Michael Koryta - The Prophet

He called her from one of the disposable cell phones he kept, a different model than he’d used on the Bova setup. She answered on the first ring, and again he thought of his parents, of the long, terrible wait.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Penny. I’m the man who made you a promise not long ago. Do you understand?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“It’s done,” Adam said.

When she finally spoke again, her voice didn’t have its sea legs.

“You really mean it? You’re telling me that the man who—”

“I’m telling you that it’s done,” Adam said, and then he hung up. His hand was shaking when he tossed the phone into a nearby Dumpster.

41

ADAM WAITED FOR THE POLICE to come, but they never did. The day dwindled away without contact. He ran the police scanner in the office and heard nothing but the standard traffic. Whatever was taking place was not running through dispatch and radio calls. They’d be processing the scene now. Interviewing the neighbors, looking for security cameras that might have seen something.

AA Bail Bonds had no skips, nobody who required hunting. No one came in during the day to process a bond, either. All quiet. Chelsea occupied herself with financial spreadsheets; Adam spent some time on the computer, browsing real estate websites. At four thirty, while the sun was still up, he grabbed his keys and asked her if she wanted to go for a ride.

“A ride?” she said, looking at him with one arched eyebrow and sweeping her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

“Please.”

She took his hand and got to her feet. “What is going on with you today?”

He didn’t answer. On the drive to Amherst Road he felt tense, forcing himself through silly small talk that she indulged, all the while refusing to ask him where they were going. It was a gorgeous afternoon—blue skies had slid in behind the last front, and fat white clouds rolled through on a warm southern breeze. An Indian summer day, full of sunshine and bright colors and the last gasps of warmth. An illusion. He’d seen the forecast and knew it was going to break overnight, that by tomorrow morning the wind would be blowing hard out of the north and driving rain with it. Still, today was so perfect it was almost hard to believe that. Easy to ignore it, at least. Easy to put the forecast aside.

The house was a stone ranch with a detached garage and a full basement. It looked too suburban to Adam, lacked character, but the property appealed. Eighteen acres, all of it wooded except for the lawn, old-growth oak and walnut trees. A few white pines near the back deck.

“Foreclosure sale,” he told her as they got out of the car and stood in the fading sunlight, the trees beyond the house alive with color. “There are a lot of them around here right now.”

She was watching him in silence, the warm wind fanning her hair out behind her.

“You’ve decided,” she said.

He nodded.

“Is it what you want, Adam? Don’t do it just for me. If you’re not ready to leave that house, or if you don’t want to, then please do not—”

“I’m ready,” he said. “And I want to. It’s time.” He looked away from her and added, “It’s probably well past time.”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm, and he felt a tingle along his spine and wondered how that was possible, how such a familiar touch could continue to provoke sensations like that. Why didn’t it wear off, like so many other things did?

“It’s a good spot,” she said.

“It’s just an option. Like I said, there are lots of them. This economy, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to buy one than it will be to sell the ones we’ve got. We’ll have to figure that out.” She was making clean breaks, she was moving forward. He would do the same. “Who will take care of the snakes?” he asked.

She looked at him in surprise. “You care? I thought you hated them.”

“I’m not a fan. But, still, they’re out there. Someone has to take care of them. We can’t just pretend they don’t exist.”

“Someone will take care of them,” she said. “Don’t worry about that.”

He nodded. They were walking through the side yard now. He waved a hand at the house. “Whether this is right for us, I don’t know. I just wanted to see it, because I like the idea of the space. It’s almost twenty acres. Good privacy. No neighbors looking over your shoulder.”

“Pioneer mentality,” she said. “All you midwestern boys are ranchers at heart. You want land. The more the better.”

“Privacy,” he repeated.

She smiled. “I like privacy. Good deck for a hot tub. I’d really like privacy if we put one of those in.” She leaned over and kissed his neck, her tongue gliding over his skin.

“I’d actually want neighbors for that,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Athletic past. I perform better in front of a large crowd.”

“You do all right in the bedroom when it’s just the two of us.”

“Just the two of us? I’ve got cameras all over the place in there.”

She smiled, then tugged on his belt, bringing him to a stop, and her eyes went serious. “I love you,” she said.

He told her that he loved her, too, and he meant it. Had never stopped meaning it. As he kissed her there in the yard, he thought that this might actually be the place. They could make it work here, where they had some space, where they were far enough from home but not gone from it completely. He knew better than to try to run from his sins—and it was in his sins that Adam’s past and present joined hands, their embrace as intimate as the one he now shared with Chelsea—but he also believed, maybe for the first time, that you could build something clean in their shadows.

Part Four

AUTUMN’S END

42

GAME DAY.

Kent had slept deeply the night before; he knew this because Beth told him so in the morning.

“You’re usually so restless on Thursday nights,” she said. “Last night, you slept like Lisa. Only with additional snoring.”

“I gather you did not sleep as well?”

“As I said, there was the snoring.”

They could afford to be light again, afford to joke. The front page carried news of the murder of Clayton Sipes, a recently paroled felon from Cleveland. There was no mention of Rachel Bond yet, but he hoped there soon would be. Stan Salter and Robert Dean would do their jobs. Until then, he would be grateful for the comfort of his private knowledge.

“Bad football weather,” Beth said. The sun that had set the previous day seemed to have chosen not to rise; the sky was a deep gray and rain splattered in nickel-colored drops on the driveway.

“There is no such thing,” Kent said, “as bad football weather.”

Rodney Bova came by that afternoon, and Adam knew instantly that it wasn’t good. The man’s eyes were red-rimmed and he was humming with tension. The first words out of his mouth were “Did you help them?”

Adam said, “Help who?”

“The police. Did you help them?”

Behind him, Chelsea stirred, and while Bova didn’t turn, Adam saw her hand going under her desk, down to where she kept a snub-nose .38 Special. He’d insisted that she keep the weapon there, but she never paid attention to it. Something about Bova was already putting her in a state of high alert.

“If there is one thing I am not right now,” Adam said, “it is a friend of the police, Rodney.”

“Why did you put the tracking bracelet on me?”

Now Chelsea’s eyes rose from the pistol and found Adam’s. He looked away fast, and got to his feet.

“Let’s go outside,” he said. “I’ll hear you out, Rodney, but I will not allow you to shout in my office. I’ve got a business to run.”