your heart, and finally your soul, until you’ll say whatever they want you to say.”
“Who are you?” Nick asked, the first words he had spoken inside the confines of these walls. “Did Mitch send you?”
“No.” The man paused, looking about the room, assessing it and Nick at the same time. “With the case they have against you, an attorney is the last thing you need. He’ll charge six hundred an hour, give you a bill for half a million, and make you feel like you owe him as you sit in your prison cell doing twenty-five to life.”
Nick stared at the elegant man, even more confused. “Mitch is on his way. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
The man nodded, exuding calm, as he laid his arms upon the table and leaned forward.
“I understand the crippling grief you must be feeling. It’s horrible that they don’t even allow you a moment of mourning before they start trying to steer you into a confession.” The man paused. “When did justice start to become about winning and losing, an us-against-them mentality, instead of the revelation and uncovering of truth?”
Nick looked the man up and down.
“Have you seen the file on you, their case?” the man said. “It’s detailed; I doubt they’ll even offer you a plea deal.”
“I didn’t kill my wife,” Nick finally said.
“I know, but that’s not how they see it. They see motive, the weapon,” the man said, casting his eyes at the gun sitting in the middle of the table. “They’re hoping for a confession to avoid the extra paperwork.”
“How do you know?”
“They’ll spend twelve hours slowly wearing you down getting you to confess to avoid the weeks of meeting with the DA for months of trial preparation.” The man paused. “You’ll be convicted, spend the rest of your days in prison, mourning the death of your wife, always wondering what really happened.”
“So, if you’re not an attorney, why are you here?”
The man’s warm eyes remained fixed on Nick as he took a deep breath, his chest expanding before finally exhaling.
“You can still save her.”
Nick stared back at the man, the words not making sense. He leaned closer for clarity. “What?”
“If you could get out of here, if you could save her, would you?”
“She’s dead,” Nick said with confusion, as if the man were unaware of the fact.
“Are you sure?” the man said, looking more closely at Nick. “Things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Are you saying my wife is alive?” Nick’s voice cracked. “How? I saw-”
The man reached into the inner breast pocket of his Ralph Lauren jacket, pulled out a sealed letter, and slid it across the table to Nick.
Nick looked at the two-way mirror.
“Don’t worry.” The man smiled. “No one is watching.”
“How do you know?”
“They’re busy with the plane crash. Two hundred and twelve dead. This town, like your life, has been turned on its head.”
Nick felt his world spinning, as if he were in that twilight between waking and sleep where the mind is peppered with incongruous images and thoughts that desperately try to coalesce into a coherent notion.
He looked down at the envelope and slid his finger under the glue flap-
“Don’t open that now.” The man laid his hand upon Nick’s.
“Why?”
“Wait until you’re out of here.” The man withdrew his hand as he leaned back in the chair.
“Out of here?”
“You’ve got twelve hours.”
Nick looked at the clock on the wall: it was 9:51. “Twelve hours for what?”
The man pulled a gold pocket watch from within his jacket and flipped it open to reveal an old-fashioned clock face. “Time is not something to waste, a particularly true statement in your case.” The man closed the watch and handed it to Nick. “Seeing you’re short one timepiece, and the pressure you’re under, you’d best hold on to that and keep an eye on the hour hand.”
“Who are you?”
“Everything you need to know is in that letter. But as I said, don’t open it until you’re out of here.”
Nick looked around the room, at the two-way glass, at the decrepit steel door. “How the hell am I supposed to get out of here?”
“You can’t save her life if you’re in here.”
“What are you saying? I don’t understand, where is she?”
The man looked at the clock on the wall as he stood up. “You better start thinking how you’re getting out; you’ve only got nine minutes.”
“Wait-”
“Good luck.” The man tapped the door twice. “Keep an eye on that watch. You have twelve hours. In the thirteenth hour all will be lost, her fate, your fate will be sealed. And she’ll have died a far worse death than you already think.”
