'Might be your big break,' Jesse said.
'Jenn Stone, the fighting weather girl?'
'I better tell the station,' Jenn said.
'Can I use your phone to call the news director?'
'Sure. You're free to go, Jenn.'
'Won't you get in trouble, just letting me go like that?'
'If I do, I'll deal with it when it comes. I'm not going to lock you up.'
Jenn sat for a moment without moving, and Jesse realized she was crying.
'Oh, shit,' Jesse said.
'Here we are together, talking in a jail cell, Jesse,' Jenn said.
'It's just so...'
'Not the way we first planned it,' Jesse said.
'God, I've made such a goddamned mess of everything.'
'It's not over,' Jesse said, 'until it's over.'
'What the hell does that mean?'
'It means we're working on it, Jenn. When we're through working on it, we'll find out if it's a mess or not.'
'I don't ever want to stop working on it,' Jenn said.
'I don't want to lose you.'
'You won't lose me,' Jesse said.
'But I don't know. I don't know if I can ever be what you want me to be.'
'I don't have any big rules about what you should be, Jenn.
Mostly I'm opposed to sharing you.'
'I don't know,' Jenn said.
'I just don't know.'
'You will,' Jesse said.
'I only know I can't imagine a world without you in it.'
'I'm not going anywhere,' Jesse said.
'I'm going to wait it out.'
'God, I hope it's not a long wait,' Jenn said.
'You seeing a shrink these days?'
'Dr. St. Claire gave me the name of two people-one in Chestnut Hill, one in Cambridge. I haven't called them. It's hard to go to a new shrink.'
'I imagine it would be,' Jesse said.
'You think I should go back into therapy?'
'Anything that will help you decide what you want to do, and then be able to do it, is a good thing,' Jesse said.
'And you'll stay?'
'I'll stay,' Jesse said.
'What if I get to a point where what I want doesn't include you?'
'Then I'll move on,' Jesse said.
'And you'll be all right?'
'Jenn, I don't know if I'm going to be all right tomorrow. I can't possibly tell you if I'll be all right in six months or two years or whatever it takes.'
'But you won't give up?'
'Not until you tell that you don't want me in your life.'
'I can't ever imagine saying that.'
'That seems like good odds to me,' Jesse said.
'The other night was good.'
'Yes,' Jesse said.
They were both quiet for a moment. Then she stood, Jesse opened his arms, Jenn stepped into them, and he held her hard. He could feel the completeness surge up inside him. There was no logic to it; he simply knew when he touched her that she was not like other women. He kept his arms around her, fighting off the desire to squeeze too hard, while she pressed her face against his chest and cried softly but not, Jesse thought, hopelessly.
FORTY-NINE.
'You got a safe deposit box?' Macklin said.
The man was in designer sweat clothes that appeared as if they'd never been sweaty. His wife had on a tennis outfit, and she was standing rigidly still because Crow had the muzzle of the shotgun pushed up into the soft tissue under her chin. On the floor was a canvas duffel bag into which Macklin had dumped the cash and jewelry 'You lie to me and your wife's brains will be decorating the ceiling,' Macklin said.
He held his handgun casually in front of him, aimed more or less at the man's navel. The gun was cocked.
'I have one.'
The man had iron-gray hair and a strong profile. He was the semi-retired CEO of something, and he was struggling to be brave and not succeeding. You can be brave, Macklin thought, with a gun in your face, though it's easier when there's no gun. But there's still nothing to do but what you're told.
'Paradise Bank?' Macklin said.
'Yes.'
'Stiles Island branch?'
'Yes.'
'Get the key.'
The man hesitated. Macklin raised the handgun and placed the muzzle a half inch from the man's left eye.
'I'll count to three. Then your widow gets the key for us... One!'
'It's in my bureau drawer,' the man said.
His voice wheezed out as if his throat was clogged with dust.
'I'll go with you,' Macklin said, and he followed the man into the front hall and up the stairs.
'What are you going to do to us?' the woman said, her voice strained, her teeth clenched in parody of an upper-crust accent from the pressure of the shotgun.
'Nothing we don't have to,' Crow said.
'You got a downstairs lav?'
'Yes.'
'Let's see it,' Crow said and lowered the shotgun.
They walked to the front hall and back toward the kitchen.
The woman indicated a door under the stairs next to the kitchen.
Crow opened the door. It opened outward. He looked in. It was a big lavatory with a wash basin and makeup mirror and no windows.
Macklin came back down the stairs with the man. He held up the safe deposit key so that Crow could see it.
Crow nodded and jerked his head toward the lavatory.
'Here,' Crow said.
'Down this hall.'
Macklin came down the hall and looked at the lavatory.
'Helps that these houses are all the same, don't it?' Macklin said.
'Okay, both of you go into the lav and close the door and stay there.'
The man and woman did as they were told. They're glad to, Macklin thought. Means we're not going to kill them. When the door was closed, Crow went to the living room and got the big gym bag. He came back down the hall and took a hammer and some 12D nails from the bag and nailed the lavatory door shut. Then he dropped the hammer back into the bag, put the shotgun in, picked the bag up, and he and Macklin, who was carrying the canvas duffel bag, walked out of the house. On the sidewalk, Macklin looked at his watch.
'Pretty good,' he said.
'We'll have them all by late afternoon.'
'What's Fran telling people at the bridge?' Crow said.
'What's that sign say?'
Macklin smiled.
'The sign says 'Caution: Blasting,'' he said.
'Any civilians, Fran tells them the island's closed for a couple hours.'
They walked up the manicured walkway of the next estate.
Macklin rang the door bell and deep inside the house some chimes sounded. Macklin grinned at Crow.
'Avon calling,' Macklin said and set his duffel bag down on the step beside him.
FIFTY.
Abby Taylor lived in a weathered shin home in the oldest part of Paradise. When!
she was married, she had bought it with her husband, and when they had divorced it remained with her. When her doorbell rang, she looked through the peephole in the front door and saw a well- dressed, good-looking, upper-class woman in her forties, who looked vaguely familiar. Abby J opened the door.
'Hello,' she said.
'Hello,' the good-looking woman said and hit Abby flush on the jaw with her clenched right fist. It was a good punch, and it staggered Abby backward several steps. The woman stepped through the front door and closed it behind her. By the time Abby got her balance, the woman was aiming a.38 Smith & Wesson Chief's Special at her.
'What... the... Christ are you... doing?' Abby said.
Her lip was already starting to puff.
'The punch was to get your attention,' Faye said. She felt perfectly cold and steady inside.
'If you don't do exactly what I say, I'll kill you. Do you believe that?'
Abby stared at her. It was hard to process anything. The woman slapped her hard across the face with her left hand.
'Do you believe that?' the woman said.
Abby nodded.
'Okay. We're going to go to your bedroom, and you're going to lie on the bed facedown. You got that? You so much as clear your throat, and I'll fill your head full of bullets.'
'What are you going to do?' Abby said. Her voice sounded thin to her and puny.
'Anything I have to,' the woman said.
'You do what you're told, you'll get out of this alive. You don't, and you won't.'
'Why?' Abby said.
'Why are you doing this?'
The woman smiled without any hint of laughter.
'Love,' she said.
'Love?'
The woman jerked her head toward the front stairs.
'Your bedroom up there?'
'Yes.'
'Then move,' the woman said.
As they went up the stairs, Abby could hear a dog bark somewhere and then someone whistling for it and then quiet. The quiet was oppressive. The house was thunderously empty except for
