“That sounds fancy,” Roy said. He took a sip of his whiskey and his eyes darted. Thoughts were coming to him, something appealing.
“It’s high tech,” I said.
“Valuable?” he asked.
My throat went dry. What could he have in mind?
I told Roy a little about Olympian, not the trade secrets, just a thirty thousand foot overview of the landscape. He seemed to sort of understand what I was saying, but when I told him about the billions in market cap for the battery, his eyes went wide.
“That’s a lot of Benjamins,” he said, licking his lips.
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
Roy had the look of a guy on speed.
“Nicky’s been around,” he said. “He knows a lot of different types of people, all fine, upstanding citizens just like him.”
“What’s your point?”
“What if he can give me a name, somebody who might want to pay a lot of money to know how to make a battery like yours?”
My teeth clenched. “You want me to steal my company’s secrets?”
“If I can find us a buyer, why not?”
“No,” I said. “No way. I’m not going to do that.”
“So, what, you’ll just do nothing?”
“For a while, maybe. See what happens.”
“In that case, let me offer you some advice,” Roy said. “Treat your woman real fine these next couple weeks, because I’m betting they’ll be the last you’ll ever have.”
CHAPTER 46
Home.
It had never looked so good, smelled so inviting, or made me feel so despondent. My fresh pop of Adderall was just starting to kick in when I entered through the front door with my overnight bag, looking just like the guy who’d returned home from a short business trip. I was nothing of the sort, but Anna didn’t know that.
I’d spent the day in the hotel room and then just walking around Boston aimlessly, trying to kill enough hours so I could come home from my bogus business trip at a realistic time. Anna was in the kitchen when I showed up, cooking something for dinner. I smelled asparagus and got a faint whiff of the garlic and olive oil she used to baste my favorite vegetable. The important thing was that Anna was cooking my favorite food as a way of welcoming me home. She was being kind, loving, and thoughtful, and all the good things Anna was on a daily basis.
It made me feel hopelessly sad for us, for what we were about to lose, which amounted to everything. I thought about the events leading to this moment, this terrible lie I was living, and asked myself: Could this have played out differently? What if I had refused Roy’s offer to assist him on the drop? What if instead he had told Anna that Lily and I had slept together? Or what if Roy had played Anna the recording of me offering them a bribe to leave? I suspect Anna and I would be in therapy, a lot of therapy, or separated, but Jorge Moreno would still be alive, and I wouldn’t owe Nicky Stacks a million dollars.
But that wasn’t how it played out. I made the deal to save my marriage, and everything else went right into the shitter.
Anna entered the hallway through the dining room. She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a passionate kiss on the lips.
“I missed you,” she said.
“I was only gone a day.”
I hoped my attempt at a smile didn’t look as sad as it felt.
Anna took my hand and led me to the kitchen. “Come, darling,” she said. “You must be starving.”
I didn’t think I could get down a bite of food, but for Anna’s sake I would try. Besides, I could use something to wash away the harsh bite of whiskey still souring my throat. Thankfully, getting back into the groove of being home was a seamless transition. I made a salad while Anna put the finishing touches on dinner. She seemed light on her feet, pleased with life. I could feel her excitement like it was my pulse.
“So, I’ve got a date from Margret for our home study,” Anna said as she stirred the turkey chili and sampled a bit with a wooden spoon. “It’s in two weeks.”
I choked on a swallow of air and nearly cut my pinky finger off while chopping a cucumber.
“Two weeks?” I repeated.
Anna gave me a backwards glance along with a smile that touched my heart. Did my eyes give me away? Could she tell I was sweating out my booze-laden morning? Two weeks. In that amount of time I would need to come up with a million dollars to save my life and get approved by the state to become a father once more. It was to be an epic two weeks.
“So what do we have to do to get ready?” My voice came out in a warble.
“We’ll start by not using any of the furniture,” Anna said. “I’m going to cordon it off with ropes like a museum exhibit.”