The door opened and the man slipped out, leaving Nick sitting alone. He stared at the envelope, tempted to open it. But he quickly tucked it, along with the gold watch, into the breast pocket of his jacket, knowing that if they were found he would never know what the man was talking about.
The man had offered no other information, no name, no explanation for how Julia could be alive.
Nick had seen her body, though he had not looked upon her face, as Marcus had held him back, protecting him from her image, her beauty stolen by the gunshot that ended her life. But he had held her leg, seen the clothes she’d worn when she left for work this morning.
There was no question it was Julia. She had called to him when she’d arrived home, but she didn’t enter the library where he worked, knowing not to disturb him, knowing he was trying to finish a major acquisition analysis stemming from his week’s travels and that if he didn’t finish before they went out for dinner, he would be working the weekend.
He could still hear her voice; it was the last time she called his name. And the guilt rained down on him: He had ignored her not just because he was immersed in work but because he was still angry about having to go out for dinner.
Nick reached into his pocket and drew the letter halfway out, but the words of warning echoed in his head. He tucked it away and thought of the man’s eyes, filled with such conviction, such honesty, such sense of purpose.
Where all hope had been wiped from the world, this man had reignited it. Nick couldn’t imagine how Julia could be alive but… if there was even a glimmer of hope. If there was any chance of saving her…
… he would have to find a way out of this locked room and station.
Grief and confusion had been replaced with possibility and purpose. Escaping from an interrogation room, a police station, was an inconceivable, improbable, foolhardy task, but…
Not impossible.
Nick looked at the door, two inches thick, a heavy dead bolt as a lock. There were no windows or other doors. He looked at the white board, the clock on the wall ticking toward 10:00 P.M., and then his eyes fell on the ominous two-way mirror. He stared at his reflection sitting alone in the bleak, humid room in the uncomfortable metal chair, the deadly Colt Peacemaker in the center of the table, and he smiled…
The window was made of glass…
DETECTIVE ETHAN DANCE stepped back into the interrogation room. The thirty-eight-year-old detective’s perpetually sleepy eyes stared at Nick as he threw a file on the table. His white JC Penney shirt was half untucked, while the bulge of his holstered pistol distorted his off-the-rack blue blazer.
“Before Shannon comes back into the room, you want to tell me what really happened? I mean”-Dance opened up the file with his latex-gloved hand and looked inside, staring at a photo, which he concealed from Nick’s eye-“what drives someone to do this? Was it the money?”
“Money?” Nick asked in genuine confusion. “How dare you.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you have a voice.”
Nick glared at Dance, his eyes falling on the bulge in his jacket where he could just see the butt of Dance’s gun poking out.
“I’m sorry.” Dance paused in sympathy. “She was a beautiful woman. May I ask when you spoke last?”
“We had a fight this morning,” Nick said, his eyes briefly looking at the clock.
“About?”
“Dinner with her friends.”
“Mmm, I know how that goes. You sit there, she and her girlfriend are lost in conversation while you’re left with the husband, who you have nothing in common with. My ex-girlfriend dragged me to the Jersey Shore for a weekend at her friend’s house, rained the whole time, I was stuck in the house with an asshole while they went shopping, felt like arresting him for subjecting me to his boring life. I’ve hated the Jersey Shore ever since.”
Dance was good, trying to win Nick over with sympathy and commonality, but Nick wasn’t so stupid as to fall for it.
“Did you talk after that?” Dance continued.
“No, I was busy all day; conference calls and paperwork pretty much consumed me. And I know she was up to her ears in issues.”
“She was an attorney?”
“Why do you ask a question you already know the answer to?”
“Sorry, force of habit.” Dance closed the manila folder and laid it ominously on the table, next to the Colt Peacemaker. “Was she in her office all day?”
“Not sure,” Nick said abruptly.
“You didn’t speak?”
“She called a few times but I ignored the calls.”
Dance said nothing as he looked at Nick.
“Childish,” Nick said. “I know, but Jesus-Why are we talking about this? Someone killed my wife, dammit, and it wasn’t me!”
Nick’s voice echoed in the room, seeming to linger for minutes as the conversation changed direction.
