You're Next

NOW
Chapter 15

Mike stood before the closet, finally stripping off that button-up shirt. One-thirty A.M., and he’d only just finished installing a second heavy-duty lock on Kat’s window. Despite his prompting, Kat didn’t want to sleep in their bedroom, and he could tell by the set of Annabel’s mouth that she found his request a bit over the top as well. He wasn’t so sure about an evidence-free home break-in anymore himself. But still, additional lock aside, he got a prickling beneath his skin when he contemplated the view of the dark backyard through Kat’s window. He could have pressed the point and made Kat move, but he didn’t want to give in to his fear that way. Or force them to give in to it.

He folded his dress pants, worked at the beer stain with a thumbnail, then gave up. Neatly folded clothes stared back from the crammed shelves. All those shirts. Such a long way from the communal dresser of his childhood. He regarded the closet with something like survivor’s guilt.

Annabel sat on the bed behind him, kicked off her high heels with a groan, and rubbed her feet. ‘I’m just saying,’ she remarked, picking up the thread of the discussion they’d interrupted a half hour ago, ‘They had an agenda, those detectives. When she was on the phone back there – Elzey – I didn’t like her expression. How animated she was. And the way they came back out swinging at you.’

Down to his boxers, he turned. ‘Something was off with those cops. No question. They’re not gonna help us. We need to figure out how to protect ourselves.’ He paused, wet his lips. ‘Maybe I should call him.’

‘Him? Him him?’ She leaned back on her elbows, shook her head vehemently. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Uh-uh. He scares me.’

‘He would know what to do.’

‘Or how to escalate things. Besides, you haven’t talked to Shepherd in years.’

Except for the Couch Mother, Annabel was the only one who ever referred to Shep by his full name. Mike used to think it stemmed from her discomfort with Mike’s past, not wanting to use the abbreviated name from the stories. But he’d figured out it was more of a maternal nod to the given name, to the boy – a mother’s sympathy for that thin-necked kid who didn’t jump when someone dropped a lunch tray six inches from his nose.

‘And the way you left things,’ she continued. ‘What makes you think he’d be there?’

‘Shep would be there,’ Mike said firmly.

‘We have other friends. Terrance next door. Barry and Kay-’

‘What’s Barry gonna do, portfolio-manage them into submission? This isn’t the kind of problem you call people like our friends for.’

‘Then why don’t you talk to that private investigator, Hank? I mean, isn’t that what a PI’s supposed to do? Find out information on people? Look – just think about it. I don’t think we want to release the bull into the china shop. Yet.’

‘Hank’s sick. I told you.’

‘Hank never struck me as big on pity. You don’t think it might help him to have something to do?’ She pulled free a hairpin, shook out her mane. ‘I’ll go in to school tomorrow with Kat and update the contact and pickup lists, make sure they keep a close eye on her, all that.’

‘And talk to her-’

‘Of course. We’ve had the stranger-danger talk a million times, but I’ll go over it again. Now, come here. Unzip me.’

She held up her hair, exposing the light down of her nape. He drew the zipper south, admiring the slash of flesh, and she shrugged out of the dress and draped it over the upholstered chair in the corner. They took the duvet off together as they had every night for years – fold, step, fold, step – a marital square dance. And then she went into the bathroom and emerged with her toothbrush poking out of her mouth and his sporting a bead of paste. Leaning over to tug off his socks, he paused, and she popped his toothbrush into his mouth before returning to the bathroom, wearing a clown mouth of foam. The everyday physics of intimacy.

Brushing his teeth, he walked down the hall to Kat’s room. She was out cold, the curtain drawn, the locks secure.

He finished up in the bathroom, slid into bed next to Annabel, turned up the monitor, and exhaled. She had leaned his award plaque against the wall by the closet, no doubt unsure what to do with the thing. His name, etched in the bluish mirror beneath the seal of California. When he turned back, Annabel was studying him.

He said, ‘What an asshole I was standing up there accepting that award.’

‘And what an asshole I was sitting there playing the dutiful wife, clapping along.’ She rolled over, her face soft, and rested a hand on his cheek. ‘It’s less lonely being assholes together.’

He caught her wrist, lifted her arm gently so he could see the broken capillaries from when he’d grabbed her in the parking lot. ‘Did I do that?’

‘Brute.’ She twisted lazily in his grasp so the back of her wrist grazed his lips. ‘All protective like that, leaving your handprints on me. It was such a turnoff.’ Beneath the covers her foot found his calf.

Her touch brought a jolt of gratitude – even after stumbling through the past few days, he still got to spend the night in this bed with this woman.

He kissed the inner curve of her arm, delicately, where it was red. Her mouth found his, and they pushed up a little, propped on elbows, their lips joined. He shifted on top of her, stomach to stomach, both of them moving slowly, their exhaustion lending every touch and movement a dreamlike aspect. He moved into her, but she clenched with her arms and legs, held him still. Crossing her wrists behind his neck, her head hoisted a few inches off the mattress, she fixed her gaze on him and tilted her hips slowly, slowly, and he slid deeper until he stopped. She held him still again, perfectly still. He was up on his knees and hands, bearing his weight and most of hers, his arms trembling slightly.

‘I want you to look at me,’ she said. ‘All the way through.’

And he did.

After, she lay as she always did, on her back, one arm thrown across her sweaty bangs, her stomach pale in the alarm clock’s glow. He loved the faint ridge of scar tissue from her C-section, how it traced the pan of her hips, dividing erotic from merely sexy, a warrior’s mark of a body well used.

She held up her hand, the dull diamond of her engagement ring managing a sparkle. The new one had disappeared into the jewelry box as soon as they’d gotten home. ‘We’ve been married a decade, Wingate.’ Her teeth pinched a bite of swollen lip. ‘It doesn’t feel like ten years in any of the bad ways. But it feels like it in all the good ways.’

She curled into him, slinging a leg across his stomach, and he stroked her back, her skin still fever-hot. He pressed his lips to her damp forehead and held her until she was asleep.

Lying on his back, cooling beneath the overhead fan, he couldn’t linger in the aftermath. His mind kept returning to the confrontation at the Braemar Country Club, his shame at losing control that way, how his temper had ignited, how it had been right there like an old friend, like something atavistic. And the cold-sweat horror of Dodge’s mouth shaping a single word: Soon.

He got up, padded down the hall, and carried Kat, limp and dead-heavy in his arms, back to their bed. He tucked her in in his place and paused, surveying mother and daughter in idyllic calm. Something glinted over by the closet. His award.

He crossed and turned the plaque around so it faced the wall.

Then he killed the baby monitor, walked down to Kat’s room, and took up his post on the glider in the corner.

Soon, Dodge had promised.

Soon.