And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Maybe.

  See you soon.

  But not in this traffic. It was as though every car that had a transmission and an AM-FM radio needed to take a Sunday drive on a Wednesday. Not an inch of free space anywhere. Highways were crammed like a summer day at Disneyland.

  Freaking Hank.

  He’d showed up unannounced at her apartment building. Was this a normal thing? Men just … showing up? She no longer had a true reference point for proper behavior, nor did she read romance novels or watch rom-coms. Her last “normal” relationship had sent her careening into California. This kind of “normalcy”? She didn’t like this kind, and she’d let Hank know that, especially since he hadn’t bothered to call or text her since … since … Friday morning?

  And now, she was stuck on the 10 freeway connector to the 110 North—an Easter-egg-hidden level of hell. Nighttime had clocked in for work, but the sun still gave off enough light to make her squint. Something about this traffic jam was different, and whatever it was scraped the back of Gray’s neck.

  Her phone buzzed. An alert from ORO.

  Gray’s breath left her, and her gaze zipped from car to car.

  Bored-looking faces. Mouths moving to Adele or Smokey Robinson or Maroon 5. Glazed eyes, some hidden by Oakleys or Ray-Bans.

  She tapped the banner to open the alert, but her screen froze and went black.

  “You’re crashing now?” she shouted.

  Gray switched lanes to exit. That scraping itchiness still rode her neck, and she looked again in the rearview and side mirrors—behind her, four other cars had also switched lanes.

  Because it’s a freeway, dummy. And the Seventh Street off-ramp was a major exit.

  No one in those cars behind her looked familiar or menacing, and yet …

  And yet … Where is he? Where is Sean? Greater Los Angeles meant he could be way south in Watts or way north in Highland Park.

  She pushed those buttons that needed pushing to restart her phone. That kick of panic was not irrational; it was instinct. Fight or flight. She’d heeded its scratchy-itchiness before, and it wouldn’t make sense to ignore it now.

  The phone blinked back to life.

  She tapped the ORO icon, but needed to log in again.

  No time.

  Gray zipped down the off-ramp and made a quick left onto Enid Place. A tidy side street, Enid’s only purpose was to send drivers to the mall’s parking garage. Gray didn’t go that far; she pulled over to the curb and idled in front of a fire hydrant.

  The green minivan that had driven behind her slowly rolled past Enid Place. That car was followed by a PT Cruiser, and its driver kept his head straight. A black Mustang slowed in the intersection. The male driver—she couldn’t tell if he was white, Latino, or lighter-skinned black—looked to his left, down Enid Place, slowing some as the Beetle behind him tooted its horn and forced him to go forward.

  Mustang Man was following her.

  Why? Who is he? What does he want? Is he one of Sean’s boys?

  That scratching against her skin had turned into clawing. But she couldn’t hear her heartbeat, or the shallow breaths pushed out of her mouth. Hollow, that’s how she felt. Floaty and dead—numb. And she stared out the windshield, not seeing cars or pigeons or anything, not anymore. Not caring that Nick hadn’t found the weakness in his company’s armor.

  Give up.

  Weary. Bone tired. In pain—not even sharp pain, but vague, strange, sad pain.

  She couldn’t even hide while driving a black SUV in a city filled with black SUVs.

  Not good.

  Unfair. This was all unfair.

  What had she done in this life or a past one to deserve any of this?

  She wanted to mash the gas pedal and escape through the mall. Race past the Mendocino Farms and the Yara boutique.

  And then what?

  Why fight anything?

  Surrender, Dorothy.

  Maybe she would surrender. And then it would be over, she’d be dead, and she’d come back a third time. Maybe as a duchess or a farmer. A housewife in Kentucky with only laundry and pumpkin muffins to fret over. Maybe her husband would beat her and this time she’d simply accept it and stay until he ended her and she came back a fourth time. And maybe that time—

  Her phone buzzed with a picture of her taken minutes ago. She’d been driving on the 10 freeway. The photographer had been in a car to her left, driving beside her, knowing that she was behind the wheel of the truck instead of the Camry. This was … nuts. This was—

  The phone buzzed again.

