Lie in the Moment

by Nicole Camden

  “You don’t,” Roland told him, stepping slightly in front of her. Maura tried to get around him, but he blocked her path. He was also moving closer to the kid, talking in a quick patter that she recognized.

  “He said you have to, but you don’t. You know it’s not right, just like you know that you don’t need to die. He’s made you believe something that isn’t true. It’s a trick, see? Like this?”

  “Sacrifices must be made,” the kid repeated, but he looked confused by the warm tone and the motion of Roland’s hands.

  Without seeing exactly how he did it, Maura was astonished to realize that a few moments later, Roland was touching the boy on his shoulder. The kid looked surprised as well, his eyes widening, but even as he moved to release the switch, it was in Roland’s hand, held securely out of reach.

  Maddie began to struggle, pulling at the arm around her throat. Confused, cold, uncertain now that Roland had the switch, the boy looked around as if for help, dragging Maddie backward.

  “Maddie!” Maura shouted and went after them, drawing her gun from her hip where she’d secured it earlier.

  “He’s got a knife, Maura,” Maddie shouted hoarsely, and Maura saw that the boy did. He’d pulled it out from somewhere in his coat and was holding it at Maddie’s throat. His unsteady grip had already caused a small trickle of blood to start running.

  He continued to move backward. “Stop,” Maura shouted. “Garrett Morris, stop and put your hands up.”

  “Maura!” Maddie let out a terrified scream as she struggled to pull away, and Maura fired at the boy’s exposed chest, seeing the impact on the boy’s body before she actually heard it. He fell, still holding Maddie, and they tumbled to the ice.

  Rushing over to her niece, she pulled the girl free of Garret’s body and set her aside while she kicked away the knife, then checked to see if he was still alive. He wasn’t—all the life had drained from those young eyes. Turning away, she gathered up her niece and held her close, only half listening to the girl’s sobbing apologies. “It’s okay,” she repeated, aware that Roland stood several yards away, the dead man’s switch still in his hand as snow swirled around his feet. “It’s going to be okay.”

  FOUR HOURS LATER, Roland explained what had happened to a Dover police officer while Maura sat on the large sofa in the great room at Roland’s house with her arms around Maddie. The girl was wrapped in a thick blanket with a mug of cocoa in her hands. Maura’s father sat nearby, his arthritic hands wrapped together in his lap, but he occasionally reached over and patted the top of his granddaughter’s head.

  Justin had been rushed to the hospital with a knife wound to his abdomen, but they thought he was going to be okay. EMTs had examined Maddie and found her cold and in shock, but otherwise in good condition, though it was possible that Maura might strangle her once everything calmed down. The girl had indeed thought that she could catch her father’s killer, and she’d enlisted Justin’s help, though he hadn’t known why she wanted to track down Garrett at the time.

  “So you took the detonator from him using a magic trick?” the cop repeated, his eyebrows rising as he made notes.

  Roland ignored the sarcasm, wishing he could join Maura on the couch. “Sleight of hand. I distracted him and took it from him. It wasn’t difficult. He was half frozen and scared.”

  “And so you just held it until your men were able to diffuse the bomb?”

  “Luckily, Maura didn’t set it off when she shot him, and my team was able to disarm it without incident. Several of them are former explosive ordnance disposal experts.”

  “Yeah.” The cop tapped his pad of paper with a pencil and looked around the room. “Seems like you have quite a few former military working here for you, Mr. Chandler.” He nodded in Maura’s direction. “Cops, too.”

  “She’s my fiancée,” Roland replied for the fifth time.

  The man nodded. “All right. Your fiancée. How was it that she came to shoot young Mr. Morris?”

  Roland knew that the man had already heard the story but was looking for corroboration, so Roland repeated the story that Maura had told, leaving out the helpless terror he’d felt when he’d seen the knife at Maddie’s throat, when Maura had raised her gun and shot the kid. Knowing her, guilt would tear her up inside unless he distracted her.

