Determined to seek a vigilante-style justice and solve the mystery of who murdered her mark, she investigates his death, pairing up with an unsuspecting hotshot detective to stay one step ahead of the police and tracking down the runaway wife in the process.
Yes, I thought, cracking my knuckles over the keyboard. Yes, this felt like it could work! There was nothing in this story about hot young bartenders who studied law, or real estate agents who stole other people’s husbands. There were no subplots involving lewd photos or extorted hush payments. No mentions of custody battles or starving authors doing questionable things to pay their bills.
Hours passed. My fingers ached and my mind felt weary. Smells started wafting from the kitchen—baking bread and steamed vegetables and the buttery, rosemary-coated skin of a roasting chicken. Night fell outside my window to the clank and clatter of silverware downstairs, the slide of the high chair from the table, and the hand-vac as Vero tidied up after dinner. No one knocked on my door. Three fresh chapters later, I jumped at the bright ring of my cell phone.
Steven’s number flashed on the screen, and I contemplated not answering.
“Hello,” I said, rubbing my eyes as I registered the time. The kids were probably already in bed. I hadn’t even kissed them good night.
“Hey, Finn. ’S it a bad time to call?” A slur smoothed over the worn edges around my name. I wondered how many drinks it must have taken for it not to sound like a curse coming out of his mouth.
“Why?”
“Just needed to talk.” He sounded tired, and maybe a little defeated, and I hated myself for the soft spot in my chest that still managed to ache at moments like this, even after all he’d done.
“You okay?” I turned off my monitor and sat in the dark, listening to liquid bubbling down the neck of a bottle and his hard swallow on the other end of the line.
He coughed. Said in a rough voice, “I don’t know. Maybe. Not really.”
The fact that he’d called me instead of his fiancée told me a lot, and at the same time, opened the door to so many more questions. A year ago, we were together, all four of us under one roof. Why’d he have to go and screw everything up?
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Theresa,” he said. “I’m worried I made a mistake.” I held my tongue, biting my lip to keep from saying the harsh things I wanted to say. “I was stupid to trust her. She’s hiding something. I don’t know exactly what it is, but…”
“But what?” I asked cautiously, afraid of scaring him away. “Why do you think she’s hiding something?”
He hesitated. Took another swig and swore under his breath. “I found cash in her underwear drawer. A lot of cash, Finn. And some cop called the house the other day looking for her. When I asked her about it, she got all defensive and refused to talk.”
“Maybe there was nothing to talk about.”
“I don’t know, Finn. She’s got this new big-shot client. She’s with him all the time. She says he’s only looking for property, but I’ve seen the guy and he’s…” Steven’s voice trailed.
“Attractive?”
“Sleazy’s more like it,” he grumbled. “I looked him up, Finn. He’s into some shady shit. What if he gave her all that cash? What if she’s planning…?” Steven fell quiet.
“To leave you for someone else?” In the silence, a siren wailed, and I heard it in stereo, loud outside my window and more faintly through his cell phone. “Where are you right now?” I pushed my chair from the desk and crossed the room, peeling back the blinds to find Steven’s truck parked outside. He waved sheepishly through the window. “Hold on,” I told him. “I’m coming out.”
I bundled on a coat and slipped on my tennis shoes. I didn’t bother to check my hair or change out of my yoga pants. Steven and I were beyond all that. Arms folded against the cold, I crossed brittle grass to his truck. He reached over the front seat to open the door for me, and I climbed inside the cab. The air was close and warm, thick with the tang of whisky on his breath and the earthy smell of his farm that still clung to his clothes.
He looked awful, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t take any joy in that. An empty pint bottle lay on the bench between us. His jacket hung open over his untucked flannel, and his hair stuck up as if he’d been dragging his fingers through it.
A curtain shifted in Mrs. Haggerty’s kitchen window. She’d be on the telephone first thing tomorrow, making sure all the neighbors knew Steven was here, having a clandestine meeting in his truck with his ex-wife. “You want to go somewhere else?”
Steven followed my line of sight to Mrs. Haggerty’s house. His shoulders shook with a somber laugh as he turned the key in the ignition and made a clumsy three-point turn, his huge tires chewing tracks in her front lawn.
Steven’s hand was loose on the wheel. I wondered if I should offer to drive, but a moment later he pulled over in front of the small community park at the end of our street. He killed the engine and got out, and I followed his slow, unsteady steps to a set of swings illuminated by a dull halo of moonlight.
The chains groaned as he eased into one. I settled into the swing beside him, shivering as the cold seeped from the hard plastic seat through my clothes. We sat, listening to the low hum of traffic on the nearby highway, watching the flashing lights of the planes overhead.
“This reminds me of the night Delia was born,” he said, staring up at the night-bright sky. I gave him a long side-eye. Our memories of that night were very different. All I remembered was the pain and the long hours of labor, leaving frantic messages for him between contractions as the time between them grew shorter. All I remembered was Georgia’s face. The smell of coffee on her breath, her hand clutching mine as she shouted at me in her police officer voice to keep pushing, and the fat lip she gave my husband in the hospital parking lot when he finally showed up, hungover and terrified. He’d been there all night, drinking in this park, afraid of becoming a father and screwing it up. “I’m scared, Finn.”
“Of what?”
“I’m scared Theresa’s involved with him.”
I raised an eyebrow, twisting in my seat to look him squarely in the face. The chains spun around each other, keeping tension on the swing. If I took my feet off the ground, they’d turn me away from him and pull me straight again, and I found something oddly reassuring about that. “Aren’t you involved with someone, too?” I asked.
He glanced up at me, surprised. “That obvious?”
“Let’s just say I know the signs.”
He shook his head, staring at the sod and mud on his boots. “It’s not just that. I know I’d probably deserve it if all she was doing was sleeping around. But I’m worried that she’s in over her head with this guy. He’s bad news, Finn. I’m afraid she’s going to do something stupid and get herself in trouble. Something that could cost me my business or my kids. The business I could come back from, but I already lost our kids once, and I don’t think I could…” A muscle bobbed in his throat and his eyes shone, reflecting the streetlamp on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” he said in a choked voice. “For everything.”
“I know.” I reached out, my hand held open in the space between us. It hung there for a moment before I felt Steven’s cold, calloused fingers in mine. I squeezed them. Not because I forgave him for doing what he’d done. But because this was a fear I understood. Because I shared it. Because of all the things I had to be afraid of right now, this was the one that terrified me most, too.
Steven’s eyelids were heavy. With a gentle tug of my hand, he pulled my swing closer, until I could smell the liquor and fear and hopelessness on his breath. His head tipped, just enough to be an invitation. Just close enough for our foreheads to touch. It would be so easy to lean into him. It was all so familiar, something I could fall into without thinking. I lifted my feet, my fingers sliding from his as the swing pulled me back to its center.
“Are you really dating an underwear model?” he asked through a sleepy, drunken grin.
A smile tugged at my lips. “My attorney would probably advise me not to answer that.”
Steven nodded. He kicked softly at the circle of dirt under his swing, making me wonder if he was jealous. Which made me wonder if that mattered to me.
I stood up, pulling Steven from his swing, making sure he was steady on his feet before letting him go. “Come on,” I said, taking his keys from his pocket. “I’ll drive you home.”