He says flatly, “I was going to kill you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, I was.”
“You wanted to, but you were never going to. That’s totally different.”
Heaving a sigh, he releases my hand, stands, and leaves the room. I holler after him, “You never would have kissed me so much if you really planned to kill me!”
“Tell that to my late ex-wife.”
That leaves me breathless, and not just because my stomach hurts from the effort of shouting. I lie there with my heart beating like mad, thinking of all the ways he might have murdered his poor ex, until Mal sticks his head back through the door.
“I don’t have an ex-wife. I’ve never been married. I only said that to scare you.”
“It worked.”
“I told you I was a bad person.”
That makes me smile. “Yeah, but if you were really bad, you wouldn’t have admitted it.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “I have to go out for a while. I’ll try to be back before dark.”
I start to panic all over again. “You’re leaving me here alone? What if I die while you’re gone?”
“Then I suppose I’ll have some digging to do when I get back.”
My mouth drops open. “Okay, that was just mean.”
I can tell he’s trying not to smile. “Would you prefer cremation? I can arrange a funeral pyre for you, if you like.”
“That is so not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Your lips are twitching.”
“That’s because I’m in a lot of pain!”
His head disappears. He returns in a moment holding a white paper bag.
“What’s in that?”
He sits on the edge of the bed and starts removing pill bottles of various sizes and colors from the bag. Some of them have labels, others don’t. The ones that do are written in gobbledygook that must be Russian.
When he shakes a few pills from different bottles into the palm of his hand and holds it out to me, I look at the pills with trepidation.
“How do I know what these are?”
“Because I told you what they are.”
“Yeah, but you also just told me you were going to kill me all along. I can’t trust you now.”
With exaggerated patience, he says, “Take the fucking pills.”
I grudgingly hold out my hand. He dumps the pills into it and pours water from a carafe on the nightstand into the glass next to it. Then he holds it out to me with a look like I’ll be in trouble if I say another word.
So of course I have to.
“Okay, but if I wake up dead, I swear I’ll come back to haunt you.”
“I’m really starting to regret that I saved your life.”
Smiling at his glower, I pop the pills into my mouth and accept the glass of water he holds out to me. I swallow all the pills in one big gulp. “Ugh. I think that big white one got stuck in my throat.”
“That’s the cyanide. You won’t be worried about your throat in a second, because you’ll be dead.”
“See, you can’t do that now. I don’t know whether or not you’re joking!”
“Look at my face. This is my joking face.”
His expression is absolutely serious.
“Oh my god. I just realized something.”
“What?”
“You’re a jerk.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Not too quick on the draw, are you?”
“At least I’m not a jerk.”
He stares at me silently, his eyes warm. I think he wants to smile, but I’m not sure he knows how to.
Then he stands and leaves me alone, telling me before he goes that he’ll be back as soon as he can.
When he returns that evening, he’s covered in blood.
26
Riley
I don’t notice it at first, because it’s dark outside, there are no lights on inside, and I can’t see more than a few feet in front of my face without my specs. But when he comes into the bedroom and starts lighting the candles that are all over the place, then sits down on the bed beside me, I notice his hands.
“What is that?”
He looks at the dark, rust-colored smear on the back of one hand and tries to wipe it on his coat sleeve. When it doesn’t work, he chooses to simply ignore my question.
“Here. This should be enough to find a match.”
He sets a bulky pillowcase on my lap.
“What’s in this?”