She squeezed her chest as hard as she could to raise him up just a hair, then kicked her legs, scraping her body just a little to the right.
Her fingers wrapped around the knife handle. In her hand now …
All going black.
She brought her arm up, then swung, wide and hard, the knife blade sparkling in the light as it slashed in slow motion across and in front of her, above her, at Michael.
He jumped back, loosening his grip on her throat. She sucked in a huge gulp of air as the thin line across the front of his neck widened into a pencil’s width.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed. He let go of her completely and brought his hands to his neck, just as a spurt of oily, syrupy thick blood erupted in a shower across the front of his chest and onto Taylor.
He tried to jump to his feet, but stumbled and fell backward, landing on his hips on the hard concrete. She jerked upright, rubbing her neck with her left hand, the knife held tightly in her right.
She saw his face in the yellow lantern light as he looked down on his chest, blood pouring out of his neck. He glared up at her. “Jesus,” he squeaked. “Look what you did.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, her voice broken and choked. Her neck ached, the back of her head pounded. “But you were going to-”
His hands were clasped tightly around his own neck now, trying to staunch the rhythmic spurts. “Oh God,” he said, his voice softer, staring down at his own blood.
She scrambled to her hands and knees, trying to stand up but too weak. She crawled toward him. The blood had soaked the front of the T-shirt, his pants, the concrete floor in front of him. She moved toward him, her hands sliding in the wetness.
“Do something,” he said. “Do something.”
“Jesus, I don’t know what-”
Suddenly he rolled backward onto the concrete. Taylor crawled over to him, the knife still in her hand. She threw it as hard as she could away from them. It clattered on the floor somewhere behind the lantern.
She put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The flow of blood had slowed, his body relaxing, as he stared up at her.
“I don’t feel good,” he said, almost childlike. His eyes drifted left and right, his eyelids fluttering.
His hands loosened from around his neck and slid to his side. Taylor Robinson took his hand in hers, on her knees next to him, as the light in his eyes dimmed.
“I just wanted them to remember me,” he whispered.
Taylor squeezed his hands, blood all over her now as well.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They will.”
EPILOGUE
“My God, it’s as beautiful as you said it was,” Taylor Robinson said, laughing, as she gazed out the front windshield of the rented Chrysler.
Next to her, in the driver’s seat, Hank Powell turned and smiled at her. It was wonderful to hear her laugh again, he thought. “See, I told you.”
“I thought I’d never seen anything as beautiful as the trees on the drive up here, but now this …”
“Fall in upstate Vermont,” he agreed. “There’s nothing like it.”
He pulled the sedan into a visitor’s space in front of Blackhurst Hall, the largest dormitory on the campus of the Butler School. Completed in 1921, the building more closely resembled an eighteenth-century Georgian mansion than an antiseptic dormitory. Modeled after The Hall at St. Hilda’s in Oxford, Blackhurst was home to one hundred and fifty female upperclassmen, including Hank’s daughter. Taylor felt like she was back in England as she exited the car.
The air was crisp and fresh, saturated with the smells of autumn. There was a slight chill in the air. Taylor pulled her field jacket around her a bit tighter. She looked around admiringly.
“The campus is really beautiful,” Taylor said.
“Jackie loves it here,” he said.
“Where do we go?”
“Well, I called her a couple of hours ago, when we stopped for gas. I told her we wouldn’t make it for lunch, but we’d be at the game.” He glanced at his watch. “As it turns out, the team has a mandatory game-day lunch, so we wouldn’t have seen her anyway. Game starts at two. We’ve got a few minutes. Want to walk around?”
“Sure, I’d love to see more.”
Taylor hooked her arm inside Hank’s as they began stroll-ing down a long sidewalk that ran to the main part of campus. They passed other students, parents, groups of people walking around enjoying the day.
“I really am glad you called me,” Hank said as they wandered among the trees, surrounded by the brilliant oranges, browns, reds of fall.
“I’m glad you were willing to talk to me after all this,” she said. “I just had to do what I had to do.”
“So how was-what was it, five? six?-months in Europe?”
“At first it was awful,” Taylor admitted. “I was so crazy I couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few days. Looking back on it now, I think I must have had some kind of post-traumatic stress thing going on. But after a while, it slowed down and I noticed that every day seemed to get a little easier. First I could only go a few minutes without reliving it all, then it was a few hours. And then one day, in France, I think it was, on the Cote d’Azur, I woke up one day and realized I hadn’t thought about him or that awful night for days.”
They walked on, Taylor holding his arm, the leaves rustling around them. “I think it was then that I started to feel alive again.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Taylor shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still taking it a day at a time. Joan Delaney’s been great. She’s given me a leave of absence from the agency. I can stay gone as long as I need to.”
“That helps,” he said. “Having an understanding boss always makes life easier.”
“Problem is,” Taylor continued, “I’m not even sure I can go back there. With all the publicity-hell, the infamy-associated with this, I’m just not sure I can ever be effective anymore, let alone happy. It’s too much pressure. I want something quieter.”
“Can you afford to just walk away from it?”
Taylor nodded. “For now. I have an agreement with Joan that my compensation is based on a percentage of the money my clients bring in, even if I’ve left the agency. And Michael’s books are selling better than ever, or at least they did for the first few months after he … he died. I feel a little guilty taking money that way, but there’s no denying there’s been a ton of it.”
“I don’t think you should feel guilty,” Hank said. “You didn’t do anything but your job. You’re supposed to get paid for doing your job.”
“I guess so,” Taylor said. “Maybe in this case I did my job a little too well.”
They walked on, through the center of campus, past the old gothic buildings, the new library. “I’ve even been thinking about putting my co-op on the market,” Taylor said.
“With Manhattan real estate prices going through the roof, I could make enough to live on for years.”
“And now that you don’t have to pay capital gains on a lot of it,” Hank commented.
“Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.”
They walked on a bit farther in silence. Then Hank spoke up.
“I’m going to be making some changes myself,” he said.
“Yeah?” Taylor asked. “What’s going on?”
“Well, my dear, I am going to retire.”
Taylor laughed. “What? That’s ridiculous. You’re too young to retire.”
“I’ve got my twenty years in,” he said. “And I’ve had it.
