The Zero Night

23

Serena savored the moment of surrender. The first swallow was always the sweetest. It was like spreading her legs for a lover. The vodka went down cold, and then it turned warm in her body, like hot sun blazing on her skin on a Las Vegas afternoon. All the swallows after that were nothing but pale imitations, but the first one made it worthwhile.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Jagger told her with a smile of surprise. He still looked as cool as the Absolut. Different T-shirt, just as tight. Black jeans. Closing time was coming soon, and only a few stragglers were nursing their last drinks in the bar. They may as well have been alone.

“And here I thought you’d miss me,” Serena said, her voice slipping into a sultry pitch.

“Well, you were in pretty bad shape last night.”

“I know. You were my hero. Thank you.”

“I’m not so sure about hero,” the bartender replied. “Enabler maybe. It’s a fine line. Something tells me I shouldn’t be serving you at all. I can spot problem drinkers, and you, lovely lady, have a problem.”

“Do I look like I want a lecture?” Serena asked.

“No.”

“Then let’s assume I don’t.”

“Your husband asked me to call him if you came back,” Jagger said. “I liked him. Something tells me I wouldn’t want to wind up on his bad side.”

“Yeah, Stride is tough as nails,” Serena agreed. “Not like you.”

“You don’t think I’m tough?” Jagger asked, with a wide grin and a flex of his muscles.

“No, you’re not tough. You’re smooth. How old are you, anyway?”

“Thirty-five.”

“A baby,” Serena said.

“What about you? Want to confess your age?”

“I’m older than you, and let’s leave it at that.”

“No way you’re over forty.”

Serena smiled. “See? You’re smooth.”

She finished her drink and tapped a long fingernail on the bar. He went to get her a refill. Her eyes followed him from the back, where the view was as good as it was from the front. She told herself that her flirtation was innocent. The bar was a kind of closed universe where nothing was real. She could tease a man, and he could tease her back, and it didn’t mean a thing. But she knew that the ice under her feet was thin. She was married, he had a girlfriend, but every drink made those things matter less and less. If she kept coming back, they’d be alone sometime after closing. She would kiss him, or he would kiss her, and then she’d be on her back on a table, and he’d be on top of her.

It would happen.

It had happened to her more than once in her long-ago past. Other men, other boyfriends, other disasters. She didn’t want to cheat — she loved Jonny more than she loved her life — but she could see her future.

It. Would. Happen.

Serena took a deep breath. Her desires were scaring her, and she knew what she had to do. Get up and walk out of the bar. Skip the next drink and the one after that. Get from midnight to midnight sober, and move the number from zero back to one.

Instead, Jagger put a lowball glass in front of her, and she took another long, beautiful swallow.

“You’re right,” Serena said.

“About what?”

“I’m an alcoholic.”

“I figured. First relapse in a while?”

“A very long while.”

“Do you want me to kick you out?”

“No. If you kick me out, I’ll just go somewhere else. When I’m ready to stop, I’ll stop.”

“Should I call your husband?”

“No, don’t do that.”

There. That was the first little crack in the ice. The secret conspiracy between them. Don’t call my husband.

Addiction had such perfect aim. It was like a sharpshooter hitting targets. Marriage. Job. Home. Money. It had been that way with Samantha, too. Serena knew how it would go, a long fall down into darkness until she was lying at rock bottom with her life in ruins. She didn’t want to go through that again, not the way she had more than 6,600 nights ago.

But there were two Serenas, and she was watching helplessly as the other Serena walked away from everything she loved.

She finished her drink.

Ordered another.

She finished that one.

And ordered another.

Down, down, down, she kept falling, looking for the ledge to take hold of, looking for anything that would break her descent.

Jagger put the next glass in front of her. “So why are you here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can get drunk anywhere. Another bartender wouldn’t give you a hard time about it. He’d just pour.”

“Maybe I like your face,” Serena said.

“Ah. Well, I like yours, too.”

“I can tell.”

