to her as his mouth filled with foamy salt water and the sharks began to circle. At least four sharks, moving in closer.
“Des!…”
“Mitch, help me!…”
“Des!…” There she was, bobbing just out of his reach, her eyes wide with terror. Mitch reached his hand out to her in vain, sinking underwater himself, gasping. “Des!…”
“Don’t leave me, Mitch!”
And now he was going down and staying down. And she was the one reaching out to him and shaking him and shaking him and…
With a yelp Mitch was suddenly awake in the morning light, his heart thudding, mouth tasting metallic. She was kneeling there on the edge of his bed, rousing him from his nightmare.
He reached for her, hugging her tightly. “I won’t ever leave you,” he promised. “I swear I won’t.”
She pulled away from him, having none of it. “What is up with you, son?”
Because it was not Des. Allison Mapes was sitting there on his bed clad in his beloved No. 56 Lawrence Taylor New York Giants jersey. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she looked about thirteen. She also looked as if she thought he was insane.
“You were shouting in your sleep,” she informed him. “You having a nightmare?”
“I was drowning.” Mitch rubbed his eyes, gasping. Part of him felt as if he were still underwater, still fighting for breath. It had been such a vivid dream. A Des dream. He had moved off of Maisie and on to the master sergeant. This was significant, Mitch sensed, though he couldn’t yet grasp why. He sat up in bed, slowly recalling that second bottle of Chianti he and Allison had gone through. Also his ear-splittingly, inspired rendition of Leslie West’s Mississippi Queen.
“You got any flip-flops I could borrow? One of your cats peed in my sneaker.”
“Which one?”
“The right one.”
“No, which cat?”
“The skinny one.”
“That’s Quirt. He’s very loyal to Des.”
“Kind of getting that. He spent half the night circling the sofa and glowering at me.”
She’d been too tipsy to drive home, so he’d made up the sofa for her. It was the responsible thing to do. It was also the bargain they’d struck. And Allison had proven to be a stubborn little negotiator.
“I really like your terrarium thingies. Didn’t notice them last night.”
“Those are my seedlings. The domes keep Clemmie out. Otherwise, she tears them to pieces.”
“No offense, but your life seems pretty much ruled by your cats.”
“Well, yeah. We all need strong authority figures in our lives.”
“Whatever. I made coffee. You take yours with cream, right? I should know that by now.”
“Today I think I’ll go with two fingers of chocolate milk.”
“Yum, I may try that myself.”
“I’d better get a fire started. It must be freezing down there.”
“I can do it,” she said, starting down the narrow steps to the living room. “Least I can do after making you listen to my sob story for half the night.”
Mitch lay there and listened to her rattle around downstairs, remembering what she’d told him about the drugs, the boys, the men. Clemmie jumped up onto the bed with him, padding at his belly determinedly before she curled up there, purring. Allison returned with two mugs of coffee and handed him one. It was hot and strong. He gulped it gratefully.
She perched on the edge of the bed with hers, smiling at him uncertainly. “I had a really good time last night. I feel really safe with you. Like I can say anything and you’ll understand. I just wanted to say thanks, and tell you if you ever feel like, I mean, if you want to…”
“Actually, I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
“Really, for what?”
“You helped me through something that’s been bothering me.”
She studied him curiously. “You’re my first, you know. The only guy I’ve ever stayed over with didn’t try to do me. I guess what you and Des have must be different from what I have with Stevie.”
“It’s different,” Mitch acknowledged, stroking Clemmie.
“Otherwise you would have, right? If you weren’t with her, I mean.”
“In a New York minute.”
“Kind of what I thought.” Allison’s round face glowed with satisfaction. “I’d better get going, hunh?”
“Wait, you promised you’d tell me his name, remember? The married guy who took you with him on his business trips.”
She scrunched up her face, chewing nervously on the inside of her mouth. “You’re not really going to hold me to that, are you?”
“I totally am. A deal’s a deal. I was straight with you, wasn’t I?”
“I guess,” she allowed. “Only, how come you’re so interested?”
“Because Justine’s book is based on real people. Whoever publishes it has to know from the get-go if someone might cause problems.”
“So it’s important?”
“Very.”
“Am I going to see you again?”
“Are you kidding? I must be in McGee’s five times a week.”
“I mean can we do this again?” Her eyes twinkled at him. “I could make you happy.”
“I believe that.”
“But it’s not going to happen, is it? Story of my life, I guess.”
Mitch was about to tell her that she was much too young to have a story. But she did have one. Justine had put it down on paper. “We can be friends.”
“Friends. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever had a guy as a friend. Nope, can’t think of a single one. You have girls as friends?”
“Absolutely. My editor at the paper is a woman, and we’re very tight. We go to dinner together all of the time when I’m in town.”
“And you don’t want to do each other?”
“We’re friends.”
“I don’t see how that could possibly work.”
“It’s just understood, that’s all.”
Allison sat in silence for a long moment. “You have to promise me you won’t spread this around town.”
“I give you my word.”
“If you tell anyone, it’ll get back to me. And I’ll hunt you down and I’ll hurt you.” She shifted around on the bed, gazing at him with a sadness that bordered on bottomless despair. “You really want his name, hunh?”
Mitch took her soft, pudgy hand and squeezed it. “Listen, how about if I say it? Because I’m starting to think I know where this is going and-”
And then Allison blurted out the married man’s name and Mitch realized he didn’t know where it was going at all.
C HAPTER 20
In death, Guy Tolliver was nowhere near stylish.
The jaunty old society photographer lay on his back, his head against a granite fieldstone, his left hand still wrapped around the empty bottle of lye that he’d drunk down. The human body instinctively wants to regurgitate a powerful corrosive such as lye-even in the death throes. So there were heavy burns around Tolly’s mouth. The skin
