One Small Sacrifice

by Hilary Davidson

  Love isn’t about looking at each other but about looking in the same direction, Alex said.

  Emily turned to him, smiling. You stole that from Saint-Exupéry, she teased him.

  I can’t believe you just accused me of stealing. Borrowing, sure. There’s a difference.

  Emily laughed. Alex felt joy and terror all at once. This was it.

  The thing is we do look in the same direction, Alex said. I’ve never met anyone so intent on helping people as you. You’re fearless.

  Look who’s talking, Emily answered. The man who gets shot but keeps returning to war zones without armor.

  That just means I never learn, Alex said. Without you, I’d be in some gutter somewhere. Or dead.

  That’s not true.

  He touched her face. It is. You know it. There are so many reasons I love you. His insides quivered like jelly as he got down on one knee. And so many reasons I want to marry you.

  He’d caught her by surprise, he knew. Her face registered shock. Marry me? she echoed, as if the idea were astonishing.

  Too traditional? he joked, but his heart was in his throat.

  Can I wear jeans to the wedding?

  For the first time, he’d realized she was going to say yes, and he was so happy he actually felt dizzy. I was thinking barefoot on a beach.

  Barefoot sounds good, Emily agreed. So that’s a yes.

  That was the moment he woke up, and for a full thirty seconds, he was elated. He was engaged to the woman of his dreams; he couldn’t have asked for anything more. Then reality closed in around him, and his heart went into free fall. He was alone in their apartment with no idea where Emily had gone, just a gnawing fear that she was in serious trouble.

  He sat up suddenly, and Sid let out a yelp, tumbling off his chest. “Sorry, buddy,” Alex said.

  He sat for a minute, petting Sid’s head and reminding himself to breathe. When he felt steady enough, he padded barefoot to the kitchen and found the small brown vial he hid in the back of a cabinet. He used its eyedropper to place a couple of drops under his tongue, then sealed the bottle tightly and replaced it. He pulled a light jacket over his T-shirt and pajama pants and took Sid out for a quick walk. They were at the corner of Forty-Eighth Street and Eleventh Avenue when the last dregs of his sunny memory turned cold and drained out of his body. There, on the other side of the block, he spotted a towering figure in a black suit. The man’s bald head, partially covered by a fedora, was turned away from Alex, but he was sure he recognized Kevin Stanton.

  Sid was sniffing happily at a fire hydrant and resisted when he tried to tug him along by the leash. The last thing Alex wanted was another confrontation with Cori’s father. The man had made his life hell after Cori’s death. Alex understood enough about grief to know that it could silently devour your mind and soul, leaving nothing but a hollow rage in its wake. Part of him felt sorry for Kevin, who was divorced and had lost his only child. Alex knew how brutal it was to be alone in the world. But he’d seen how controlling Kevin was with Cori, how angry he got when he wasn’t obeyed. There was more to it than that, because Cori would hint at things and then deny them. The end result was that Alex wasn’t sure what to believe, but he was left with a feeling of deep unease where Kevin was concerned. The man had turned up at Alex’s building several times after Cori died, but that had stopped months ago. What did it mean if he was making another appearance?

  While all of this ran through Alex’s mind, the big man in the fedora continued down the avenue without a backward glance. He turned a corner and vanished from view.

  Alex felt rooted to the spot. Had he mistaken a stranger for Kevin Stanton? Was this just another trick his unreliable brain was playing on him?

  It’s your own guilty conscience, Alex told himself. Because you should’ve stopped Cori from jumping. Instead, you chose to get high and blank out everything else.

  That realization always hurt. Deep down, he knew he should’ve died that night, not Cori. But there was no way to change how events had played out, and nothing he could do except move forward and try to make something out of the life he hadn’t even wanted a year ago.

  When he and Sid got back to the apartment, Alex shoved those thoughts aside and headed for the shower. His brain was foggy, swimming in happy memories with Emily and painful ones about Cori. He turned the cold water on full blast to shake himself out of that funk. Most people he knew wouldn’t choose a cold shower, but then again most people he knew had never lived anywhere without running water. After years in dusty camps and gutted buildings with blown-out windows, it wasn’t something he’d ever take for granted.

