Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

So, here’s the thing...

A tight knot in her belly.

‘Kathryn?’

She blinked and realized Boling had asked her something. ‘Sorry?’

‘Antioch. He was Greek?’

‘Probably second or third generation. He didn’t look Mediterranean. He looked like some hunky actor.’

‘Antioch. That’s a town, right?’

‘I don’t know.’

They watched a wraith of fog skim the house, urged on by a modest breeze. The temperature was cool but Dance needed that. Cleansing. So, too, was the noise of seals barking and of waves colliding with rock, the sounds comical and comforting respectively.

It was then, with a thud in her belly, that she noticed something sitting on the Deck floor, near Jon Boling’s feet. A small bag. From By the Sea Jewelry in Carmel. She knew the place. Since Carmel was such a romantic getaway, the jewelry stores tended to specialize in engagement and wedding rings.

My God, she thought. Oh, my God.

The silence between them rolled up, thicker than the fog. And she realized that he’d been mulling something over. Of course, a rehearsed speech. Now he got to it.

‘There’s something I want to say.’ He smiled. ‘How’s that for verbal uselessness? Obviously if I wanted to say something I’d just say it. So. I will.’

Dance administered a sip of wine. No, a gulp. Then she told herself: Keep your wits, girl. Something big’s happening here. She set the glass down.

Boling inhaled, like a free diver about to test himself. ‘We were talking about getting up to Napa, with the kids.’

The coming weekend. A little vineyard touring, a little shopping. On-demand TV in the inn. Pizza.

‘But I’m thinking we shouldn’t go.’

‘No?’

So he had in mind a romantic getaway, just the two of them.

Then he was smiling. A different smile, though. A look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.

‘Kathryn—’

Okay. He never used her name. Or rarely.

‘I’m going to be leaving.’

‘Now? It’s not that late.’

‘No, I mean moving.’

‘You’re...’

‘There’s a start-up in Seattle wants me. May be the new Microsoft. Oh, and how’s this? It’s a new tech company that’s actually making money.’

‘Wait, Jon. Wait. I—’

‘Please?’ He was so even, so gentle, so reasonable.

‘Sure. Sorry.’ A smile and she fell silent.

‘I’m not going to use the clichés people throw around at times like this. Even though— Didn’t you say clichés are clichés because they’re true?’

A friend of hers, not she, but she didn’t respond.

‘What we’ve had is wonderful. Your kids are the best. Okay, maybe those are clichés. But they are the best. You’re the best.’

She gave him infinite credit for not talking about the physical between them. That was wonderful and comfortable and fine, sometimes breathtaking. But it wasn’t a spoke of this discussion’s wheel.

‘But you know what? I’m not the guy for you.’ He laughed his soothing laugh. ‘You do know what I’m talking about, right?’

Kathryn Dance did, yes.

‘I’ve seen you and Michael together. That argument you had on the porch after you came back from Orange County. It wasn’t petty, it wasn’t sniping. It was real. It was the kind of clash that people who’re totally connected have. A bit of flying fur but a lot of love. And I saw the way you worked together to figure out that the killer, the unsub, had done this for hire. Your minds jumping back and forth. Two minds but, you know, really one.’

He might have gone on, she sensed, but there was really no need for additional citation: it was a self-proving argument.

Tears prickled. Her breath was wobbly. She took his hand, which as always was warmer than hers. She remembered once, under the blanket, she’d slipped her fingers along his spine and felt him tense slightly from the chill. They’d both laughed.

‘Now, I’m not matchmaking. All I can do is bow out gracefully and you take it from there.’

Her eyes strayed to the bag. He noticed.

‘Oh, here.’ He reached to the floor and retrieved it.

He handed it to her. And she reached inside. As she did, the tissue rustled and Patsy, the flat-coated retriever, thirty feet away, swung a silky head their way. Leftovers might loom. When she saw the humans’ attention was not on food, she dozed once more.

The box, she noted, was larger than ring size.

‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not really a present. Considering it was yours to start with.’

She opened the box and gave a laugh. ‘Oh, Jon!’

It was her watch, the present from Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, shattered in her enthusiasm to flop to the ground, adding credibility to the Serrano ‘escape’. Clutching the Rolex, she flung her arms around him, inhaled his complex scents. Skin, shampoo, detergents, aftershave. Then she eased back.

In his face, sadness, yes, but not a degree of doubt, not a hint that he hoped for her to protest. He’d analyzed the situation and drawn conclusions that were as true as the speed of light and the binary numerical system. And as immutable.

‘So, what I’m going to do now, so I can hold it together — because I really want to hold it together and I can’t for very long — is to head home.’

He rose. ‘Here’s my plan and I think it’s a good one. Come back every couple of weeks, keep an eye on my house, visit friends. Hack some code with Wes, come to some of Maggie’s recitals. And — if you make the decision you ought to make — you and Michael can have me over to dinner. And — if I make the decisions I ought to make — I imagine I’ll meet somebody and bring her along with me. And you can hire me to perform my cogent forensic analysis, though I have to say that the CBI’s outside-vendor pay rate is pitiful.’

‘Oh, Jon...’

She laughed through the tears.

They walked to the door and embraced.

‘I do love you,’ he said. And touched her lips with his finger, saving her from a stick-figure response. With a rub of Dylan’s sleek muzzle, Jon Boling stepped through the front doorway and, to all intents and purposes, out of her life.

Dance returned to the Deck, sat back in the chair, enwrapped by the damp chill she hadn’t been aware of earlier. Embraced too, far more strongly, by Jon Boling’s absence. She slipped on the repaired watch and stared at the face while the second hand made full circuit, just visible in the amber light from a maritime sconce mounted on the wall above and behind her.

Then she closed her eyes and sat back, as Michael O’Neil’s words, from forty minutes earlier, came back to her now.

‘So, here’s the thing. I’ve thought about this for months, and tried to figure out some other way to say it.’

Kathryn Dance had readied herself for ex-wife Anne’s name to rear itself in the next sentence.

‘I know you’re with Jon now. He’s a good guy and I’ve seen you both together. It clicks. The kids like him. That’s important. Real important. He’ll never hurt you.’

She’d wondered: Where is this going? These words, amounting to rambling from Michael O’Neil, were disorienting. Why was he justifying to her getting back together with his ex?

His eyes fixed on the ugly yellow ceramic cat, he’d continued, ‘I was saying, months and months. But there’s no way except meeting it head on. I don’t think you’re going to want to hear it but I’ve—’

‘Michael.’

‘I want to get married.’

Remarried to Anne? she’d thought. Why the hell ask my permission?

Then he added, ‘You can say no. I’ll understand. You can say Jon’s in your life for ever. But I had to ask.’

Oh, my God. Me. He’s proposing to me .