Lisa Unger - Die For You

“You lied to the police?” Trevor said, his voice high with anguish, looking like he did the day she had to break it to him about Santa.

“I’m just giving Dad a head start,” she whispered, glancing over at the door. She moved over to him and put both her hands on his thin shoulders. “We want to find Isabel before the police do.”

“I thought you said I did the right thing.”

“God, stop whining for once,” said Emily.

“You did” said Linda. “You did do the right thing. But this is the right thing, too. In a different way.”

It was nothing but shades of gray, she wanted to tell him, none of it black and white. But instead she opened her free arm to him and he came and sat on her lap; he wasn’t too big for that. Emily rested her head on Linda’s shoulder and she took her brother’s hand and squeezed. They could be so mean to each other, scream and whine to beat the band, but Linda knew they shared the same ferocious love that she and Izzy did. And now, with foundations shifting, and life as they knew it crashing around them-in ways they weren’t yet aware-they’d have this. They’d always have this.

He felt an acute annoyance as she bled out, died slowly. Her eyelids fluttered quickly, butterfly wings of panic and resistance. There was a hopeless rattle to her breath. He looked away when he saw her hand start to twitch, her eyes go blank. His annoyance resided at first in the back of his throat, then became an ache just above his brow line.

A slow unraveling occurs when one thread separates from the fabric; it can’t help but catch on something. One tiny pull, then another, and eventually the whole garment comes apart. He’d broken the first rule he’d set for himself: Leave at the first sign of trouble; cut your losses, take what you can, and change that garment before you’re left half naked in the cold. It was attachment and arrogance that brought him to this place. Sara’s earlier admonition rang in his ears.

He moved over to the couch and sat, put his chin on one fist, watched her. There was a time when he thought he could love her. But when she’d given herself to him so easily and served her purpose, his passion for her cooled quickly.

HE’D MET MARCUS Raine at Red Gravity, where they were both programmers. Though they’d been raised in the same country, just miles apart, Marcus Raine didn’t want to be friends-not with his fellow countryman, not with anyone. Their colleagues laughed about Raine behind his back, joked that he just powered down at the end of the day, sat slumped at his desk until morning. He was there when everyone arrived, there when they left in the evenings. He seemed to have five sets of nearly identical outfits-black pants and Rockport shoes, button-down shirts in some shade of brown or gray. The receptionist took notes-brown on Monday, charcoal on Tuesday, slate on Wednesday, chocolate on Thursday, gunmetal on Friday. He didn’t often acknowledge the weather, wore the same three-quarter-length lightweight black jacket, rain or shine, summer or winter. Sometimes he wore a stocking cap when it was very, very cold. Sometimes, in the blistering heat, he didn’t wear the jacket at all.

He didn’t join in the laughter. He was only slightly more sociable than Marcus Raine. But even this was design, part of his invisibility. Friendly enough not to stand apart but never intimate, never revealing. As a result, he was fairly certain that none of his Red Gravity colleagues would even remember his name. Sometimes he forgot it, too, would go days without thinking of himself even with the name his mother had given him. Now, after so many years, the name Kristof Ragan seemed to belong to someone else, someone who’d lived a meaningless life and been forgotten.

Beneath their jokes about Marcus Raine was a current of resentment. Marcus had been hired early, before any of them. He’d been paid a very low salary and given a large number of company shares to make up for it. When the company went public, Raine became a very rich man. The company rewarded his loyalty and hard work by raising his salary on top of it. Rumor had it-and in a small company there were always rumors-he made nearly as much as the CEO. But he didn’t begrudge Marcus Raine his success; it didn’t make him angry or jealous. It made him curious. What was it like to be Marcus Raine?

Isabel got a certain look on her face when she was working-and she didn’t have to be sitting at her computer to be working. It was a faraway glaze to her eyes, a kind of thoughtful cock to her head. He could almost see synapses firing in her brain as it struggled to know . It was a place she went to imagine, to understand, to be something that she wasn’t so that she could write it. He found it fascinating but not foreign. He had the same drives, the same desires for very different reasons. He’d had them all his life.

It was Camilla, Raine’s girlfriend, who impelled him to action. Raine, apparently, had forgotten his lunch. He brought the same lunch every day. Some type of meat on whole wheat bread and an apple. He drank water from the cooler, in a cup he kept in his desk and washed in the break-room sink when he was done. He was so precise, like an old clock, so predictable and self-contained. He never could have imagined Raine with a woman like Camilla. She breezed into the office, wearing a flouncy, printed dress, extraordinarily lean, delicately muscular, outstanding legs ending in dangerously high heels-red. She had an electrifying energy, white-blond hair, a voice that sounded like a singing bird to him.

“Can I just leave this for Marcus Raine?” she asked, holding up a brown bag.

“Oh, I’ll call him,” the receptionist said with unmasked enthusiasm. She wanted to see him interact with his girlfriend. “Can I give him your name?”

She hesitated, looked around. “Camilla,” she said finally.

The reception desk stood directly in front of the door; behind that was the field of cubicles where everyone sat. One by one, people found a reason to look over the walls, like prairie dogs popping quick, curious heads up from their holes. From where he sat, he had an unobstructed view as Marcus Raine strode up to the front and took the bag from her hand. He watched Camilla’s face brighten at the sight of him. Her smile widened-no, deepened-as Raine wound a strong arm around her waist and kissed her. He whispered something to her in Czech and she laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like ice in a glass.

Suddenly Marcus Raine didn’t seem so laughable. He watched the faces of their colleagues, mocking smiles dropping in surprise, resentment waxing like a moon, cold and hard.

HE HADN’T THOUGHT about the way he met Camilla in a long time, about the desire he’d had from the first moment he saw her. It was different from the desire he’d had for Isabel, which was cooler, more intellectual. His love for Isabel connected him to the higher parts of himself, the better man inside. His hunger for Camilla had been primal, a raptor ripping meat from a carcass on the jungle floor.

He saw her again later in the week. This time it was no accident. He worked at his station until he saw the top of Raine’s head float by his cube. He quickly gathered his things and ran down the stairs while the old elevator slowly carried Raine toward the street. He arrived on the ground floor just in time to see the other man exit through the glass doors onto Canal Street. It was summer, still light at nearly eight P.M.

The humidity in the air raised an instant sheen of sweat on his brow. From a distance, he followed Raine through the chaos of the busy street, beside the garish electronics shops, just gaping holes in buildings, loud with booming speakers, and stands loaded with knockoff bags, the air smelling of exhaust and crispy duck.