Anna tried to hold a serious expression but couldn’t contain the smile. Then she noticed I didn’t think the joke was particularly funny. Normally I would have laughed right along with her, but I kept seeing Nicky Stacks looming above me, twirling the blade of his knife against his fleshy palm, telling me I didn’t know the meaning of pain. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. Would Stacks kill me? Worse, would he hurt Anna? Kill her, even? What about my parents? Bessie?
Two weeks . . .
I thought about Roy’s suggestion. What if Nicky did have a contact for him? What if it was the only way? I could do it, because I had Security Breach Team access privileges. The question was, would I?
“Honey, are you all right?” Anna asked as she crossed the kitchen floor. She got to me and got her answer all in the same instant. “Gage, you’re shaking.”
I held it together by biting on the inside of my cheek until tangy droplets of blood filled my mouth.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I guess it’s all happening and I’m a bit emotional, is all.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Anna’s eyes brimmed with sympathy. She smoothed her hand over my cheek, the one I had been biting, and looked deeply in my eyes, trying to comfort me with the intimacy of our connection. She pulled her hand away, but I could feel her love for me linger. I battled back the tears, trying to hold myself together.
“Baby, I know this is emotional for you. I know how hard it is and what it’s bringing up for you.”
“No,” I wanted to say. You have no idea what’s really happening. Why I’m breaking down. You have no idea how much we have to fear. How close we are to death.
“I can’t take away the hurt, sweetie,” Anna said, pulling me into her arms. I smelled the sweet aroma of her hair, the faint scent of lilacs. I took in several deep breaths, letting her familiar smells ground me. Each breath I took served as a powerful reminder of what I was fighting for. We were two halves of two shattered lives that somehow found each other and fit together like the pieces of the same broken vase. I would do anything to protect her.
And that included getting a million dollars I didn’t have.
“Seriously, what do we have to do to get ready?” I asked.
“Well, we really are going to have to keep the house spotless,” she said. “I know they say they don’t give us grades for housekeeping, but I’m not taking the chance.”
“We don’t have to baby-proof, right?” I felt sick for leading her on, because I knew how this was going to play out. But it would be better for our future if Anna felt the sting from Lily’s betrayal rather than from mine.
“No, baby-proofing is not required. Speaking of baby, I’m going to call Lily. I invited her to eat with us tonight. She said Roy was away and I didn’t want her to eat alone.”
Roy was away, all right, I thought. I knew exactly where Roy had gone.
Anna went to the kitchen to get the phone while I set the table for three. She was dialing Lily when she returned and took notice of my place settings.
“Before you know it, we’re always going to set the table for three,” Anna said, putting the cordless phone to her ear. She stood marveling at the three place settings, hands on her hips, looking at it like it brought a warmth all its own.
I cringed, knowing we’d be a tab
le of two for the foreseeable future.
“Lily’s not answering,” Anna said, ending the call.
“Maybe she went out,” I suggested. “She works nights after all.” Already I felt a twinge of panic.
Anna went to the front door.
“I’ll just ring the bell and make sure. She did accept my invitation.”
I followed Anna outside, into a warm summer’s eve with the dusk sky draped in a serene amber glow. When Anna reached Lily’s apartment door she paused. Something was troubling her. Only when I got closer could I see what it was. The door to Lily’s apartment had been left slightly ajar. Anna pushed it open fully and called up the winding wooden staircase.
“Lily, it’s Anna! Are you there? We’re ready to have dinner.”
No response.
Anna took a cautious step inside and again called up into the empty stairwell. She waited at the foot of the stairs and motioned for me to join her inside.
“Maybe something is wrong,” Anna said, her tone urgent. “I think we should go upstairs and check.”
What could I do? I would agree with her without reservation if I weren’t so terrified about what we’d find. Soon though, I found myself following Anna up the stairs. At the landing, I could see the door into the apartment was left slightly ajar as well. Anna pushed it open with the palm of her hand and took a tentative step inside.
