by Tina Whittle
“Quint admitted this?”
“No. Portia did. She’s flipping on him so fast it’s hard to keep up.”
Trey nodded again, still not looking my way. He’d already been interviewed. I had too. The rain had lifted to reveal bright sunshine, sudden and clear. It felt suspicious somehow, too cheerful, as if someone had delivered the wrong morning. Beyond the police tape, the wrecker crew and the cops were coordinating their efforts.
“Has someone told Price?” he said.
“Yes. She said the poor burglar guy is actually relieved. He’s been living under a murder warrant for four years. Now he can stop looking over his shoulder. She also said to tell you that as soon as she gets him squared away, she’s finding you.”
“But I have no information. The detective in charge—”
“She’s not coming as a cop. She’s coming as your friend.”
“Oh. Right.” Trey kept his eyes on the gathered crowd and the wrecker crew. “What happened with Quint and Portia? In the Ferrari?”
“Apparently, Portia tried to grab Quint’s gun, he lost control of the car, and the gun went flying. He managed to get out of the car before it sank and took off running. She caught up with him at the ruins.”
Trey winced at the word “sank.” The cops had yelled at him a little for his overenthusiastic use of peppershot. But they understood, they’d said. “Good on ya,” they’d said, ending the situation with no loss of life. I suppressed my annoyance. If I’d smothered two people in capsaicin powder ballistics, the cops would have sequestered me in a corner and lectured me until my ears bled. But Trey was still one of them. He got a pass. I didn’t bother telling them that it was the car he’d been pissed off about.
The car.
The wrecking crew had it winched now and was pulling it out of the lake one painful centimeter at a time. Branches snagged on the fender, mud sucked at the tires. My cousin Billie was a mechanic, and she always said she could fix a lot of things, but a car that had been submerged was a total loss.
I examined Trey out of the corner of my eye. His eyes were a little unfocused, his mouth in a straight line. He looked perplexed more than anything. He blinked, tilted his head. Blinked again.
“Portia knew everything,” he said.
“Yeah. Quint’s throwing massive blame her way. She’ll definitely go down as a co-conspirator. Thanks to you, they’ll both be behind bars tonight. The racketeering gamerunners will be answering some hard questions. The Buckhead Burglar is working a plea deal. And Nick Talbot will finally be exonerated.” I poked his shoulder. “You made all that happen.”
“No. We did.”
I felt a warm pleasantness spread in my chest. “Nick sends his thanks, by the way. He had a little bit of a nervous breakdown at all the news, but Addison leapt into action like a high-strung Florence Nightingale.”
“Is he okay?”
“He will be. And you will be too.”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. I will.”
Dozens of cop cars choked the pristine resort. The ambulance had arrived hot on their heels. The paramedics wore hazmat gear to deal with Quint and Portia, rinsing them in cold water and flushing their noses and eyes with saline drips before packing them off to the ER like drowned cats.
“You’re right,” I said. “About not carrying a gun anymore.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think I should either, to tell the truth.” I hesitated, then kept going. “I’m angry. All the time. And it’s so easy to channel that into…you understand.”
“I do.”
We stood very close in the rain-washed, late summer light. It felt like the first day of the turning season. There were shouts in the distance, arms waving. Slowly the winch creaked.
“Did it help you?” I said.
“Did what help?”
“Therapy.”
He nodded. “It did.”
I laughed a little. “It’s weird. I’m not afraid of murderers with guns, but I am terrified of sitting in a room with somebody like my brother and spilling my guts. That’s just…”
I shuddered. Trey almost put his arm around me, but reconsidered, perhaps to avoid cranking the emotional intensity of the moment any higher. I could feel the intention, though, in the non-accidental touch of his fingers against the small of my back. He dropped his hand to his side, and I decided that things were perfect the way they were, the two of us shoulder to shoulder, facing the same direction, fingertips brushing.
“Was that Marisa on the phone earlier?”
He nodded.
“And?”
“I’m suspended again, this time indefinitely pending psychiatric evaluation and a hearing with the board.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s fair. Generous even. She could have fired me outright.”
