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“No,” said Sean. “And I don’t think we have time to do it now.”
“We’ll take a rain check, though,” said Michelle quickly, snatching a glance at Sean.
The driver slowed the carriage near an intersection.
“Straight down that street. There’s a car waiting, red four-door Toyota. Bloke at the wheel is named Charlie.”
Michelle shook his hand. “Thanks again. I’d be dead right now if it weren’t for you guys.”
“We’d all be dead if it weren’t for some guys,” said the driver. “Just stay alive so we didn’t waste the effort.”
They stepped down from the carriage, walked off in the gloomy rain, found the car, and were soon on their way to Penn Station.
They retrieved Michelle’s Land Cruiser from a nearby garage, gassed it up, and were on their way north before midnight. Michelle had changed the license plates on her SUV, replacing them with a pair of sterilized ones, just in case.
As they left Manhattan behind them, Sean reached out his hand and gripped Michelle’s arm. “Like the guy said, we cut it close. Way too close.”
“But we’re alive. That’s what counts.”
“Does it?”
She glanced at him as she changed lanes and accelerated. “What do you mean?”
“Can we both really keep doing this until it comes to the point where way too close instead becomes, ‘If she’d just not gone through that other doorway’?”
“We both take risks. It could be you too.”
“You take far more risks than I do.”
“Okay, so what?”
He removed his hand, looked away, and watched the wink of big-city lights in the side mirror until they disappeared from view.
“Okay, so what?” she said again.
“I don’t know where I’m going with this.”
“I think you do know.”
“Okay. If it were just the two of us, you’d be dead.”
“You did the best you could. And the alternative was what? Do nothing?”
“Maybe that would’ve been the smart thing to do.”
“Smart for our safety maybe, not so good for trying to solve the case, which happens to be our job.”
When Sean didn’t say anything she added, “We’re in a dangerous business. I thought we both understood that. It’s like playing in the NFL. Every Sunday you know you’re going to get your ass kicked but you do it anyway.”
“Well, players retire too, before it’s too late.”
“Not many do. At least voluntarily.”
“Well, maybe we should think about it. Seriously think about it.”
“Then what would we do?”
“There’s more to life than this, Michelle.”
