The excitement took hold, a desperate need to get the words down on the page before they dulled or fizzed away from his consciousness. This was what Paul lived for.
He just liked writing twists good enough to make the reader drop the goddamn book.
And there was one on the way.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He’s really gone.
The silent, empty house in a silent, empty town. Maria felt that absence of life more keenly than she had ever done before. It wasn’t just her waking present that felt empty. It was as if Paul had sneaked into her life and stolen her past. Three years. Gone. She had never felt so alone. Never felt so violated. The love that she had undoubtedly felt for Paul had twisted, and knotted itself around her pain and transformed into a thirsty wound.
No love remained. She had loved a lie. That man she’d met and laughed with, slept with, held, and loved – he didn’t really exist. He was dead to her now.
Maria let Paul’s note slip from her fingers and drift through the heavy air to rest on the kitchen counter.
Maria,
I have to go away, maybe for a long time. You won’t be in danger if I’m not there. The house is yours, the money in the account too. Don’t worry about me.
I’m sorry.
Paul.
Maria went straight to his study, unlocked the door and checked behind the volume of Dickens he kept on the shelf. He’d taken his revolver with him. She trudged back out of the study, poured coffee and sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.
The clock on the wall read nine-fifteen a.m. Maria called Daryl. She had to set the phone down on the counter and put it on speaker. Her breath came hard through her nose and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
‘You okay?’ said Daryl.
‘No, I’m not okay. He’s gone. He really did it. I didn’t think he would really do it,’ she said, spitting the words at the phone in short, harsh breaths.
‘What are you going to do? You gonna divorce the prick?’
‘No. It’s gone beyond that now. I … I don’t even know who he is. He’s like a stranger that I’ve just found in the basement. A stranger who’s been sleeping in my bed for three years. I married a man I have no clue about …’ She broke off, choking down the tears.
‘It’s okay, Maria. Take it slow,’ said Daryl, gently.
‘No! I’m through with this shit. He’s conned me. He’s taken years of my life and dumped me in this shithole town. I’ve lost all of my friends. I’ve lost my job, my life. I’m not gonna take this, Daryl. I need you.’
‘I’ll help you in any way I can. You know that,’ he said.
‘Good. I needed to hear that. I need you. I want a new life. My life. Our life. I want to be with you now. Always.’
She listened for a response. When it came, it filled her body and mind with a calm and reassurance she hadn’t felt in days.
‘I want that too. More than anything. I love you, Maria.’
‘I love you too,’ she said, and she felt it then more deeply than she had ever felt it before.
‘What are you going to do about Paul?’ said Daryl.
For all her ravaged senses, the turmoil rolling through her guts, Maria gave thought to how she was going to respond. She chose her words carefully. It would feel good to say it. It would feel right. This was how she would reset her life and build a new existence in comfort and security with the man she truly loved. She imagined herself on a beach far away. Maybe somewhere in the Caribbean. White sand flecked on her tan legs as they stretched out on a sun lounger. A drink by her side. The sun on her face. Watching Daryl swim in the ocean. A pair of Manolo Blahnik heels buried in the sand beside her. A life of freedom. Away from this trap, with everything she could ever want. Either she could have that life. Or let Paul have that life, with the blonde. The two of them, lying on a beach and laughing at foolish Maria. The stupid wife, who didn’t even know she was married to one of the richest, most famous authors in the world. It wasn’t just money. Twenty million dollars was more than just money.
It was a whole world.
Maria wanted that world. More than that, she wanted to make sure that Paul couldn’t have it.
And so, clearly, slowly and confidently she said, ‘I’m going to need you to help me get a slice of the money. I want my fair share. That’s all. Can you do that for me?’ she said.
‘Whatever it takes, I’ll do it for us.’
It was Daryl’s simplicity that made Maria feel safe around him. In this man, there was very little gray – things were black and white. Simple. He would do something, or he would not.
‘I’m going to get him to come back to the house. We’re going to ask for ten million dollars or we go to the press and reveal his identity to the world. If he wants to keep his secrets, it’ll cost him.’
She heard him blow out his cheeks. Taking in the thought, and then blowing out the tense air burning his lungs. ‘Wow,’ said Daryl. ‘What if he says no? Or calls the cops? It’s blackmail. I mean, he deserves it and all – but that’s pretty heavy shit.’
‘Don’t you want to us to be together? Don’t you want to have enough money to make a great life?’
‘You know I do. With that kind of money we could be …’
‘What?’ said Maria, knowing the answer. She wanted to hear him say it. Needed it. If she was going to do this she had to know Daryl was with her.
‘We could be free,’ he said.
‘We have to be so careful. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt,’ said Maria.
‘What do you mean?’ said Daryl.
Maria sighed, said, ‘He has a gun.’
‘You don’t think he’d shoot you, or me, do you? He’s your husband, you know him, you think he could hurt you?’
She almost laughed. Daryl’s sweetness fed his naivety. Or maybe they were one and the same, she couldn’t tell.
