“It hurts.”
“I’m very sorry.” David stepped into the room, put his hands on the back of the chair in front of him. “Seriously, you need me to take you home?”
“Home?” She stood, slammed her hand down on the stack of papers on her desk. “When am I ever going to get home? I’m in charge of this circus now.”
David hadn’t considered that, but of course with Bert down, it all fell to Amy.
She hurled the towel of ice at the wall. It hit hard, cracking the glass in the frame of her law diploma and scattering ice. “Shit!”
David raised an eyebrow.
Amy’s shoulder slumped immediately, the heat leaking out of her. She rubbed her eyes. “Oh, God. That’s not fair. Poor Bert. I got word from the hospital a few minutes ago. He’s stable. They say he’ll be okay. It could have been me. I was standing right there.”
She took a deep breath, let it out again raggedly. “It could have been me.”
David circled the desk, lifted Amy’s chin with a finger and examined the red blotch at the corner of her mouth. It would soon turn into an ugly green and purple bruise. “I’m glad you don’t see the women at Anna’s preschool drop-off. I’d hate to have to explain this.”
Amy shook her head, stepped back. “Save the jokes. I’m in no mood.”
“Okay, sorry. But you’re being hard on yourself.”
“I was promoted to do one thing and that was to put Dante Payne behind bars. Without that witness, I can just forget it. We’ve been holding Payne as long as we can without bail, but now we’ve got to cut him loose. I just gave the order ten minutes before you arrived. I don’t even want to describe the rotten taste doing that left in my mouth. God, Bert is shot, and now I’ve let him down. This just sucks.”
“What were you supposed to do?” David asked. “Jump in front of the witness and take the bullet for him? Look, this isn’t your fault.”
“But I should be able to figure something out, come up with an idea to stall or something,” Amy said. “All I can do is sit here like some stupid…” She groped for the right word.
“Just stop. Okay? That’s the problem with being one of the good guys. You have to play by the rules. It’s not your fault.”
She blew out a tired sigh.
“Do they know anything about the bailiff who did it?” David asked.
“Not yet,” Amy said. “The police are looking into it. I mean if you can’t trust—”
A blond woman of about twenty-five stuck her head in the door, pretty and bright, black-framed glasses just a little too hip, David thought.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Mrs. Sparrow, you wanted to know when they were taking him out.”
“Oh.” Amy nodded. “Thank you, Jenny.”
Jenny returned the nod and left.
“What was that about?”
Amy didn’t answer. Instead she stared at a spot on the wall, unblinking. David had seen her do this many times before. She was on the razor’s edge of some decision, probably something she knew was a bad idea but some stubborn part of her was insisting. Any minute she would—
Amy stormed past him out of the office.
“Amy!”
David ran after her.
She fast-walked past the elevators and banged open the door to the stairwell, David right behind her. The rapid click of her high heels echoed off cement as she descended.
David harbored no delusions that he’d be able to talk her out of whatever she was doing, but considering her mood, he gave it a try anyway.
“Amy, calm down and think about what you’re doing,” David called after her. “Whatever it is.”
He kept chasing her but not too fast. Frankly, he wasn’t sure what to do if he caught her. His wife didn’t tolerate a lot of interference when she got up a head of steam like this. She was on the warpath and woe unto anyone who got in her way. The best he could hope for was to stay right behind her and try to mitigate any collateral damage.
She slammed through the door and out of the stairwell on the ground floor. She stopped, head turning as she rapidly searched for something. Her frown deepened as her eyes locked onto the object of her sudden obsession.
David followed her gaze to a group of men slowly making their way toward the main exit, escorted out by a pair of police officers.
“Hey!” Amy trotted after them.
They didn’t turn. David sized them up. A bunch of dark suits, lawyers, all surrounding a man in a garish burgundy jacket.
“Hey!” Amy shouted again. “You hear me, Payne?”
Oh, shit. David hurried after her.
She tried to push through the lawyers, but they closed ranks around their client. The two police officers hesitated, not quite able to bring themselves to interfere with the deputy DA.
“How’d you get to the bailiff, huh?” There was a cold fury in Amy’s voice. “You buy him off, Payne?”
One of the lawyers pushed her back. “This is highly inappropriate, Mrs. Sparrow.”
Amy ignored the lawyer, pressed past him with a fresh surge of anger and latched on to one of Payne’s burgundy sleeves, glaring hot daggers at him.
“Get her off him!” screeched the lawyer.
The police were moving in halfheartedly now to break it up, but Amy held on.
“You think you’re untouchable?” Amy shouted. “You think you’re safe?”
Payne moved fast, knocking her hand away and pushing her back. “Get your hands off me, woman.” The hint of an accent.
Then David was there, slipping like a ghost in between the police and the lawyers. He slipped an arm around his wife’s waist, intending to haul her away gently but firmly. “Easy. I got you. Forget it. Come on.” She resisted, but not enough to stop him.
David felt a hard shove to his shoulder.
“Keep your bitch under control.”
David spun, grabbed the burgundy jacket by the lapel. Maybe one good punch. He could do that much for his wife, couldn’t he? Maybe he’d get a little satisfaction out of it himself.
