Titus never screamed. He never got angry or threatened violence. He didn’t have to. Gerard had met men who commanded respect, who walked into a room and immediately took control of it. Titus was like that. His even tone somehow grabbed you by the lapels and made you obey.
Gerard turned toward him.
“Come.”
Titus disappeared back into the farmhouse. Gerard followed him.
An hour later, Gerard started back down the path. His gait was unsteady. He began to shake. He didn’t want to go back into that damned box. Promises had been made, of course. The way back to Vanessa, Titus had promised him, was to cooperate. He did not know what to believe anymore, but really, did it matter?
Gerard once again considered making a run for it. He once again dismissed it as nonsense.
When he reached the clearing, the Muscled Man stopped playing with his chocolate Lab and gave him an order in what Gerard believed was Portuguese. The dog ran up the path and out of sight. The Muscled Man pointed a gun at Gerard. Gerard had been through this routine before. Muscled Man would keep the gun on him as Gerard entered the box. Muscled Man would close the door and throw on the lock.
Darkness would smother him again.
But there was something different this time. Gerard could see it in the man’s eyes.
“Vanessa,” Gerard said softly to himself. He had taken to repeating her name, almost like a mantra, something to calm and soothe him, like his mother at the end with her rosary beads.
“This way,” Muscled Man said. He pointed with his gun toward the right.
“Where are we going?”
“This way.”
“Where are we going?” Gerard said again.
Muscled Man walked up to Gerard and put the gun against his head.
“This. Way.”
He started toward the right. He had been here before—it was the spot where he washed off with the hose and changed into this jumpsuit.
“Keep going.”
“Vanessa . . .”
“Yep. Keep walking.”
Gerard trekked up past the hose. Muscled Man stayed two steps behind, the gun pointed at Gerard’s back.
“Don’t stop. Almost there.”
Up ahead, Gerard could see a smaller clearing. He frowned, confused. He took one more step, saw it, and froze.
“Keep going.”
He didn’t. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t even breathe.
To his left—next to a thick oak tree—was a pile of clothes. Lots of clothes, like someone was waiting to do laundry. It was hard to say how many outfits. Ten. Maybe more. He could even see the gray suit he’d been wearing on his way to Logan Airport.
How many of us . . . ?
But his gray suit and even the sheer height of the pile wasn’t what drew his eye. That wasn’t what made him pull up, stop, and let the truth finally crash over him hard. No, it wasn’t the volume of clothes. It was one article of clothing, sitting atop the pile like a cake decoration, that shattered his world into a million pieces.
A bright yellow sundress.
Gerard closed his eyes. His life actually did pass before his eyes—the life he had, the life he almost had—before the blast ushered the darkness back in, this time forever.
Chapter 11
Two weeks later, Kat was finishing up some paperwork in the precinct when Stacy stormed in like a Doppler-tracked weather system. Heads turned. Tongues lolled. Most higher-level brain activity ceased. Simply put, nothing lowers a man’s IQ like a curvaceous woman. Chaz Faircloth, who was sadly still Kat’s partner, straightened his perfectly straightened tie. He started toward her, but Stacy shot him a look that knocked him back a step.
“Lunch at the Carlyle,” Stacy said. “I’m buying.”
“Deal.”
Kat started to sign off her computer.
“So how did your date go last night?” Stacy asked.
“I hate you,” Kat said.
“Yet you’ll still have lunch with me.”
“You said you were buying.”
Kat’s first three dates from YouAreJustMyType were unfailingly polite, nicely dressed, and, well, blah. No sparks, no sizzle, just . . . nothing. Last night—her fourth in the two weeks since Jeff had semi-redumped her—had given her early hope. She and Stan Something—no reason to memorize the last name until she reached the so-far-unreachable Second Date—had been walking on West 69th Street, heading to Telepan restaurant, when Stan asked: “Are you a Woody Allen fan?”
Kat felt her heart flutter. She loved Woody Allen. “Very much so.”
“How about Annie Hall? You ever see Annie Hall?”
It was only one of her favorite movies of all time. “Of course.”
Stan laughed, stopped walking. “You remember that scene when Alvy’s going on his first date with Annie and he says something about them kissing before the date so they could relax?”
Kat almost swooned. Woody Allen stops before he and Diane Keaton arrive at the restaurant, kind of like Stan here just did, and says, “Hey, gimme a kiss.” Diane Keaton replies, “Really?” Woody says, “Yeah, why not, because we’re just gonna go home later, right, and then there’s gonna be all that tension, we’ve never kissed before and I’ll never know when to make the right move or anything. So we’ll kiss now and get it over with, and then we’ll go eat. We’ll digest our food better.”
Oh, how she loved that scene. She smiled at Stan and waited.
“Hey,” Stan said, doing a meh impression of Woody, “let’s go have sex before we eat.”
Kat blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Right, I know that’s not the exact line, but think about it. I won’t know when to make the right move and how many dates before we jump in the sack and, when you think about it, we might as well start off doing the horizontal mambo because if we aren’t good in bed, well, what’s the point, you know what I mean?”
She looked for him to start laughing. He didn’t. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“Sure. We’ll digest our food better, right?”
“I can feel my last meal coming up right now,” Kat said.
During dinner, she tried to stay on the rather safe topic of Woody Allen movies. It soon became apparent that Stan wasn’t a fan, but he had seen Annie Hall. “See, here’s what I do,” Stan confided to her in a low whisper. “I just search on the site for women who love that movie. That line? It didn’t work with you, but most of Woody’s fans immediately get their legs in the air.”
Terrific.