I stood still for a moment. The room was black and quiet. All I could hear was Carter’s and my breathing and the rain spanking the pavement outside.
“Liz?” I yelled.
Nothing.
“I got upstairs,” Carter said, moving past me, his gun up and ready. “You get the kitchen?”
I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and stepped quickly from the living room into the kitchen. I rotated my gun through the room. Dishes in the sink. A napkin on the table. Lightning flashed outside the window.
No one.
I stood up and took another deep breath, trying to gain control. Maybe Keene had just played me, messed with my head. Trying to show me he was in control. He’d gotten in my head at the airport. He’d seen it, and now he was seeing what he could do to me.
I walked out of the kitchen and Carter was at the top of the stairs. He took one step down, his entire body lethargic and heavy. When I saw the expression on his face, an expression I’d never seen before—disbelief, confusion—I knew.
FIFTY
She was on the bed and, in the dark, appeared to be sleeping. I moved closer and felt my gun slip out of my hand and fall to the floor.
Her eyes were open and her arms outstretched, like she’d been reaching for something. A deep, red circle on her chest half a foot in diameter had stained the T-shirt she was wearing and bled into the sheet.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her hand. It was still warm, and I laced my fingers with hers, squeezing hard, as though I could transfer my life to hers.
But I knew that I couldn’t.
I heard sirens in the distance and shouts downstairs, but they seemed further away.
I reached out and covered her eyes, gently pushing her lids down.
The tears fell off my face onto hers, and in the murky, rainy moonlight, it looked like it was Liz who was crying rather than me.
FIFTY-ONE
Commotion.
People were coming and going. Carter sat next to me on the sofa in Liz’s living room. I was vaguely aware of all this, yet completely removed from it. I wasn’t numb; I could feel a dull pain in my stomach that pulsed with each breath. It was more like I was trying to wake up and couldn’t clear my head.
Wellton was standing in front of me. “Did you hear me?”
I looked up. “What?”
His eyes were blazing in the dark room. “I asked when you last spoke to her.”
“Oh. I … um … this morning. I was here. Then I left.” “Where’d you go?” he asked.
I’d walked out of the house. Told her I’d do the right thing. That I wouldn’t let her down.
“Where did you go?” Wellton repeated, his voice seared with anger.
“I … home, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Easy,” Carter said.
Wellton pointed at Carter. “Shut the hell up. My partner is dead, and I want to know why.”
Carter stood and started yelling at him, but his words faded in the air.
I’d told her I wouldn’t let her down.
But I had.
Why had I even left her? Why hadn’t I seen it?
The ache in my stomach pulsed like a strobe. My arms and legs felt light, like they were attached but I couldn’t control them.
Two officers grabbed Carter and pulled him away from Wellton, and the words in the room exploded back into my head.
“Leave him alone!” Carter was yelling. “He found her! How do you
“She was my partner!” Wellton was screaming back, his hands now on Carter’s shirt.
“And she was more to him!” Carter yelled back, straining against the grasp of the two officers.
I knew they were talking about me, but I couldn’t engage.
I felt Liz’s hands on my face. We were standing in her doorway. Her eyes were right in front of me. I could smell her hair, her skin, feel her breath against my skin, her lips against mine.
