“There’s no comparison,” Carey said. “One night I turned to a man I knew and trusted because I needed comfort. You open the yellow pages and pick a number. And you say it’s just abusiness transaction. That’s beyond sleazy.
“Can you at least tell me you used protection?” she asked. “That you didn’t put me at risk? That you wouldn’t put your daughter at risk if she needed a transfusion or a kidney?”
“No,” he said with a smug look. “I didn’t. I wanted my money’s worth.”
Carey slapped him across the face as hard as she could. She’d never struck another human being in her life.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, glaring at him. “Get out. Get out of this house. Get out of my life. Just go!” she shouted, pointing toward the door.
“It’s my house too.”
“The hell it is. And if you think for one minute you’re getting anything out of this divorce, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Yeah,” David sneered. “It’s all for you.”
“For me and for Lucy.”
“You can’t keep me from seeing my daughter,” he said.
“You don’t think so? A Family Court judge is not going to be impressed with your hobbies, David.”
“I have been a very good father to Lucy,” he said, his voice trembling, tears coming to his eyes. “Whatever I have or haven’t been to you, Carey, you can’t say I don’t love my daughter, or that she doesn’t love me.”
Carey closed her eyes and sighed. “No, I can’t say that.”
“You can’t possibly believe I would ever do anything to hurt Lucy in any way. You can’t just cut me out of her life.”
“No,” Carey said with resignation. “I won’t do that.”
She didn’t really know what she would or wouldn’t do. Thinking about David’s having been with prostitutes made her want to never let him touch Lucy as long as he lived. Her misgivings about the twenty-five thousand dollars made her want him to be out of both of their lives forever. But now was not the time to say any of that.
In all the years she had known him, she had never known David to be violent in any way. But she didn’t know this man in front of her. He wasn’t the man she had married. He wasn’t even the man she thought she had been living with.
She thought of Kovac. Despite what she had told him, he was probably standing in the shrubbery, ready to smash the window in if he so much as imagined anything going wrong.
“I can be there before you hang up the phone.”
She thought of the two officers in the squad car out front.
Lucy was her ace. David wouldn’t do anything to her here and now, because he couldn’t get away and because he would never see his daughter again if he went to prison. Lucy’s guardians were Kate and John Quinn, a victim advocate and one of the country’s leading experts on the criminal mind. They would never allow David to be a part of Lucy’s life again.
And that knowledge only gave credence to the notion of her husband’s having paid someone else to do the dirty work for him.
“I guess I loved you once,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how we got here.”
“Please go now, David,” Carey said, surprised by how much what he had just said hurt her. “I guess I loved you once…”
“I could just stay in the guest room,” he said. “I don’t want Lucy to wake up and have me just be gone.”
“I’ll tell her you had to go away on business. I can’t have you here, David. I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t trust me not to do what?” he asked, his anger rising again. “That’s Kovac telling you he thinks I paid someone to have you attacked. How could you possibly believe that, Carey? You know me better than that!”
Carey stared at him. “I don’t know you at all. I don’t know who you are. The man I married would never have done any of the things you’ve done. I have no idea who you are.”
“So that’s what you think of the man I am now?” he asked aggressively. “That I would pay someone to kill you? That I might kill you in your sleep myself? Jesus Christ, Carey.”
“You have to go now, David,” she said. “I can’t have you here. I don’t want you here. Don’t make me call the officers in from their car to remove you. It’s not like you don’t have someplace else to go.”
“You are un-fucking-believable!” he shouted.
“Please keep your voice down. Your daughter is asleep upstairs.”
Muttering curses under his breath, David grabbed the external hard drive from his computer and stormed out of the room and up the stairs.
Carey followed him, afraid she had pushed him too far. Her heart in her throat as David approached Lucy’s bedroom, she was struck by a fear that David might try to take Lucy with him. But when he stopped at the door to the room, it was only to look in on their sleeping child.
He was red in the face, fighting tears, breathing hard as he turned away and stalked down the hall into the bedroom they had shared. He jerked a suitcase out of his closet, tossed it on the bed, and began throwing clothes at it.
Ten minutes later he was gone.
Carey stood at the kitchen door to the garage and listened as his car started and backed out. She hadn’t known how she would feel after the big scene. She hadn’t known if she would cry or be angry or feel sick. She didn’t feel anything. She was numb. She had spent all her emotions confronting him.
Going back to the den, she walked back and forth across the room, physically holding herself together. She needed to call Kovac. She had told him not to come, but he was almost certainly there, if not in the front yard, then sitting in his car down the street. It touched her that he was concerned about her. She felt less alone.
Being a cop, Kovac was unshockable. Carey couldn’t even picture herself telling anyone else what David had been up to all this time. Not even her best friend. She felt stupid and embarrassed talking about it. Kovac hadn’t batted an eye. He had dealt with far worse than a cheating spouse.
Sitting down in David’s desk chair, she used her cell phone to call him. She had put his number on speed dial. He answered before the first ring finished.
“Kovac.”
“It’s Carey. I’m all right. David is gone.”
“You don’t sound all right.”
“I’m very tired,” she said, appalled at how weak her voice sounded.
“Do you want to talk about it? Do you want me to come over? I’m not that far away.”
“You’re in my front yard, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. You can tell me what to do,” he said. “But I’ll do whatever I want.”
She managed to smile a little at that-her own words tossed back at her. “Touché,” she said. “I really just want to go to bed. But thank you for offering, Sam.”
“I’m here to protect and serve.”
“I know.”
An awkward silence hung between them for a moment. Carey had the feeling he wanted to say something more, but finally he just said, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Carey turned off her phone and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans, and sighed, hoping morning would come soon.
33
KOVAC FLICKED ON the dash strobe as he drove through the streets, trying to catch up to David Moore. He was betting Moore would go straight to the apartment he had been paying for. Even money said Ginnie Bird lived there.
He caught a look at the big Mercedes sedan sitting at the next stoplight and killed the strobe.
Moore went through the intersection and turned onto the ramp to the freeway. Kovac followed him, then stepped on the gas and blew past him, two lanes over. Moore didn’t know his car and wouldn’t be looking for him anyway. His head would still be in the scene that had just played out between himself and his wife, and on what he was going to do next.
Kovac exited the freeway and drove straight to the apartment building. It was a nice place in a pricey neighborhood. Fairly new building, landscaping, a gated underground garage. No doorman, though, no concierge.