Page 63 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Chapter Forty-Two
Ethan
Turns out, if it’s dark enough, a cell phone flashlight can be surprisingly bright. Which was a good thing because the corridor stretched farther than Ethan had first realized. And they’d been in there longer than he’d hoped. And the situation was more perilous than he’d feared as he glanced over his shoulder at Maggie.
She had the back of his shirt in a death grip, but at least her breath was slow and steady. “You doing okay back there?”
“Yes. Why?” Her fingers twisted in his shirt and pressed into the small of his back.
“No reason.” He didn’t want her thinking about how long they’d been in that narrow space or that there wasn’t an obvious way out.
“That’s not yourno reasonvoice,” she shot back, which... good. He’d rather have her picking a fight than starting to panic.
“I know you don’t like the dark. Or tight spaces, that’s all.”
“Who said I was afraid of the dark and tight spaces?” She sounded like a woman who wasvery muchafraid of the dark and tight spaces but wasn’t about to admit it.
“Nothing. No one. If you see a crack of light or something, let’s check it out. I’ll walk you back to the room and—”
“Who said?” Now she just sounded annoyed.
“You did,” he admitted.
“When?”
Oh no.Ethan had spent years avoiding this conversation, but he’d stumbled right into it. He felt a tug on his shirt, and it took him a moment to realize it was because she’d stopped. She’d stopped but she hadn’t let go.
“If this is about Tucson—” she started.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Tucson?”
“Oh.” She huffed. “We arenottalking about Tucson.”
Ethan shouldn’t have been grateful for the darknessand the shadows, but he was. He didn’t want to face Maggie—see her. But, more than anything, he didn’t want her to see him when he said, “It was a long time ago. You probably don’t remember”—hehopedshe didn’t remember—“but we were in an elevator once. It wasn’t a big—”
“It was you.” There was wonder in her voice, like all this time, she’d thought she’d dreamed it. “At the Christmas party. I got stuck in an elevator with... That was you.” He tried to pull away, keep walking, find someplace to hide, but it was like she was seeing him for the first time, there in the dark. “I didn’t recognize you. Why didn’t I recognize you?”
Because he looked different. Because hewasdifferent. Her hand was a soft weight against his back and his scar and the skin he hadn’t felt in years, and something about her touch soothed him. Burned him? He didn’t even know anymore.
“Ethan? That morning? On the plane...” Her voice was small and soft and he wanted to play dumb, blow it off, act like he hadn’t heard her. “I saw your scar.”
He didn’t want to have that conversation—not then, not there, not ever. But he wanted to lie to her even less. So he settled on “It’s not a cool story, Maggie. I didn’t leap in front of a bullet or—”
“I don’t want a cool story. You’re not Evan Knight, hitman-turned-bodyguard. I don’t want you to be. I just want to know...”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
She laughed softly and said, “What do you think?” So Ethan turned and leaned against a wall that was little more than strips of crumbling plaster.
“We have a place in the mountains. Wow.” He ran a hand over his face. “That makes me sound like a rich asshole. My father is a defense contractor now, by the way, so he reallyisa rich asshole. He has a place outside Aspen. And it was Christmas...” He smiled in spite of himself because irony really was a bitch. “I went because that’s what good sons do. And on Christmas Eve, I unwrapped a bottle of scotch I didn’t drink and a bunch of ties I didn’t need and then I got the hell out of there.”
His eyes followed the dust as it dancedin the flashlight’s beam. “I didn’t know the roads had gotten bad. Or” —he shook his head— “maybe that’s a lie? Maybe I did know and I just didn’t care.”
“Oh, Ethan.” Maggie’s voice was so soft he barely heard her.
“I was halfway down the mountain when I saw them. A car had gone off the road and a pair of headlights were pointing straight up, reflecting off the clouds, snow falling down through the beams. It looked like the Bat Signal or something. I remember climbing down, but”—his laugh was dry and joyless—“the car was empty. I climbed down an icy cliff to be some kind of hero, and the car was empty. The next thing I knew, the cliff gave out and... the last thing I remember is the sound. I woke up in the hospital. I don’t know how long I was pinned or how I got out but...” He thought he might choke on the words. “I am never going to forget that sound.”
“Oh, Ethan...” Her voice quivered and her lip shook. He wanted to still it with his own.