  “He’s wanted for questioning regarding a car bombing in Boston,” he said after he’d explained what had happened with Maura.

  When the cop finally finished asking him questions, Roland was able to leave the room briefly, long enough to make a quick phone call to Milton. He’d texted him as soon as his team disarmed the bomb, telling him to stay where he was, but that there had been an incident.

  Wonder of all wonders, his friend had actually listened.

  “Roland. Shit. What the hell happened? Are you guys okay?” Milton answered breathlessly.

  “We’re all right. Keenan sent that kid, Garrett Morris, to my house with a bomb vest and a dead man’s switch and orders to blow up Maura’s niece while we watched. Were you able to track the video signal?”

  “I did you one better, my friend. I was able to locate the address where the video was being sent—a bookstore in your old neighborhood.”

  Roland felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

  “Milton, where are you right now?”

  “I’m sitting outside the store in the limo with Shane waiting for Maura’s partner to arrive. I called him when I couldn’t get ahold of you two.”

  “Get back. Get away from the bookstore.”

  “Why?”

  “Milton, just do what I fucking say.”

  “All right, all right. Shane—” Roland heard a loud boom and the line went dead.

  “Milton!” he shouted. “Goddamn it.”

  He tried calling back, but the phone just went straight to voicemail.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. He needed to find out if Milton was okay. Maura was probably his best shot of getting through a crime scene quickly, but he’d have to get her to leave Maddie.

  His phone rang as he was stalking back into the living room. Unknown number. He stopped where he was in the middle of the hallway.

  “Hello.”

  “Roland,” his cousin replied. “It’s been a long time.”

  Keenan’s smooth baritone voice hadn’t changed, but the liquid, laughing pleasure in his tone set Roland’s teeth on edge. Milton was okay. Milton had to be okay.

  “Keenan, what have you done?”

  “Me?” Keenan sounded surprised. “Not a thing.”

  “That’s right, you get everyone else to do your dirty work.”

  “So self-righteous. How exactly are we different? We’re the same, Roland. It’s about time you admitted it.”

  Roland continued down the hall. He could hear sirens behind Keenan. He was there, at the site of the explosion. If Milton was okay, if Bert, Maura’s partner could be reached, they stood a chance of catching him.

  “Okay, I admit it,” Roland agreed. “Was that all you wanted? To teach me a lesson?”

  “Lesson’s not over yet,” Keenan said quietly, and hung up the phone.

  Hurrying now, Roland nearly ran into Maura as she came out of the living room.

  “What’s going on?” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Bert just called me. There’s been an explosion and your friend Milton said—”

  Gripping her upper arms, he asked, “Is Milton okay? Has Bert talked to him?”

  “Yeah, he was talking to him while we were on the phone just a second—” She stopped talking as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. After a moment, she hugged him back, even harder than he’d hugged her.

  When she released him, she kept her head down and wiped at her eyes. “So, we need to get to Watertown, right? It’s the same bookstore that you and Keenan tried to rob when you were kids?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I think Keenan’s still there, with God knows who helping him now. Angela Wepsic is still unaccounted for. C
an you call Bert back? Tell him to warn everyone, including first responders?”

  She nodded, already lifting the phone to her ear.

  Roland turned away to have the car brought around. Maybe just showing up would bring Keenan out of hiding, though he wasn’t going to count on getting that lucky.

  “Roland,” she called out, making him turn, “thank you for saving Maddie.”

  Uncomfortable with the gratitude when it was his fault that she’d been in danger, he shook his head, trying to stop her from saying anything else. He didn’t deserve the look he saw in her eyes. He would never deserve it.

  “You’re a good man,” she swore in a firm voice. “I’ll meet you in the front of the house in five minutes. I need to change.” She walked away.

