Lisa Unger - Die For You

I felt myself separating from a rising tide of emotion-grief horror, fear. I rafted it like a white-water current, otherwise I would have drowned.

“Where would you say that is?” I asked. He leaned in close and I could smell the scent of Ivory soap on his skin, mingling with the vodka on his breath. He put a finger on the screen. I saw the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the distance.

“Brooklyn,” he said. “Somewhere between Bensonhurst and Coney Island.”

“You were right,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. “We would have been better off not seeing that.”

“Always listen to your agent,” he said. He was trying to lighten things up a bit, but he just sounded sad and a little afraid.

I backed up the thumb drive on his computer, ejected and pocketed the small device. He stood by and watched me do it, folded his arms across his chest. I walked to the door and turned around to look at him.

“This is the point where I say you don’t have to come with me, that I don’t want you to. I want you to stay here and be safe, call the police if I don’t come back or call.”

He released a long, slow breath, held my eyes.

“I was hoping that this was the point where you realized you’re not writing this. That the tragedy and danger are real, that you’re grief-stricken and injured, that you need to lie down and let me take care of you.”

I smiled at the temptation. “If I did that, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

He nodded. “And if I let you go alone, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

He helped me on with my coat. I gathered Camilla’s things and put them in her bag, slipped the thumb drive in there, too, and slung it over my shoulder. I left my own bag behind, not wanting anything to happen to my last bit of cash, my passport and credit cards. I kept her gun in the pocket with Detective Crowe’s card. I put her cell phone in the other, noticing that the charge was low.

“Do you have my cash?”

“Not on my person. But I have it in the house, yes. We’ll talk about that later.”

I nodded, took the revolver out of my pocket one last time and did what I hadn’t yet done, looked to see if it was loaded. It was.

“Do you even know how to use a gun?” Jack asked.

“I do.”

He looked at me quizzically, skeptical.

“Research,” I said.

He opened the door for me and we walked out into the night.

“WHY DON’T YOU give it up, Crowe? Seriously, buddy. We’re going on two years here.”

Grady Crowe was sitting alone in the car outside the precinct. He’d dropped Jez off at the door, told her he’d park and be right up to deal with Erik Book. Book, as they suspected, had already contacted his lawyer and was refusing to say anything until he arrived. They’d had him ride in the back of a radio car with two uniformed officers, not cuffed, but not necessarily free to go, either. And Crowe suspected that Book was unsettled enough that he might turn on the charm and get a word or two out of him the nice way. Book seemed like a reasonable guy in over his head, maybe making mistakes out of fear, a desire to protect. He’d give him the “Look, you’re not a suspect, don’t need a lawyer, we just want to help” speech.

There were fewer parking spots on the street in front of the precinct than there were police vehicles, so he found a space in the back of the lot across First. With a few seconds alone in the car, he did what he’d been wanting to do all day: He called Clara’s cell.

She was still thinking about him. Her late-night call told him that. Maybe she wasn’t as happy with Keane as she thought she’d be. Big surprise there. He had a lofting feeling of hope in his center until Sean Keane, the man currently fucking Grady’s wife, answered her phone.

Grady stared ahead, his view a chain-link fence, a patch of overgrown grass and weeds, and the tall redbrick wall of the building adjacent to the lot. To his right was the outdoor basketball court where he and Keane used to shoot hoops after a rough shift to blow off steam. Around the corner was the bar where they’d grab a beer and a burger. They’d bitch about their wives. When they were friends, more than once he’d thought, with a twinge of envy, that Keane was a really good-looking guy. Lean and muscular, sandy-blond hair and strong jaw, jewel-green eyes with girlish lashes. All the girls in the precinct brushed the hair out of their eyes, smiled too much, laughed too loudly when he was around. Stupid. If they knew what a dog he was, those smiles wouldn’t last long.

Little did Grady know that Sean would one day be making Clara smile and so much more. He saw them talking at the Christmas party. He noticed the way she tilted her head and twirled a strand of her hair. They’d fought about it, actually.

You shouldn’t be flirting at my fucking Christmas party. It’s unbecoming .

Yeah? Maybe if you stayed with me, acted like my goddamn husband, I’d be flirting with you.

But that was a long time ago. “I would, buddy” he said, mocking Keane’s use of the word. “I would let it go. Except your fiancée keeps calling me.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line and Grady felt a rush of satisfaction. “All the shiny and new rubbing off? Underneath just the same old thing?”

Sean didn’t give him the benefit of a reaction, but Grady heard his voice tighten when the other man spoke again.

“Give it up, Crowe. The wedding’s in a week.”

“Yeah. And a year from now, you’re going to find yourself on another bar stool bitching about Clara the way you bitched about Angie.” He let a beat pass. “Hey, how’s that boy of yours? Missing his daddy?”

The line went dead and Grady enjoyed a moment of self-righteous glee. He was the injured party, the one who’d kept his vows-he liked lording that over them. It comforted him. Clara and Sean hurt a lot of people to be together; he hoped they lost a little sleep over it.

But after a moment, the rush of pleasure passed and he felt lower than he had before, which was pretty low. Now Clara would be upset with him for betraying her to Sean. If she called again, it would be in anger and disappointment. She’d phoned him in a vulnerable moment and he used it to hurt her. He wished he could take it back, what he’d said. He wished he’d protected her instead of offering her up to get his licks in with Keane.

One of Clara’s more memorable cuts came back to him: You’re not even adult enough to be someone’s husband. What kind of father would you be?

“Shit.” He almost hit the dash, but his fist still ached from the last miserable phone call. “Shit.”

By the time he’d cooled down and was entering the precinct, Jez was exiting.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “The lawyer is already here. What took you so long, anyway?”

“I was looking for parking,” he said lamely.

She seemed skeptical but stopped short of giving him a hard time again. Instead she patted him on the back to get him moving.

“Well, let’s roll,” she said. “When’s the last time you went dancing?”

“So long ago, I don’t even remember what it feels like.”

She gave a little grunt. “Join the club.”

I had this nervous tick of using my thumbnail to tug at the back of my wedding ring. Of course, every time I tried to do this, I was reminded that the ring was gone.

I never had a traditional wedding band, always hated the idea of that for some reason-as though it was some kind of bond to the normal, the common idea of marriage. The ring Marcus gave me at our engagement, a ruby set in a platinum band, was the only jewelry I wore. I loved its glinting red fire, the simple beauty of a single gem, something pure mined from the earth. Not flashy but stately. Not for show, for real. Of course, it was all flash, all show, none of it real. And the ring, like everything else, was gone.