“Is it Laura now?” Nick grinned. He had always basked under close scrutiny. “After our hero from Oslo?”
“It was random,” she lied, looking past him, first at the wall, then at the piano. “Witness security doesn’t let you set your own terms. You either go along or you don’t.”
He shook his head, as if the details didn’t interest him. “You look the same.”
Laura’s fingers went nervously to her gray hair.
“Don’t be ashamed, my love. It suits you. But then, you always did everything so gracefully.”
She finally looked him in the eye.
The flecks of gold in his irises were a pattern as familiar as the stars. His long eyelashes. The flicker of curiosity mixed with awe, as if Laura was the most interesting person he had ever met.
He said, “There’s my girl.”
Laura struggled against the thrilling shock of his attention, that inexplicable rush of need. She could so easily fall into his vortex again. She could be seventeen years old, her heart floating out of her chest like a hot-air balloon.
Laura broke off first, looking behind him at the piano.
She reminded herself that, just down the corridor, Andy was in that small, dark room listening to everything they said. Mike, too. Marshal Rosenfeld. The six guards with their headphones and monitors.
Laura was not a lonely teenaged girl anymore. She was fifty-five years old. She was a mother, a cancer survivor, a businesswoman.
That was her life.
Not Nick.
She cleared her throat. “You look the same, too.”
“Not much stress around here. Everything gets planned for me. I just have to show up. Still—” He turned his head to the side, looking at her ear. “Age is a cruel punishment for youth.”
Laura touched the earbud. The lie came easily enough. “All those years of concerts finally caught up with me.”
He carefully studied her expression. “Yes, I’ve heard about that. Something to do with the nerve cells.”
“Hair cells inside the middle ear.” She knew he was testing her. “They translate the sounds into electrical signals that activate the nerves. That is, if they’re not destroyed by too much loud music.”
He seemed to accept the explanation. “Tell me, my love. How have you been?”
“I’m good. And you?”
“Well, I’m in prison. Did you not hear about what happened?”
“I think I saw something in the news.”
He leaned over the table.
Laura reeled back as if from a snake.
Nick grinned, the glow in his eyes sparking into flames. “I was just trying to get a look at the damage.”
She held up her left hand so that Nick could see the scar where Jonah Helsinger’s knife had gone through.
He said, “Pulled a Maplecroft, did you? A bit more successfully than the poor old gal could manage.”
“I’d rather not joke about the woman you killed.”
His laugh was almost jubilant. “Manslaughter, but yes, I get your point.”
Laura gripped her hands under the table, physically forcing herself to take back control. “I assume you saw the diner video.”
“Yes. And our daughter. She’s so lovely, Jinx. Reminds me of you.”
Her heart lurched into a violent pounding. Andy was listening. What would she make of the compliment? Could she still see that Nick was a monster? Or were these verbal volleys somehow normalizing him?
She asked, “Did you hear about Paula?”
“Paula?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Laura was wringing her hands again. She made herself stop—again.
She said, “Penny.”
“Ah, yes. Dear Penny. Such a loyal soldier. She always had it out for you, didn’t she? I guess no matter how glowing the personality, there are always detractors.”
“She hated me.”
“She did.” He shrugged. “A bit jealous, I think. But why bring up the old days when we were having so much fun?”
Laura fumbled for words. She couldn’t keep doing this. She had come here for a reason and that reason was slipping through her fingers. “I’m a speech pathologist.”
“I know.”
“I work with patients who—” She had to stop to swallow. “I wanted to help people. After what we did. And when I was in jail, the only book I had was this textbook on speech—”
Nick interrupted her with a loud groan. “You know, it’s sad, Jinxie. We used to have so much to talk about, but you’ve changed. You’re so . . .” He seemed to look for the right word. “Suburban.”
Laura laughed, because Nick had clearly wanted her to do the opposite. “I am suburban. I wanted my daughter to have a normal life.”
She waited for him to correct her about who Andy belonged to, but Nick said, “Sounds fascinating.”
“It is, actually.”
“Married a black fella, too. How cosmopolitan of you.”
Black fella.
About a million years ago, Agent Danberry had used the same words to describe Donald DeFreeze.
Nick said, “You got a divorce. What happened, Jinx? Did he cheat on you? Did you cheat on him? You always had a wandering eye.”
“I didn’t know what I had,” she said, keenly aware of her audience in the distant room. “I thought that being in love meant being on pins and needles all of the time. Passion and fury and arguing and making up.”
“But it’s not?”
She shook her head, because she had learned at least one thing from Gordon. “It’s taking out the trash and saving up for vacations. Making sure the school forms are signed. Remembering to bring home milk.”
“Is that really how you feel, Jinx Queller? You don’t miss the excitement? The thrill? The fucking the shit out of each other?”
Laura tried to keep the blush off her face. “Love doesn’t keep you in a constant state of turmoil. It gives you peace.”
He pressed his forehead to the table and pretended to snore.
She laughed, though she didn’t want to.
Nick opened one eye, smiled up at her. “I’ve missed that sound.”
Laura looked over his shoulder at the piano.
“I heard you had breast cancer.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to talk to him about that.
He said, “I can remember what it felt like to put my mouth on your breasts. The way you used to moan and squirm when I licked between your legs. Do you ever think about that, Jinx? How good we were together?”
Laura stared at him. She wasn’t worried about Andy anymore. Nick’s fatal flaw had reared its ugly head. He always overplayed his hand.
She asked, “How do you live with it?”
He raised an eyebrow. She had piqued his interest again.
“The guilt?” she asked. “For killing people. For putting it all into motion.”
“People?” he asked, because the jury had been divided over his part in the Chicago bombing. “You tell me, darling. Jonah Helsinger? Was that his name?” He waited for Laura to nod. “Ripped out his throat, though they blur that part on TV.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek.
“How do you live with it? How do you feel about murdering that boy?”
Laura let a tiny part of her brain think about what she had done. It was hard—for so long she had managed to face each day by discarding the day before. “Do you remember the look on Laura Juneau’s face? When we were in Oslo?”
Nick nodded, and she marveled at the fact that he was the only person left alive with whom she could talk about one of the most pivotal moments of her life.
Laura said, “She seemed almost at peace when she pulled the trigger. Both times. I remember wondering how she did it. How she had turned off her humanity. But I think what happened was that she turned it on. Does that make sense? She was completely at peace with what she was doing. That’s why she looked so serene.”
He raised his eyebrow again, and this time she knew that he was waiting for her to get to the point.
“I kept saying I didn’t want to see the video from the diner, but then I finally broke down and watched, and the look on my face was the exact same as Laura’s. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Nick said. “I noticed that, too.”
“I’ll do anything I can to protect my daughter. Anything.”
“Poor Penny found that out the hard way.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.