  Roland watched her go, the bright beacon of her hair shining as she strode through the hallways of his home. She was his home, he realized. The stone, the walls, the wealth that covered every surface was the illusion, and she was the center of his universe.

  “Roland,” a voice said from behind him.

  He turned, surprised to see Maura’s father, his face looking years older in the space of a day.

  “Sir, are you all right?” He needed to get going, but if Maura’s father wasn’t feeling well, he couldn’t just leave him.

  The man waved a hand, dismissing Roland’s concern. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Heard about what you did today, saving Maddie. Saving Maura, too, sounds like.”

  “It’s my fault that—”

  The former detective was shaking his head before Roland even finished the sentence. “You were a kid. A smart kid, but a kid nonetheless. You didn’t kill my son. And you didn’t make Shy into a monster. He is what he is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roland agreed. “But I need—”

  “Here.” Her father handed him a grimy file folder wrapped with a rubber band that had been stretched beyond all elasticity, which was how Roland felt, stretched beyond his capacity for thought.

  “What’s this?” Roland turned the folder in his hands and read the label on the tab. “Robert O’Halloran” and a case number.

  “My own notes from the case against Shy. I’d poke my head in every now and then, see if Maura was making any progress. Made a few copies. Maura mentioned that the letters he sent that girl Blake had gone missing, thought you might like to have them back again.”

  “The letters are in here?” Roland held up the file folder in one hand.

  “They are indeed,” her father replied. “I’m sorry I didn’t hand them over sooner. I guess I thought that I would still get a shot at solving it, catching the man who killed my boy.”

  “We will catch him, sir.”

  The man nodded. “I expect you will. Take care of my girl, Chandler. She and my granddaughter are all I have left.” He rolled away before Roland could respond.

  “WHAT’S THE MOST powerful force in the world, son?” Crawly had asked him, years ago, as they walked past the buskers in the street market, his father’s shoe’s shining with a fresh coat of polish.

  At ten, Roland had a fairly strong grasp of physics. “Gravity?

  His father barked a laugh. “No, though that’s probably the best answer I’ve ever gotten to that question.”

  “What is it, then?” Roland asked, licking the ice cream cone that his father had stolen from a vendor.

  “Love.”

  “Love?” Roland repeated, his lip turning up. Yuck.

  “That’s right, boy. Get people to love you, and you can make them do anything. It’s the greatest con you can play on a person, making them love you. Right, Keenan?”

  Keenan shrugged, eyeing Roland’s ice cream.

  Roland had his doubts. Love hadn’t worked out so well for his father and mother. “Don’t people see through you eventually? If you don’t love them back?”

  “Well, that’s the trick, you see,” his father had replied. “If you’re going to convince someone of something, whether it’s a pencil dancing in midair or your undying devotion, you have to give a little bit of yourself up as well. You have to believe in it just enough to sell it.”

  Thinking back, Roland realized that his father had never really explained the pitfalls of getting someone to love you without loving them back. Sometimes you took a step too far, and you found yourself caring far more for someone than they cared for you. He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her, it had just happened. Did she care about him the same way?

  He glanced at Maura in the passenger seat. She’d been reading Keenan’s letters as they raced toward Watertown, toward the man they’d both been hunting for a good part of their lives.

  “Why didn’t I notice this before?” she asked him. “Most of his comments are about you, not Blake. She was only a means of hurting you.”

  “I know,” he replied. “He sees me as the person he should have been, as the one who received everything he never got in life.”

  Shaking her head, Maura put her hand on his thigh. “No, Roland. These read like jealousy. Only he wasn’t jealous of you having Blake, he was jealous of Blake having you.”

  “Having me?” Roland frowned. “But I agree with what you said before. No one goes to this much effort over this many years out of simple jealousy.”

  “He loved you,” Maura said. “I bet he loved you like a brother. Same way you loved him.”

  “What’s your point?” he muttered, trying to focus on his driving so he didn’t crash into anything and kill them both.