‘Until two days ago, I thought I knew my husband. Today, I’ve no idea who he is, or what he’s capable of. I do know one thing. We need a plan. We have to assume when I get him home he’ll be armed and pissed-off like he’s never been before. And we have to be ready.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The sky was darkening above the boat. Paul hadn’t noticed the time. He was lost in the writing. He checked his phone, found that he still had two bars of signal. He dialed his agent’s cell phone. Josephine picked up straight away.
‘Hey, Paul, you okay?’
‘I’m fine. Did you find the leak?’
She sighed and said, ‘There’s no leak. I had someone from IT check out my computer. I’m the only one with access to your information. It’s not stored on our accounts systems. According to the tech there’s no trace of any kind of hack. No spyware, no malware, nothing. The log-in times correlate to my work. I change the password for the computer every three months. There’s no leak at my end.’
Standing, Paul’s eyes flicked around the cabin as his mind turned the information over. He was back at square one.
‘Then how was I found?’ he said.
‘I have no clue. You sure you didn’t get drunk and say something you shouldn’t have? It happens, you know …’
‘No. I didn’t. Never. There has to be someone on the inside.’
‘The bank. Has to be the bank.’
The bank. Some clerk at the bank maybe figured it out …
He shook his head – no. That simply wasn’t possible. Nor did he believe that Josephine had ratted him out. A literary agent’s livelihood relies on their clients. Paul knew he was a special client. Aside from selling his books to publishers, Josephine had helped Paul to manage and hide the money. She helped to keep Paul’s secrets – in exchange for a fee, of course. A huge fee.
It had to be something else.
‘Where are you?’ she said.
‘I left. I’m on my boat.’
‘How did she take it? Did you tell her anything in the end?’ asked Josephine.
Paul wiped his mouth, said, ‘I l
eft a note.’
Silence. A sigh, and then, ‘She deserved more than that. I hope you explained things. Some women blame themselves, you know. Doesn’t matter if they did nothing wrong, they’ll feel guilty about everything. What did you tell her?’
‘I didn’t tell her anything. I just said I was leaving. And I was giving her the house and the money in our joint account.’
‘Twenty grand and a house in the middle of nowhere? If she has any sense she’ll come after you.’
Paul looked out at the waves.
‘She won’t be able to find me. And even if she did, and filed for divorce, she can’t touch my money even if her lawyers found out about it. I made sure we moved to the right state for that. No way do I want my money showing up in some court document. I would be found out, for sure. May as well put a billboard outside my house. Look, it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t know about the money. She doesn’t know about me. I prefer to keep it that way. At least there’s someone out there who hates me for being Paul, and not for all the other things I’ve done.’
‘Let’s not go into that,’ said Josephine.
He had never told her the whole truth, but he’d guessed she had already put it together. Josephine didn’t want to talk about the murders. She found it … unsettling. Distasteful. In her world it was like using the wrong spoon for soup. Maybe her knowledge tainted her somehow, but as long as it was a secret she could deal with it. And Josephine was a lady who took pride in her reputation. If people knew the truth, she may not get invited to the right parties.
‘How’s the book comin—’
Paul ended the call, and provided the answer to an empty cabin – the book is fine, Josephine. You’ll get it when it’s ready. Not before. Screw you and your deadlines.
For now, he had his walking-away money. Twenty grand. It wouldn’t last long. In the next few weeks he planned to go to the bank in Grand Cayman. Take out a large, lump sum, and then switch the rest of the cash to a different account. Maybe somewhere in Zurich. Just to be on the safe side, in case it was someone at the bank who had worked things out. He put his phone down on the counter next to the coffee pot and poured himself a fresh glass of red wine. Raising it to his lips, he heard the faint tremor from his cell phone as it vibrated with a new message.
He drained the glass, feeling the rosy, inky wine against the back of his throat.
The wine helped prepare him for the SMS message. The cell text message alert sounded again. He now had two new messages from Maria.
She must’ve found the note that morning and she’d been building up to this text for most of the day. All of the moisture left his mouth. She wouldn’t understand and Paul didn’t want to explain. Josephine was right. Maria deserved more, but at least she would be safe and that was the main thing in his mind. He clung to that like a life raft, but he knew he was sinking in a sea of black guilt.
Maria had saved him. She deserved better.
Between the burning car and the publication of the second J. T. LeBeau novel, Paul had passed the time in a dim, gray haze. He was living in New York. Although you couldn’t really call it living. Each morning he got out of bed through habit more than any pressing need or desire to ever leave his sheets. Not that he slept. His dreams were too violent, and filled with vivid red flames. He dressed and left the apartment. It was one hundred and seventeen paving flags, or eight blocks, to the diner. Sixty-seven of the paving flags were broken or cracked. He’d counted them each day.
The floor of the diner was a polished pine, stained with coffee and syrup and God knows what else. The waitresses all wore white sneakers. After a meal it was two hundred and three paving flags to the bar. Once inside it was always too dark to make out the floor clearly. Some kind of hard-wearing rubber that sucked at the soles of Paul’s boots. He sat at a bar stool and watched his feet dangling above the rubber flooring until he was too drunk to count paving stones on the way home.