  He forgot about the gauze on his arm until it was hanging off him like a mummy’s bandages. Seeing it brought Sunday’s misadventures back in waves. He’d never even made it to the dojo, and there he was, a pulpy mess from a close encounter with the sidewalk. He wanted to make light of it, but the memory left him tasting shame. When he’d come home from Syria eighteen months earlier, he’d been in a black hole of PTSD-induced depression. It made him jump at shadows and fear crowds, so he’d kept his blinds down permanently and avoided going outside for days on end. The only thing that made him leave his apartment was Sid, who got used to being walked in the dead of night. He’d self-medicated with a variety of drugs, relying on them to the point where he’d almost killed himself. It was an ugly time in his life that he thought was behind him. But when Emily left, it felt like she’d taken the better part of his nature with her.

  Why he’d dreamed so vividly about their engagement, Alex couldn’t quite figure. Maybe it was just a yearning to get back to a better place and time, one that lived in recent memory, yet seemed completely out of reach. Funny, he thought, how he’d only dreamed about the most romantic part of their engagement. What came next—he’d dropped the diamond ring, and they’d had to search for it in the dirt—had been conveniently elided.

  The thought of Emily tugged at his brain, and he found himself wondering why that woman who’d called herself Diana had been so desperate to find her. Was there a chance that her odd story had any truth in it? He’d wondered if she might be looking for something to steal, but aside from his camera equipment, old laptop, and some weed, there wasn’t much in the apartment with street value. There was Emily’s engagement ring, though. She’d left it behind on Friday night, along with a note. The folded sheet of white paper had been lying in wait to ambush him when he’d come home from teaching his photography workshop that evening. It had been on the coffee table with Emily’s engagement ring perched on top of it. Her words were seared on his brain.

  Thinking about them made his chest hurt, as if he’d swallowed a rock and could feel it sliding down, inch by inch. Emily was in trouble; that was the one thing he was certain of. He couldn’t understand why she couldn’t tell him about it, why she’d decided to take off as soon as he’d clued in to the fact that there was a problem. Maybe she was only trying to protect him, keep him clear of it, but there was a darker possibility that haunted him: maybe she didn’t think he could handle it.

  Sid followed him into the bedroom. Alex slid open the top drawer of the dresser. Right on top was the blue velvet box where his mother’s engagement ring had lived for years, since cancer had pared her flesh down to the bone. She’d died when he was in high school. The ring had languished there until he’d gotten it resized for Emily’s elegant but work-strong hands. He’d returned it to the box on Friday night, after he read her goodbye note.

  He opened the box. The ring was right where he’d left it.

  Swallowing hard, he pulled it out of its little bed of velvet. The diamond was small, but it winked at him conspiratorially. She won’t be gone for long, it seemed to promise.

  Okay, at least Diana hadn’t broken in to steal Emily’s jewelry, he reasoned. That was something. But, in that case, what had she been doing? When he thought about it, he was sure he’d heard the dresser drawer closing after he’d come into the apartment. Diana had been hunting for somet
hing. It obviously wasn’t Emily’s note, which he’d anxiously folded down a dozen times into the size of a sugar cube. Even though he knew it by heart, he picked it up, smoothed out the page, and read it again.

  Alex, I can’t live like this anymore. I’m going away for a few days. When I get back, I’ll pack up my things. Please don’t try to contact me. I don’t want to talk to you. Emily

  Was that a code? he wondered. It wasn’t the first time he had that idea. Emily was careful, circumspect. He felt that he should be able to read between the lines and hear what she was really saying to him. It felt like a Keep Out sign, one that told him not to meddle with her problems. But she knew him better than that. No matter what she’d done—and he felt a little queasy, thinking of the small part he knew of—she had to know he’d do anything to help her.

