Liz didn’t blink. “Take this.” She handed him a cup and saucer and sat across the table.
“They tried to serve it this morning, but Channing was gone. Her parents don’t know where she is. She sent a text, though.”
“That was considerate of her.”
“They say that’s not her normal behavior. Sneaking out, yes. Not the texting.”
“Hmm.” Elizabeth sipped from her own coffee. “How odd.”
“Where is she, Liz?”
Elizabeth put the coffee down. “I’ve told you how I feel about you and this girl.”
“She doesn’t exist. I remember. Things are bigger, now. You can’t protect her. You shouldn’t.”
“Are you saying it’s wrong to try?”
“She’s a victim. You’re a cop. Cops don’t have relationships with victims. It’s a rule designed for your own protection.”
Elizabeth looked at her fingers on the china cup. They were long and tapered. The fingers of a pianist, her mother once said. If Elizabeth closed her eyes, though, she’d see them bloody and red and shaking. “I’m not sure about rules, anymore.” She said it softly and left out the rest. That she wasn’t sure about being a cop, either, that maybe-like Crybaby-she’d lost something vital. Why was she doing it if not for the victims? What did it mean if she became one? They were hard questions, but she wasn’t upset. The feelings were more of calm and quiet, a strange, still acceptance that Beckett-for all his abilities-didn’t seem to notice.
“If I take Channing in, I can keep your name out of it. No obstruction charges. Nice and clean.” He reached for her hand, and she watched his fingers on hers. “She can tell the truth, and this can end. The state investigation. The risk of prison. You can have your life back, Liz, but it has to be now. If they find her here…” He let that hang between them, but his eyes were deadly serious.
“I can’t give you what you want,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“And if I force you?”
“I’d say that’s a dangerous road to walk.”
“I’m sorry, Liz. I have to walk it.”
Beckett rose before the last word died. He moved down the short hallway, surprised when she didn’t try to stop him. He opened one door and then another, and at the second stared for a long time at tousled hair and pale skin and tangled sheets. When he returned, he sat in the same chair, his features still. “She’s asleep in your bed.”
“I know.”
“Not even the guest room. Your bed. Your room.”
Elizabeth sipped coffee, placed the cup on its saucer. “I won’t explain because you wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re harboring a material witness and obstructing a state police investigation.”
“I don’t owe the state cops anything.”
“What about the truth?”
“Truth.”
She laughed darkly, and Beckett leaned across the table. “What will the girl say if they find her? That she was wired on the mattress when it happened? That you shot them in the dark?”
Elizabeth looked away, but Beckett wasn’t fooled.
“It won’t work this time, Liz, not with autopsy results, ballistics, spatter analysis. They were shot in different rooms. Most of the bullets went through and through. There are fourteen bullet holes in the floor. You know how that plays.”
“I imagine I do.”
“Say it, then.”
“It plays as if they were on the ground, and no threat at all.”
“So, torture and murder.”
“Charlie-”
“I can’t have you in prison.” Beckett struggled, found the right words. “You’re too… necessary.”
“Thank you for that.” She squeezed his hand and meant it. “I love you for caring.”
“Do you?”
He tightened his grip enough to show the strength in his wide palm and in fingers that stopped an inch from her cuff. Their eyes met in a pregnant moment, and her voice caught like a child’s. “Don’t.”
“Do you trust me or not?”
“Don’t. Please.”
Two words. Very small. He looked at her sleeve, and at the narrow flash of china wrist. Both knew he could lift the sleeve, and that she couldn’t stop him. He was too strong; too ready. He could have his answer and, in its wake, find helplessness and truth and the ruins of their friendship. “What is it with you and these kids?” he asked. “Gideon? The girl? Put a hurt child in front of you and you don’t think straight. You never have.”
His grip was iron, his hand squeezed so tight she had little feeling left in her fingers. “That’s not your business, Charlie.”
“It wasn’t before. Now it is.”
“Let me go.”
“Answer the question.”
“Very well.” She found his eyes and held them, unflinching. “I can’t have children of my own.”
“Liz, Jesus…”
“Not now, not ever. Shall I tell you how I was raped as a child? Or should we discuss all that came after, the complications and the lies and the reasons my father, even now, won’t look at me the same? Is that your business, Charlie? Is the skin on my wrists your business, too?”
“Liz…”
“Is it or isn’t it?”
“No,” he said. “I guess it’s not.”
“Then let go of my hand.”
It was a bad moment that caught like a breath. But he saw her clearly, now. The children she loved. The string of broken relationships and the withdrawn, cool way she often held herself. He squeezed her hand-once and gently-then did as she asked.
“I’ll try to keep them away.” He stood and seemed every inch the clumsy giant. “I’ll do what I can to conceal the fact she’s here.” Elizabeth nodded as if nothing were wrong; but Beckett knew her every look. “Channing’s scores are public record,” he said. “You can’t hide that she’s a shooter. Sooner or later someone will figure it out. Sooner or later they’ll find her.”
“All I need is for it to be later.”
“Why, for God’s sake? I hear what you’re saying, okay? The kids and all. I get it. I see what it means to you. But this is your life.” He spread the same thick fingers, struggling. “Why risk it?”
“Because for Channing it’s not too late.”
“And for you it is?”
“The girl matters more.”
Elizabeth lifted her chin, and Beckett understood, then, the depth of her commitment. It wasn’t a game or delay for its own sake. She would take the heat for Channing. The murders. The torture. She would go down for the girl.
“Jesus, Liz…”
“It’s okay, Charlie. Really.”
He turned away for an instant, and when he turned back he was harder. “I want a better reason.”
“For what?”
“Look, I’ve made mistakes in my life, some really big ones. I don’t care to make another one now, so if there’s a reason you’re doing this-something beyond childhood wounds and raw emotion-”
“What if there is?”
“Then I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
Elizabeth measured his sincerity, then pulled up both sleeves and lifted her arms so he could take it all in: the fierce eyes and conviction, the raw, pink wounds and all they implied. “I would have died without the girl,” she said. “I would have been raped, and I would have been killed. Is that reason enough?” she asked; and Beckett nodded because it was, and because, looking at her face, he knew for a fact that he’d never seen anything so fragile, so determined, or so goddamn, terrible beautiful.
When he was gone, Elizabeth pushed the door shut and watched him all the way to his car. His stride was slow and steady, and he drove away without looking back once.
When she turned, Channing was in the hall. A blanket wrapped her like a package. Her skin was creased from sleep. “I’m ruining your life.”
Elizabeth put her back to the door and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “You don’t have that power, sweetheart.”
“I heard what you said to him.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”