His neck creaked as he looked back. Something compelled him. It felt as if he were in a long tunnel, and the only way out was to look at Brienne Cross.
Brienne lay in an infinity pool. Everything was completely still around her. Her face rose partway out of the water, long hair like golden seaweed spread out in a fan. She wore a skimpy blue bikini top. Her breasts rose up, droplets of water on satin flesh, surrounded by a deep, saturated blue. As if she had been a sculpture partially poured into a mold, or had been formed by an upheaval in smooth, pale rock. Her eyes wide open and startled, her lashes beaded with water. Her lips—
Her lips were parted. He recognized her expression. Surprise. His fingers closed around the crucifix on the chain around his neck. The silver filigree felt warm—alive to his touch.
He went back to that moment. Suspended on a breath Brienne Cross never got to finish, the moment she looked up into his eyes.
He saw those eyes, blue orbs filled with light. He saw them change from surprise to trust.
She had accepted that he knew what was best. She knew she was in good hands, even as he extinguished the light in her eyes and stopped her heart.
His heart wrenched inside him, as if it had been torn loose of its moorings. The feeling went away almost immediately. It was not physical pain. It was emotional. He could not turn away. He could not move. All he could do was stare at the poster.
He had shared something with her nobody else would. In that moment, he had known her better than anyone could have ever hoped to. He had held her with his eyes, he had told her without words it was all right, and she had submitted.
It was a communion they shared.
He realized he had never known a more emotional moment, or conversely, a moment so completely devoid of worldly passion.
He’d been raised Catholic. He didn’t give a damn about that mumbo jumbo, the rosary, the confession, the standing up and kneeling down and repeating phrases over and over—as if those phrases would somehow take, somehow transform. They were just words sent into a void. That was what he’d always thought.
But now he knew that religion was real, and that transformation was possible.
All in a rush, he knew the truth. The world fell away, and it was just the two of them. There was no Cindi, there was no Kristal, just the two of them, Brienne Cross and himself, inextricably bound together.
He had never questioned a mission. In fact, he tried to know as little about the people he was charged to kill as possible.
But this was different.
Landry had carried out his mission. He had killed Brienne Cross.
Now he needed to know why.
9
Maddy Akers said to Jolie, “Did you know Kathy Westbrook had an eight-year-old son?”
Jolie and Maddy were in the new interview room at the Palm County Sheriff’s substation in Meridian Beach. So new you could smell the white paint on the walls. They sat catty-corner at the small table pushed up against the wall, close enough to touch.
“Kathy’s son,” Maddy continued. “That’s what bothered him the most. He couldn’t stand the thought of that little boy out there somewhere without his mother. You know what happened?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Jim was primary on the hostage negotiation; he had an FBI agent for his secondary. Jim spent hours talking to Luke Perdue.”
Jolie knew the story well. A few hours into the hostage situation, Chief Akers had persuaded Luke Perdue to throw out his gun. Luke must have seen one of the snipers and panicked. Standing in the doorway, he’d held Kathy Westbrook in the crook of his arm to use her as a human shield.
Both snipers fired simultaneously. Luke Perdue took a round dead center in the shallow triangle of eyes and nose. That bullet came from the sniper on top of Stearing Automotive. The other sniper, the one on the railroad car, missed his shot. His bullet took a downward trajectory through Perdue’s jaw and obliterated Kathy Westbrook’s frontal lobe.
“Jim yelled for them to hold their fire, but they didn’t listen. Poor woman—he said she was there in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Starliner Motel was a regular stop on Kathy Westbrook’s medical sales route. She was headed to her room when Luke Perdue popped up out of nowhere, put a gun to her head, and forced her inside.
Nobody knew why he did it.
“You don’t know what Jim went through the last month. He blamed himself for that woman’s death. Even though he knew he did everything right. But late at night, you know? It creeps back in. He shot himself last night, but he was dead before that. He couldn’t live with what happened.”
“You say he shot himself?”
“That was a mistake. What I meant to say was someone shot him.”
“Oh. I guess I misheard. Still. I can see why he might do that. Kill himself. You yourself said how depressed he was. If he did kill himself, it would be so unfair. To you, to your children. You have kids, right? They’re both grown?”
She nodded.
“Can you talk for the mic?”
“Okay. Yes, I have two kids.”
“You know what? If my husband killed himself, I know what I’d do.” If? God, you’re such a liar. “I’d make it look like something else, like somebody killed him. I wouldn’t hesitate for one minute. I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d do it for their sake.”
Jolie could see the wheels turning. Cagey. Then Maddy surprised her. “You’re damn right I did it. And I’d do it again.”
Maddy gave her statement.
Once she’d made her decision, Maddy was anxious to explain.
Her husband had called her from the Starliner Motel. He’d told her he was going to kill himself, and she pleaded with him not to. She heard the sound of the gunshot. She raced over, running two red lights to get there.
Maddy told Jolie she’d made up her mind standing in the doorway of room nine. Nobody else was around. Nobody heard the shot. She was alone with her husband of twenty-four years, except it wasn’t her husband lying on the bed anymore.
She thought about her two adult children, what they’d think. She thought about the funeral, law enforcement coming from all over the state—the hero’s funeral for a fallen cop. And yes, she thought about his life insurance policy. She thought about how she’d meet her bills now that her husband was gone.
She sat on the one chair in the room and cried. And then she went to work.
A cop’s wife, Maddy knew all about gunshot residue. Jim Akers had shot himself in the temple—not through the mouth. Already it looked like a homicide. She cleaned up the gunshot residue on his hands with a moist towelette from her purse—the sharp alcohol-and-perfume scent Jolie had smelled in the bathroom wastebasket. Maddy took his gun because he’d shot himself with it. She took his backup gun because she might as well make a clean sweep. She took his phone to be on the safe side.
Maddy stared into the middle distance, her eyes filling with tears. “Now everyone will know.”
Jolie held out a box of tissues. Maddy waved it away, visibly panicked. “I need to call my kids. I need to tell them before they find out some other way.”
“Just a few more questions,” Jolie said soothingly, “and we can wrap this up. You want something to drink?”
Maddy Akers nodded. Her pretty face showed the strain. “Coffee? With some cream?”
Jolie went back to the coffee machine and poured her a cup. She reached for the packets of cream in the jar by the coffeemaker, then thought better of it and pulled out her own stash of Shamrock half-and-half. She felt for Maddy. She understood what Maddy was going through, as few others could.