“I can’t.”
“Do you need a ride to your hotel?”
“I have my car. I’m fine.” Kira squeezed Wanda’s arm, offering what little comfort she could. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
“You too.”
An awkward beat or two passed, and then Kira dropped her arm and started to turn. To her astonishment, Wanda caught her up in a baby-powder-scented hug so fierce it knocked Wanda’s hat to the ground, where it was soon tumbled away by the wind.
Instinct took over because there was only one thing to do when an old woman who’d lost her only child cried on your shoulder: you hugged her back.
“I’m so scared,” Wanda whispered against Kira’s neck. “I don’t know what to do without him. I don’t know how to live.”
Yeah. There was a lot of that going around, wasn’t there? Kira gripped Wanda’s frail shoulders and rubbed her curved spine.
“You’ll be okay. We both will.”
With a great, shuddering breath, Wanda got a grip on herself and let Kira go, but not before a final pat on Kira’s face with her soft hand and a kiss on Kira’s cheek that nearly reduced Kira to tears. Then she was gone, escorted into one of the waiting limousines by a gaggle of her solicitous friends, and Kira was left alone at the cemetery, except for the groundskeeper.
She took a minute to breathe, turning her face up to the sky and catching a weak ray or two of sunlight. The throbbing in her head eased back, just enough, and she went back down the hill to a bench, where she planned to sit and watch while they lowered that coffin six feet into the ground and buried it forever, taking her old life with it.
Chapter 13
The best word for the whole casket burial process was startling. The groundskeeper, or whoever he was, drove up in the backhoe that had, until now, been kept at a discreet distance, probably so that the mourners could imagine it would later be used to replant a large tree or something.
The casket was lowered and the groundskeeper, working with the kind of quick efficiency that made Kira wonder if he’d get a bonus for filling in ten or more graves before dark, shoveled the dirt in with great heaping clods.
The clouds drifted away and the sun came out. Kira stayed where she was, cold, but warm enough with her gloves, scarf, and hat to see this through to the bitter end, probably because she couldn’t shake the fear that if she turned her back, even for a second, Kareem would pull an undead routine and climb out of the coffin to resume his dastardly deeds.
That didn’t happen, though.
After the filling of the dirt, there was the tamping of the dirt with the backhoe’s bucket and, finally, the smoothing of the dirt. After a quick break for a cigarette and what looked like a Snickers bar, the groundskeeper used a small crane to lift the headstone into place, and that was that.
That was that.
Stunned, Kira waited for the euphoria to hit, and it crept up on her in stages as she thought about all the choices opening up before her, all the opportunities that she’d never had.
The first part of her new life involved, obviously, finding somewhere other than that bedbug-proving-ground motel shit hole to live. Well, no, not quite. The very first part involved taking her boards and getting her license. Then she could start working in obstetrics (thank God she’d kept her grades up and graduated with a 3.9 GPA; there was nothing like offers coming to you before you graduated rather than you having to pound the pavement and hope to find something, especially in this economy), and then, once she’d worked for about a month or so, maybe six weeks, she’d have enough for a deposit on an apartment.
So she’d have a little while longer at the motel, but that was fine. She could certainly use the time to look for an apartment, right? When she left here, she planned to swing by the grocery store and get a couple of things, so she could look for one of those free apartment guides that they always kept in the newsstands near the carts.
Other things to do? Well, she’d need a credit card. Oh, and she wanted to start therapy ASAP because she knew she had issues with a capital I and didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as screwed up as she currently was. So she’d better get a recommendation for a psychologist.
Maybe she should make a list of all the things she needed to do.
Yeah. Good idea. Rummaging in her purse, she found a notepad—
Behind her, a twig snapped.
Kira jumped to her feet in a wild explosion of movement that sent her purse flying, its contents scattering in every possible direction. Wheeling around, her limbs already spiking on adrenaline and shaking with fear, she tried to sound like she was tough and commanding rather than scared enough to send her heart leaping into cardiac arrest.
“Who’s there?”
No one was there. A frantic glance in every direction revealed no one there (the groundskeeper had driven off in the backhoe a while ago) other than an industrious squirrel using his little two-handed grip to work on an acorn twenty feet away.
No one was there, she reassured herself.
No one is there, girl. Chill out.
But, she realized for the first time, the short winter days meant that dark would be here soon and was already well on its way. The shifting light had thrown everything into shadow, and what had been a bucolic setting was now, simply, a sinister graveyard with hulking objects and potential hiding places in every direction. As one of the nicer sections, this area had mature trees, shrubs, and huge monuments, any one of which could hide ...
Who? Who was she hiding from with Kareem dead and in the ground? One of his minions? But why? None of them should have a beef against her. The boogeyman? Garden-variety attackers and robbers? Did it really matter?
No. All she knew was that the hairs on her scalp felt like they were standing straight up and she needed to dodge a mine field of potential ambush spots before she made it to the relative safety of her car.
Go, Kira. Move.
