CHAPTER SIX
Michael had seen this moment so many times: in his dreams and imaginings, in those sweat- filled hours when he could not sleep and the air in Elena’s apartment seemed to have no breath at all. He’d tried to envision a graceful way to tell her the things he’d done, some means by which to speak of regret and hope and aspiration, but there was no window to his soul that wasn’t cracked through or painted black. He was a killer, and could never take that back. What did the rest of it matter? That he had reasons? That he’d never hurt a civilian?
She wouldn’t care, and he couldn’t blame her.
He stepped closer, certain only that in all his imaginings, the moment of truth had never looked like this: blood on his hands and Elena on her knees in the brown, brittle grass. She looked so small and unhappy, one hand splayed beneath her, the other twisting fabric from her stomach. Michael could not know the thoughts that pushed through her mind, only that they must be slippery and wet and cold. Thoughts of betrayals, he imagined, thoughts of lies and violence done.
He put the phone in his pocket and stepped onto the grass. She was five feet away, but could have been a thousand.
“Are you okay?” Her back was warm in the sun, lean under a dress that felt like silk. She shook her head as low wind stirred and the river smell intensified. Traffic flowed past, and Michael heard sirens far away, the sound of the city. To the north, an ugly smoke rose.
“I don’t know you.” Her words came without heat, but tasted of ash and things ruined. She pushed herself up, rocked back on her knees, and shrugged off Michael’s hand. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“You know me in every way that matters.”
“You were shooting at those men. You just threw guns in the river. Jesus, I can’t even say that without sounding absurd.”
She kept her head still, but Michael saw that she was ready to break. Her friends were dead, and Michael’s answer was a lie they both recognized. He touched his chest and said, “What’s in here hasn’t changed. I swear to you, that’s true.” She refused to blink, and a kernel of panic crystallized in Michael’s chest. “You’re the only thing that matters to me. Everything we’ve experienced, everything we’ve shared.”
“No.”
“I swear on our unborn child.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
She searched his eyes, and Michael saw in hers the annihilation of faith. “Don’t swear on my baby,” she said, and they both understood the power of the words she’d chosen.
Michael turned his face to the sky, then looked back down and saw the police car. It rolled past on the street, moving slowly. Behind glass, an officer’s face swiveled toward the parked car and the patch of grass where they knelt. “We need to go.” Elena followed his gaze, and some part of her understood. “Now,” Michael said.
She looked at his face, then at the police car, which had stopped a hundred yards away. If she chose to call out or run, Michael could do nothing to stop her. “I’ll need an explanation,” she said.
“You’ll have it.”
“The truth.”
“I swear.”
Michael touched his chest a second time, and the air between them crackled with charge. Love scored with fear. Dark energy. The knife blade beneath them felt very real, and Michael knew the keen edge of it could slice them apart in the next second. Elena knew it, too, had the same prophetic glimpse; but in the end, she nodded, followed him to the car, and neither doubted it was love alone that gave her legs the strength. On the sidewalk she took in the police car, the far, black smoke. A siren throbbed in the distance as people died and a piece of the city burned. Elena looked once at the father of her unborn child, then got in the car, her features very still, her small hands twisted pink in the womb of her lap.
Michael started the Navigator and accelerated into traffic. The cop was still there, then the road curved and he was gone. Michael turned east, away from the river. “We need to get out of the city,” he said.
“Why?”
The word was small.
“I have enemies.”
She sank lower in the seat, and Michael checked the mirror, hating truth for being so absolute. Elena wrapped her arms around her knees. At his apartment, he circled the block, then stopped. Elena leaned forward and peered up through the glass. “What is this place?”
“My apartment.”
“But you don’t have…” The words trailed away. “I want to go home,” she said.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I need you to trust me.” Michael opened the door.
“Why are we here?”
“We need money.” He studied the street, the neighboring windows. “You should come up.”
He walked around the hood and opened her door. A lady passed, walking a small dog. Birds called from trees down the street, and Michael saw that Elena was smoothing her hands across the fabric of her dress, pulling it tight on her thighs, then balling loose folds in her hands. When she descended from the car, he led her onto a small stoop, then inside and to the third floor. Michael checked the apartment before allowing Elena to enter.
“Come in. Please.”
She stopped five feet inside the door, eyes restless on this place where Michael had lived.
“It’s just a place,” he said.
She touched a painting on the wall, a book on the shelf. “You’ve had this all along?”
“I almost never come here.”
“How long?”
Anger flashed in her eyes, the first flicker of heat he’d seen. “Five years,” he said. “Maybe six. It doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that?”
Michael had no answer. “This will only take a second. Just… wait here.” He made his way down the hall to the smaller bedroom. In the closet, he stripped off his bloodstained clothing and put on a different suit, new shoes. He chose two handguns from the racked weapons, then pulled a duffel bag from the shelf and opened it on the floor. One of the guns, a Kimber nine millimeter, went into a carry holster and onto his belt, under his jacket; the other, a Smith & Wesson forty-five, went into the bag with five spare magazines. He turned to the cash. On the lowest shelf, next to boxed ammunition, he had $290,000 in banded hundred-dollar bills. He tossed them into the duffel as Elena appeared in the door behind him. She hesitated and Michael let her take it in-the sight of steel, the smell of gun oil, cash, and English leather. “I have more,” Michael said.
“More what?” Her eyes were on the rowed guns.
“More money.”
“You think I care about money?” The same heat, skin flushed.
“No. I-”
“You think I’ll stay for money?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