The car broke the surface of the water. Trey flinched as they pulled it out of the lake, moss and mud and slime dripping from the wheels. Water gushed out the open driver’s side door, and I saw a fish flop in surprise and plop into the lake. I remembered my first days in that car, learning about Trey as I watched him drive. I also remembered the first time I’d driven it myself, the crystalline realization that this was his identity I held in my hands, one of the most true and vulnerable parts of him.
The understanding came to me in a rush. “You knew Marisa would find out about this case, didn’t you?”
Another shrug. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps nothing. You engineered it. Completely pulled the rug out from under old Trey so that new Trey could have a clean slate.”
He considered. “I’m not sure what happened. Right now I am having a hard time reconciling what I know I know with what I don’t know I know.”
The car caught on a submerged branch, and the fender ripped free. Trey looked nauseated. Of course he hadn’t reckoned on losing the Ferrari. We watched it get hauled onto the back of the wrecker, a sad and soggy hunk of metal. Beginnings and endings, we were always moving toward one or the other. Cycles and circles.
And I realized that I was okay too. Despite the craziness and the mayhem, the crises and cross purposes. Better than okay, thriving, and so was Trey. There was very little the world could throw at us that we couldn’t handle. Downright formidable, we were. Partners in every sense of the word.
And I saw the next beginning and end coming at the same time. It was a Before and After moment, like when I’d made the U-turn that had taken me back to Trey’s apartment. The Tai before that moment hadn’t known how to love and be loved so fiercely and completely. A new understanding blossomed, and I got lightheaded with the rightness of it.
I took a deep breath. “Trey?”
“Yes?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want to run a gun shop.” I thought hard about the words coming out of my mouth. “I want to be a private detective.”
He nodded, his eyes on the distant tragedy. “Okay. I want a new Ferrari.”
I wrapped my arm around his waist and cinched him close. “Okay.”
Chapter Fifty-five
The drive from Adairsville to Alpharetta was a quiet one. Trey sat silently in the passenger seat of his rental car, holding his mother’s rosary in his lap. It was the one item he’d salvaged from the water-logged carcass of the F430, and he ticked off the marble beads with practiced fingers, though he offered no prayers or words of penance.
The Ferrari manager had agreed to meet us at the dealership even though it was almost closing time. He was very gracious about it, made the appropriate noises of horror and sympathy at our story of the previous car’s demise.
“Would you like to come into the office?” he said. “We can begin the paperwork there.”
I shook my head. “No. He needs to get in a
car right now.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
The manager was a shade nonplussed. “But last time Mr. Seaver had very specific requirements.”
“Yes, but now is different.” I patted his shoulder. “Go ahead and get the financing in order. We’ll be back in a second.”
I watched while Trey made the rounds of the showroom like a visitor to some automotive petting zoo. Several of the display models were fresh from the factory. Others were secondhand, returned by unsuccessful drug dealers and suddenly broke dot-com millionaires. They all had one thing in common—six-figure price tags.
In a showroom of canary yellows and flame reds, Trey stood next to the only black car available, a California T. I joined him beside it. Just like his previous vehicle, it had a black-on-black interior with buttery, hand-stitched leather and polished chrome.
But Trey was shaking his head. “It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a convertible. I need a coupe.”
I started to argue, then realized that would be pointless. He was still looking backward. He needed to be looking forward.
I opened the driver’s side door. “Get in.”
“I—”
“Just do it.”
He complied, slipping the rosary beads into his pocket. I shut the door behind him and got in on the other side. The T felt friendlier than his old car, still low to the ground and styled for speed, but lighter, more playful than the deadly serious F430.
I read from the tag. “It’s got a V8 twin turbo engine. Five-sixty horsepower with a top speed of one-ninety-six. Double clutch gearbox. And look! A fuel economy mode!”
He wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel. I could feel him simultaneously quickening and shutting down, excited and then restrained. He was trying to remember who he was. The Trey of danger zones and full throttle? Or the Trey of speed limits and stop signs?