Hands still shaking, she crouched down to gather up the contents of her purse. Lipstick, keys, phone, wallet ... wallet ... where was the—Oh, there. She snatched it up and shoved it in the bag. And her pistol. Nice, huh? Her first chance to protect herself from attackers and rabid squirrels, and she thought of her pistol last. She had a real eye-of-the-tiger thing going there, didn’t she? But where the hell did it—Oh, there it was, in the higher grass under the bench. It felt nice and heavy in her hands, safer already, and she checked the safety, just in case.
Okay. Walk to the car. Hurry.
She hurried, trying to navigate between the headstones while staying far enough away from each one that someone—if anyone was there—would have a hard time reaching out and grabbing her.
Almost there, now, and she wished that her little bucket o’bolts had a key fob so she could click it and hear the reassuring chirp-chirp of the doors unlocking and see the lights blink on to guide her, but this wasn’t the time—
“Kira.”
With no further warning, a dark figure stepped out from behind a monument just to her right, blocking her, and she raised her gun and screamed, ready to die, yeah, but not before blasting Kareem to kingdom come as she went.
Jesus. He hadn’t meant to scare her like that.
There was a flash of black, and the next thing Kerry knew, he was staring down the barrel of a nice-looking piece that would blow a hole the size of a grapefruit in his head. Reacting on instinct, he stepped back and held his hands up, praying he hadn’t escaped Kareem only to be accidentally taken out by Kareem’s wife.
“Don’t shoot, Kira! It’s me! Kerry!”
Kira had a hard look in her eyes, flashing, intent, and murderous, and he imagined she’d look just like this if she were fighting on some battlefield in Afghanistan. He froze, hoping for the best but waiting for that bullet to the forehead, because a person who looked like that was in killing mode, but then she blinked and her alert level eased back from red to orange.
Lowering the gun one inch, she blinked again and took a closer look at his fa
ce. “Kerry?”
“Yeah.” He tried to breathe again, but his lungs couldn’t seem to master the procedure. “And I don’t want to die today, so please don’t shoot me. Okay?”
She looked from him to the gun with dawning horror. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.”
They stared at each other, both panting and spiked out on nerves.
“When the hell did you get a gun?”
“The other day.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
One corner of her mouth curled. “I guess we were about to find out, weren’t we?”
That was reassuring. And she had the pistol lowered now, pointing in the general direction of his dick, which was not, in his opinion, much of an improvement over pointing it at his head.
“Can you put that thing away, please?”
“Sorry!” Clicking the safety back on again, she shoved the thing in her purse and watched him for another beat or two. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind, feel her vibrating curiosity. “Was it you? Did you tell the DEA about the real warehouse? Were you the informant?”
“You mean snitch, don’t you?”
“No. Because whoever turned Kareem in is a hero in my book. Was it you?”
He hesitated, thinking about the marshals and the secrecy, and the measures that’d been taken to ensure his safety. He thought about the horror he’d see in the eyes of both Dexter Brady and Jayne Morrison if they knew he was having even a hypothetical discussion about this with Kira. Then he looked into those dark eyes and thought about how nice it would be if they saw him with admiration.
“Yeah. It was me.”
She did a choked laugh-sob thing, quickly stifled, and before he knew it, she was launching herself at him, all open arms and thrilled female. And then she was pressed up against him, melting into him, and, Jesus, she felt better than he’d remembered. Better than he’d dreamed during all those dark and endless nights since he’d held her last.
Buried emotions bubbled inside him, shifting and churning the way the earth’s layers do right before a tsunami or a volcanic eruption, and he couldn’t hold her tight enough. Couldn’t believe he’d lived long enough and been lucky enough to hold her again.
They swayed together for a few seconds and then, too soon, she pulled back to arm’s length. His consolation was that her sparkling gaze held his and he could see—he could finally, finally see—that he meant something to her no matter how ruthlessly she’d pushed him away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” Full disclosure seemed like a good idea, especially since he’d lived too much of his life in the tricky shadow world of lies. “But I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me.”
“Does it matter why you do the right thing, as long as you do it?”
“I did it so I could look myself in the mirror again. So don’t go thinking I’m a hero, okay? That’s one thing. And the other thing is, I was scared shitless.”
“That just makes you human.”
She said it with such infinite understanding that his chest contracted, reminding him in painful detail why this woman was thrumming in his blood and he couldn’t get her out. It also reminded him of why he didn’t deserve her and never would.
Not that his foolish heart would let him stop hoping.
Tugging her hand, he pulled her back to the bench, where they sat. There was so much unfinished between them and so much still to be said that he had to tackle it like a man eating an elephant—one small piece at a time.
“How are you?” he asked urgently.
“Fine,” she said, too quickly.
“Don’t lie to me. Do you think I don’t know when you’re lying?”
She ducked her head and refused to meet his gaze, shame making her cheeks bright. “If you don’t want me to lie to you, then don’t ask me questions like that. I can’t talk about it with you.”