  I told U 2 b careful

  43

  Gray made a right onto Figueroa, not caring if Mustang Man spotted her again. As she stopped to make a left onto Third Street, she saw Hank. He stood near her apartment building’s sign, wearing jeans and an untucked button-down shirt. A patient man, he had waited for her for over an hour. Four days ago, that simple act—waiting—would have sent Gray’s heart skipping like the slickest stone across her chest.

  Today, though …

  She pulled into her building’s dark parking garage.

  No other car—including black Mustangs—rolled in behind her.

  Gray climbed out of the Yukon, and the giant parking lot tightened around her. She hugged bags of Hawaiian souvenirs and biscuits to her chest, and on numb legs, she shuffled outside and to the illuminated Beaudry Towers sign.

  Hank said, “Hey.”

  She tried out a smile, but her lips mangled that attempt.

  He pulled her into his arms. He smelled like mint and strawberries. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  “Traffic.”

  He pointed to the base of the sign, where a brown paper bag sat beside a bouquet of roses. “I brought wine and Thai for dinner. You’ll have to heat it up, though.”

  With that mangled smile of hers stowed away for future failed attempts, Gray asked, “Why are you here?” Funny—hours ago, Nick had asked her the same question.

  Hank shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, I got some explaining to do, huh? But can we go to your place? I need to … you know … use the restroom. It’s been a long afternoon.”

  And so she let him in. And as he used her bathroom, she put the cartons of mint basil beef, Thai chicken, and steamed rice into the microwave. Then she slipped the bottle of white wine into the freezer for a quick chill.

  “That’s a fifty-dollar bottle,” Hank said, rejoining her.

  “Can’t wait to try it.”

  The refrigerator coughed.

  Hank said, “You should make management fix that.”

  She grunted, still not saying much as they took their cartons and the barely chilled bottle of wine into the solarium. There, his plastic fork dipped into her carton without permission. Sean had done that same thing—he’d cut pieces of her rib eye steak for himself or take her last hot wing. Sometimes he’d sip from her cocktail. When she made faces at him or requested that he ask first, because that was the polite thing to do, he’d always snap, “I’m paying for it, right?”

  Now, Hank’s fork in her chicken made her skin blister. I paid for it, right?

  “You’re mad,” Hank said, nodding.

  Gray cocked an eyebrow.

  “I’m not sure you know this…” He drained his glass, then filled it with more wine. “When we first met, I thought that I didn’t have a chance with you. Doesn’t help that I’ve been married before and it didn’t end so good. Obviously.”

  Gray sipped wine and kept her gaze on her guest.

  “It hurt, divorcing Cara, and I…” He winced. “I didn’t want to hurt like that again. And then I saw you, and everything, the past, it didn’t matter.” He touched her knee. “You’re beautiful, but you’re also strong and funny and sexy and … different now. I made the mistake of letting you in. You’re probably saying that, too, but for a different reason—”

  Gray said, “Yeah.”

  “This. Us.” He pointed to her and then back to him. “Scared me.
I went into this … Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. About everything.”

  Gray’s phone rang from the small patio table. Nick was calling.

  Hank took both of her hands in his. “I think we deserve another chance.”

  The wine’s effects were dulling her anger. The heat of his hold was pulling her down.

  Surrender, Dorothy.

  Hank kissed her cheek. “What do you think of Tahiti?”

  Gray’s heart creaked open. “I hear it’s beautiful.” She let her fingers scratch his head.

  “You’ve never been?” He almost looked surprised.

  “No.” Not in this life or in her last.

  He came close enough that their noses touched. “Wanna go with me?”

  Her mind swirled with confusion, confetti caught in a tornado.

  “It’s still the summer. We can—”

  Someone knocked on the door. The video doorbell app bonged.

  Hank and Gray both looked toward the living room.

  He said, “Ignore it.”

  Another knock.

