Fear

I?’

‘I didn’t save my husband. I locked myself in a house for a year. What kind of person am I, Miles?’ She sat up from the bed. She held out her hand. ‘Give me the confession. I can handle it.’

He sat up, pulled the paper from his jacket, handed it to her. She unfolded it and began to read:

Allison:

I killed my best friend. I was working with my dad in Miami – he owned a private investigations firm. Dad died (cancer) and my friend Andy was an accountant for what I believed was an insurance company but the firm was a financial front for the Barrada crime family. Dad lost three hundred thousand on gambling and he owed the money through a Barrada bookie. When he died – I owed the debt. The Barradas threatened to take Dad’s firm, which was all Dad left me, but Andy got me a deal; he told me that I could work it off by doing clandestine work for the Barradas. Andy wanted financial and logistical information on other crime rings: spreadsheets, payments, dealer networks, information on shipments into the country.

I wasn’t a hit man or an enforcer. I was their personal spy and Andy gently told me that if I refused, the Barradas would kill me and he would not be able to stop them. He wept as he told me and I believed him. He was giving me a way out. The Barradas had me conduct eleven covert jobs against their competitors and I succeeded in every one of them. I believed the debt was paid. But they made it clear I couldn’t walk away.

I approached the FBI in Miami. I told them I would testify about the Barradas’ spying on the other crime rings if they would provide immunity to me – and to Andy. He saved my ass, so I was saving his. But Andy couldn’t know, they told me, his loyalty to the Barradas ran too deep. He was engaged to a Barrada cousin, who owned the insurance front. I would have to get information on Andy, leverage over him, so that he couldn’t run back to the Barradas, give him no choice but to cooperate. I had to eliminate loyalty as a choice for him.

I set up a meeting with Andy in a Barrada warehouse. The FBI gave me falsified data I could claim to have stolen from the Duarte crime ring, a group in Los Angeles wanting to expand and make alliances in south Florida. I had already lifted some minor stuff from them but this faked FBI info was designed to make Andy drool: names of dealers under their control, bank-account numbers, people on their payroll. I was to take two FBI undercover agents with me. The undercovers pretended to be guys I had recruited to be my operatives and they planned to record what Andy said about the spying operation and then immediately make the offer to him of immunity. Because I couldn’t do it alone, and Andy might have to be physically handled. I told the FBI I couldn’t turn without Andy. He might not want to believe it, but the Barradas would blame him for my betrayal, for bringing me into their camp and me selling them to the feds. They’d kill him, I was sure.

This was the only way to save Andy.

We’re at the warehouse and this is all I remember: I introduce Andy to the guys and we’re talking, we’re showing him the data, I say I can get more on the Duartes but it’s going to involve a substantial operation – the sting I have in mind for them, I can’t do it alone, I need the two guys with me. I ask Andy, real specifically what kind of data he wants me to steal from the Duartes, and he’s talking up a beauty, feeding everything into the tapes that the FBI needs, to put on the real pressure, and he asks me when can you get started and then it’s all a blank then I see him pull a gun from under his shirt. Aims it at one of the feds’ head and I’ve got my gun and I never use a gun much but I shoot because I can’t let him shoot a man in the head.

My bullet hits his shoulder as he shoots at me and hits my chest and we both scream and fall and I raise the gun at him again then it’s all a blank again

The next time I’m aware of what’s going on I’m in a safe house in Jacksonville, and they’re offering me the witness protection program and my best friend, my brother for all intents and purposes, is dead and I don’t know what I did wrong, why I killed him.

Celeste folded the paper.

‘You remembered something else,’ she said quietly.

‘Yes. The first blank. When Andy asked me when I could get started.’ He stopped. ‘Groote and I were talking about the FBI and when they would start naming me in the news – it brought it back, clear as day. But…’

‘Don’t shy away from it,’ she said.

‘He asked me when me and the guys could get started on the project and I said, They’ll do it as soon as we turn off the tape.’

‘You let him know he was being taped.’