David Sparrow and Dante Payne locked eyes.
“Are you truly so eager to die, little man?” Payne said quietly only for David’s ears. “Or do you want to watch your woman go first?”
Violence welled up within David, threatening to break through his control, and it would have if he hadn’t felt many hands from behind, pulling him back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
David sat at his kitchen table, a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in front of him. He was generally a beer-and-wine kind of guy, but on special occasions, he wanted something with a kick. He’d filled a Pokémon glass three fingers full and had been staring at it for about thirty minutes without drinking. The sounds of after school cartoons seeped in from the living room. He’d get to Brent’s homework later.
It was impossible not to connect the break-in to Dante Payne. How could it be a coincidence? Answer: it wasn’t.
He fished the flash drive out of his pocket and squinted at it. Why did he want this?
He picked up his drink and walked back to Amy’s office, sat down at the computer. David had put the room back together the day after the break-in, sweeping up and throwing out anything broken beyond repair, salvaging what he could. The office still felt soiled, violated. Trying to access the information on the flash drive turned out to be a dead end. Password protected. He should have left the drive with Charlie. He was trying to figure his next move when he heard the front door open and close. Muffled voices, Amy greeting the kids. A second later, he heard her footsteps coming down the hall, the office door opening behind him.
David spun in the chair to greet her. “Hey.”
“Some day, huh?” Amy’s eyes drifted to the glass in his hand. “I don’t blame you.”
“Want one?”
“Do we have any wine?”
David nodded. “I’ll open a bottle.”
They ordered pizza and let the kids eat it in front of the TV. Anna thought they’d hit the j
ackpot, but Brent was just old enough to be a little suspicious. David assured him it was just a one-time treat. The truth was neither David nor Amy had it in them to cook a meal. A cheap pizza and garbage television one night wouldn’t corrupt the kids forever.
They sat on the back deck, David with a second helping of Johnny Walker and Amy with a glass of pinot noir.
Amy slouched in a deck chair. She’d changed into yoga pants and a loose-fitting, faded Yale T-shirt. “So that was some display earlier, huh?”
David summoned a wan smile. “I should have just let you go after him. Might have solved everything right then and there.”
“David, did you know him?” Amy asked. “There seemed to be a moment there. Like maybe you’d seen him before.”
He sipped the Johnny Walker slowly, then said, “Just men like him. That type. I think I’ve heard that accent before. It just struck a chord.”
It had been the threat against Amy that had riled David. If the police hadn’t pulled David away …
She nodded, sipping wine, but David could see she wanted to ask more. Amy was a smart woman. Smart enough to know there was more. Smart enough not to press him about it. Some instinct told her it was a rabbit she couldn’t chase.
The bulk of David’s Army days had been spent going back and forth between assignments overseas and his home in the States. Each time David returned home, he told his wife a little less about what he’d been doing, or, more accurately, he repeated less of the cover story he’d rehearsed by order of the U.S. government. As far as the world was concerned, David used his keen organizational skills to set up supply chains at bases around the world. It was a good excuse to have him always traveling to different places. He hated lying to Amy, and she must have known on some level not to ask, some combination of his demeanor and facial expression or something, but her curiosity about David’s work faded over time, and now she didn’t ask at all anymore.
“Did you find anything out about the bailiff?” David asked.
“The police are still filling in the gaps,” Amy said. “But apparently this guy had a bad gambling problem and was drowning in debt, like up to his eyeballs, about to lose everything, house, car, you name it. All of a sudden those debts were completely paid off. And”—she paused to sip wine—“he had a wife and two daughters.”
“So Payne pays off the debts and leaves the daughters alone. Carrot-and-stick approach. In return, the bailiff pops the star witness. He probably knew he wasn’t getting out of there in one piece.”
“The trick is pinning it to Payne. The police are bending over backward to make some kind of connection between him and the bailiff. I’m not optimistic.”
“Give them time. Maybe they’ll come up with something.”
Amy shook her head. “My gut tells me we missed our chance. We could have put Payne away, but we blew it. Without Del Preston’s statement we’ve got nothing, and Payne’s as free as a bird.”
They lapsed into silence, sipped drinks.
“Amy, how safe are we?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if this Payne guy can get a bailiff to murder a witness for him, what can he do to us?” David said.
“You’re thinking about the break-in, aren’t you?” Amy said.
He shrugged.
“It could be just a coincidence, you know,” Amy told him. “The break-in probably doesn’t have a thing to do with Payne. The police even said the burglar had a long list of priors. Maybe we were just being robbed, and that’s all. It happens.”
“Do you believe that?”
Instead of answering, she looked away and sipped wine, brow knit. David knew what this meant. It meant she wanted to believe it but knew better. Or maybe she simply didn’t know what to believe at all.
Amy hoped Dante Payne would be satisfied with the witness’s death, that he would feel safe now. But David’s business had been knowing men like Payne. They were hard, cunning creatures with little forgiveness in them. It wasn’t enough to defeat opponents. They wanted to eliminate them. A live enemy was still an enemy that could bite.
