James Grippando - Money to Burn

Wonderful.

The back of her neck tingled with goose bumps. That gut-wrenching fear was returning-not for herself, but for Michael. Now that she’d tipped her hand and they knew for certain that she was alive, she was not the only one in danger.

Ivy returned to the cavernous nave of the church, her gaze drifting toward the dimly lit high altar. There had to be a way out, and she knew she would find it. Somehow she’d always managed to stay one step ahead of them.

Her only worries were for Michael.

She drew a deep breath, and since she was in a church, she figured a quick prayer couldn’t hurt. Then she reached for her cell and dialed Michael’s number.

“MICHAEL, IT’S ME.”

I thought I was emotionally up to speed with the fact that Ivy was alive, but hearing her voice on the phone blew me away. People sometimes describe these moments in their lives as “time standing still,” but that must have happened only in movies from Papa’s generation. The feeling was the complete opposite for me. It was hard to fathom how so much of our past could be resurrected in a split second. Just those few words-Michael, it’s me-triggered a flood of memories, instantly bringing back all the things I had feared I was forgetting. Her laugh. Her touch. Her kiss. Even the smallest details of our first phone conversation, our first date, our first naked adventure were compressed into that nanosecond of joy, scores of emotional threads unraveling at warp speed and on parallel tracks that led straight to my heart.

But the sense of urgency in her voice was unlike any I had ever heard.

“Where are you?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.

“I can’t tell you.”

I was in my car driving back to Manhattan and was ready to go wherever she was.

“Just listen, please,” she said. “We are in so much danger now that they know I’m alive. They might torture or even kill you to lure me out.”

“Who are they?”

“Just run!”

“Wait! I need to see you.”

“Michael, please!”

An eighteen-wheeler flew past me in the next lane and nearly took the ragtop of my Mini Cooper with it. Tiny cars and the Cross Bronx Expressway were not a happy marriage.

“If you won’t see me, then why did you come back?”

“You know why. I told you.”

Her response caught me by surprise. “When? How?”

“My first warning.”

“I never got any warning.”

She hesitated, and I sensed her fear.

“Michael, the first text message. Two weeks ago, right after I saw Mallory in that gay bar with another man.”

“What?”

“Are you saying you didn’t get the message that said ‘beware the naked bears’?”

Naked bears? “I didn’t get anything like that.”

“Shit!” she said, her tone even more urgent. “Then they must be intercepting your messages. They might even be listening right now! Michael, you have to run.”

“I have to see you!”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Ivy, don’t do this to me!”

“Don’t let yourself end up like Chuck Bell. Run!”

“Ivy, please-”

A loud crack on the line stopped me cold. It sounded like a gunshot.

“Ivy?”

The line was dead. My heart was in my throat.

My God, Ivy!

MALLORY POURED HERSELF ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE, EMPTYING THE bottle. She needed a shoulder to lean on-even cry on a little-and she found it in her friend Andrea.

“Let’s open another,” said Andrea.

Mallory grabbed a key from a hook on the wall. “Here,” she said, sliding it down the bartop to Andrea. “Michael’s personal stash is locked up in the cellar.”

“No offense, but do you really want to drink the good stuff in your condition?”

“Yesh,” Mallory said, slurring. “And the bottles we don’t drink we can pour down the drain. Bottom’s up, Michael.”

Andrea walked inside the climate-controlled cellar behind the bar, came out much too soon to have made an intelligent choice, and placed her selection on the bar.

Mallory made a face. “Damn, girl. You picked the twenty-dollar bottle of Italian toilet water that Michael’s grandfather gave us for our first anniversary.”

Mallory started to get up, but the effects of too much wine rushed to her head. She lowered herself back onto the bar stool, suddenly guilt-ridden. “Sorry, Papa. I shouldn’t take this out on you.”

“You’re sloshed,” said Andrea.

“I had a few glasses before you got here.”

Andrea smiled as she came around the bar and cozied up. “Good. Now I get to hear all the secrets.”

“You want to know a big one?”

Andrea leaned in closer, her eyes eager. “How big?”

“Huge,” said Mallory. “Get this: I think Michael’s first wife is still alive.”

“Ivy what’s her name? I thought you said she was eaten by a shark.”

“I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

“Have you lost your marbles?”

“I’m totally serious,” said Mallory.

“Okay, I’ll bite, no pun intended. What makes you think Ivy has literally risen from the depths?”

Mallory attempted to cross her legs, and Andrea grabbed her just in time to keep her from falling off the stool. Mallory gathered herself, speaking with the forced precision of a drunk trying to sound sober.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like when your husband sleeps around?”

“I’ve never been married, but it can’t be good.”

“It’s horrible. When I caught Don-asshole number one-with his second girlfriend, I said, ‘Never again. I am never going to let a man make me feel like this again.’”

“But you said Michael wasn’t cheating on you.”

“He wasn’t. But I was getting that same horrible feeling. Like I wasn’t his one and only. That was when I started sleeping with Nathaniel.”

“What does that have to do with Ivy being alive?”

Mallory blinked hard, fighting through the alcohol to get back on track. “Ah, excellent question. I was paranoid that someone would find out about Nathaniel and tell Michael. So every night when Michael went to sleep, I crawled out of bed and checked his voice mails, his text messages, his e-mails-just to see if anyone snitched on me. Sure enough, he got one two weeks ago. A text.”

“He got a message you were cheating?”

“Yeah, but I deleted it. He never saw it.”

“What did it say?”

“Something like ‘Mallory is cheating on you,’ and then ‘beware the naked bears.’” She drank more wine, then continued. “I’ve never heard anyone call someone’s lover a ‘naked bear,’ have you?”

“No,” said Andrea. “Definitely not.”

“I Googled it, and all I found were old gay men with hairy bodies. Gross.”

Andrea’s glass was empty, so she took a sip from Mallory’s. “Focus, Mal: How does any of that make you think Ivy is alive?”

Mallory walked around the bar, hanging on to the rail as she came to Andrea’s side.

“Because it was signed ‘Just Between Us.’ And I happen to know that the song ‘Just Between Us’ had special meaning to Michael and Ivy.”

“You know what their song was?”

The way Andrea had said it made Mallory feel pathetic. People just didn’t understand. “You think I’m sick, don’t you?”

“No, not at all,” said Andrea.

“You’ve never seen Ivy’s picture. She was beautiful. Smart, too.”

“So are you, Mallory.”

“But I didn’t use my brain to build a successful career in Michael’s world. I quit teaching dance and spent all my energy on something much more difficult: trying to make him want me.” She shook her head. “What a mistake.”

“Don’t go there,” said Andrea. “You sound jealous of Ivy.”