What I understand is that this isn’t just about Will taking the money. It’s about Will taking the money and running away. Corban feels abandoned. He feels rejected and cast aside, and it’s this emotion that has triggered his rage.
He resumes his pacing, launching into yet another tirade about how no one seems to appreciate his brilliance. How it was his idea to transfer stock and not the more easily traceable money to a company in the Bahamas. He’s the one who knew when to sell the stock for top-market price. If it weren’t for him, Will would still be selling dime bags on the street corner. Narcissists love to play the victim.
He stops, looking down at me with a frown. “I’m beginning to think your husband is going to stand us up.”
“He wouldn’t.” I say it with much more confidence than I feel. Will’s already proved he loves money more than me. Why not let Corban make good on his threats to rape me? Why not let him get his revenge?
Except he said he was coming. He told me he was on his way.
I’m so sorry, Will says in my head, as clearly as if he were sitting right here, on the couch next to me. For a second or two, I see him driving down a dusty Mexican road, one hand flicking in a wave out the open window.
No, Corban was right about one thing. Will would hate it in Mexico. Too damn hot.
Corban’s gaze whips to the back door. “Did you hear that?”
I push myself up on the couch, ears straining. “Hear what?”
“Shh!” He cocks his head, then sticks a finger into the air. “That. Did you hear it?”
I think I might have heard something, a crunching outside the window, maybe, or the snap of a twig, right before a neighbor’s dog goes ballistic. His barks spark another, then another, carrying across the neighborhood until the barking comes at me in surround sound. It’s like that cartoon scene, when the dogs are alerting each other to a couple of missing dalmatians.
Only this time, they’re alerting Corban to someone right outside my window.
I flip around on the couch and cup my hands to the glass, trying to see out, but it’s like looking into a black hole, dark and endless. Somewhere in the near distance, the dogs go nuts.
The house line rings.
Corban frowns, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing I am: Why wouldn’t Will call on my cell like he did last time?
The phone rings again.
“Should I—”
“Don’t move,” he barks. He fetches the handheld off the stand in the kitchen and looks at the display. “It’s a 770 number.” He reads the rest of the digits out loud. “Do you recognize it?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
My phone flips the call to voice mail, and the caller hangs up. If there’s someone still under the window, I can’t hear it over the dogs and the thundering of my heart. Two seconds later, the phone starts up again.
This time, Corban hits the button to pick up on the first ring. “Hello.” Not a question but a demand.
Corban’s expression changes as distinctly as storm clouds scudding across the sun, turning light to dark. Whoever is on the other line is a surprise and not a pleasant one.
“You’ve got it all wrong, friend. I’m here as a guest. Iris is—”
The caller cuts him off, and the fact that Corban lets him tells me it’s someone Corban is trying to appease. Narcissists are masters at manipulation, and though his silence says he’s listening, his movements are preoccupied. His eyes scan the windows, and his body draws in on itself, like a rattlesnake coiling to spring.
“I’d love to do that,” Corban says, his tone steering toward cajoling, “but her Ambien just kicked in. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but she recently lost her husband, and she’s not handling it very well.”
Next door a light flips on, illuminating at least three silhouettes just outside. I blink, and the bodies slide into the shadows.
Corban’s voice, when he speaks again, is cold as frozen concrete. “I see.”
See what? I don’t see a thing. Is it Will outside my window? Where is he? I scan the windows, study Corban’s expression, but I don’t understand anything.
Corban holds out the receiver, knocks it against my skull. “Tell the cops you’re fine, that this is all one big misunderstanding. Tell them I’m here as your guest and to get the fuck off your property.” When I can’t choke out an answer, he makes a disgusted sound. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Get the fuck off her property, assholes.”
He chucks the receiver onto the floor and sighs. “It seems we have a little problem.”
Under any other set of circumstances, Corban’s understatement might be amusing, but now his answer sucks some of the steam from my confusion. As far as I can tell, the house is surrounded by police, and Corban is looking at me like he doesn’t know what to do with me, which is not good. From where I’m sitting, there’s only one way out. A cornered man has nothing to lose. Whoever’s on the other side of that glass needs to shoot and do it now.
But would the police do that? Would they shoot an unarmed man? As if Corban is thinking the exact same thing, he lifts both hands into the air and does a slow three-sixty before the window. Move along, folks, his smile seems to say. Nothing to see here.
I notice every detail of what happens next in crisp, sharp focus. How the bullet hits the window with a hard pop, busting a neat hole in the center of the plate glass. How it whizzes past me with a breathy hiss, a spark of silver and air. How when it hits Corban, his head jerks back, and his blood and brain splatter like a Jackson Pollock painting on me and the wall. How the floorboards quake when his body hits the ground, a two-hundred-plus-pound solid mass of concrete bone and muscle.
And then the back door explodes open, a burst of wood and glass and boot, and an army of uniformed police swarm through. Their guns are drawn, and they’re aimed—every single one—at Corban.
One of them drops to his knees and feels for a pulse, which may be standard procedure but, in this case, completely unnecessary. Corban’s eyes are open, but he’s missing a big chunk of his forehead.
A female officer crouches next to me. “Ma’am, are you okay?” She runs her hands along my face and neck, her fingers probing into my shaking skin. When she pulls away, her hands are streaked with blood.
“It’s n-not mine,” I say, but my teeth are chattering, and the words get swallowed up by all the yelling.
A big, dark-haired man behind her is doing most of it. “Which one of you assholes fired?” His face is purple, and he’s screaming so hard, spittle sprays in a perfect arc from his mouth. “The suspect was unarmed. Who fired, goddammit?”
The female officer ignores him, reaching around me for the afghan on the sofa and draping it around my shaking shoulders. “We need to warm you up. You’re in shock.” She twists around, yells into the room. “Can we get an EMT over here?”
The EMTs trot up with a stretcher, but when they get a load of Corban leaking onto my floor, they slow down considerably. One of them breaks away, approaching me with a medical bag. He takes my blood pressure and checks my vitals while snippets of conversations float all around.