Brady started crying anew. “I needed the money.”
Nessa tried to compose herself. She had to confirm that it was Nathan who’d bought the keys. “Was this guy about six--four? Blond?”
“No,” Brady said.
Of course Nathan wouldn’t be blond after spending twenty--three hours a day inside a prison.
“Not blond, then,” Nessa said.
“And not six--four either,” Brady said. The crying had stopped, but he still looked terrified. “He was—-”
“Taller or shorter?”
“A lot shorter. About my height.”
Brady looked to be about five--nine. She puzzled over this.
“Don’t you even know how tall your own husband is? Ex--husband, whatever?”
“Kid,” Nessa said. “It wasn’t my ex--husband. He’s—-”
“But it was,” Brady insisted. “He showed me his driver’s license.”
“His—-”
“Yes! I know it was him because he has the same last name as you. Donati. John Donati.”
Chapter Sixteen
AND THEN NESSA was on her back on the pavement, staring up at the sky with Brady kneeling next to her, crying again. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, whether she’d hit her head, or if she’d had a seizure, or just fainted.
“Mrs. Donati?” Brady was patting her hand with his clammy one. She yanked her hand away and sat up. “Are you all right?”
Her hands were scraped up from the gravelly surface beneath her.
John was alive.
“When did this happen?” she said. “When did . . . Mr. Donati buy the keys from you?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Just answer the question,” she snapped. “When did this happen?”
Brady startled, then looked up, obviously trying to remember. “It was, like, a week ago. He said you’d locked him out of his house, and he just wanted to get in there and get his stuff. That’s all he wanted to do. His name was the same as yours, so I figured it was legit, you know?”
She couldn’t breathe, felt like she was going to pitch over again. The world was not real, not at all, it couldn’t be.
John was alive.
Brady held up a Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand. “I swear to God,” he said, sniveling again. “I never thought something like this would happen. I swear to God.”
She tried to stand.
Her legs turned to water and she fell to the ground again, her bones and muscles no longer capable of supporting her weight, her brain unable to support this fact:
John’s alive.
Brady chattered away like a monkey, but she couldn’t understand anything he said because she was trying to adjust her worldview.
“I’m going to go get you some water. Stay right where you are.”
As if she could do anything else at this moment.
He ran back inside the locksmith office while she sat leaning against his vehicle’s tire in the shade.
She’d never known John at all, not really. And he was so much sicker than she ever realized.
Her mind lined up all the events of the past three weeks, and it was now so obvious. Of course it was John. He was punishing her for keeping him away from his stuff, his wife, his house, his son. He’d smeared the pickup truck with his own blood, fired her gun into the bed, and called the cops . . . he’d done all of it. And then tormented her with the details of her past.
Why had he never been that ambitious about jobs?
Brady returned, paper cone in hand, with about thimbleful’s worth of water in it. She threw it back and swallowed.
“You can make it up to me,” Nessa said to the quaking locksmith. “If he approaches you again after I change the locks, I want you to text me. Tell him you’ll give him the new keys, set up a meeting, then tell me. This is really important. John’s a crack addict. He wants to hurt me and my son, my three--year--old boy. I don’t know if you know anything about addicts, but they don’t care about anything but rock. The drugs rot away their brains so that they lose their connection to the -people they once loved. It’s like the rabies virus. It just wants what it wants and to propagate itself without regard to its host. That’s what’s going on here. Will you do that for me?”
Brady sniffled and wiped his eyes and nose and nodded.
“I will,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I honestly thought he was just trying to get his stuff. I didn’t know.”
“Well,” Nessa said, “now you know.” She tried to stand again, and this time succeeded. She got in the Pacifica and headed for home.
The temporary photo of Daltrey with X’s over his eyes bubbled up in her brain. He Will Die scrawled across it. John had meant what he’d said—-he’d rather see Daltrey dead than with her.
She wept as she drove, thinking about everything that was lost. The only man she’d ever loved, the only one to whom she’d bared her soul and then some, had not only not loved her enough to remain drug--free, but was also now trying to drive her crazy or get her killed. Or drive her to addiction again. How had she been so thoroughly fooled?