‘I said… yes, for that reason, but for a joke, to try and soften the blow. We all laughed. Even Andy. But then he saw my eyes, he panicked, he realized it was a bust and he pulled his gun, aimed it at the undercover’s head… If I’d kept my mouth shut, told him a different way…’

She took his hands in hers. ‘There’s no good way to tell him, is there?’

Miles shook his head.

She gripped his hands tightly. ‘But Andy drew the gun. He chose to fight. You saved a life, two lives, your own. You and I both saved lives, wow, we’re in a special club.’ Her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. ‘If God keeps a ledger, don’t you think our accounts are balanced?’

‘I… shot to wound him, not to kill him. I still don’t remember the details.’

‘He shot you in the chest. Did he show you the same consideration?’

Miles opened his mouth to speak, then shut it.

‘I handled it wrong. He panicked.’

‘Did he expect you to work for the mob forever when you were strong-armed into service? I don’t care if you knew him from when you were in diapers, he’s a horrible friend.’

Miles released her hands. ‘So what does Andy want to tell me, that he’s sorry? He never offers an apology. What I did, what I didn’t do, what the hell does that mean?’

‘The tape the FBI made of the meeting – did you ever listen to it?’

‘They told me the tape failed. Andy died for nothing.’ He sat down again. ‘God, you must think I’m a terrible person.’

She folded her legs under her on the bed. ‘I told you my husband went out to get eggs and coffee. And a man I thought was a close friend, and instead was stalking me, I let him into my home and he tied me up and he waited for Brian to come home. He held a knife to my throat. He didn’t gag me. He said he was going to hurt me because I hadn’t loved him, I didn’t appreciate him – all your standard stalker bullshit – but he wouldn’t hurt Brian. I believed him. I was petrified with terror, I couldn’t think two seconds into the future.’ She tapped the side of her temple. ‘The brain that outfoxed nine very smart people and won five million dollars – frozen like ice. I heard Brian call to me as he opened the front door. If I had screamed for him to run, he would have had a chance. He could have run, saved himself. Instead, with a knife at my throat, I didn’t scream out a warning and my husband came in and the Disturbed Fan tortured him to death. In front of me. So I could see every howl of pain, every grimace, every inch of agony. A neighbor heard my Brian’s screams and called the police and they busted in and killed the Disturbed Fan about three minutes after Brian died. The Fan was smoking a cigarette before he started in on me and I was just lying there, staring into my husband’s dead eyes, waiting to die, wondering, Why didn’t I scream and warn him? Why? ’

‘Because you were afraid. Because you wanted to believe him that he wouldn’t hurt Brian.’

‘Well, how stupid was I?’

‘I wanted to believe Andy would be happy about me getting us both out of the mob. You wanted to believe Brian would be safe if you followed orders. Do you think Brian blamed you, for one second?’

She didn’t answer.

‘If you had screamed, do you think Brian would have run? Hell, no. He would have run to you. Fought to save you.’

The truth of what he said crushed her. ‘All because I wanted to be on a stupid TV show.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘So why can’t we move past all the grief?’

‘Because we loved these people. You don’t shed them like a skin.’

‘Do you think if I kept taking Frost – I would forget what happened to Brian?’ Her voice cracked. ‘If I forget the terror we experienced, aren’t I awful?’

‘Brian wouldn’t want you to carry that grief forever. He sure wouldn’t want you always cutting yourself.’

She wiped at her eyes. ‘Thank you for showing me the confession.’

‘Thanks for telling me what happened to you too.’

The silence between them grew awkward; almost as if they’d been physically intimate and didn’t know what to say, how to part, how to step forward.

She came to his bed, and she curled herself into his arms. They lay, tense, barely touching each other, and she closed her hand around his and he began to relax. Touch to touch. Her hair – she had showered after they ate, put on loose clothes Victor gave her – smelled of tangerine and he realized he had forgotten the perfection of holding a woman, the yield of skin, the beat of breath.

If he kept chasing Frost, he could be dead in a day. Or in prison. This might be the last bit of happiness, a final morsel, in his life.

He closed his eyes and slept.

A hand touched his shoulder. Miles opened his eyes. Victor sat, wheeled close to the bed.

Bad news, he mouthed. Let’s talk.