He puts the car in reverse, backs us out of the driveway. We start down the street, the sun shining through the trees that reach up and cover us, casting shadows everywhere. At the end of the block we reach the stop sign. A car coming up Vine Street stops at the same time, its turn signal flashing.
Marilyn. It’s five thirty—I now see the time on the dashboard—and she’s coming home from her meetings. Soon she’ll arrive home and see all the cars and SUVs. She’ll enter her house to find that it’s become a stranger’s. Then Walter will approach her and she’ll see it on his face, in his eyes, and she will begin to cry, begin to wail, falling to her knees, pounding Walter with her fists.
I don’t know for certain this will happen, but as we pull through the intersection, as we leave Marilyn behind, I hope it’s close enough to the truth.
I hope she punches him as many times as she can.
I hope she makes him pay.
Forty-Nine
It’s one of those silly ironies that on the worst day of my life the elevator in my apartment building is working.
I take the stairs anyway. I let myself into my apartment and shut the door. I think about eating something—my stomach is growling—but I don’t have an appetite. I take off my sandals, drop them to the floor, and enter the living room to find Nova sitting on the couch.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me. In his hand, resting in his lap, is a black Beretta pistol.
I sit down in the recliner facing him.
“Were you followed?” he asks.
“No, but it doesn’t matter anyway. They know where I live and if they wanted to take me out by now they would have.”
Nova doesn’t respond.
“How long have you known?”
He keeps watching me.
“Why the fuck did nobody ever tell me?” I shake my head, lean forward in my seat. “I watched them die.”
“No”—Nova shakes his head almost imperceptibly—“you watched what they wanted you to watch.”
“So you knew?”
“I had my suspicions.”
“But why … why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I figured it wasn’t my place. Besides, I never knew for certain.”
I lean back in the recliner, run my fingers through my hair. “So everybody figured it out except me.”
“John was your father. Zane was your lover. After seeing what you did, there was no way you could ever step back and look at it rationally.”
“And if I could have stepped back and looked at it rationally, what would I have seen?”
“For starters, I was supposed to be the one who went on that yacht, not you. But John changed the plan before we left. He said he wanted you there instead.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, but remember who gave you your guns.”
“Zane did.”
“That’s right.”
“That still”—I shake my head again—“that still doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know you, Holly. I know how particular you are about your weapons. Especially your ammunition. When you can, you like to load your own rounds. You like to make sure you touch each one before you put them in the magazine. But sometimes you’d allow Zane to load your magazines for you. Why? Because out of all of us, he was the one you trusted most.”
I think about Zane again, turning around in Walter’s chair, Zane who I watched die two years ago.
“Impossible,” I whisper.
“They’d loaded blanks in the magazine.”
“No, they didn’t. I’d used the gun. I’d fired it.”
“But had you hit anything?”
I pause a moment, trying to remember. Everything had been happening so quickly.
“Zane and my dad were doing most of the shooting. They went on the yacht first.”
Nova nods, watching me closely. He doesn’t say anything.
“But I …”
I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. Trying to work it out in my head, how it could possibly have happened that the two men I trusted most in the world played me for a fool.
But I saw Zane with my own eyes today. I heard his voice. I felt his hands on my arm. I felt his lips on my forehead.
“Why?” I ask finally.
“Who knows. There may not even be a reason.”
“There has to be a reason. Zane, my father … they were good men.”
“Were they?”
My teeth clenched, I get up and stalk into the kitchen. I open the fridge. The light comes on and I look at the little I have in there—the nearly empty container of milk, the V8, the aging cheese—and I wonder if I died who would be the one to clean out this fridge, what they would think, the story these few remaining items would tell.
I close the fridge door, open the cabinet and pull out a glass. I use the tap to fill the glass and I take a long swallow, then another long swallow. I set the glass in the sink and start to turn back toward the living room when the corkboard on the wall by the phone catches my eye.
On the corkboard, in the top right corner, is the Bazooka Joe comic Scooter gave me.
Nova steps into the kitchen, leans against the doorway. The Beretta hangs at his side.
“You should get some sleep,” he says.
Still staring at the comic, I say, “Do you know everything that happened today?”
“I know two FBI agents were killed. I know Walter’s kids were taken and are being used for ransom for Delano’s flash drive.”
“Those kids are already dead, aren’t they?”
Nova doesn’t answer.
I turn around so I can face him. “Answer me, Nova. Do you think Casey and David are dead already? Do you think Zane—do you think my father—is capable of killing them?”
“People are capable of all different kinds of things.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You should go lie down.”
“I’m not tired,” I say, but it’s a lie. I’m exhausted. Whatever Zane gave me is still working its way through my system and I feel more than a little drowsy.
“I’ll stay while you take a nap,” Nova says.
“Walter’s not going to give them the flash drive, is he?”
I don’t know why I
