“I don’t need an escort.”
“You’ll want this one. Trust me.” Dolan opened the door and there was Adele, sitting by herself at a long table. Her bob of silky black hair looked ruffled and static-charged from some hat she’d just removed. Her lipstick had long ago faded. Her mascara had gone soft like a water-color around her eyes. She was still the most beautiful thing Vega had ever seen.
“You came.” His voice was hoarse and throaty. He tried hard to control the pitch.
Adele’s full lips parted slightly. Her deep brown eyes searched his. She reached up a delicate hand and tucked a wad of hair behind one ear. It was such a simple gesture, one she did so often. But it brought an instant lump to Vega’s throat. It made him want to bury himself in her arms and cry right there. But he knew he couldn’t. And so he stood frozen in the doorway, afraid to touch her with his darkness, afraid to contaminate her world with the poison that was now his own.
“He needs to decompress,” Dolan told Adele. “Take him out the back way.” Then he flicked a gaze at Vega. “Take care, Jimmy. See you around, okay?”
The way Dolan said it made Vega wonder whether he ever would.
Vega hugged Adele as soon as Dolan left the room. He leaned over and whispered a husky thank-you into her hair. She smelled of vanilla and limes and something entirely her own. He wanted to take her to bed with him, huddle under the blankets, and never come out.
“My car’s out back,” she told him. “Leave your truck here tonight. You can fetch it in the morning. You’re in no condition to drive home.”
“But Sophia—” Vega knew Adele didn’t like him sleeping over when Sophia was in the house.
“Peter agreed to keep her for the night.”
“You didn’t tell him, I hope.”
“No.”
Vega heard something sad and spent in her voice. And he understood what he hadn’t wanted to before: he couldn’t keep this a secret. Even if Peter didn’t know tonight, he would know. Everyone would know before the week was over. Friends. Family. The cops in his band. His ex-wife’s neighbors. Classmates Vega hadn’t seen in twenty years. He was sticking his head in the sand if he thought he could keep this a secret.
They snuck out the back entrance. Everything felt shameful now. Vega laced his fingers into Adele’s. He was hungry for her touch but it felt as tentative as her voice. When she smiled, there was something forced around the edges. He didn’t press. They walked past Vega’s Ford pickup, the black paint gelatinous under the cold wattage of floodlights. Adele’s pale green Prius was in the visitor’s parking lot, farther up the hill. She powered open the doors and Vega strapped himself into the front passenger’s seat. The silence between them felt like a third person. Adele fumbled to undo the buttons on her coat. She had trouble steadying her hands. Vega gave her arm a gentle squeeze.
“It’s okay, nena. It’s going to be okay.” He couldn’t believe he was the one consoling her. But in an odd way, it made him feel better. By soothing her, he was soothing himself. It gave him an outlet for his pain.
They sat in the car for a moment, their breath clouding white. Adele didn’t look at him. She stared out the windshield. “You didn’t tell me he was unarmed.”
Vega stiffened. He was going to tell her. Of course he was. But not like this. Not when everything was so fresh he could barely sort through it.
“Dispatch told me he was armed. I didn’t know until—” He turned to her. “How did you find out?”
“I overheard some of the cops talking while I was waiting for you.” Adele fiddled with a cross on a chain around her neck, sliding it back and forth. She seldom wore it. She was only nominally religious. “I drove over here picturing a gunfight. A struggle—”
“Would you rather I have been in intensive care?”
“Of course not!”
Vega picked at the skin around his cuticles until they bled. He didn’t know what to say.
“People from La Casa are already calling me,” Adele told him. “They’re saying they heard that the police shot a Central American dishwasher in Wickford.”
“You didn’t tell them I’m involved, did you?”
“No. But it’s bound to come out. I feel like I’m in the middle. My clients assume I know things I don’t and I don’t know things I do.”
Silence.
“Jimmy, I need to know what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you. I’m not allowed to talk about the shooting. You know that.”
“But you can tell me the man’s name.”
“I don’t know it—not for certain, anyway. And even if I did, I couldn’t give it to you until my department makes it public, and that won’t be until after his next of kin are notified.”
“Was he part of that gang? The one that raped that girl in Quaker Hills?”
“In all likelihood? No.”
“He had a criminal record I assume.”