“Because it’s a bad idea?” she asked instead. “Or because you’re telling me not to?”
“Because it’s a bad idea. You know it is.”
It was, and she did.
“Jesus, Em. I wish you’d listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” she said. “I’ll make the call.”
He seemed to relax, the line of his shoulders softening. “Okay. Keep me posted.”
“I’ll try. It might get a little complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Do what Sam says. He’ll take care of you.”
Right, she thought.
“I’m going home tomorrow,” she said. “To take care of a few things. I should be back in a few days.”
She hesitated. She wanted to make some gesture, something to show him that she cared. She’d seen women actually press their lips against the window, but she wasn’t going to do that.
Instead, she flattened her palm on the Plexiglas, just for a moment.
It still felt fake. Like a scene from a bad prison movie.
He watched her do it. Stared down at his own hands held flat on the counter. “Be careful,” he said.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought he seemed ashamed.
“I will. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
Once she got out in the hall, she tore open her second wet wipe and cleaned her hand with it.
Stupid. You’re so stupid.
The words repeated in her head like the world’s worst mantra. While she stood in the shower, washing the stink of the jail away, while she lay on her hotel bed, not able to sleep, until she finally gave up and took an Ambien.
Seeing him in jail that first time, the rush of affection and fierce protectiveness she’d felt, now she thought it had been like she was acting out a part in a romance novel-save the handcuffed, wounded hero.
This time, seeing him, the thrill was definitely gone.
The jail was a horrible place, full of petty indignities. It was about waiting in lines, filling out forms, screaming into a spittle-flecked speaker, having to pee in an overflowing, shit-smeared toilet that no one seemed to care enough to clean. Watched every step of the way by guards, some of whom wore leather gloves padded with buckshot. It was horrible and stupid and mundane, like some kind of nightmare version of a prom at a poor public high school, men and women lined up on opposite sides of the glass.
If I really care about him, I’m going to have to see this through, she thought. There’s no quick fix. What were the odds that Gary or Sam could just snap their fingers and make it all better? Or if they could, that either of them were willing to do so?
She lay there, the Ambien slowly dissolving the knots in her head, and thought about it. How she really felt. Did she love Danny, really, without the fantasy? Considering who he was, and all the things he’d done?
He’d done good things as well, she told herself. She’d believed him when he’d talked about the missions he’d flown. They hadn’t all been criminal.
But what was the point of rationalizing it? That was what he’d done, what had helped him keep doing his job, until the bad things had piled up too high and tipped the balance.
Did she owe him? On the one hand, he’d saved her ass. On the other, her ass wouldn’t have needed saving if she’d never met him.
Though she’d probably be bankrupt and living in her sister’s spare room.
She was finally dozing off. Once, twice, a fragmented thought broke through her drift towards sleep, jerking her awake, and she was irritated with herself for not being able to control her thoughts, for depriving herself of the relief that sleep would bring.
Jesus Christ, I’m in love with a criminal.
And not for the first time.
That hadn’t ended well, either, she thought, before she finally fell asleep.
Chapter Eight
She got into Arcata at 4 p.m. She’d left her car at the airport, with a fleece jacket in the trunk, which was a good thing, because it had to be thirty degrees cooler here than it had been in Houston.
She made it home before 5 p.m. The house smelled stale and cold. She resisted the temptation to take a nap. It had been a long day of travel, and her shoulders ached with fatigue, but there were things she had to do.
Call Sam.
She didn’t want to. But she’d promised.
Funny. Danny had told her to memorize Sam’s number, and she thought that she had, but she was still afraid of forgetting it. So she’d written the number down on page 122 of her Alice Waters Art of Simple Food cookbook, on the margins of a recipe for pan-fried pork chops.
She flipped through the cookbook to page 122.
There it was.
What phone to call him from? Emily’s? Michelle’s? A burner?
She had a sudden flash from the night she’d met Sam. They’d flown over the border, landed on a dirt airstrip somewhere in New Mexico. Danny by that time was shocky, pale and drenched in sweat, wavering on the edge of consciousness at times, the blood on his shirt dried to rust. He’d called Sam. “Hey, Sam,” he’d said. “Hey. Can you pick us up?”
She shuddered, thinking about it. It had been a bad night.
A burner.
She retrieved the new burner phone from her luggage that she’d bought in Houston at a Best Buy and plugged it in to charge. Went out to the garage and got the other phone, the one she hadn’t used to call Danny the night he was arrested. She’d tossed that one before going through security at SFO.
The area code for Sam’s number was 703, Virginia, but that didn’t mean anything much. She had no idea where Sam’s base of operations actually was.
“Hi, Sam? This is… this is Michelle. Danny’s friend.” She hesitated. “Is this a good time?”
“Let me call you back.”
Sam had the hint of an accent. She wasn’t sure from where. His last name was Kolar, but who knew if that was his real name? At times she thought she’d imagined the accent, or that maybe it was just an inflection he’d picked up from foreign-born parents. Or that it was some kind of disguise.
Five minutes later, her burner rang. He was using a different number now. A burner of his own, maybe.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“Yeah. You know Gary, right?”
A brief silence on the other end of the line.
“Just tell me what happened.”
She kept it short. Didn’t talk about her visit to Houston, or Gary’s job. Just that Gary had been responsible for Danny’s bust.
Sam knew who Gary was. He had to. She hadn’t heard everything Daniel had told him that night in New Mexico, but he had to have told Sam about Gary.
“So, Gary,” Sam said when she’d finished. Then silence. She waited.
When it was clear that he wouldn’t speak first, she asked: “Is there anything you can do?”
Another pause. “What does Gary want?”
She felt the acid churn in her gut. This was what she’d wanted to avoid. “I don’t know, revenge?”
Sam chuckled softly. “Is there something he wants you to do?”
She was afraid to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t come up with a good enough lie.
“So you know Gary,” she said.
She listened to the silence on the other end of the line. He wasn’t going to answer. “I’m afraid if I tell you that he’ll find out,” she finally said. “And that you won’t be able to protect me.”
“A legitimate concern. But Danny told you to call me, didn’t he?”
She couldn’t say what she wanted to. Which would have been something like, “Yeah, and he also thought that smuggling pot into Texas was a great idea.”
“Gary wants me to take a personal assistant job,” she said. “For a woman named Caitlin O’Connor. She has a non-profit called Safer America.”
She thought she heard the clicking of a keyboard, but she couldn’t be sure.