  “The point,” you idiot, she almost added, “is that when you love someone, and they don’t love you back, some people can’t handle it. They go a little kazoo, especially if no one ever loved them before.”

  “Like Keenan.”

  “His mom was trash, your father used him. I bet you were the first person to ever look up to him.”

  Roland nodded, considering. “He used to get me things, take things back from my father. I thought he was the smartest, coolest person I’d ever met.”

  “And he might have told himself that he was just using you, but . . .” She chewed on her lips as she sorted through the letters again. “He was truly shocked that you turned him in, I think. Or that you didn’t go to jail with him.”

  “It’s possible.” Roland didn’t know anything for certain anymore, except that he wanted Keenan stopped and Maura safe. Safe and in his life. He didn’t know how it had happened. She’d snuck inside him, and the bright light that lived in her had made a home in his chest. If it turned out that she didn’t love him, that all this pretending hadn’t affected her the way it had affected him, he didn’t know what he would do with himself. But more than anything, he wanted her alive and safe and happy.

  “Maura, when all this is over . . . ”

  “Let’s just focus on getting Keenan right now. Though I don’t think there’s any way he’s just going to be waiting for us. Bert says they haven’t located him yet, but it looks like Angela Wepsic was in the building when it blew.”

  “I just want to say that no matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you,” he said simply. “Anything you need, ever, and it’s yours.”

  They were close now, only a few minutes away from the bookstore. He could already see gray smoke pouring into the sky and hear the sounds of sirens.

  She didn’t say anything for a full minute. “You’re an asshole, Roland Chandler,” she muttered finally, gathering up her papers and shoving them back into the folder. “Has anyone ever mentioned that to you before?”

  Shocked, Roland replied, “Not in recent memory.”

  “Well, you are. ‘I’ll always be there for you. Anything you need,’ ” she mocked. “Like you’re going to sit by like my damn guardian angel the way you do everyone else. I killed a kid today. I don’t have time to waste on your bullshit. If I’m going to give up the respect of all my friends and marry a billionaire, you’re damn well going to commit. And I mean fully. Kids. Dogs. Messes. And if you ever interfere with my work again, you’ll be sleeping with
Porkchop.”

  Light bloomed inside his chest, and a terrible gratitude for her, for all that she was, rose inside him. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” She removed her badge as he approached the police barricade and pulled to a stop. “I want this car.”

  Not bothering to wait for him, she marched up to the nearest uniform and flashed her badge, her head swiveling, probably as she looked for Bert in the melee.

  Roland caught up to her before she passed through the barricade, and the two of them wove their way through piles of bricks laden with books, papers swirling wildly among the ash and smoke and snow.

  “You see Bert anywhere?” she asked him.

  “There he is.” Roland nodded ahead, where Bert was standing with several other Watertown police, a tall man handcuffed between them, his dark hair dusted with ash and snow.

  “Is that . . . ?” Maura asked, disbelief coloring her tone.

  “Keenan fucking Shy,” Roland said, stunned.

  They looked at each other. “It’s a trick.” Roland was certain of it.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Fall for it,” he replied grimly, “until we figure out what the trick is.”

  HOURS LATER, KEENAN SHY—the man she’d been chasing for her entire adult life—sat calmly across from her at the interrogation table, his long face so much like Roland’s that she had trouble looking at him directly while he was questioned. He was pale, unusually so, and his eyes were red from smoke.

  Even though they let her in the interrogation room, she wasn’t allowed to do the questioning, not on this case, and not just because she’d taken a spontaneous vacation this week. No, she wasn’t allowed to question him because she was “too close” to it.

  Damn right she was too close.

  Roland hadn’t been allowed in the room at all. He was relegated to the squad room with Bert, who’d been tasked with keeping an eye on him.

  A trick, she thought. Roland said that it has to be a trick.

  “So you’re Maura O’Halloran,” Keenan said to her, ignoring the questions put to him by Captain Maynard.