“Lily?” Anna called out.
Her voice carried down the long hallway. Anna shot me a nervous look. Something was amiss.
I went into the living room while Anna ventured toward Lily’s (and Roy’s) bedroom. From down the hall, I could hear Anna calling Lily’s name. There was a subtle uptick of worry to her voice each time Lily failed to answer.
Why was the door open? Why wasn’t Lily home? She knew we were having dinner together. Where was Lily?
I was heading down the hallway to meet Anna when I heard a soft cry of surprise. My heart leapt to my throat, hairs on my arms straightening as my pace quickened. What could she have found? I passed the entrance to the kitchen and took a quick glance inside, seeing nothing of alarm.
Anna was in the bedroom and I could hear her gasping for breath. When I entered, I saw her standing in front of Lily’s bedroom closet, one hand covering her mouth, eyes wide. On the windowsill, I saw the Pac-Man mug Lily had painted for a friend and wondered if that friend had been Roy. Anna stood stock-still, gazing at something in the darkness of the closet. My stomach flipped a dozen ways. I wasn’t ready to see what I thought I’d see: Lily’s body, bloodied by the steel blade of Nicky’s knife, or a bullet hole to the head.
But I saw something else entirely.
The closet was empty. There were no clothes. No shoes. No black outfits or laced boots to be seen anywhere. I didn’t see any of Roy’s clothes, either. Missing was the vintage green suitcase Lily had carried with her on the day she moved in.
“Gage, Lily is gone,” Anna said, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “I really think she’s gone.”
I tried my very best to look surprised.
CHAPTER 47
Hours later the sun went down and the moon came up, because even when the future mother of your child vanishes without a word, even when a vicious drug dealer has threatened to carve up your family with a switchblade, these things happen. Anna followed her evening routine. Maybe she thought that by acting normally life would return to normal, or our normal. Maybe, if we stayed positive, if we believed hard enough, we’d have a stranger in our family once again. Without proclamation, without telling me what she was thinking, Anna showed me, by doing her evening stretches, checking e-mail, and then washing up for bed.
“She will come back,” Anna said, as she got under the covers. “She will. She’s just scared. Or maybe she just had to go away suddenly. There’s an explanation. I know it.”
Oh yeah, there’s an explanation all right.
I knew the specifics of the explanation, too. Not long after we’d left Lily’s condo, I got a text message from Roy.
Roy to me: Lily freaked and took off. Trying to track her down.
Thinks she’s not safe. We gotta talk. Gotta get the money.
I thought of a lot of responses to Roy’s text. None of them would have ended with lol or thx. I wanted to unleash a tirade for all he’d done to me. If there was any way to make him suffer, I wanted him to feel it tenfold.
Instead of barking at him, I kept my reply short and simple. I had made up my mind, and maybe Lily leaving was the impetus for my decision. I was rid of her and now I could be rid of Roy with one simple text message.
Me to Roy: I’m not doing anything. You take care of yourself and I’ll take care of my family. Going to the cops in the morning. Don’t text me again.
Roy: That’s stupid. What about my idea. The battery thing. I can check with Nicky to see if he’s got a contact.
Me: That’s not going to happen.
Roy: Don’t quit on me. I need your help. He’s going to kill us.
Me: I’m going to the police in the morning. That’s my final decision.
Roy: What about Jorge?
Me: I’m betting it’ll get back to Nicky. If he wants me to stay quiet tell him to leave us alone. You give him that message from me.
There was a long pause, no reply from Roy. Minutes passed. What I eventually got back put a fresh spike of fear in me.
Roy: Your funeral.
Hours later, Anna and I were in bed, trying to find our normal. I turned on the ten o’clock news but saw no reports of a dead drug dealer. No mention of a shooting down on the docks by Eagle Square. Lucas must have taken the body and the bullets to the associates Nicky Stacks kept referring to. Word of underground happenings might spread on the underground channels, where people like Lily and Roy got the late-breaking stories and straight guys like me wouldn’t even know to look.
