“Yeah, that’s Duane. Early riser.”
She gave him a strange look. “Did you want to talk to me?”
“Actually, I did,” he admitted. He went on quickly, because he felt the need to explain. “You’ve been there. You know what it’s like to lose a friend. Especially that way.”
Even as he said it, he knew that he was lying. It was more than that. The fact that he was able to open up to Tabby about losing Jess was a neon warning sign that he felt a connection with her. Except he couldn’t afford to feel that way. Tabby had barbed wire around her. She was with Duane.
“Wow, I... I’m glad that you thought of me.” She added after a pause, “Hey, Duane and I are having dinner with your parents tonight at Boulevard. You should come with us.”
“I don’t want to intrude. This is your chance to get to know Ned and Janice. Away from the support group, that is.”
Tabby took his hand. It felt way too natural for her to do so. “Really, Frost, I’d like you there.”
The safe thing to say was no, but he heard himself tell her, “Sure. Okay.”
“Excellent. Seven o’clock.” She added, “Speaking of the support group, the families of the victims are meeting on Saturday afternoon. I have to work, but I hope you can make it.”
“I’m under orders to be there,” Frost said. “I’m sure they’ll all be happy to see me.”
“It won’t be so bad. I promise.”
“We’ll see about that.” Frost slid his phone from his pocket. “I met with Gilda Flores, by the way. I was in Nina’s room, and I saw a photo of the two of you. I thought you’d like to see it again.”
He showed her the picture he’d taken of Nina’s birthday button, showing Tabby and Nina cheek to cheek in her bedroom, with the memorabilia of her life on the wall behind them. They were two friends, inseparable, with the world at their feet and their whole lives ahead of them.
But that would only turn out to be true for one of them.
Tabby enlarged the photo to show their faces. “We look young.”
“You were.”
“I know, but nine years ago? It’s like an eternity. I can’t believe she’s been gone for so long. Look at us. That was a week before her twenty-first birthday. We had no idea. I mean, imagine if you could spin a wheel and know exactly when you were going to die. What if we’d spun it that day, and Nina saw that two weeks later, she’d be gone?”
“I’m glad there’s not a wheel like that,” Frost said.
“You wouldn’t want to know?”
“No.”
“I guess you’re right. I guess that’s the mystery.” She gave him back his phone, as if she didn’t want to stare at the past anymore. “I better go buy some fish.”
“Of course.”
“Unless you want me to stick around longer? I can if you want. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Frost said.
“What’s your number?” she asked. When he gave it to her, she worked the keyboard on her phone. “I just texted you my number, too. Call me whenever, okay? I’m serious.”
“Thanks.”
Tabby stood up. She was about to leave, but then she tucked her phone back in her purse and sat down again. Shack bumped her with his head to get her to pet him. “There’s something I’ve always wondered about.”
“What’s that?”
“Why do you think Cutter picked her?” Tabby asked. “Why did he pick Nina instead of me? She and I were both there at the coffee shop. He must have talked to both of us. We were so similar that we were almost like sisters. I mean, what if it had gone the other way? She’d be here, and I’d be dead.”
“You shouldn’t think like that.”
“Oh, but I do. I do all the time. I feel guilty about it.”
“The only one who should feel guilty is Rudy Cutter,” Frost said. “And maybe me.”
“You? You didn’t do anything wrong. You just did your job.”
“Me doing my job got Jess killed.”
He watched Tabby’s lips part in dismay, as if she wanted to tell him, No, that’s not true. But she couldn’t. Her green eyes reached for him across the short space because she had no comforting words to say. He felt her wanting to get closer to him. Her hand made a gesture in his direction, as if the next motion would be to touch his shoulder or his cheek. He saw her lean in, just a little, just enough to encourage him to lean in to her, too. Her chin tilted in what was unmistakably an invitation to a kiss. At that moment, he knew that she felt the chemistry, too. There was something magnetic and dangerous between them.
Then her whole face changed as she remembered the situation. A tiny flash of horror came and went across her features.
Tabby slid away from him in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
He said nothing.
“You know, about Jess,” she added.
“Right.”
She hugged herself tightly, as if the air had grown cold. She stared out at the water. She bit her lower lip and looked upset with herself. “I still miss Nina.”
“I know. I still miss Katie, too.”
“Sometimes I need a girlfriend to talk to about things.”
“Sure.”
Tabby shivered. “Cutter’s out there looking for someone new, isn’t he?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“It’s some girl just like Nina,” she went on. “She has no idea. I hate that.”
“Me, too.”
She shook her head. “I guess you’re right, it’s better not to know the future. Not if you can’t change it. I mean, what if it were me this time instead of some stranger?”
“It’s not,” Frost said.
Tabby stood up again, and he noticed that she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “Are you sure? If I spun the wheel right now, how many days would I have left?”
Rudy climbed down from the top deck of the tour bus at the vista point on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge. His cheeks were windburned from the cold. He had his jacket zipped up. He wore sunglasses and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap that he’d picked up on the Wharf.
Outside the bus, white morning fog poured down from the bridge toward the water like overflowing cotton candy. The city on the other side of the bay looked as if it were floating on top of a cloud. Behind him, the green hills were bathed in sunshine. He was part of a crowd of tourists, all of them with phones and cameras snapping pictures of the view.
Rudy made sure he was out of the camera angles. He didn’t want any record that he’d been here.
The tour guide, who narrated the city’s history as the bus went to each hop-on, hop-off stop, texted on his phone with his thumbs. He was on a break, waiting for the bus to continue its route. The man was in his thirties, with gold studs in both nostrils and a beret over his rainbow-colored hair. He wore a leather jacket decorated with chains.
“What a view,” Rudy said.
“To a kill,” the guide replied without looking up from his phone.
Rudy recoiled. It took him a moment to realize the guide was simply echoing a James Bond movie, and then he laughed. He stayed in profile, so the guide didn’t have a chance to see his face straight on. “I just wanted to tell you that you do a great job with the narration.”
“Thanks.”
“I take these bus tours in all the cities I visit,” Rudy said, “but some of the guides aren’t great at telling stories. It’s more like, here’s this building, here’s that building. Here in Frisco, you guys always make the place come to life.”
He watched the guide wince at the term Frisco, but the man made no effort to correct him. Instead, the man pointed at Rudy’s blue hat. “So you’re from Chicago?”
“Yeah. Out in the suburbs.”
“What do you do?”
Rudy was prepared with a lie. “I sell wholesale furnace replacement parts. Not too exciting.”