Page 79 of Dear Wife

I nod. And then say, “Just one.”

“One box?”

“One bullet.”

Clyde’s eyes go big and wide, and he looks at me like I’m crazy. “You know those magazines hold fifteen rounds each, right?”

I smile at that, resist telling him that I know how to work the gun. “I only need one. A hollow tip.” The kind of bullet that will tear a man in two.

With a shrug, he pulls a box of nine-millimeter bullets from the van and hands one to me. “On the house,” he says, and I drop it in my pocket.

The thing is, after all those years of ridicule at the shooting range, I learned a few things. I learned that the Sig has a much smoother trigger than the .357 you made me practice on, and the compact model fits much better in my hand and the pocket of my bag. That if I focus on the target, not the din of the other shooters at the range or the feel of your hot breath on my neck, I have almost-perfect aim. That my hands don’t shake and my eyes don’t blink, not unless I want them to.

Do you get what I’m telling you?

I know how to shoot, Marcus.

You taught me.

BETH

I’m back in room 313 at the Atlanta Motel, listening to the drone of the police scanner when the phone rings. The sound is sharp, an old-school ring that practically levitates the ancient beige rotary phone on the nightstand. I lean across the bed and pick up the receiver, keeping one eye on the door. “Hello?”

“Yo, this is Terry, down at the front desk. The maroon Buick with Arkansas plates in the lot. Is that your ride?”

I scoot off the bed and scoop up the phone with two fingers, stretching the cord as far as it will go toward the window. The curtains are pulled wide, ugly paisley polyester shiny with age, but the sheers are still tucked tight. I can see out, but as long as I don’t turn on the lights, the only thing anybody outside can see is shadows. The Regal is exactly where I left it, squeezed between two sedans at the edge of the lot.

“Yes. Why?”

“’Cause somebody just busted in the window.”

It’s a trap, your voice whispers in my other ear, and I flinch. I don’t want to hear it, hate that it’s your voice in my head, especially because you’re right.

This is definitely a trap.

“Thanks,” I say into the phone, then drop the phone on the cradle.

I move to the dresser, where the guns lie side by side. The first gun I tuck into the front of my jeans. The barrel is not long, but it’s too obvious, and the metal digs into my hip bone. I slide it around until I find a semicomfortable spot, at the small of my back, and then pull my T-shirt over to conceal it. The other I drop into the pocket of my crossbody bag, which I strap across a shoulder. It hangs heavy and deadly at my hip.

“Never point a weapon at another person,” you once told me, “not unless you’re prepared to pull the trigger.”

I’ve thought about this a lot, Marcus, and I am not you. Anger wouldn’t make me shove my gun in another person’s mouth any more than it would drive me to wrap my hands around another person’s neck and squeeze until the bones break. I can’t so casually take another human’s life, but these past ten months of planning have been anything but casual. This is do-or-die time, you or me. I am more than prepared to pull the trigger.

“Okay,” I tell myself, stepping to the door. “Okay.”

Outside, the catwalk is quiet, nothing but a long, empty walkway littered with cigarette butts and trash. I peer over the railing onto the lot, and I see what I missed through the sheers—glass, glittering like a million diamonds tossed across the asphalt. I study the cars, a dozen at best, looking for one that’s out of place. A generic rental, or your unmarked sedan. Not that you would be reckless enough to park where I could see, but still. I look for it, and then I study the parked cars, searching for movement inside. A pedestrian wanders by on the sidewalk beyond, but otherwise the lot is still.

I move to the stairwell, leaning my head around the bend, half expecting you to jump out and shoutboo. But you don’t, and the stairwell is empty. I hold my breath and rush down it, hugging the railing. The bums use the corners as a toilet, and no amount of soapy water can wash away the stink.

At the bottom, I ease across the pavement to my car, glass crunching underneath my sneakers. The heat out here is oppressive, the sun beating down on black asphalt, hot, humid air thick with exhaust from the highway on the other side of the building. Even today, a Saturday, traffic is a constant roar.

I arrive at the Buick, and there’s a hole where the driver’s window used to be. I lean my face into it, and there it is: further proof you’re here. It sits in the middle of the cracked dash, a bright yellow Hot Wheels car. The same toy I held across the aisle at a McDonald’s all those years ago. The one I gave you for your nephew. It sits atop a pink Post-it, the edges wilting in the heat. I reach inside and snatch it from the dash, my heart free-falling at the words slashed across it in dark blue ink.

Dear wife, I found you.

I drop the note and whirl around, my breath coming in raspy gulps, my gaze searching out all the places in the lot you could be hiding. By now I’ve walked this lot a dozen times, and I know where they are. The shadowy openings of the two stairwells, the dark corners by the shrubs, that narrow slit between the dumpsters and the wall. If you’re here, which you are, you’re well hidden. Watching. Waiting.

A door opens at the far end of the building, and I turn toward the sound. Terry, poking her head out of the office. “Want me to call somebody?” she yells.

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