This one boundary was perfectly understandable and it shouldn’t hurt so much, but being sliced in two with a circular saw had to cut less than this.
“Why not?” he demanded. “I was there that night—”
“Don’t, Kerry.”
“—And I should have protected you from Kareem.”
“Really?” There was less anguish in her voice now and much more bitterness. “I’m not your responsibility. And when has any of us been able to protect anyone from Kareem?”
Not his responsibility. Yeah. Thanks for the reminder. “I should have killed him for you. That night. When I had the chance.”
Her head and eyes were lowered, but the minute thinning of her lips and flare of her nostrils said it all, as did the measured pause before she spoke, as though she needed the time for a careful edit of her words.
And then, to make things worse, she glanced up at him, a flash of accusation that acted like that circular saw again, slicing another chunk of his flesh from his body. In the end, though, she mastered all that dark emotion.
He wished he could.
“I’m not your responsibility. I never expected you to avenge me or rescue me.”
“I expected it,” he said flatly.
That brought her head up, and their gazes connected with a startling jolt of electricity. He stared at her, refusing to look away, and willed her to see all the things she’d never let him say.
That their few short nights together two years ago hadn’t been enough. That the inherent and suicidal danger of having an affair with the wife of his boss, the drug kingpin, had been a price he’d been willing and happy to pay for the pleasure of her body against his and her whispers in the night. That new hope had sprung to life inside him and was leeching through the pores of his skin now that Kareem was dead and things were possible again.
“Kira,” he began, agonized.
The play of emotions across her face said it all. The dawning understanding. The gratitude, quickly replaced by embarrassment, and then, horribly, the pity.
That pity killed him every time, but this time was so much worse because it’d been preceded by thirty seconds of the sweet joy of possibilities.
“I can’t, Kerry,” she said.
She couldn’t. Not exactly a news flash there, and yet his stupid mouth kept blathering.
“Kareem’s dead now, baby. We could try again—”
More pity. More intense pity. So much pity that he had to look away before it shamed him.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Kerry. Don’t make me say it.”
The unspoken it had always been there, much as he’d tried to wish it away: she didn’t love him—never had and never would.
Except this was somehow worse because there was nothing for him to hide behind and mitigate the rejection. Before, there’d been Kareem. She’d loved Kareem and been hung up on him, and he got that. Then she’d been afraid of Kareem and afraid for him if Kareem ever found out about them, and he got that, too. But now Kareem was gone and the naked truth was that, with her field wide open and her future bright, she still didn’t want Kerry.
Which made sense because, having gotten rid of one thug in her life, why would she sign on with another one? And that was all he was, wasn’t it? A man who’d had choices and always made the wrong ones. A kindler, gentler, better-quality criminal than Kareem had been, and a criminal with a medical degree, but a criminal nonetheless.
Still, it hurt. In his heart and the remnants of what passed for his soul, in the cells of his organs, the marrow of his bones, and the drops of his blood, it hurt.
The bitterness collected on his tongue, and he swallowed it back, twisting his mouth in the process until he felt like a gargoyle grimacing on the side of some building.
God, it hurt.
She knew it, too, because, looking off down the path to give him the space to get his act together, she reached out and took his hand. His pride, which had clocked out and gone home for the day, didn’t stop him from hanging on to that hand for as long as she’d let him.
His nostrils flared; his chin
trembled; his throat and eyes burned. And then he got it together. With a final squeeze, he let that hand go.
“What will you do now?” she wondered.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure the feds won’t still prosecute me. But they don’t seem that interested. I was a smaller fish. They wanted Kareem. But I’ll keep a low profile for now. I’m probably not real popular with the other guys.”
Concern crinkled her forehead. “Do they know you’re the one who flipped?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But they know it wasn’t them.”
“So maybe they’ll point the finger at each other.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
They sat in silence for a while before Kira mentioned the obvious. “You’re not going to take over, are you? Now that there’s a job vacancy at the top—”
“Nice.” He knew what made her ask, but he still resented her for it. “Is that what you think of me?”
She shot him an apologetic smile. “It would be the easy way.”
He stared, hating her for this shrewd assessment of his morally challenged life.
“You can be the first to know: I’m finished taking the easy way.”
“Good,” she said flatly. “So what will you do? Open a practice somewhere?”
“We’ll see.”
She grinned. “You can do it.”
He wanted to smile back, but suddenly his mind was full of all the bad choices he’d made, all the times that he’d had the option between right and wrong and he’d sprinted toward wrong.
What kind of fool, after all, crawls out of the wrong side of town, works and scrapes together the money to earn a medical degree, and yet lets himself be lured into his buddy’s criminal underworld?
Yeah. That would be him.
He could be a partner in some practice group by now, with a wife, kids, and a dog.
Instead, he was now the lieutenant in a failed drug empire, still under threat of both indictment and, probably, vendetta killing by his cronies, with only the dwindling supply of tainted money hidden beneath a carpet-covered loose floorboard in his apartment to keep a roof over his head.
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