73
PAIN—FROM MY HEAD to my shoulder to my back—forced open my eyes. I slowly sat up. Everything hurt. Dried blood on my head, my cheek, drool stuck to my lips. I was in a small stone room. No bed; file cabinets. My shirt and jacket were hiked up.
Then I saw Lucy, sitting across the room from me.
I blinked at her.
“Hello, Sam.”
“You cut your hair,” I said. My voice sounded thick, heavy, broken.
“I’m supposed to kill you,” she said. Five words to end a conversation before it started. I could hear a truck’s engine rumbling in the distance. The plonking sounds of crates being moved. I heard those sounds and I couldn’t wrap my head around the words she had just spoken to me.
“Lucy—”
“I told Edward I would take care of you, but take care has a whole range of meanings.”
“Lucy. Where is the baby?” My mind swirled with a thousand questions, but that was the one that knifed through the shock.
“Sam. You’ll die if you don’t listen to me.”
I looked at the flat of her stomach. Her dark blouse was neatly tucked into blue jeans. “Where is our son?”
“He’s not your concern, Sam.”
“He’s my only concern. Now that I know what you are.” Hello, anger, boiling up in my chest.
“Will you please listen, monkey? I am trying to save you.”
Her use of her old term of endearment made my stomach twist. But I kept my voice steady. “You. I don’t even have the words for what you are.”
“You’d rather argue with me than live?”
“What you are. I know what you are now,” I said.
“Smarter. Quicker. Stronger. Richer. You could try those on for size.”
The woman I loved. I thought I loved. She sat there, wearing the face and the body that I knew so well, that I’d treasured; she spoke with the voice that had murmured love into my ear; she regarded me with the intelligence that sealed the deal to spend my life with her. But she was a stranger. I hadn’t known her.
Let me say that again: I hadn’t known her.
She had been a complete and utter lie and she had stolen far more than three years of my life. The scale of the lie staggered me. She had stolen my sense of who I was, and what I knew in the world. The marriage was done and I didn’t even have time to grieve for it. All this flashed through my head in a second, not even in words, just a coldness that covered me.
“All right, smart and rich,” I said. “Where is our child?”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“No. I’ll ask and you’ll lie, or you won’t tell me. You’ve done what you’ve done and that’s it,” I said. “I don’t understand it but I don’t need to understand it. I only need to stop you.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Now she showed me a half smile, the one when I used to tease her and she’d tease back.
“Fine. We’ll play it your way. Tell me why. You’re clearly dying to,” I said. “You seem to have a reason for keeping me alive. Just to taunt me?”
“I’m not heartless, Sam. I do have… feelings for you. You were a good cook. Good in bed. Thoughtful company. You were a good husband.”
“I was good camouflage,” I said. “I was a good pawn.”
“I’ll bet you insisted to the Company that I was innocent. Very chivalrous.”
“Very naïve.”
“No. I’m just very good at fooling people,” she said. An emptiness seemed to hollow out her words.
I got to unsteady feet, my head rocking. “What is going on here, Lucy? Who are these people, what are you doing?”
“Sweet mystery,” she said. “I’m supposed to find out what you know and shoot you. But I can’t. I can’t just shoot you in cold blood, Sam. I think…”
I took a shambling step toward her and she raised the gun. “It’s not cold blood if you attack me. Then I do what I have to, Sam. And I assume you don’t want to die.”
I stopped. “Yes.”
“I’m glad I didn’t wreck your will to live, then.” I couldn’t read the emotion in her face. She wasn’t smug, despite her earlier words about being smarter and richer. She looked unsure. Like she wasn’t used to seeing consequences staring back at her.
“I want to know where our son is.”
“You say nothing to the police, to the Company, that I’m alive. You don’t mention me and, in a week or so, I’ll be in touch with you. I’ll tell you what you need to know to find the baby. You can have him. Just say you never saw me, okay?”
“Is the baby all right?”
“He’s safe, Sam.” She glanced up at me. “A healthy, beautiful boy. We made us a good one.” She stood and I saw a swallow work her throat. A silencer capped her gun. “I really need to go. Now. So here’s what we’re going to do. I am going to leave. You are going to be quiet and not make a sound. Edward and I will be on our way. Eventually the police will come and you will have to answer questions. You keep my name out of it—and I’ll know if you do or not—and then I’ll let you know where the baby is. Mention me and you’ll never, ever see him.”
“Why would you let me live?”
“I stole three years of your life. This is restitution.” Her voice was unsteady. The spouse always knows. August had said that, so had Howell. The spouse always knows when treason is in the house. I hadn’t.
“That’s not reason enough. Why?” She had to have another motivation. One based on her own advantage.
“Don’t be an ingrate,” Lucy said.
I thought of our three years together, how every word, every action, had been choreographed to protect her.
“Did you ever love me?” I asked. I hated asking; it didn’t matter. She didn’t love me now. Any question was sentiment. I’d lost years of my life as surely as if I’d been stranded on an island or walled in a prison. The only thing that could matter was my child, not my ego.
“I must have. You’re still breathing.”
She looked past my shoulder. Out the window. And I heard the blast of gunfire. She slammed the door, locked it. I staggered to the door. I started kicking the lock, trying to break it.
The gunfire stopped. I looked out the window. A van roared into the parking lot, spilling three men out onto the pavement.
One of them was Howell.