“Still eating?” she asked.
“I’m done.”
“Me too. You ready to go?”
He nodded. The tab had been paid already. Hester rose to leave. Wilde did the same. When they were outside, Tim started up Hester’s car. Hester put her hand on Wilde’s arm.
“I never blamed you for what happened,” Hester said. “Never.”
Wilde said nothing.
“Even though I know now you lied to me.”
Wilde closed his eyes.
“When are you going to tell me what really happened to my son, Wilde?”
“I’ve told you.”
“No. Oren took me up to the crash site. Did I tell you that? It was right before you ran off to Costa Rica. He showed me where David’s car went off the road. He walked me through it. Oren, he’s always known you didn’t tell the truth.”
Wilde said nothing.
“David was your best friend,” she said softly, “but he was my son.”
“I know.” Wilde met her eye. “I would never compare.”
Tim got out of the car and came around to open the door for Hester.
“We are not going to do this today,” Hester whispered to Wilde. “But soon. Do you understand?”
Wilde said nothing. Hester kissed his cheek and slid into the backseat. When the car was out of sight, he turned and headed down the road. He texted Laila.
Wilde: Hey
The dancing dots told him she was typing a reply.
Laila: How is a woman supposed to resist a line like that?
Wilde couldn’t help but smile as he typed another text.
Wilde: Hey Laila: Smooth talker. Get over here.
He pocketed his phone and picked up the pace. Laila had been his best friend’s wife. There was no way around that. She and David had been soulmates. Wilde and Laila had both spent years, probably too many of them, trying to push away the obvious ghost in the room instead of simply letting him be.
His phone did the text-buzz thing again. Wilde looked down at the message.
Laila: In all seriousness, come over when you can. It’s time we talked this out.
He was reading the message a second time, his head down, his face lit up by the phone’s screen, when the two cars came screeching to a halt.
“Police! Get the fuck down on the ground now!”
Wilde tensed and debated his next move. He could make a run for it. He would likely get away too, but they’d charge him with running from the police and resisting arrest, even if he was innocent. He’d have to go into hiding right when the search for Peter Bennett was revving up.
Wilde didn’t want that.
“NOW, ASSHOLE!”
Four men—two in uniform, two plainclothes—pointed their guns straight at him.
They all wore ski masks.
This was not good.
“NOW!”
Three ran toward him, one kept a gun trained on him. With his hand still on his phone, Wilde slowly lowered himself to the ground, not so much to surrender peacefully as to give himself time to turn off the phone’s volume with his thumb and then hit call. There was no opportunity to scroll through and get the right number. Laila’s number had been the last one on his screen. The call would go to her.
The three men continued their bull rush.
“I’m not resisting,” Wilde said, trying like hell to hit the right buttons on his phone. “I’m surrendering—”
The three men didn’t care. They crashed into Wilde hard, knocking him onto the asphalt. They flipped him over onto his stomach. One jumped up and smashed a knee into his kidney, shocking the liver and internal organs. The other two grabbed Wilde’s arms and pulled them too hard behind his back. Wilde felt the rip in his shoulder cuffs, but it didn’t register much through the waves of pain still emanating from the kidney blow. The men twisted his wrist and knocked the phone from his hand. They cuffed him, pressing down on the bracelets so that they cut off circulation.
One of the uniformed cops—it was hard to make out a badge number or anything else in the dim light—stomped on the phone, then stomped again. The phone shattered.
On his stomach, his face being pushed into hard asphalt, Wilde was able to make out that the first car, the one closest to him, had all the earmarks of an unmarked police car—a Ford Crown Vic with municipal plates, a cluster of antennas, tinted windows, out-of-place lights on the mirrors, and grill that hid their flashers. The second vehicle was a regulation police squad car. Painted on the side, Wilde could now make out two words: Hartford Police.
Henry McAndrews’s old force. Oh, Wilde thought, this was definitely not good.