Peril

“Sara will probably get in touch with me at some point,” Tony said. “I’ll go from there. If she wants a divorce, I’ll give her one. If she wants to come back, I’ll take her back.”

Caruso nodded. “Whatever you say, Tony.”

A half hour later Tony killed the engine and the boat came to a halt. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

They lifted the body and brought it over to the gunwale and eased it down again, so that Labriola looked as if he were sitting silently, head drooped forward, staring at his feet.

Caruso shrugged. “Well, we’re both orphans now.”

“Yeah.”

They heaved the body over the side of the boat, then watched as the cement blocks dragged him down, feetfirst, so that their last glimpse was of his upraised arms, fingers reaching for them.

“If he were alive, he’d really be pissed,” Tony said dryly.

A burst of laughter shot from Caruso. “Sorry,” he said, now trying to get control. “The way you said it . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Another burst hit him. “I mean, I could just imagine it, you know, him all pissed off, ‘You fucking bastard, put them fucking shells in that fucking gun. . . .’ ”

The same seizure of laughter now hit Tony. “Did you see his face? That look he had?”

“Oh, he was pissed all right,” Caruso said, the two of them laughing together now, one burst following another in rippling waves.

“Jesus,” Caruso said when the laughter finally faded.

“Yeah.”

“So, what now?”

“We go home,” Tony said.

And so they did, Tony guiding the boat landward where, minutes later, they could see the twinkling lights of the distant shore.

ABE

He gave a final glance back toward the bar, turned off the light, and headed out onto the street. At the corner he looked left and right, noted the streets were deserted, drew the pistol from his jacket pocket, and dropped it into the sewer beneath his feet. He wouldn’t need it anymore, and what was the point of returning it to Morty?

He turned left on Sixth Avenue and headed south toward Grove Street, remembering how he’d dropped his hand into his lap, dragged his trembling fingers across his stomach and sank them into the black depths of his jacket pocket, reaching for the pistol. That was the moment when it had come clear to him that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep Samantha safe. It was a story he would never tell, he decided. Not to Jake or any of the regulars. And especially not to—her real name surfaced in his mind for the first time and he found that he liked the sound of it, that it gave off a sense of something warm and solid—especially not to Sara.

SARA

She sat by the window, her gaze on the deserted street below, and wondered how long it would go well at McPherson’s, how long her voice would hold out, how long before something changed.

She shook her head at how grim her own thoughts were, how all her life she’d reached for the Big Happy Ending. But when you really thought about it, the Big Happy Ending was beyond what anyone could actually expect, and it seemed to her that it was the very fear of not having it that held all other, lesser happiness in peril.

And so the point was to enjoy the small happy endings that came your way.

She looked at the roses Abe had brought, then reached out and touched them. The day came back to her, from first light to now.

She smiled.

Okay, so, happy ending, right?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THOMAS H. COOK is the author of sixteen novels, including The Chatham School Affair, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Instruments of Night; Breakheart Hill; Mortal Memory; Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, both Edgar Award nominees; and two early works about true crimes, Early Graves and Blood Echoes, which was also nominated for an Edgar Award. He recently completed the novelization of the upcoming SCI FI Channel television event, Taken. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod, where he is at work on his next novel.

ALSO BY THOMAS H. COOK

FICTION

MOON OVER MANHATTAN

(with Larry King)

THE INTERROGATION

PLACES IN THE DARK

INSTRUMENTS OF NIGHT

THE CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR

BREAKHEART HILL

MORTAL MEMORY

EVIDENCE OF BLOOD

THE CITY WHEN IT RAINS

NIGHT SECRETS

STREETS OF FIRE

FLESH AND BLOOD

SACRIFICIAL GROUND

THE ORCHIDS

TABERNACLE

ELENA

BLOOD INNOCENTS

NONFICTION

EARLY GRAVES

BLOOD ECHOES

ANTHOLOGIES

BEST AMERICAN CRIME WRITING

(with Otto Penzler)

BEST AMERICAN CRIME WRITING 2002

(with Otto Penzler)

PERIL

A Bantam Book / February 2004

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.