“Chain. Elena, please.”
“Did you kill him?”
Michael dragged the body another six inches, lined it up with the edge of the canoe. “He’s been dead for a while.”
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing a thing that needs fixing. I really don’t have time to explain. Will you give me the chain, please?”
She didn’t move. Part of Michael understood her struggle, and part of him was angry. He’d told her to stay put for a reason.
“You knew you’d find this?”
Michael crossed the space between them and scooped up the chain. “The smell’s hard to confuse with anything else.” He took the gun from her limp hand, tucked it into his belt. “I wish you had listened to me, baby. I’m sorry you have to see this.”
She stared at the body, her throat pulsing as she swallowed whatever bitter emotion the sight conjured. “Who is that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Now, come here, please. I need you to do something.” Michael began to loop chain around the body, looked up, impatient. “You don’t have to touch it. Just hold the canoe.”
“Hold the canoe,” she repeated. “Why?” The question hung in the air between them. Michael found her eyes, and saw the moment she understood. “You’re going to sink him in the lake?”
“It’s not my mess, Elena, but it has to be cleaned up. It’s important. Trust me. The canoe, please.”
She shook her head. “This is wrong.”
“It’s what has to be done.”
“We need to call the police. This is…” She trailed off. “This is…”
“All you have to do is hold the canoe. Baby, please…”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“There are reasons.”
“I’m not going to sink a dead man in the lake.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Please don’t tell me that.”
“Sun’s coming, baby.”
She shook her head. “I can’t be here.”
“Elena…”
“No.” She stumbled through the door, wood slamming once on the wall outside. For an instant Michael saw the hint of her, a flash of black cloth and skin, then she was gone. He looked once at the empty door, then at the body. For half a second, he debated; then he went after her.
“Elena.”
“Stay away from me.”
Her feet were loud on the wood, then quiet when she hit grass. She was running, but blind in the dark. Michael caught her by the water’s edge, her arm hot and dry between his fingers. He pulled her to a stop. “Settle down. Come on.”
She jerked her arm, but he held on. “Let me go, Michael.”
“Just listen.”
“Let me go or I’ll scream.” One second stretched to three, then Michael released her arm. For an instant more, there was total silence, then she said, “What the hell are you?”
“I’m just a man.”
“I can’t be with you.”
Her head moved in the dark, and Michael knew she was about to run. She took a step, and he said, “It’s not safe, baby. I need you to stay with me.”
“No.”
“Elena…”
“I need to think. I need time. I need…”
But she didn’t know what she needed; and the sky was growing lighter. Michael reached for her hand, but she stumbled back. “Don’t touch me.”
“It’s still me…”
“Don’t follow me. Don’t call me.” She stepped back, and Michael moved forward. “Take one more step and you’ll never see me again. I swear!” She threw up a hand, her palm pale in the dark.
Michael froze, said, “Trust me.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
And there was such disgust in her voice, such fear and loathing that when she turned to run, Michael declined to follow. He watched her fade along the shore-the moment an agony of indecision-then turned slowly for the boathouse. She needed to think, needed time. So, he poured varnish on the bloody floor, dragged a boat across the stain and rolled the body into the canoe. It was heavy like his heart, cold and broken; so, he sank it in the lake, in the deep, black water surrounded by silent woods and purple hills. For an instant, the face shone as it fell, then, Michael was alone with the choice he’d made.
Back at the house, he was unsurprised to find the car gone and Elena with it. He looked at the place it had been, then stood on the porch, tall and still as the night gathered its last breath and a new day crowned. He wanted to call her, but minutes passed and red light spilled across the valley floor. She would understand or not, return or keep running. So, he went inside and took a shower. He put his duffel bag near the sofa, then stretched out and let sleep take him deep and dreamless, so that he woke long hours after the sun had filled the sky to bursting. He opened the door-felt scorching heat-and standing on the porch, saw two things at once.
Elena had not returned.
Cops were dragging the lake.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elena drove with tears in her eyes and a burn the length of her throat. She could still smell the body, the scent so pervasive it was in her hair, her clothes, steeped into the oils of her skin. And images came with the scent: mottled skin and swollen hands, the look on Michael’s face, the cool detachment and methodical precision.
She checked the mirror and scrubbed one arm across her face, a dark laugh building in the hollow courses of her soul. How could she have allowed herself to believe that he was the same man she’d once thought him to be, that he could kill in cold blood, yet be a decent father to the child he’d put inside her?
“Oh, God…”
The laughter came then, an expulsion so sharp and tattered she frightened herself. In the mirror, her eyes were not her own. They were glass eyes, stone eyes painted black. Her fingers felt the wheel, but the wheel felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. Elena did not know where she was: some town in North Carolina, a road with four lanes, fast-food joints and cheap motels. There had been countryside and red light fading to orange, a whisper of trees.
The thought felt false but she clung to it, one hand moving to the seat beside her. She had clean clothes and her passport, enough money to get back to Spain. She would forget about Michael, and the death she had seen. She would find her father and tell him that she’d been wrong to leave, that life in a small village was life enough. Elena almost wept at the thought, and at the images that came with such clarity: home and family and people that never changed. Her fingers brushed the warmth of her stomach, and where the fear had been she felt
