“You weren’t alone.”
“I pushed you, though,” she said, her voice small. “I wanted it more. I always wanted it more. I know you’d love to have a child. But I was the one who pushed. After we tried the shots, the hormones, you were ready to adopt. But I wanted to have one of my own. So I kept pushing, and we got deeper into debt, and you and I, we lost track of each other.”
“Stop,” he said. “None of that matters now.”
She looked over at him, held the gaze for a long time. Finally she said, “You would have been a great father.”
Something in him broke, some tenuous, fragile connection deep in his chest, it just gave. He felt a rush of emotions, too many and mixed to name. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He knew what she was saying. What it cost her, cost them both.
“It’s time, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.” He flipped on the turn signal, pulled into the lot of a Jewel, and parked.
“The police are going to be tough on us.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “We don’t have much of a story to tell, not with a cop dead.”
“I know,” he said. “But every time we try to get out of this, we only make it worse.”
“Should we tell them about the deal we made with Malachi?”
“We should tell them everything. Every detail.”
“We’ll go to jail.”
“Probably,” he said.
She nodded. Reached over and put a hand on his thigh. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said, and for the first time since this whole thing started, since the moment, Christ, it seemed like years ago, when they’d looked at each other across the pile of money and each realized the other wanted to take it, for the first time since then he felt right. No more running. No more playing angles or choosing convenient truths. No more pretending to be criminals. He leaned across the parking brake, and she met him halfway, the kiss passionate, her hand snaking around his neck to pull him close. The rain pattered on the roof, less urgently than before, and it seemed safe somehow, a childhood sound, a rainy day home from school.
When they finally broke, he stayed near, their eyes inches apart and staring. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “Me too.” Then he took his phone from his pocket and dialed.
“THIS IS STUPID, MAN.” His partner rubbed his chin, the stubble grating. “The cops could be here any minute.”
“Why? If Tom and Anna are talking to them, why would they send someone to the house?” Jack sniffed hard, popped his knuckles. “No one’s coming.”
“Even if you’re right, you don’t really think the money is here, do you?” Marshall stood in front of the door. “They probably turned it in already. And if they’re running, it’s going with them.”
“Only one way to be sure.”
“Look-”
“Move.” Jack stared hard. With a sigh, Marshall stepped aside.
He didn’t bother with picks this time. Just wound up and booted the door at the handle. The wood cracked and snapped. A second kick, and the thing flew open, the lock mounting tearing out of the frame, splinters flying. He was through before the door banged against the opposite wall.
Beep.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Marshall said. “The alarm.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. He stepped over to the control box and punched a six-digit string. The beeping died.
“How-”
“I watched Anna.”
“You said she hit the panic code.”
“Panic code is one digit higher than the regular code. Alarm companies do it so people remember when they’ve got a gun pointed at their head.” He made a slow turn, surveying the space. “All right. Tear this place apart.”
“Listen to me, this is a waste of time-”
“Would you just fucking do it?” Jack grabbed the back of a knockoff Eames chair and yanked the thing over. It flipped and slammed loud. His head hurt, and inside his chest he could feel something crackling like a downed power wire.
His partner stared. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was going to make a play. But Marshall shook his head, turned, and went down the hall to the kitchen, started looking through cabinets.
Good enough. Jack turned back to the room. There was a lock-back knife sitting on the coffee table. He opened it, saw that the blade was crusted with dried blood. Jack smiled, then dug the point into a sofa cushion and yanked, feeling the tearing shiver up his arm, the rich physical pleasure of it. He yanked out a handful of foam, then tossed the cushion and eviscerated the next. Slashed at the back, then reached for the bottom and flipped the sofa up on its ass.
He went to the bookcase and began shoving novels to the ground by the armload. Opened the cabinets below and scattered DVDs and board games. Went to the entertainment center, took hold of the TV, a big Zenith, forty inches easy, and yanked it forward. The thing hung for a moment on edge, wavering like a beast on the lip of a cliff, and then it plummeted. The picture tube exploded with a high-pitched pop, and glass crunched against the hardwood. He could feel his heart starting to go, his breath coming a little faster. It felt good.
In the bedroom he slashed the mattress in a dozen places, tore the pillows to clouds of wobbling feathers. Yanked the drawers from the dresser and upended them, then tossed them on the mauled bed, leaving the dresser to gape. He tore clothes from the rack in the closet, striped yuppie shirts and fancy sweaters. Ripped down a shoe rack, a dozen varieties of what looked like the same black heel clattering. Jerked the medicine cabinet off the bathroom wall. Ripped down the shower curtain. Used the lid of the toilet to shatter the tank, porcelain ringing loud, water pouring out to drench his pant legs, drown his shoes. A migraine had been formingbehind his eyes, but the destruction seemed to keep it at a distance.
The spare room was stacked with banker boxes, no furniture, like they’d had other plans for the room that never came together. One by one Jack tossed the lids and shook the contents out, bills and letters and tax returns flipping and fluttering like crazed birds. Yanked a bookcase off the wall. Found a box of photos and upended them, a dozen years of weddings and Christmases and quiet Sunday mornings spilling across the ruin of the den. He unzipped his pants and pissed all over them. Fuck Anna and Tom Reed. Fuck them eternal.
From the doorway he heard Marshall speak. “Unless that thing in your hand is a magic wand, I don’t think it’s going to help us.”
Jack shook himself dry, zipped up. His breath coming hard, steady and strong, even as his head throbbed. He wanted to spit in the eye of God. “Nothing in the kitchen?”
“There’s nothing anywhere, man. The money’s not here.” Marshall paused. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Jack didn’t answer. He stepped into the hallway, looked around. The floors of every room were covered with broken glass and piled fabric, spills of paper and upended furniture.
“Let’s go.” Marshall spoke calm, steady.
“One more thing,” Jack said.
The pillar candle in the bedroom would do. He walked back to the kitchen, where pans and broken dishes lay strewn among multigrain waffles and Tupperware and butcher packages of steak. Every kitchen in America had a junk drawer. He found where Marshall had dumped it, rubber bands and batteries and take-outmenus, and kicked through to find a pack of matches. Lit the candle and set it on the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?”
It made sense. For the Reeds, this was the way the whole thing had started. There was a nice sense of circularity. Jack gripped the edges of the big Viking range and yanked. The base squealed against the tiles, and a metal flex-hose stretched out to the wall. He hoisted himself up onto the counter, maneuvered a foot around, then stomped the point where the hose met the stove. Again and again, the coupling bending, then, one more good hit, snapping free, the sweet fart stink of gas rising fast.