“You are full of shit.” His pupils are huge. There’s a vein on his forehead I haven’t seen in days, because he’s been so weirdly nice lately. Now, it’s back, and angrier than ever. “How dare you fucking lie to me?”
He looks at me a beat longer, the bottle still in his fist. Then his work phone goes off in the pocket of his pajama pants. The ringtone is the old-fashionedbrrr-brrrhe insists on, like we’re all answering rotary phones in 1956.
Raymond holds up one finger. “Don’t move.”
He pulls the phone out without taking his eyes off me. He looks at the screen. Whatever’s on it makes the vein on his forehead pulse harder.
“What,” he barks into the receiver.
I don’t move.
I hear a man’s voice on the other end, garbled but urgent. Raymond’s eyes flick from me, to the floor, to the window, and back to me again. He pivots toward the bedroom and walks out into the hallway, the vitamin bottle still in his hand.
“When?” he demands. A pause. “When?Who told you that? No. No, you do not do anything until I am there. Do you hear me?Nothing.I am leaving right now.”
His voice gets further down the hall as he moves toward his study. Doors open and close. Drawers. The metallic clang of the forbidden safe in the back of his closet.
I stand where he left me, water still trickling down my back, cold now.
But he doesn’t come back in. A moment later, I hear the front door slam. Just like that, he’s gone.
I count to twenty in my head. Then I count to twenty again. Then I make it to the bathroom and lock the door behind me before I collapse to the floor.
I sit on the frigid tile with my back against the tub and my knees pulled up to my chest. My teeth are rattling like I’m a windup toy that some sadistic little kid keeps cranking to the breaking point. I can’t make it stop.
He didn’t kill me, which is the only good news I have right now, and only because somebody called him about something bigger. This has to be related to what Matvei told me about: Raymond’s secret alliances. The phone rang, and he flipped into Mob Boss Raymond, not Beat My Wife Raymond. Lucky for me, Mob Boss Raymond had to be somewhere else.
But Beat My Wife Raymond will be back. Probably tonight, as soon as he’s done with whoever’s on fire.
I dig the burner out from behind the hatbox. I can’t get my fingers to work right, so I type the message three times because I keep hitting the wrong letters. When it finally comes out clean, I look at it:I need you. Now.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
The dot-dot-dot is instant. I almost cry.
M.S.
Where?
Not here.
Central Park. Greyshot Arch. 20 minutes.
I throw the burner back behind the hatbox and lurch to my feet.
I take a cab to the park because I don’t trust myself to drive. I have the driver let me off at Columbus Circle and walk the rest, because Raymond pulls the credit card statements on the second of every month, and even cabs have to be accounted for. Coffee dates with Dani I can sell. A car ride into Central Park on a Tuesday morning with no destination, I cannot.
Greyshot Arch is in the southwest corner of the park, a low stone passage cut into one of the carriage paths. I went under it once with Dani on a walk last fall. She said it always made her feel like she was in a Henry James novel, and I said that was very on-brand for her.
I see Mat before he sees me.
He’s standing at the mouth of the passage in a long black wool coat with the collar turned up, hands in his pockets, scanning the path. The trees are bare. A film of snow covers the ground, and his breath puffs out white in the cold air. He’s pale and very still, and somehow, he manages to look like he’s been carved out of the park itself.
He spots me and starts walking. So do I. We meet halfway, just inside the mouth of the passage where the air goes cold and damp and the sound of the city gets muffled by stone.
His hands come up to my face before I can speak. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Hey. Look at me.”
I look at him. His blue eyes make me shiver. Under his gaze, I feel like I’ve been pulled out of a freezing river.
