The Gentlemen's Hour

119

“It’s beautiful,” she says, watching the sun go down. “Just beautiful. I’m usually still at work . . .”

“It has a way of putting things in perspective,” Boone says. He lets a few seconds go by before he says, “I need those records, Nicole.”

“They’re my safety net.”

“Until he knows you have them. Then they’re a danger.” Rule of thumb: If you know where the bodies are buried, sooner or later you’re going to be one of them.

“You think he killed Schering?”

“You don’t?” Boone asks. “You of all people know what he’s capable of. Nicole, he might already be thinking about what he told you when he was drunk.”

“I know.”

“If I have the records, I can help you,” Boone says. “I’ll take you to a cop I know—”

“I don’t want to go to jail.”

“You won’t,” Boone assures her. “Once your story is on the record, it’s done. You’re safe. There’s no point in anyone doing you harm. But the records prove your story. Without them . . .”

“. . . I’m just a bimbo secretary with a nose-candy problem.”

He doesn’t say anything. There’s no response to that—she’s dead on.

Nicole scans the view, the long, curving stretch of coastline from La Jolla Point to the south, all the way down past Scripps Pier toward Oceanside. Some of the most valuable real estate on earth, some of it built on land that never should have been built on. She says, “So I’m supposed to trust you.”

He gets it, totally. Why should she trust him? Or some cop she doesn’t know? Why should she trust any public official? She’s seen them bribed and bought—helped to do it herself.

A new idea, a fresh fear, hits her. “How do I know Bill didn’t send you? You work for him. How do I know he didn’t send you to find out what I know, get what I have?”

She’s on the edge of panic. Boone has seen it before, not just on cases but with inexperienced swimmers in the deep water. They feel overwhelmed, outmatched, exhausted—then they see the next wave coming and it’s too much, too frightening. They panic, and unless someone is there to pull them out, they drown.

“You don’t,” Boone says. “All I can tell you is, at the end of the day, you have to trust someone.”

Because the ocean is too big to cross alone.