I reach around the door frame; maybe there’s a key on top. No, of course not. You’re not that type. I have to go back to the room where you’re sleeping and find it in your pocket. If it’s there.
Back down the hall, I sidestep the squeaky board, edging along the wall, measuring my frightened breathing, which is expanding my chest, wheezing too loud in my nose. You’re still sleeping, still and peaceful. I crouch down and crawl to your clothes. The gun sticks out of one of my pockets, the bullet is in the other; I haven’t had the chance to load it. If I find the key, I won’t need to.
There, a single cold key in the pocket of your jeans. I clutch it in my palm.
I could kill you while you sleep. The thought comes unbidden. A single shot to the head or the chest.
If I leave here while you live, will you chase? Will you follow me through the dark alleys of the web—steal my money, reveal my secrets? Will you shadow me like the predator you are? Will I always live in fear? Or will you let me go?
Still crouched at the foot of the bed, I take the gun from my pocket, slip the bullet in the chamber, make sure it’s aligned with the firing pin. Can I do it? Can I kill you in cold blood while you lay, arms wide, trusting?
I already know the answer.
I rise, lift the gun, and find the bed empty.
Then I sense you behind me. How?
I don’t have time to fight; your hands close over my wrists, squeezing hard until I drop the gun where it falls with a dead thud. Then your arms are around me. I can’t even struggle. You’re so strong.
“Wren.” I hear all the notes of your sadness, disappointment, anger. It brings to mind my father’s face the night I shot him with my arrow. “I trusted you. You betrayed me. Just like they all do.”
“Let me go,” I whisper. Your face is right next to mine, eyes dark with anger.
But I don’t remember your answer. Because in a single motion, you release one of my wrists and there’s a painful prick, a heat rushing down my arm. The world falters, going dark around the edges.
Robin cowers in the corner, watching me with wide eyes. She’s crying.
I’m sorry, she whispers. I’m so sorry.
And then there’s nothing.
forty-five
Bailey Kirk waited in the plush lobby of the accounting firm, nursing a headache brought on from his own stupidity and lack of self-control. He felt the eyes of the receptionist fall on him occasionally; he’d been there awhile. When he turned his gaze back to her, she was answering the phone. Gleaming, flame-red hair, dark blue eyes, glossed lips, full-bodied; she was a pinup girl, a beauty of a bygone era. The electric blue frames of her glasses highlighted her eyes, her lips. She didn’t look up at him again.
His arm, healing slowly but throbbing from the physical therapy session yesterday, was still in a sling, six weeks after the gunshot wound.
The pain, though dull, was persistent, constant, a white noise in his awareness, reminding him of all his mistakes and failures.
Since that terrible day, he’d lost his job—well, technically it was a medical leave. He’d failed his client Henry Thorpe, who was no closer to finding his child. The ghost was gone. He’d taken Wren Greenwood—and Mia, and Bonnie, and Melissa—with him. Whatever hole the ghost had opened in the world and slipped through had swallowed them all.
And since that day, Bailey Kirk had been drinking too much. Taking too many pain pills. His mother was worried. She’d lost one child to drugs and alcohol; she knew the signs of someone in trouble.
“Come home,” she told him. “I don’t like the way you sound. Let us take care of you.”
The temptation was strong. His room was just as he left it—lacrosse team pennants on the wall, navy blue bedspread over a twin mattress, the desk where he’d done—or hadn’t done—his homework, a shelf of old yearbooks. When he went back to that room—during visits, on the holidays—he went back to his teenage self with his mom doing laundry and making his breakfast. It was a good thing, a soothing thing. A blessing to be loved by parents who took you in when you were low, let you go again when you were strong enough to pick yourself back up.
But no. He’d been on his own since college, never had to go back, not like his sister, or his brother. Never asked them for anything, not a dime.
“You’re persistent.” The voice snapped him from his thoughts.
Marty Friedman, Wren’s longtime accountant, was not easy to reach, not willing to talk about his clients. Now, the small old man stood before him looking more like a character out of Lord of the Rings than a financial adviser, with a smart suit and round spectacles, a cloud of wild white hair, ears too big for his head, a bulbous nose. Bailey’s calls had gone unreturned, and this visit was unannounced. He told the receptionist that he’d wait until Mr. Friedman could fit him in. This was important. He wouldn’t leave until they’d spoken.