  The app’s feed was too small for her to see who was visiting.

  Gray scrunched her eyebrows. “I need to get that.”

  Hank grabbed her wrist with one hand and used his other hand to hold her knee. “C’mon, babe. Whoever it is will go—”

  The hair on her neck and arms bristled. She glared at his hands now keeping her there …

  One. Two. Three. Four.… Five.

  She rose from the chair and toppled her glass of wine.

  Hank, pissed, sat back in the chair.

  “And that’s why I’m not going to Tahiti with you,” Gray said, striding to the door under his angry gaze. She peeped into the peephole, then opened the door.

  Nick stood there in trainers and a sweatshirt. “I’m here for my biscuits.”

  Seeing him made the hard shell she’d just tucked into as thin as silk.

  Nick’s eyes skipped from her face to the living room behind her. “What’s up?” He was pretending that there was nothing to see over her shoulder.

  Gray said, “Just … dinner.”

  Nick shook his head. “You’re … busy, and I was just…” He held a bottle of top-shelf vodka and a jar of olives.

  “Oh. Yeah. I … well…”

  “Everything good?”

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  Hank was now standing in the living room. A dick move, to show off his dick and to let Nick know that this was what he thought it was.

  Nick squinted at Gray. You serious? “I’ll let you get back to…”

  Her face burned, and she wanted to vomit. “Okay. I won’t be much longer…”

  Nick backed away from the door. “Call me later. Got something interesting for you.”

  “About Isabel?”

  He started down the hallway.

  “What is it? Gonna give me a hint?”

  “Later.” He pointed toward her apartment. “Tend to your guest.”

  Hank was closing in behind her, and her hard shell was regenerating. “I’ll call you later.”

  Nick said, “Yep,” then sauntered down the hallway.

  Look back. Please look back. She kept thinking that—Look back—until her head hurt.

  Before turning to hit the elevator bank, Nick looked back at her, smiled, then waved.

  She caught that smile and crammed it into her heart with the other smiles he’d tossed her since they’d met, so long ago.

  44

  Hank’s blue eyes and his strong arms with those sexy tats had lost their power over her. And those hard abs and strong jaw? Like expired Children’s Tylenol in a smashed bottle.

  “Is it because of that guy?” he growled, pointing at the door. “You’re seeing him, too?”

  “Who I’m seeing is none of your business.” Gray crossed her arms, but not because she was angry. She felt … nothing. Nothing for him, nothing for his spiky words.

  His frown set deeper in his face. “Then you need to find yourself another cantina.”

  She stared at him—if she kept at it, she could freeze him solid. “That it?” She opened the front door. “Go ye into the world and live your ignorant truth, Henry. Thanks for playing.”

  He stomped past her and out into the hallway. “You—”

  She slammed the door.

  He kicked it.

  She didn’t flinch. Alas, she’d expected it. Men like Hank grabbed arms, took food without asking. Men like him asked, “Who’s that guy?” and “Why didn’t you pick up when I called you?” Men like Hank Wexler kicked doors and, sometimes, broke doors down. Just in case this one felt like the Kool-Aid Man, Gray grabbed her Glock from beneath the pillow on her bed.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Gray peeped through the peephole.

  Tiny Mrs. Kim from across the hall stood there with her hands behind her back.

  Gray opened the door and smiled at her gray-haired neighbor.

  “You okay here?” Worry etched the old woman’s face.

  Gray said, “Oh yeah. Just … men.”

  Mrs. Kim tugged at the neck of her T-shirt. “He come earlier. I see him downstairs.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t home yet.”

  The old woman scowled. “He with some other man. Big white man. No hair. They wanted to ride up, but I say, No, you wait.”

  Gray’s ears chilled hearing that. “A big white bald man? You sure?”

  Mrs. Kim gave a solid nod. “I don’t like either one of them. You be careful.”

  Back in her living room, Gray logged on to ORO and found the earlier alert. Range Rover plates had been read a mile from Rader Consulting and then near USC, three miles from her apartment. There were plate-reading cameras near Staples Center and also Seventh Street and Figueroa and all around downtown, but there’d been no alerts from those.