David didn’t have all the answers yet. He didn’t know what was on the flash drive, didn’t know what Charlie might uncover on his covert safari into cyberspace. All he knew was that he didn’t feel safe, and a gnawing gut feeling wouldn’t let him forget about it.
So then. Decisions.
“We need to do something. We need to take precautions,” David said. “And I don’t mean just double-checking that the doors are locked each night.”
Silence stretched between them for a moment.
David pretended not to notice Amy nibbling the inside of her bottom lip.
Amy tapped a fingernail against one of her front teeth, another nervous habit. “I might have an idea about that.”
* * *
They stood in the driveway the next afternoon and watched a squad car pull up and park in front of the house. After yesterday’s bloody events, nobody at Amy’s office had objected to her request to take a personal day, although Amy found herself calling Jenny every twenty minutes, insisting on a status report.
“Are you sure about this?” whispered David from the side of his mouth.
“You wanted to feel safer,” Amy whispered back. “It’s just temporary until we think of something else.”
“This is the guy who took you to prom, right?”
She shot him a look. “Roy is nice. It’ll be fine.”
Roy Bennett climbed out of his squad car and lumbered up the lawn toward them, flipping them a jaunty salute. His hairline was retreating fast and he was going soft in the middle although not as bad as some, but he had a friendly open face and alert blue eyes. The sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve were the result of sixteen years on the force. That was some kind of accomplishment anyway.
Amy introduced David, and he shook hands with Roy.
“Roy, I can’t thank you enough,” Amy said. “This whole situation has just been so upsetting.”
When Amy had called Roy, she’d kept the story simple. As deputy DA it was her job to put away bad people. Naturally some of the bad people didn’t appreciate this, and Amy now had reason to believe that some of these people wanted to cause trouble for her and her family. The situation wasn’t to the point that it was appropriate to fill out an official complaint, but some steps needed to be taken for Amy’s peace of mind. Her old high school friend Roy had happily stepped up to the plate.
“I’m happy I can do this for you,” Roy said. “I mean, it’s the least I can do after—oh, here they are now.”
About half a block away, a squad car slowed and parked across the street. A second squad car parked at the end of the street in the other direction.
“Just the sight of police vehicles will keep most of the assholes—er, sorry.” Roy’s eyes darted to Amy, embarrassed. “Jerks, I mean. Anyway, most of the bad guys will move along if they see a police presence.”
“Thanks,” Amy said. “I feel better already.”
“I hope this isn’t putting you out,” David said.
Roy waved the idea away. “As long as the captain doesn’t look too close at the duty roster, I’m fine. And I run a pretty tight ship, so he lets me run the precinct my way. Fact is I owe some of these boys some easy overtime, so that’s for starters. But the fact is I owe your wife here a big one. Didn’t see how I could refuse her a favor like this.”
“Oh, really?” David raised an eyebrow at his wife. “I hadn’t heard about this.”
“David, don’t pry into the man’s business,” scolded Amy.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” David smiled and tried to look harmless.
“It’s okay,” Roy said. “When my kid sister graduated from NYU a few years ago, she celebrated pretty hard, drank a bit too much, and got into some trouble. I called up Amy and begged a favor. She didn’t even hesitate. Fact is, Little Sis did need to learn a lesson, but maybe not to the point of having something on her record if you know wh
at I mean. Your wife understood. She’s good people, Mr. Sparrow.”
David put a hand on Amy’s shoulder, gave it a light squeeze. “I think so, too.”
“But it’s just for a few days.” Roy looked apologetic. “That’s about all I can swing.”
“That’s fine. I figure we’ll have things sorted out by then. You don’t have to rush off, do you?” Amy asked. “Come in for some coffee.”
Roy smiled. “I’d like that.”
CHAPTER NINE
The next two days crept by in seemingly normal fashion. Amy went to work in the city. David took the kids to school and tended house.
But underneath the facade of normalcy there was tension. David was the primary culprit. He knew what a criminal like Payne was capable of and kept thinking something bad was going to happen. His anxiety infected Amy, and even the kids seemed out of sorts, sensing there was something wrong in the house.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Payne doesn’t even care. With the witness dead, he’s off the hook. Maybe he’ll forget about us.
David knew he was kidding himself.
He picked the kids up from school and brought them home as usual. He forced himself to engage with them, helping with homework. He cooked dinner, did the dishes afterward. He felt like a fraud. The daddy robot going through the motions as the more active part of his brain thought about the perimeter of the house, how somebody might break in. He considered additional locks, entertained upgrading the alarm system. Sooner or later, Roy’s overtime cops wouldn’t be there anymore. What was the response time if he called the police? Could he count on them? And what, if anything, would keep Dante Payne at bay? Walls? Razor wire and land mines? How far was David willing to go?
When would David and his family get their lives back?
“Hey!”
David jumped. He hadn’t even heard his wife come into the kitchen.
She pinned him with a hard look. “Stop it, okay?”
“Stop what?”
“You’re stalking around like the grim reaper or something,” she said. “Brent keeps asking if you’re angry at him.”
“What? No, of course not. Look I…” He exhaled. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
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