Peril

SARA

She wasn’t sure why, but suddenly all the reasons she should keep her head down only made her want to lift it more. She knew that to show up at McPherson’s, even if only for a few songs before the usual crowd, was dangerous. You never knew who might wander in. Certainly Labriola himself never frequented such places. It would be far more likely for Tony to show up, probably alone, taking the off chance that she might have returned to her old life. It wasn’t likely, of course, and yet it was something she had to consider.

So why had she not simply refused to do it? It would have been easy to do, and as she stood by the window, staring down at the street, she imagined having done just that. Abe would not have pressed the issue. He would have taken her refusal at face value and left the apartment with no further word.

But she’d said yes to the proposal, regardless of the risk, and she knew now that she’d done it because to have done anything else would have been to retreat even further into the netherworld she occupied now, to abandon all future hope of a happy ending to her life.

She felt the weight of the pistol in her hand, heard the chilling voice, Kill him! Now she knew precisely why she hadn’t done it then or later. Against all odds, against the terrible urgency of the murderous voice in her head, she had glimpsed the precipice, felt her feet poised at its jagged edge, but at the decisive moment also glimpsed the hope she would forfeit if she leaped, and so had said, to her own astonishment, Not yet.