Page 61 of Not a Word

Not some crazed psycho killer. A methodical, thoughtful, pragmatic killer. She wasn’t sure whether that made him less, or more, scary.

And yet, the word came out, albeit in a whisper: “No.”

She put a palm on his chest and pushed back. Not hard, just enough to send a message. But there was his hand, sliding up the inside of her leg.

A more forceful rejection was going to be necessary. “No,” she whispered. “No, I can’t. I can’t do this.”

The hand stopped its ascent but was not removed.

“Yes, you can,” he said softly. “We’re good together. We can take it slow. That’s okay. Slow’s good. Slow can be fun. I can be very, very slow.”

“You killed that doctor,” she blurted.

The hand came away. He sat back.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “I don’t . . . I thought this, all of this, I was liking where it was going, but . . .”

“You’re afraid of me,” he said.

She nodded. “A little.”

A sly smile. “Do I look dangerous to you?”

Catherine blinked. “What?”

“I mean, look at me. I’m borderline nebbish. No one’s going to mistake me for Clint Eastwood. You clearly have an inflated sense of my capabilities.”

“It’s . . . what makes you good at what you do,” she said. “You blend in. You don’t look . . . intimidating. That’s how you catch people off guard. They think you’re a pushover, and then you’re making them drink drain cleaner.”

He slowly shook his head. “Catherine. That doctor, he really did have an accident when he went fishing. There was an investigation. Things just happened to go our way, that’s all. Sometimes it happens.”

Catherine was willing to accept the lie. But there was more she had to say.

“I love my husband,” she said.

“A fine man.”

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I do, but I can’t . . . I want you to know I’m grateful but—”

“Let me drive you home.”

“I know how it would go,” she said, thinking out loud more than telling him. “It’s . . . it’s fun at first, but then, eventually, somehow, Brent finds out. The boys do too. And I lose everything. Not just my family, but my life.”

“Catherine—”

“I like my life. I like the life Brent has made for us. We have a beautiful home. We go to Europe every other year. We can have whatever we want.” She paused, then said, “I grew up in a trailer. A trailer. Not even a double-wide, just a sixty-foot-long trailer that was like living on a train. My father was a high school janitor. My mother took in laundry. Somehow they scraped enough money together to send me to university, where I met Brent. He took me away from that, and I will not go back. This . . . this could be fun, but it would be the beginning of the unraveling.”

Crane listened.

“I’m . . . I’m flattered. And thank you for teaching me . . . I can still have the gun?”

He smiled. “Of course. Just promise me you’ll be careful with it.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said.

Twenty-Two

Reece