His eyes weren’t thinking about his girlfriend. His eyes said, I want you, you want me. And he was right. She did. She was so turned on she could feel an erotic tingling all the way down to her toes. She wanted the seduction; she wanted the game. It was a game that ended with both of them naked and him buried inside her, her body writhing, their skin slippery with sweat.

She could hear the echo of Samantha laughing at the thought of it. Like mother, like daughter.

Stop, Serena told herself.

Don’t do this, she screamed inside her head.

She frowned at the next drink on the bar. She pushed it away. Pulled it back. Pushed it away. She brushed back her hair and ignored the heat between her legs, and she tried to remember who she was.

A cop. A detective. That was her salvation.

She took a photograph from her purse and put it in front of Jagger.

“Do you recognize this woman?” she asked. “She used to come in here a lot.”

He picked up the picture. “No, she doesn’t look familiar.”

“Her name’s Nikki Candis.”

“I can keep an eye out if you’re trying to find her.”

“You don’t need to do that. She’s dead. She died two years ago.”

His eyebrows arched. “Two years? Well, I only started working here six months ago, but if you want, I can ask around. Other people have been here longer.”

“Thanks, that would help.”

She took the lowball glass in her hand. With a sigh of resigned acceptance, she downed the whole thing. Then she reached in and took one of the ice cubes and cupped it in her palm. She watched it melt on her hot skin.

“Another?” Jagger asked. His eyes said it all.

Yes, she wanted another. And another. She wanted what came after that, too. The man-woman dance. She felt herself possessed by an overwhelming urge to reach out and grab this man’s face and get it over with. The first kiss. The kiss that would lead to everything else. She leaned across the bar. He was inches away, so close and so attractive. His eyes glittered, wondering what she would do. She imagined what his tongue would feel like. Not just on her mouth but elsewhere.

It. Would. Happen.

Unless she stopped right now. This second.

Unless she grabbed the ledge.

Touching him, not touching him, felt like a test of willpower. If she went the wrong way, there was no going back. She took a stuttering breath, utterly consumed by desire. Then she pinned her arousal down, which was like caging a feral cat that scratched and yowled. She leaned back and shivered to clear away the image of their bodies intertwined.

That was how recovery began, with one small victory.

She wasn’t going to have sex with this man. She wasn’t going to cheat.

There was no final exam. No declaration of mission accomplished. You won one little victory, and then another, and then another, and when you added them all together, you got to 6,608 nights without a drink.

“One more?” he asked again.

“No, I’m done,” Serena replied. She repeated it for good measure. “I’m done.”

Jagger looked at her with a faint shadow of disappointment. But he said, “I’m glad to hear it.”

“That’s all for me. I won’t be back.”

“Congratulations.”

She didn’t know whether he believed her. She didn’t know whether she believed herself. Then Jagger held out his hand for her car keys. “You’ve still had too much to drive.”

“I know. I’ll text my daughter to come get me.”

“Your daughter? She’d have to be, what, ten years old?”

“Smooth, smooth, smooth,” Serena said to him. She lifted her phone and showed him Cat’s photograph. “My adopted daughter. She’s twenty. I’ll wait for her in my car. And don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Whatever you say.”

Breathless, oddly exhilarated, she headed for the door. Jagger called after her.

“Hey, I’m curious.”

Serena stopped. “About what?”

“This woman in the picture. If she died two years ago, why are you asking about her now? Does this have something to do with Hink? That guy with all the cash?”

“No, it’s not part of that case,” she replied, the vodka loosening her tongue. “It’s something else. All the evidence from back then says that Nikki Candis killed herself, but there’s something that bothers me.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“My gut,” Serena replied. “My gut says that she was murdered.”

Stride paced.

With the cottage lights off, he went back and forth from the front door to the back door in darkness. Every few minutes, he walked out into the crisp, clear night, listening to the thunder of the lake on the other side of the dunes. Then he went back inside. He’d already called Serena half a dozen times and gotten her voice mail. He’d texted, but his messages went undelivered.

She was off the grid. She didn’t want him to find her.