  Because Sean hadn’t been the only one looking for her.

  She called Nick. “Sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. You’re a beautiful woman. You should date whoever—”

  “I don’t want to be with him. He’s gone now. Nothing to do with you.”

  Phone to her ear, she walked to the solarium with a trash bag and stooped to sop up the wine she’d knocked over. “There was something about him that bothered me.”

  “Hunh.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Hunh.”

  She dumped the cartons of Thai food into the trash bag. “Clarissa did a background check on him and he came up clean.”

  “Clarissa did a … Not you?”

  She said nothing as her certainty spilled around her like the wine had.

  Nick took her silence as No, not me, then said, “What’s his name?”

  “Henry Wexler.” She spelled it for him and listened as he tapped at a computer keyboard.

  “Sam Jose’s, right?” Nick sighed.

  Gray said, “What?”

  “Henry Wexler worked at TRIBE as a bartender from 2010 to 2013.”

  Gray’s stomach dropped alongside her certainty and she plopped onto the carpet. “Oh, fuck. Are you sure? Oh, shit.”

  She had been married to Sean and living in Las Vegas, and TRIBE had been Sean’s second and most successful nightclub. Located in the Tropicana, TRIBE had pulled in a younger, trendier set with its music, its drinks, and its celebrities. African tapestries mixed with Asian lacquers with a dollop of Native American dream catchers and Celtic crosses. “Just chill” spaces; high balconies; the aromas of sage, spices, and oranges wafting across the dance floor. And there were also great cocktails, mixed by …

  Nick said, “You didn’t recognize him?”

  Gray moved her mouth, only to hear it squeak. Finally, she managed to say, “I kept my head down. I didn’t meet any man’s eyes because I didn’t know if he was a … spy.”

  Hank must have been the one to alert Sean. Hey, guess who came into my cantina? Sure, I got her number. Hey, I have her address, too. M
inutes ago, he’d even said to her, When we first met, I thought that I didn’t have a chance.

  “First met” had meant back in the 2010s.

  And she’d let Hank in because he wanted to use the bathroom. The same ruse she’d used in Idyllwild to enter Tea Christopher’s cabin.

  And the big, bald white man who had wanted Mrs. Kim to let him in, that had to be Mr. Hook, the bodyguard who’d always followed Mrs. Dixon around the city.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Nick asked now.

  Gray told him her theory as defeat found her again, as its stink clung to her skin. Her life had always been rugged country, with each day starting with “One more mountain.” That’s where hope ended and happiness started—just over that one more mountain.

  “That’s why I can’t find the P.I. working for him,” Nick said. “Because there is no P.I.”

  Gray caught her reflection in the mirror and startled. She had a black cap of hair so dark that all light disappeared there. Her skin looked as pale as black skin could. Thin—her skin looked thin. As if she were a ghost or a vampire. That she could see herself at all was the most startling.

  “He knows where I am,” she whispered.

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “No. I don’t wanna run anymore.”

  “Then let me end it. I won’t miss vital organs.”

  “You think I missed on purpose?” Gray shouted. “Because I’m incompetent?”

  Nick didn’t respond.

  Heat swirled in her belly and spiraled up to her head. “You do think that.”

  “Let me end it, Gray. I’ve done it before, without hesitation.”

  She squeezed shut her eyes. “I’m handling it.”

  “By giving up? You said you’d come here when shit got scary. Well, shit’s now scary, and you’re just … sitting there, waiting for this fucker to kill you.”

  Resignation had settled on her like fog just hours ago. At that moment, resignation had triumphed over her one-more-mountain resolve. It was brackish water drowning the pinkish-red of dawn. Surrender, Dorothy. She’d thought that, and Nick knew she’d thought that, and now here he was, willing to kill Sean Dixon himself before letting her die from her surrender.

  “I’m not giving up,” she said. “It’s my fight. I’m gonna handle it.”