Cold Ridge

Fifteen

Val Carrera waited until midafternoon for Manny to call her. When he didn't, she started calling him and leaving him messages on his voice mail. One every fifteen minutes. After the tenth, he called her back. "Damn it, Val, can't you take a hint? I don't want to talk to you."

"Tough. Where are you? Not in jail, I presume, or you wouldn't have your cell phone."

"My hotel. A different one. I'm on my own dime now. I'm climbing the fucking walls. There, you happy?"

"Police watching you?"

"Yes."

Her heart jumped. It was real. Her husband was under suspicion for murder. "Jesus, Manny. How the hell did this happen? Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know how the hell this happened. There's nothing you can do. Well, there is." He paused, and she could feel his smile-she swore she could. "You couldg et a job. You drive people crazy when you're not working."

"Ass. I've got a job. Hank and Antonia hired me this morning. Manny-" She choked back a sob, hating herself for displaying any weakness. "Do you want me to come to Boston?"

"No."

"Have you talked to Eric?"

"No. You?"

"Yesterday. I'll call him again tonight. He's-well, you know how tight-lipped he is. Gee, I wonder where he gets it. But I can tell he's worried about you. I am, too. Sorry, bub, but you can't control how we feel."

"Val, listen to me. Worry all you want. Tear your hair out, curse me to the rafters. I don't care. Just stay out of this mess. Understood?"

"Manny, you're my husband. What happens to you-"

"What happens to me doesn't happen to you. When I jump out of a helo, I don't see you strapped on my back."

He clicked off.

She hated him. She really did.

She hit Redial on her phone, since his number was the only one she'd called all day. She got his voice mail again. He'd probably shut off his cell phone, knowing she'd call back.

Her apartment reeked of cheap pizza, half of it still in the open box on the coffee table. She'd had it delivered, and next time, she thought, she was going to make them wait until she got it out and give them the damn box back, let them get rid of it.

"Someone ought to come up with a self-destructing pizza box," she grumbled, carrying it into the kitchen.

She stuck the leftover pizza in the refrigerator, no plate, no aluminum foil-she just laid the two cold slices on the rack by themselves. If she was still here, she'd heat it up for supper. If not, it could rot. The pizza box she dropped onto the floor and jumped on, flattening it, then used her feet to fold it as small as she could, but even that didn't fit into her trash can.

When he was home, Manny did the trash. He never complained about it. They shared the cooking, but she didn't think he'd ever touched a toilet brush in his life. Maybe in PJ indoc somebody made him swab out a toilet. If so, it was the last damn time.

She scooped a stray piece of pepperoni off the floor, dumped it in the trash and wiped up the spot with the toe of her running shoe. Okay, so she wasn't a great housekeeper. She liked books. She could read one a day. She loved talking books with her customers back when she was a store manager. She'd read anything- mystery, romance, thrillers, the women's book club books, biographies. She'd gotten into self-help for a while, but it always made her feel inadequate, sitting there answering the questions about dreams and goals, writing her own eulogy. That was pretty sick. Here lies Val Carrera, who read a lot of books and tried to do right by her family, even if she screwed it up most of the time.

She hoped there were readers on Hank's staff. If they were all policy wonks and just wanted to talk about reforming the health-caresystem, she'd slit her own throat.

She grabbed her lukewarm Diet Coke off the coffee table and took it with her to the computer, set up in a corner of the living room. Pepperoni pizza and a Diet Coke. Made a lot of sense. But she was wired as it was, and sugar in addition to the caffeine would put her over the top. Then she would get in her car and drive up to Boston. Manny was acting as if he was on a combat mission and she was out of line for wanting to show up. No wives on search-and-rescue missions. Except he wasn't in the air force anymore.

Two years in uniform had done it for her. She had no interest in being career military. She knew women who could be generals and wanted the job a whole lot more than she ever did.

She'd wanted what she'd had. A sexy, irreverent husband who rescued people. A smart, healthy son. A job she loved.

But she didn't have any of those things anymore.

"Negative thinking, negative thinking."

The monitor had gone into sleep mode. She got it up and running again, but she was having the same problem she'd had since she got back yesterday from breakfast with Hank and Antonia-she couldn't access Manny's files without his password. Why did the bastard need a password? Had he decided she was nuts and couldn't be trusted with access to his files?

She'd tried every possible password combination she could think of. Eric's middle name, his birthday, the name they'd picked out if he'd been a girl. Her middle name. Her maiden name. Their wedding date. Manny was a sentimentalist at heart, and he wasn't particularly creative or intricate in his thinking. It had to be something obvious.

Irritated, she typed bullheaded, but that didn't work, either.

Tyler North? Nope, not in any combination she tried.

If she called Manny and asked him for his password, he wouldn't tell her. He'd just say "butt out" and hang up. Or not bother to call her back at all.

Stubborn.

Irritating.

Nothing was working. She flopped back against her chair and sipped her Diet Coke. She had to stay busy. If she didn't, she'd think. She'd relive the scary, early days of Eric's illness. She'd relive charging off to the emergency room while Manny was out of the country, facing dangers of his own-he couldn't talk about most of his missions, but she was well aware of what he did.

She didn't think, not then, that she could lose them both, her husband to combat, her son to illness. Only afterward, only when they were safe. It was sick, but there it was.

She suddenly realized she was shaking, crying. Her gaze settled on the number of her therapist, which she'd written on an orange Post-it note and stuck to the side of the computer. She grabbed it and reached for the phone, but she didn't dial, instead doing her relaxation and visualization exercises until she felt the incipient panic pass.

It'd be okay. She was getting better.

For grins, she typed crazywoman, but nothing happened.

"Maybe I should just shoot the damn thing."

If she couldn't get into Manny's files and he didn't want to talk to her, what could she do?

She dug her date book out of her handbag and looked up Tyler North's number in New Hampshire. If he wasn't on duty, he'd be there. She used to be critical of his weird, crazy mother. Not anymore. For the most part, she'd done the best she could. She made mistakes. But she'd been lucky.

If Manny had confided in anyone, it'd be his best friend and fellow PJ. Obviously, Val thought, it wasn't his wife.