  He set the note on the dresser and topped it with the velvet box to hold it in place. What else would Diana have been looking for? Emily had a little jewelry, but nothing seemed to be missing except the diamond stud earrings she wore on a daily basis. The fact they were gone meant nothing; she’d been wearing them when he’d seen her on Friday.

  There was another possibility that belatedly occurred to him. Was Diana looking for the very same papers he’d found on Emily’s dresser on Friday morning? In that case, she’d definitely gone away empty handed. But did that put Emily in less danger, or more?

  He shut the drawer and went back to the living room. The first thing to catch his eye was a framed photo from the bookcase. It was a close-up of him and Emily in Syria; she was volunteering there with Doctors Without Borders, and he was still working as a photographer, still telling himself that he was making a difference in the world. They looked improbably happy, and their heads blocked out most—though not all—of the backdrop of ruined buildings behind them. He stepped closer and picked it up. Emily wore a white T-shirt and the heavy silver Saint Christopher medal that he knew had belonged to her mother. Alex couldn’t see the inscription around the edge of the disk, but he knew it by heart: REGARDE ST. CHRISTOPHE ET VA-T-EN RASSURÉ.

  “Behold Saint Christopher and go on in safety,” Alex murmured. Emily had been wearing the medal the first time he’d seen her, standing over him in a rickety tent while bombers sounded in the not-too-far-off distance. He hadn’t seen her wear it in New York, but it hit him suddenly that the medal wasn’t in the drawer with the rest of Emily’s jewelry. That alarmed him, not because he thought it was missing—Diana hadn’t made a beeline for a silver necklace that wouldn’t fetch a hundred bucks on the street—but because Emily must have taken it with her. A while back, he’d asked her about the necklace. It’s my talisman. I wear it in war zones, she’d told him. If it was missing, that meant Emily had taken it into battle with her, alone.

  He returned the photo to the shelf. Maybe Emily thought she had to deal with this herself, but he was determined to find a way to help her. He looked at his watch. He had a class to teach at NYU, but if he rushed, he’d be able to talk to someone who could help Emily, no matter how much trouble she was in.

  CHAPTER 6

  SHERYN

  “I can’t believe you already talked to this woman,” Rafael Mendoza complained. “Why didn’t you wait for me? We’re supposed to be partners, right?”

  “We are partners,” Sheryn drawled, “which is why you need to get your butt in here earlier in the morning.”

  They were sitting together in the squad room at the precinct, Sheryn in her chair and Rafael perched on the edge of his desk. He wasn’t tall, but he was built, and he wore his gray bespoke suit well. Sheryn had only worked with him for a month, and she didn’t yet feel as if she knew him at all. He was a big change from her former partner, a white-haired Irishman who’d introduced her to poker and Laphroaig scotch. Rafael was more mysterious, with the dark half-moons under his eyes and the tattoos barely hidden on his wrists by french cuffs. If she’d passed him on the street, she’d have eyed him as a potential perp.

  “I’m not an early bird,” Rafael said. “You can have all the worms for yourself.”

  “I thought Californians kept early schedules. All that sun out there.”

  “Not when you work homicide at the LAPD. That’s for nighthawks.”

  Sheryn smiled. “Well, Dr. Khan didn’t have an awful lot to say. The crux of it is this: Emily Teare is nowhere to be found. She left work a little after five on Friday. At noon that day, she had a fight with her boyfriend. Excuse me, her fiancé.”

  “Fancy. That’s this Alex Traynor character you mentioned?”

  “Right. And if we’re going to talk about him, we need to talk about Cori Stanton. How much do you know about the case?”

  Rafael frowned. “You said something about it when I transferred here. The drugged-up girl who fell off a building and died?”

  “I know that’s how the papers reported it,” Sheryn said sharply. Was she annoyed that he hadn’t followed through on the reading homework she’d given him? More than a little. “But it was my case, so let me give you the inside scoop. At approximately one a.m. on Thanksgiving Day last fall, a thirty-year-old woman named Corinthia, or Cori, Stanton died in a fall from the roof of Alex Traynor’s building. Her body landed in the street. She died on the scene, before paramedics arrived.”

