You are a magnificent person, she had told Jane before leaving. You are magnificent because you are so uniquely you.
“More G-men just pulled up.” Nick was at the window looking down on the motorcourt. “I’m guessing FBI by the shitty car.” He flashed Jane a crooked grin, as if the presence of more feds on top of the CIA, NSA, Interpol, Revenue Agents and Secret Service men they’d already spoken to was a trifle. “You be Bonnie and I’ll be Clyde.”
Jane gulped the tea. She barely tasted the hot liquid as it scorched into her stomach. Martin had been murdered five days ago. His funeral was tomorrow. Nick seemed to be feeding off the stress, almost giddy during the interviews that more and more felt like interrogations. Jane wanted to scream at him that this was real, that they had murdered someone, that what they were planning next could land them all in prison for the rest of their lives—or worse.
Instead, she whispered, “I’m scared, Nicky.”
“Darling.” He was on the bed, holding her, before she could ask. His lips were at her ear. “You’ll be okay. Trust me. I’ve been through a hell of a lot worse than this. It makes you stronger. It reminds you why we’re doing this.”
Jane closed her eyes as she tried to absorb his words. She had lost the point of doing this. Why was she grieving her father? For so many years, she’d truly believed that any love she’d had for Martin had been beaten out of her. So why was Jane so racked with guilt? Why did it hurt every time she remembered that Martin was gone?
“Stop.” Nick could always tell when she was troubled. He told her, “Think of something else. Something good.”
Jane shook her head. She did not have Nick’s talent of compartmentalization. She couldn’t even close her eyes without seeing Martin’s head exploding. He’d been shot in the temple. Brain and tissue and bone had splattered Friedrich Richter like mud from a car wheel. Then Laura had pulled the trigger again and the top of her head had sprayed up into the ceiling.
I’m sorry, Jane had mouthed to the woman seconds before.
Had Laura even known why Jane was apologizing?
“Come on,” Nick said, giving Jane a squeeze on the shoulder to bring her back to the present. “Do you remember the first time I met you?”
Jane shook her head again, but only to try to clear the violent images from her mind. The gun. The explosions. The splatter and spray.
“Come on, Jinx,” Nick coaxed. “Have you forgotten about the first time we met? It’ll be six years in December. Did you know that?”
Jane wiped her nose. Of course she knew. The moment she first saw Nick was etched into every fiber of her being: Andrew and Nick home from college, pushing and shoving each other like schoolboys in the front hall. Jane had stormed out of the parlor to complain about the racket. Nick had smiled at her, and she’d felt her heart fill like a hot-air balloon that threatened to float out of her chest.
“Jinx?”
She knew that he wouldn’t give up unless she played along, so she played along, saying, “You barely noticed me.”
“You were barely legal.”
“I was seventeen.” She hated when he treated her like she was a child. Like Andrew, he was only three years her senior. “And you ignored me the entire weekend because you and Andy were chasing after those trashy girls from North Beach.”
He laughed. “You would’ve never given me a chance if I’d fallen all over myself like the other fools.”
There were no other fools. No one had ever fallen all over themselves for Jane. Men had looked at her with either awe or boredom, as if she was a doll inside of a glass case. Nick was the first of Andrew’s friends who had seen her as a woman.
He stroked back her hair. His mouth went to her ear. He always whispered when he told her the important things. “I didn’t ignore you the entire weekend.”
Jane could not stop her heart from doing the floaty thing again. Even now in this horrible moment, she could still remember the thrill of Nick surprising her in the kitchen. She was reading a magazine when he’d wandered in. Jane had said something flinty to make him go away, and he’d kissed her, wordlessly, before backing out of the room and closing the door.
Nick said, “I was practically an orphan when I met you. I didn’t have anybody. I was completely alone. And then I had you.” His hand held the back of her neck. He was suddenly serious. “Tell me you’re still with me. I have to know.”
“Of course.” He’d done this in Oslo, then again on the plane home, then their first night back in San Francisco. He seemed terrified that the three months they’d spent apart had somehow weakened her resolve. “I’m with you, Nick. Always.”
He searched her eyes for a sign, some indication that she was lying to him the way that everyone else had in his life.
“I am yours,” she repeated, firmly. “Every part of me is yours.”
“Good girl.” His smile was hesitant. He had been hurt by so many people before.
Jane wanted to hold him, but he hated when she got clingy. Instead, she tilted up her face so that he would kiss her. Nick obliged, and for the first time in days, Jane could breathe again.
“My darling,” he whispered into her ear. His hands slid under her camisole. His mouth moved to her breasts. Jane was finally able to wrap her arms around him. She didn’t want sex, but she knew telling him no again would hurt his feelings. What she craved most was the after. When he held her. When he told her that he loved her. When he made her feel like everything was going to be okay.
That would be the moment to tell him.
As Nick laid her back on the bed, Jane felt all the words she had silently practiced over the last month rush to her lips—I’m sorry, terrified, ecstatic, overjoyed, anxious, panicky, elated, so scared that you’ll leave me because—
I’m pregnant.
“Hello?”
They both sat back up. Jane gripped the sheets around her neck.
“You guys awake?” Andrew knocked on the door before peering into the room. “Everyone decent?”
“Never,” Nick said. He still held one of her breasts underneath the sheet. Jane tried to pull away, but Nick snaked his arm around her waist so that she could not. He stroked the small of her back, his eyes on Andrew.
Nick said, “Two more agents pulled into the front drive.”
“I saw.” Andrew wiped his nose with his sleeve. He was still fighting off the cold from Norway. He told Nick what Jane dared not. “Don’t be aggressive with them, Nicky. Please.”
They all looked at each other. Nick’s hand stroked lower down Jane’s back. She felt a flush of heat work its way up her neck and into her face. She hated when he did this sort of thing in front of Andrew.
Nick said, “I feel like we should be touching the sides of our noses like they did in The Sting.”
“This is real life.” Andrew’s tone was strident. They were all terrified that the house was bugged. The last few days had been like tiptoeing around the sharp end of a needle. “Our father has been murdered. A woman has been kidnapped. You need to take this seriously.”
“I’ll at least take it cleanly.” Nick bit Jane’s shoulder before marching into the bathroom.
Jane pulled the sheets tighter around her neck. She stared at the closed bathroom door. She wanted to go after him, to beg him to listen to Andrew, but she had always lacked the ability to tell Nick that he was wrong about anything.
Andrew said, “Jane—”
She motioned for him to turn around so she could get dressed.
He obliged, saying, “Mother was asking for you.”
Jane rolled on a pair of pantyhose. The waist felt tight when she stood. “Was that Ellis-Anne you were on the phone with this morning?”
Andrew did not answer. The subject of his ex-girlfriend was somehow off limits now.
Still, she tried, “You were together for two years. She’s just—”