He shook his head. “It doesn’t feel safe.”
“It’s not. But you don’t need safe anymore.” I pointed at the button on the console. “Put the top down.”
He shook his head more emphatically.
I turned to face him. “Listen to me. The rest of the stuff in your life, the black and white wardrobe, the apartment? Those are containers. Interesting, yes, and useful, but you can let them go whenever you feel like it. This car, though? This car is you, boyfriend, pure you.” I leaned closer. “Trust me. This car has been waiting for you its whole life.”
He ran his hand along the dash. “You’ve already opened the envelope.”
I caught my breath. To an eavesdropper, that comment would have been a non sequitur.
“Yes,” I said. “The second it came.”
“So you know.”
“I’ve always known. I wasn’t waiting on the test results. I was waiting until I was ready to deal with them.”
“And are you?”
The front door opened, and the sounds of the city hustled inside the showroom. And then the door shut, and we were once again in our sanctum, separate and air conditioned and orderly. But the outside was still there, surging and chaotic. One big dice game.
“Yes,” I said. “As of this very second, I am dealing with the fact that I am the daughter of Beauregard Forrest Boone. And I am ready to find out exactly how that unthinkable thing happened.”
Trey watched me say the words. “Okay.”
He extended his hand toward the button. His finger hovered there. And it was like our first time, the tender skin underneath his armor, which he’d taken off for me piece by piece. He was unarmored now, as open as I’d ever seen him. I placed my own hand lightly on top of his, and we pushed the button together.
A soft whirring began as the roof opened above us, folding behind like origami, and Trey entangled his fingers with mine. Fresh sunshine spilled into the car, lemonade sweet, and the showroom ceiling came into view, with its champagne-colored lights and soft gold trim.
Trey tilted his head back and looked up. I let my head fall back too, resting it on his shoulder. All I could see was the showroom ceiling, that arching gilded boundary. And it was safe, that ceiling. But beyond it lay the whole of the expanding universe.
Author’s Note
Tai and Trey’s Atlanta is a place of bustle and leisure, nature and steel, tradition and edge, just like the real Atlanta. These two Atlantas co-exist easily in my imagination, but any native to the area will recognize some differences between my fictional version and the actual one (the most obvious being that in Trey and Tai’s Atlanta, nobody spends nearly enough time waiting in traffic).
Tai’s gun shop resides in my imagination; the city of Kennesaw is real, however. You’ll find it slightly northwest of Atlanta, and it really does have a city ordinance requiring every head of household to maintain a firearm and ammunition. It also has a store specializing in Confederate memorabilia—Wildman’s Civil War Surplus (although any resemblance between Tai’s shop and this one is purely coincidental).
Trey’s Buckhead neighborhood also exists, and includes high rise condominium buildings like his, chic bungalows like Gabriella’s, and ultra-contemporary mansions like the Talbots’. Beardsley Gardens is a stand-in for the popular Barnsley Gardens; I tampered with enough of the resort’s geography that I thought it best to give my imaginary construct a new name, though you will find the quaint English cottages and the ruins of the Italianate villa almost exactly as I described them. Most of the other places I mention—Little Five Points, Westview, Chastain Park, Adairsville, and the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield National Park—are real, as are the histories and complicated geographies that Tai shares.
The film industry is alive and well in the Peach State—as of this writing, more feature films were made in Georgia than any other place in the world, including California (sorry, Hollywood!). Celebrity spottings are routine in the Atlanta area, as are the yellow directional markers that indicate base camps and on-location sets.
If you’re interested in learning more about the research that went into this book, you can check out my Necessary Ends Pinterest board, plus my other series boards: Civil War—devoted to the War Between the States, especially Georgia’s part in it; Criminal Behavior, which explores villains and scams and nefarious wrongdoings, Trey and Tai’s Accessories, a collection of my protagonists’ clothing, automobiles, and weaponry; and Trey and Tai’s Atlanta, which includes the metro Atlanta landmarks that have cameo appearances in the series. You can find these, and my other writerly and readerly boards, at www.pinterest.com/tinawh.
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