  “She was an actress, right?” Rafael asked.

  “Yes, and a close friend of Traynor’s,” Sheryn said.

  “How close? Like fuck buddies?”

  Sheryn grimaced. “According to Stanton’s father, she was planning their wedding. He never heard her mention any guy but Traynor. It sounded like she was serious. In Traynor’s version, she was his good pal and his drug dealer. Nothing romantic between them at all. But we found a burner phone smashed to pieces in Traynor’s apartment. It had been used a bunch of times to call Stanton.”

  “Booty calls, drug buys, or both?”

  “Traynor denied the phone was his,” Sheryn said. “Unfortunately, it was wiped clean of prints, so there was no way to definitely prove the connection. Traynor’s lawyer claimed Stanton must’ve brought the busted phone into the apartment with her, since it was stuffed in a Duane Reade bag under the table beside the door.”

  “Any reason Traynor would use a burner phone to call her?” Rafael asked.

  Sheryn shrugged. “She was his drug dealer. There’s that.”

  “Huh. What did the dead girl’s friends say?”

  “She’d dropped coy hints about ring shopping and getting engaged soon, but she referred to the guy as ‘the Beau.’”

  “That sounds . . . odd.”

  “Whatever it was, Stanton seemed to think it was serious. She made a comment to one friend about how hard it would be to give up angel dust if she got pregnant.”

  Rafael raised his eyebrows. “A real party girl.”

  “You know what? Forget I said that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now you’re judging the victim.” Sheryn sighed. “Look, I do the same thing without meaning to. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not relevant to the case.”

  “I like it when you’re human,” Rafael said. “It doesn’t happen that often. Go on.”

  Sheryn resisted the urge to snap back at him. There was a teasing quality about Rafael that might be amusing in another context, but it drove her nuts at work. “If I had to bet, I’d say there was a romantic triangle going on,” she said. “Traynor was also involved with Emily Teare at that point. They’d been together for three years, off and on.” Sheryn took a deep breath. “Here’s where the story gets really dark: Traynor’s girlfriend, Dr. Teare, was the person who came upon Cori Stanton’s body on the street. She gave the dying woman CPR and called 911. Actually, she called twice. The first time, the call cut out before she said anything. Then she phoned back, and the operator stayed on the line with her until the ambulance arrived.”

  Rafael’s face registered shock. “What was she even doing there?”

  “She’d just gotten off a plane from Paris and was
coming over to see the man she thought was her boyfriend.” Sheryn shook her head. “The timing was eerie. Her flight had gotten in late, and she’d gone to her apartment. Then she got a text from Traynor and went running over to his place.”

  “What the hell did he write?”

  “I don’t even have to look it up,” Sheryn said. “It’s tattooed on my brain. ‘I love you with every last piece of my heart. Goodbye.’”

  Rafael’s dark eyes scanned her face. “That sounds like a really succinct suicide note.”

  “That’s what it was supposed to be. Traynor admitted that when we brought him in. He wanted to die. But hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself.” Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen and turned it over, not wanting to be interrupted.

  “We were at the part where Girlfriend Number One meets Girlfriend Number Two on the street in front of Traynor’s building . . . while she’s internally bleeding to death?”

  “Yeah. Teare was holding Stanton’s hand when she died. She’s a spine surgeon, a pretty damned talented one from what I hear. But nobody could do a thing for Cori Stanton at that point.”

  “Where was Traynor while his girlfriend was playing Florence Nightingale?”

  Something in the flippancy of Rafael’s tone needled her. Gallows humor was a given among police detectives, but his mocking tone was a mile off from her own dark sense of irony, and the discrepancy nagged at her. She reminded herself that, after working with the same partner for a decade, anyone new would rattle her cage, but that didn’t make her less uneasy. “He was still on the roof, high on ketamine and heroin.”