Anna was asleep when I turned off the television. For a long while I listened to the gentle rise and fall of her breathing while I gazed at the ceiling. I thought about taking a play from Lily’s playbook and vanishing with Anna, but if Nicky wanted to hurt us, he could still get to me through the people we loved. And he would do it, too. I knew it when I first set eyes on him at his restaurant. Here was a guy who would shoot me in the back and then piss on my grave.
I wasn’t going to the police, either, despite what I had texted to Roy. I had no real desire to spend my best remaining years in jail for murdering a drug dealer. My goal with Roy was to get a message— call it a threat—to Nicky Stacks and hope he’d agree to a truce: my silence in exchange for my life.
I started to fantasize, because the mind can only handle so much stress. It goes into denial mode, assumes things will work out for the better. It’s a primitive carryover buried into our genetics, because if we contemplated the dangers we faced on a daily basis—car accidents, slips in the shower, a falling tree branch, wild animal attack, lightning strikes, and so on, and so on—we’d never leave the house. So our genetics helps to block out those worries, infuse us with denial. It’s like Adderall for fear—it won’t happen to me—and that’s how we can go about our daily business.
In my fantasy, as I drifted off to sleep, I was right about Stacks. He’d change his tune if he thought I was going to the police. We’d be left alone to live our lives without Roy and Lily. Later, perhaps, when Stacks was a shadow of a memory, Anna and I would try again, after she’d recovered from the loss of Lily and a baby that was never going to be hers. When her spirit was ready, I could once again become the thing I loved most in life—somebody’s dad.
I woke up hours later to the sound of Anna screaming.
CHAPTER 48
Anna’s scream didn’t sound terrified—not like someone was coming after her. I’d characterize it as perplexed, a surprised and shocked-sounding noise made from somewhere deep in the throat.
My eyes snapped open and I was out of bed like the mattress was on fire. A blast of adrenaline zapped all the sleepiness from my body, and I
was instantly on red alert.
Anna, wearing her jogging clothes, stood at the edge of the bed looking down at her pillow as if something was wrong with it. The curtains had been parted and the first sprinkles of sunlight filtered into the bedroom. Anna was looking at me, not in an angry way, but concerned, as if I had done something wrong that she couldn’t exactly blame me for.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
I was unsteady on my feet and struggling to regain my equilibrium.
“What are the side effects of Adderall?” Anna asked me.
“Huh?”
“Adderall. What are the side effects?” she wanted to know, her voice steeped in concern.
I scratched my head, thinking.
“Why are you asking me this? Why did you scream?”
“Just answer the question.”
Anna was serious and not at all amused, so I rattled off what I could remember in my current condition: loss of appetite, nervousness, easily angered or annoyed, dry mouth. There were more, but I couldn’t think of them on the spot.
“There’s no sleepwalking? Night terrors? Anything like that?” Anna asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. Why? What’s going on? Why did you scream?”
Anna didn’t answer right away. She eyed me thoughtfully in her pink and black running outfit, perhaps seeing if a prolonged gaze might bring about an admission of something, a side effect I was intentionally keeping secret.
I lowered my head and rubbed at my tired eyes. To help with balance, I locked my arms and braced my hands against the edge of the mattress for support. “Why did you scream?” I asked again, lifting my head to make eye contact.
“I was getting ready to go out for my jog when I saw this sticking out from under my pillow.” Anna removed the pillow in a grand sweeping motion, like a stage magician making a dramatic reveal.
My breath caught when I saw what it was. It had nothing to do with the side effects of Adderall.
“I don’t sleepwalk and never have,” Anna said. “I’m a thousand percent certain I didn’t do this. What’s going on, Gage? Are you sure you’re all right?”
Desperate Page 24