Days became weeks, and Paul still couldn’t shift the weight of what he’d done from his shoulders.
Then one night a band was playing in the bar. They had come in early to set up their equipment and do a sound check. He smelled Maria before he saw her. A sweet, citrus smell. Then he saw her boots, her legs encased in tight jeans and he smiled to himself in regret.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened to Paul. To this day he could not explain it, but the lady in the boots hooked a finger beneath Paul’s chin and gracefully angled his head up so she could look at his face. And what a face she had. Gorgeous blue eyes set in a perfect frame. She said hello. Paul said hi. They talked. He left the bar with her that night and couldn’t find his way home. He didn’t recognize the buildings or the storefronts. For a time he couldn’t really figure out why. Then he realized the lady in the boots had lifted his head from the ground. Paul had gazed into her eyes without feeling the need to look away in shame. Those eyes held his, without fear, or disgust, or anything other than kindness. She made him feel like himself again. It was a gift he took with both hands. The lady in the boots was called Maria, and she had saved him.
Now she wanted to know why he’d left her. He hadn’t given much to her in the marriage. He couldn’t. She had fallen in love with Paul. Telling her about the money would change things. She’d want to spend it, live the high life. The life that attracted attention. It wouldn’t take long for Paul to be discovered. No, he couldn’t have told her about his other life. Too dangerous. Instead he had tried to make a new one. The only life he could have was one he could control. Which meant controlling her, too.
How foolish he had been to believe he could control anything. He wished he had never met her. Things would be far less complicated. His head would still be down, pointed at the street, where he should have left it.
Paul clicked to open the messages. Two of them. One was a picture file, the other plain text.
The picture loaded on his screen.
Oh shit.
His passport. Sitting on the kitchen counter. He clicked the text message.
Forget something?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sunday afternoon shopping used to be a small pleasure for Maria. Hours spent in record stores on 42nd Street, followed by a beer and a slice of pie with extra pepperoni. Always on her own, never with friends. That way she never felt guilty about taking her time. There was no one else to worry about.
This afternoon was different. She’d driven an hour to the mall and the giant hardware store beyond it. At the mall she’d withdrawn five hundred dollars, and gone next door to the hardware store.
She had a list in her hand, even though Daryl told her to memorize the items she would need and not to write them down. She’d written them down anyway, knowing in her present state of mind she could easily forget to buy something important. Her brain felt flighty – unable to hold onto one thought for very long before a hundred others came crashing through the door of her consciousness.
Dressed in blue jeans, white blouse and a denim jacket, with her hair tied up in a red handkerchief, Maria pushed her shopping cart around the aisles picking up items and ticking them off her list with a pen.
Two gallons of white paint.
Two paint rollers.
Two paint roller trays.
One bag of paint brushes (in varying sizes).
Four bags of strong plastic dust sheets.
Duct tape, three rolls.
Cable ties, one bunch.
Four pairs of plastic overalls.
Two paint masks.
A box of latex gloves.
Three rolls of drawstring garbage bags.
When her cart was full, she made her way to the teller and paid in cash. She kept the receipt in her purse, rolled the cart all the way to her car. Loaded up the trunk, got drive-thru coffee and went home.
The shopping list looked, for all intents and purposes, like a lady about to do some serious redecorating. And indeed she was. Maria got home, opened the paint can with a screwdriver and mixed the paint.
Then she poured some into the paint roller tray, dabbed a brush into it and wiped off the excess paint before testing the color on the kitchen wall.
She stood back. Examining the difference. Maybe it was her state of mind at that time – she was way off the reservation and living through a hyper-real, hyper-unreal world, but the paint mark looked more like she uncovered the true color of the wall, rather than applied a fresh coat of paint to the surface.
Her phone buzzed.
Daryl.
‘I got everything on the list,’ she said. ‘I’m going to set up the dust sheets and send him a text message. Come over, I’d say he’ll come back late tonight.’
They had discussed the plan at length.
When Paul came home she would wait for him in the kitchen – the passport hidden. The space would look like Maria was starting to paint it. A single chair laid out in the center of the dust sheet, facing the back doors. Maria would get him to sit down, so they could talk. Daryl would come up behind him, grab his arms and hold them while Maria came around the side with the cable ties and fixed Paul’s wrists to the chair, then his ankles. Search him and relieve him of the gun if he was carrying it.
Then Maria would lay it all out. She knew he was J. T. LeBeau, she knew about the money. He would wire them ten million dollars or Maria dimed the New York Times. It was his choice.
Maria didn’t know how Paul would react. If he got violent, she wanted Daryl to have the upper hand and not be afraid to give Paul a slug in the mouth. He didn’t want to do it, and it had taken her some time to persuade him that he would only be protecting her. She had thought about Paul going to the police if things got physical. That’s why they had the dust sheets – they would protect the floors if anyone got cut. The dust sheets would be lifted and burned afterwards. No blood on the floor. It never happened. With paint cans scattered around the kitchen the dust sheets wouldn’t look out of place.
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