Mick felt a kind of satisfaction that he could not suppress. That’s the way you do it, he thought inwardly, as if he was giving her a high-five. But then his brief look of satisfaction was gone. She was not out of jeopardy yet. He had spent hours upon hours setting up this meeting. He had to promise all kinds of political and financial support when the DA was up for reelection. He had to twist arms and make threats and call in favors he never intended to call in. He had to fight and claw like a dog in the streets to get to this point.
And it wasn’t over yet. It could still go either way. The DA could still go along with the cops and sign off on their arrest warrant, which would almost certainly necessitate that Rosalind would go to trial. Or she could defy the cops and drop all charges. Politically, that would be the tougher route. But Mick had already made clear to her that it was the route she had better choose. But he never predicted what somebody else would ultimately do. There were still risks for his lady. She was still in jeopardy. There would be no high-fives or lasting satisfactory looks until those risks, that jeopardy, were over.
“Prior to last night,” Hammer asked, “you would describe your relationship with Barry Acker as what? Cordial? Discordant?”
“Oh no,” Roz said quickly. “Barry and I were very cordial! He selected me to act in his plays. He treated me with nothing but respect.”
“But this makes no sense, Miss Graham. If he treated you so respectfully, what changed?”
“My relationship with Barry,” Mick said.
Everybody looked at him. Especially Roz. She thought he wanted to keep his role in this sordid affair private. But he was speaking up.
“Your relationship with Acker?” the Chief asked. “What kind of relationship are we talking about?”
Mick looked at the chief. “Barry Acker was a very good man. He was kind and he was loyal. But he was also bisexual.”
Roz was shocked. She had never heard that before about Barry.
Mick continued, undaunted by her shock. “He enjoyed the men as much as he enjoyed the ladies. He enjoyed his wife as much as he wanted to enjoy me.”
“He was sexually interested in you,” Hammer said. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” Mick said. Barry was no more bisexual than Mick was, but Mick would have claimed to have slept with Barry Acker if it would set Rosalind free. That was the way he played ball. He didn’t play it soft and easy so that people could have a great opinion of him when all was said and done. He played hard. To win. To win Rosalind’s freedom. “That’s what I mean,” he added.
And in the end it ended up being enough. The DA announced to Chief Salinger that this was nothing more than a case of an accidental fall by a disturbed man. No crime had been committed. She could not go along with the arrest warrant and Rosalind Graham, she announced, was free to go.
The ride back to Roz’s apartment was a slow one. The traffic was thick, nerves were frayed, and Mick and Roz sat side by side as if they had just endured a dangerous battle that could have taken them out. Mick had his arm around her waist, and they sat close, but Roz felt as if they were miles apart. Because Mick seemed more troubled than she was.
When the gulf became unbearable, Roz looked at him. “I didn’t push him,” she said to him.
“I know that,” Mick responded. “That was never at issue.”
“Then what’s at issue? I know you loved Barry.”
“I respected Barry. Love had nothing to do with it. I don’t blame you for what he did to himself. Given what he did, even if you did push his ass, I still wouldn’t blame you.”
“I didn’t push him,” Roz wanted to make that abundantly clear. “But something’s still bothering you. What is it? What is the issue?”
Mick exhaled. “You’re the issue,” he said.
Roz’s heart dropped. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“But you said you believed me.”
“I do. Of course I do!”
“Then why would I be the issue?”
“When we get to your apartment, you’re going to have to do something you do not want to do. You will pack your bags and move to Philadelphia with me. You don’t have to live with me if you prefer not. I’ll get you your own place, your own car, your own anything you want. But you’re leaving here.”
Mick looked at her. She could see the determination in his eyes. “I will not allow you to live this far from me ever again.”
Roz actually loved the sound of that. “You make it sound as if we’re worlds apart,” she said. “You’re less than an hour away by plane.”
“That hour felt like fifty years last night,” Mick confessed. And he confessed it so heartfelt that Roz felt it to the roots of her hair. She knew exactly what he meant.
She stared into his hard eyes. Publicly, there wasn’t a soft side to this man. But she didn’t know him publicly. She knew him far deeper than that. “Thank you for handling things for me, Mick. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have you out here working to get me out of there. Without you I could have rotted in that place. And I realized, as I sat in that filthy cell, that life could turn in a flash so dramatically. I realized what you meant about kill or be killed.”
Mick studied her as she spoke.