“No,” he said. “And if you want a real answer to that question …” He stopped, as if he were weighing his answer carefully. “You must have fallen next to the far wall, and a table tipped over and covered you. We had no idea you were suffocating until Joe realized you weren’t where he thought you were, and started looking for you. We were right there, and we let you die while we screwed around securing the scene. I was the one who moved the table and found you. I was too late. You were gone. When it came down to a choice, I really didn’t have one.”
There was so much going on in his voice, although he was trying to keep it bland and even. She could imagine how that had felt, to find someone like that—someone you might have been in time to save. Someone whose chance had slipped away while you were only feet away.
“So it’s guilt,” she said. “You did it out of guilt.”
He looked at her and said, “Would it make you feel better if I said yes?”
Obscurely, it did. A little. “Would you do it again?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I wouldn’t even think about it. Not now that I know you. And it wouldn’t be guilt if I made the choice now.”
“No?” She smiled a little, intrigued despite her weariness. “What would it be?”
He avoided that question neatly. “We’re here,” he said. “Home.”
The apartment complex looked shabbier than ever; the wind had blown some trash out of the overflowing bins, and it lay heaped against parked cars like dirty snow. McCallister found a parking space, and Bryn led the way up to her door.
He took her keys and edged her out of the way. “Let me check it first,” he said.
“It’s fine. Mr. French is on guard inside.”
He gave her a slightly baffled look, but eased the door open and hit the light switch. The bulldog inside stood up on the couch, growling, staring at McCallister with murderous beady eyes.
“Mr. French, I presume,” McCallister said. He sounded amused. “Call him off, please.”
Bryn whistled, and Mr. French’s ears perked. He stopped growling and sat down, but he still looked concerned until Bryn pushed past McCallister and came over to pet him. “Good boy,” she said, and scratched him behind the ears. “You just stay on guard against all the bad men.”
“Me included?” McCallister shut the door and locked the dead bolt.
“I have to walk him, you know.”
“Not until I check the other rooms.”
“There’s no need. Mr. French—”
“I’m not doubting his abilities. I’m just double-checking.”
It didn’t take long, really—the kitchen was tiny, the bedroom disorderly and almost as small. Closets held no surprises, and neither did corners or the dust bunnies beneath the bed. McCallister was methodical; she had to give him that: he not only checked every conceivable hiding place, including the bathtub, but made sure every window was firmly secured. She was vaguely worried about what he thought of her housekeeping.
“All clear,” he said. “I’ll take the dog out.”
“He’s my dog.”
“And I don’t want you outside alone,” he said.
“Fine. Come with.” Bryn clipped the leash onto Mr. French’s collar. “It’s a nice night for a walk, right?”
McCallister clearly didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t argue the point. Together, they walked the dog down the stairs and out to the grassy area on the other side of the parking lot. It was the common pet-walking area, and Bryn had brought her poop bags; Mr. French did his business; she cleaned it up. It was all very normal except that she had a solid male shadow who kept watching the shadows as if waiting for an army of ninja assassins to appear.
The only thing that happened was that a rat scrabbled out of the trash container and raced across the parking lot, making Mr. French bark and lunge to the end of his leash. Bryn struggled to hold on to him; he had a lot of muscle packed into his small body.
“Let’s get back in,” McCallister said. His body language was almost as tense as the dog’s, and Bryn finally surrendered and let Mr. French drag her back partway on the rat’s trail before she tugged him toward the apartment stairs. He went willingly enough, confident he’d driven off the invader, and by the time they were back inside, locked in, he stretched out and looked supremely self-satisfied.
McCallister checked the apartment again.
“We should eat something,” he said, coming back to find her still on the couch with the dog.
“I could call out for pizza.”
“No deliveries. It’s not safe.”
“Oh, come on, it’s pizza.”
“And if someone wanted to get to you, and me, it’s easy enough to doctor a pizza. No. We make something here.”
Bryn scratched the bulldog’s ears. “Okay, well, I hope you’re one of those amazing cooks who can make a feast out of two dried cranberries and a lemon, because that’s about all I have.”
McCallister looked at her in complete bafflement, as if she were making some kind of an obscure joke, and then checked the fridge. He stared a moment, then let the door swing closed. He repeated the exercise in the pantry, and pulled out a moldy half loaf of bread, which he threw out, and finally an open package of crackers and a peanut-butter jar.
“You don’t cook,” he said.
“Are you sure you’re not Sherlock Holmes? Because the way you notice subtle clues …”
“I thought everyone was capable of cooking at least a can of soup. How do you survive? Not on pizza.”
“They also deliver spaghetti, and sub sandwiches. And Chinese food.”
McCallister shook his head and sat down across from her with the crackers and peanut butter and a butter knife. He handed her a paper plate, which was the only kind she owned. Mr. French stood up, curiously examining the peanut-butter jar until Bryn shooed him off the couch. He obediently sat down, staring at the two of them, and the peanut-butter jar, from a different angle, and doing his best to convey that he was, in fact, starving.
Bryn ate in silence, casting glances at McCallister from time to time; chewing crackers and sticky peanut butter didn’t make for much conversation. By the end, though, the silence had begun to feel oppressive, and as Bryn swallowed the last of what was clearly a highly inadequate meal, she thought she ought to at least try to be social. “Thanks,” she said. “For, ah, making this.”
He gave her a trace of a smile and took her empty plate into the kitchen, along with the rest of the crackers and peanut butter. While he was in there, he opened a couple of other cabinets, apparently looking for a second course. Which wasn’t there, Bryn almost told him; she’d been out of everything, planning to make a run to the store for at least a few basic things. He must have decided that the saltshaker didn’t have much potential, because he began to walk around the apartment, checking the view out the windows.
“I’ll take the couch,” he said, still not looking directly at her. “It’d be nice if you had an extra pillow, but it’s not required.”
“I’m not that bad. I have an extra pillow. And a blanket.”
“One the dog hasn’t slept on?”
She blushed. “Come on, am I that horrible?”
McCallister glanced in her direction and, for the first time, allowed the look to linger. It was almost … human. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”
“Coming from you, that’s nearly a compliment.” Bryn swallowed hard, suddenly feeling the pressure of tears growing behind her eyes. “I’m not feeling anything but horrible lately. Like an alien in someone else’s skin.”
“I can understand that,” he said. He hadn’t looked away from her, and she felt that spark of warmth take hold between them. “What you’ve been through … But you’re still an attractive woman, Bryn, if you have any doubt of that.”
“That was definitely a compliment.”
He smiled with genuine amusement. “I hoped you’d take it that way. I didn’t only ask you out for a drink to pass on information, you know.”