“You know, you kind of inspired me, actually. I’ve been working out a lot myself.” He sat up straighter. Displaying himself. “You notice?”
Oh please, she thought.
But taking the opportunity to really focus on him, she could tell that he looked different. Thinner, for one. Harder. Even his face. His eyelids looked less puffy, the bags below them almost gone.
Good god, had he gotten his eyes done?
The mouth was the same, the cherub lips. And the hair, the gold curls, with their salon highlights.
“You’ve lost some weight,” she said.
“Well, you know, I was in the hospital for almost a month, thanks to you. Yeah, I lost a lot of weight. When I got out, I had to do a bunch of physical therapy, and after all that, I just thought, well hey, why not turn over a new leaf while I’m at it?” He rubbed a patch on his cheekbone. “Still numb. Multiple fractures.” Touched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, and that bump’s left from where they reset it. I could’ve had more work done but I kinda like it, actually. Gives me a distinguished touch, I’ve been told.”
Deep, calming breaths, she told herself.
“So is that why you came here, Gary? You want to compare injuries? Because you know, I have a few. Thanks to you.”
“Be nice if we could just call it even. Wouldn’t it?”
At that, she laughed. “Are you really going to tell me that you came here to kiss and make up? Do you think for one second I’d believe that?”
“No, I don’t expect you would.” He settled back into his chair. “But one thing I hope you do believe, Michelle. You know how I used to tell you that I thought you had a lot of potential? A natural aptitude? I meant that. I really did.”
A sinking feeling. How many times had she read that description in a book, not really thinking about what it actually described? She felt it now, a hollow plunging in her gut.
She didn’t need to know exactly what was coming to have a pretty good idea of its shape.
“No,” she said.
“You haven’t even heard what I have to say.”
“I don’t need to.”
Now he chuckled. Took a hearty swallow of wine. “You really think you get to say no?”
Red pulsed behind her eyes. She thought about the gun. “I should have fucking killed you,” she said.
“Yeah. You probably should’ve,” he said without heat. “Rookie mistake. It’s always best to finish the job.”
He drank some more wine and finally pushed his glass away. “Tell you what. I know this is a lot to absorb right now. I’m staying at a little bed and breakfast just off the square. The Lady Jane Grey. Cute place. Got a hot tub and everything. Why don’t you come see me tomorrow morning, nine-ish, and we’ll get caught up?”
Michelle nodded. It was easier to agree than to argue.
Now he stood. Retrieved his wallet from a back pocket. “One glass is my limit these days.” He pulled out three one hundred dollar bills and tossed them on the table. “You can take the rest of the bottle home.” He smiled. “On me.”
After Gary left, she stayed where she was. Picked up her wine glass. Thinking she wanted to snap the stem between her fingers, hurl the glass against the wall. At the redwoods photo, maybe. Because it really was a cliché.
Instead she had a sip, and then another.
She finished the glass. Picked Gary’s money up off the table, grabbed the bottle of wine, and went over to the bar.
“For the Turley on number five,” she said, handing Matt the money.
“Wow. That’s a big tip.”
She shrugged. “Make sure it gets divided up.”
“What about the bottle?”
Michelle glanced at the two customers on bar stools. Students, she thought, a girl and a boy who looked like they’d barely reached drinking age. On a date, probably. Nursing draft beers.
“You like wine?” she asked them. “It’s on the house.”
Outside, the fog was thick, leaving her face damp with its chill. She kept one hand on the butt of her.38 as she clicked on her key to unlock the Prius, parked behind Evergreen.
Stupid, she thought, sliding into the front seat. He’s not waiting out here to kill me, or kidnap me. He wouldn’t have come into the restaurant that way if that had been his plan.
Whatever it was he wanted her to do would be his version of revenge. Or the start of it. He’d put her in some situation that she couldn’t get out of. Where she’d be afraid, all the time. Terrorized.
She remembered the things he’d threatened her with, before. She remembered the things that he’d done.
It’s all a game to him. It’s fun.
She arrived home, not remembering the drive.
Still keeping her hand on the pistol, she clicked off the alarm and went inside.
No Danny. He wasn’t due back yet, but still, she’d wanted desperately to find him here. She wanted to tell him what had happened. To have him hold her.
She went out to the garage and retrieved one of the burner cell phones.
They could have kept the phones in the house safe, but that looked bad, Danny had said. “Just throw them in a box of crap in the garage. Like it’s a piece of junk we haven’t taken to the electronics recycling. If anyone finds one, you don’t know what it is or how it got there.” A cheap phone, with no GPS. Prepaid minutes, bought with cash at a big-box store in another state.
She dug out the charger, stashed in a different bin on the workbench. Plugged in the phone. Went to texts, and punched in a number.
A two-character text: 86.
She waited. No response.
Okay, she thought, it might still be okay. He could be on his way back. He could have already tossed the phone.
She went back into the house. Grabbed her iPhone. Her “Emily” phone. The one with the plan through AT &T, the one that she paid for out of her “Emily” bank account every month, like a normal person.
She called Danny’s “Jeff” phone. “Hey,” his recorded voice said, “Sorry I missed you. Leave a message.”
“Hi, it’s Emily. Can you call me back, as soon as you pick this up. It’s important.”
He turns his phone off all the time, she told herself. If he’s still doing his run, it would definitely be off. Stashed in a signal-blocking bag, to make sure it couldn’t be tracked.
But he was supposed to have his burner cell on, if he was still doing his run.
She went to her bedroom closet. Retrieved another cell phone from her other hobo, a Marc Jacobs she didn’t use much any more. Her “Michelle” phone. Also prepaid. A risk, she knew. But she didn’t keep any numbers in the phone book. Deleted the calls she made after she made them, as well as any incoming.
The only person who had the number was her sister, and Michelle had already changed it twice.
She couldn’t tell Maggie what had happened in Mexico, or after. Where she was now, what she was doing. She’d seen Maggie and Ben once, eight months ago, meeting them in Santa Barbara for a “getaway weekend.”
“You can’t ask questions,” she’d told Maggie. “Only call me if it’s an emergency. I mean, a real emergency.” She’d given Maggie an email address too, that she accessed through a VPN. “Use that first. I’ll check it every day.”
It wasn’t foolproof. Cutting off all contact would have been the safest thing to do. But she’d lost everything else. She wasn’t going to lose what was left of her family.
Their parents had been older. They’d gone from retirement community to assisted living to nursing home, the kind of journey where the horizons shrunk to a room and a wheelchair. Mom was gone. Dad had Alzheimer’s. It was a weird blessing, in a way, that there wasn’t enough left of him to miss her.
She put money into an account for his care, every month. Derek, their lawyer, took care of that. It was supposed to be untraceable.
She didn’t necessarily trust Derek.
Michelle dialed Maggie’s number. If her sister’s phone was tapped, so what? She didn’t have to worry about them pinging the cell phone tower, about them locating her. Gary was here. They already knew.