Restlessly, he wandered into the spare bedroom where Serena kept her clothes. He knew it was a practical thing. She often got called in overnight. But he hated that she’d moved her clothes out, that when he opened his closet door, it no longer smelled like her perfume. She dressed and undressed here, where he didn’t see her naked, and he missed the sight of her body. He longed to be close to her again, but this was all his fault. He’d been letting her creep away for months.

In her bedroom, Stride opened the top drawer of her dresser. Underneath her sweaters, he found the photograph she kept there. He picked up the picture and used the flashlight on his phone to illuminate it. The photograph was of Samantha and Serena when Serena was about fourteen years old, already stunning in her youth. The two of them wore matching pantsuits, holding hands, their heads leaning together, black hair against blond hair. Samantha was beautiful, too; he could see the amazing genes of mother and daughter. This picture had been taken before the worst of Samantha’s problems, but if you knew what was coming, you could see the danger in her eyes. The selfish, self-centered, narcissistic need to be the center of the party. The willingness to sacrifice everyone else to get what she wanted.

There weren’t many people in his life that Stride hated, but he hated Samantha. He’d never met her, and yet he hated her. He was furious over the things she’d done to her child, the physical and emotional scars that Serena carried to this day. Wherever Serena was, Samantha was with her. Her mother was dead, but she was never far away.

He swore out loud. He couldn’t pretend or fool himself anymore. He and Serena were at a breaking point, and he needed to do something. He didn’t care if she wanted space. He wasn’t going to accept being without her. He marched to the back door of the cottage, grabbed his leather jacket, and went outside. There were places he could check around the city. The park at the end of the Point. Brighton Beach. Enger Tower. And the bar in West Duluth. That was the first place to look. He knew how Serena’s mind worked, how it went in ever-decreasing circles as she homed in on the truth. If that bar was where she’d slipped, she’d go back there to slip again.

He was almost to the door of the Expedition when his phone rang. It was Cat.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“Sorry to call so late,” she told him, “but I figured you’d be up.”

“I was.”

“Are you out looking for Serena?”

“I was on my way.”

“Well, don’t bother. She texted me. My roommate’s driving me down there to pick her up. I’ll take her home.”

“Where is she?”

“The bar on Grand.”

He closed his eyes. “Damn it.”

“She drank a lot, but she sounded okay.”

“Good.”

There was a long stretch of silence on the phone.

“You get that she doesn’t want to look weak in front of you, right?” Cat asked. “That’s why she called me, not you.”

“Yes, I get that.”

“Well, try not to be stupid when she comes home.”

He laughed without any humor. “Yeah.”

Cat hung up.

Stride felt a heaviness in his chest, but it didn’t feel like stress on his heart. He walked to the end of the driveway and out to Minnesota Avenue, where he stood in the middle of the empty street. Around him, the houses on the lake and bay sides were dark. A streetlight cast his long shadow onto the pavement like a giant. Tendrils of mist made a kind of fog, obscuring his vision.

Then his phone rang again, surprising him. The number was one he didn’t recognize.

“This is Stride,” he said as he answered.

After a staticky pause, a muffled voice spoke. “You’re a cop, right? I’ve seen you on TV.”

“That’s right. Who is this?”

More static. More silence.

“I don’t want to give my name,” the man replied finally. “Are you still looking for that missing woman?”

“Yes, we’re still looking for Chelsey Webster,” Stride said. “What do you know about her kidnapping?”

“I don’t know anything. But I know where you should look for her.”

“Where?”

“The woods near Island Lake,” the man told him.

“That’s a big area. Can you narrow it down?”

“No.”

“Why do you think Chelsey is there?”

“Ask her husband,” the voice said. “He was in those woods last weekend.”

“How do you know that?”

“Some guy with a tow truck told me. He said he fixed a flat for Gavin Webster up in those woods. That’s a big coincidence, don’t you think? Him being up there in the middle of nowhere right before his wife goes missing? If you ask me, he was scouting where to hide her body.”