Tanya’s footsteps are clomping around, moving nearer. “Where are y’all? Are you upstairs?”
“Get rid of her,” the man whispers, and now he sounds like Cam. Cam has never been a Tanya fan. Not since the welcome-to-the-neighborhood party she threw us, where after one too many cocktails, I offered her a key. Cam wanted me to march over there and demand it back, because he knew she’d equate the key with an open-door policy. She uses it at least once a week to pop over for drinks, to deliver our mail or just to say hi. She’s sweet, but she needs constant coddling, like an insecure, jealous spouse. She wants nothing more than to be needed.
And now that’s one battle won because boy do I ever need her.
I scurry down the hall with Baxter on my hip, my shoes slipping in the broken glass, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. I spot Tanya in the living room, pinching a fuchsia-tipped bloom of an orchid plant between two fingers, I’m guessing to see if it’s real.
“Sorry, sorry. We were in the bedroom. Hey, Tan.”
She whirls around, her oversize shirt swinging around her hips, and I know what she sees: wild hair, lipstick chewed off, haunted eyes. I saw myself in the bedroom mirror just now. I know I look a mess.
But Tanya is her usual put-together self. Dark jeans, white shirt topped with a chunky necklace. This one’s made of long fingers of polished black horn studded with diamonds. Tanya once told me she knew every time her ex-husband had an affair, because he’d come home with another stunner for her jewelry collection—and she has amassed quite the collection.
“There you are. I was just bringing by some mail I picked up for you last week. Y’all should really put a lock on that mailbox, it’s a surefire way to—Aww, Baxie, what’s the matter, sugar? You look like you’ve been crying.” She steps close enough to brush his cheek with the pad of her thumb.
One more inch, one tiny twist of her head, and she’ll spot the masked man slinking silently down the hall to my right, the gun he’s aiming at my temple.
“He’s just tired. It’s been kind of a crazy day.”
Her glossed lips purse with sympathy. “Poor baby. I hope you’re not coming down with that nasty bug that’s been working its way through the club.” She presses the back of her hand to Baxter’s forehead, then one of his cheeks. “You’re a little warm, but nothing too bad. Are you feeling okay?”
She’s standing less than a foot away, close enough I can smell her spicy-sweet perfume and the caramel she stirred into her afternoon coffee.
“Baxter’s fine.” I run a shaky hand over Baxter’s head, flattening the tangle of fine hair at the crown. My next words are as much for him as they are for me: “He’s fine. Everybody’s fine.”
She smiles, but I can’t manage to match it.
“Well, you can never be too careful, you know, and you don’t want to push too hard if you’re not feeling well. Bill McAllister tried that, and he passed out on the ninth tee. One minute he’s standing there, bragging to his caddie about the birdie he just scored, the next he’s lights out on the green. They carted him off in an ambulance, you know.”
Tanya blabbers on, oblivious as ever to my discomfort, but I’m no longer listening because out of the corner of my eye, movement. A black smudge, shifting from me to Baxter. The man didn’t say it, but he also didn’t have to. One wrong move and he’ll shoot us both dead.
I transfer Baxter to my other hip, putting my torso between him and the muzzle of the gun. If anybody here is taking a bullet, it will be me. I’m going first.
Take that, asshole.
I stare at Tanya’s mouth and will the chattering to stop—Leave, there’s a gunman standing right here, run back across the road and save yourself—but my mind is as thick as molasses. I need her to stop talking long enough for me to give her some kind of sign. A subtle clue that she will recognize as a call for help, but the gunman won’t.
“Jade, I swear. You are such a dreamer. Did you hear a single word I said?” She watches me, eyebrows raised. I shake my head, and she laughs like I’m the silliest thing ever. “I have a question for you. And before you say no, just promise you’ll hear me out, okay?”
I don’t respond. My mind is racing, trying to come up with words that pry loose some understanding, some urgency in Tanya. She takes my silence as an affirmative.
“Okay, so I’m putting together a fundraiser for my niece, you know, to help out with some of the medical costs. Poor thing’s not getting any better. If you’re the praying type, say a little prayer she gets in that trial, will you? Her insurance is being so difficult.”