He looks at me.Then he looks back through the doorway at Charles.Then back at me.
“Get dressed,” he says.“Then we’ll figure it out.”
He walks downstairs.I hear his boots on the kitchen floor.The coffeepot being lifted.A mug pulled from the cabinet—the LIVE LAUGH LOVE mug, probably, because the universe has a sick sense of humor.
I stand in the hallway, dripping, holding a towel around a body that suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else.
He hasn’t called the police.
He hasn’t left.
I don’t know what that means yet.
But I know it means something.
25
Luke
Ipour two coffees.Not because I’m calm.Because my hands need something to do.I open three cabinets before I find the mugs.Nothing’s where it used to be.Nothing’s where Emily put it.
Except that mug, I’d know it anywhere.Live, Laugh, Love.What a joke.
I take it and a plain white mug and fill them.I don’t sit down.I stand at the counter and drink and think about the man upstairs.
Padded leather cuffs.The kind you don’t find at a hardware store.Professional grade.She bought them somewhere specific, somewhere that knew what they were for, and she bought the good ones—I could tell by the tension, the way they held.She thought about that.She thought about a lot of things.The water.The ibuprofen.The protein bars.
She’s not torturing him.She’s keeping him.
There’s a difference.I shouldn’t know that, but I do.
I think about Ryan McCall on the locker room floor.Naked.Broken ribs.Breathing in sips.I think about the way I stood over him and felt nothing except the satisfaction of a job done well.I think about the father-in-law who hired me—the soft voice on the phone, the careful language, the way he saidI just want it handledlike he was ordering landscaping.
Everyone has a line.They just draw it in different places.
I hear her upstairs.Footsteps in the bedroom.A drawer opening and closing.She’s getting dressed, which means she’s composing herself, which means when she comes down those stairs she’ll have a new version ready.A better lie.A tighter pitch.That’s what she does—I’ve watched her do it on every phone call, every interaction, every time something catches her off guard.She recalibrates.Adjusts.Sells.
I’m not buying.But I still want to hear what she’s selling.
The stairs creak.She appears in the kitchen doorway wearing jeans and a t-shirt, hair still wet, no makeup.She looks younger without the armor.Smaller.She sees the coffee and something crosses her face—not gratitude, not relief.Confusion.Like she can’t figure out why a man who just found a body in her bedroom is making her coffee instead of making a phone call.
She picks up the mug.Studies it.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” she says.
I take a sip.Set the mug down.Shrug.“I haven’t figured out what this is yet.”
It’s a lie and it lands like one.It wasn’t the response she was expecting.She was expecting anger, or conditions, or an ultimatum.Something she could push against or negotiate around.Instead she got patience, and patience makes Marin nervous.I can see it—the way her fingers tighten around the mug, the way she shifts her weight like she’s recalculating her footing.
“What do you want to know?”she says.
“How long?”
“A few days.”
“Before that?”
She hesitates.First time I’ve seen her hesitate about anything.
