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Maybe I should have felt relief. After all, Bill had been trying to kill me. Yet what I felt was overwhelming shame that I’d let Kevin’s best friend down somehow. Was I so hell-bent on forcing the truth from Bill that I had backed him into a corner? He was just a civilian, after all, not a war criminal. He deserved a trial and prison, not a panicked suicide.
“I’m sorry, my love,” I said, as if Kevin were in the room, too. “For everything.”
If Kevin was indeed with me, he didn’t respond. I couldn’t blame him.
I knew I couldn’t stay here. This was a tightly packed residential district of townhouses. Somebody must have called in the multiple gunshots by now. My own death was fast approaching, and Ireallydidn’t want to die in an interrogation room.
Somehow I propelled myself out of Bill’s front door and staggered halfway down the block before hearing the singsong of Berlin police sirens. I kept moving, even as the strength drained out of me like blood from a hundred cuts.
Was Kevin’s spirit walking with me? I hoped so. Maybe this was how our honeymoon was always supposed to end. The two of us lost souls, refugees from the real world, wandering the streets of Berlin together in the middle of the night.
About five blocks away from Bill Devander’s apartment, I collapsed and died.
CHAPTER 36
COME ON, BELL,God said.Open your eyes. That’s an order.
My body had disappeared. I had the sensation of floating through slightly turbulent air. I opened my eyes. But I quickly realized it wasn’t God speaking to me.
“Quentin?”
I was in his arms and he was hurrying us both down the street.
“Good, you’re still with us. I’m going to bring you to a nearby safe house. You hang on just a little while longer. You got me?”
I wanted to tell him I appreciated his concern, but that I was a lost cause… only, I passed out again before I could form the words. My mind slid away from my body and disappeared into an impossibly black lake. The water wasn’t cold; it felt more like warm, viscous oil. At some point I realized there were creatures down here with me. One of them squeezed my hand in the dark. Jaws clamped down on my wrist…
I jolted back awake in Bill Devander’s living room, handcuffed to a radiator.
My first thought was that the last fifteen minutes had been a dream, that I hadn’t really escaped from the townhouse after all, and the Berlin police had just arrested me for Bill’s murder.
But then I saw Quentin across the room, leaning against a wall, studying the room like a forensic analyst taking in a crime scene. It was a bit surreal, seeing him here, now, after all of these months. He was tall (six foot five) and lean as ever—possibly leaner now.I’m the one boss you can look up to, he used to joke.
“Quentin,” I said. “We can’t be here.”
“Don’t worry. When the address popped up on the scanner, I had the Berlin police diverted.” Quentin gestured down at Bill’s corpse, which lay in the same exact position as when I’d left it. “Devander do himself in, or did you make it look that way?”
“All his idea,” I said. “Quentin?”
“Yeah, Bell?”
“Why am I handcuffed to this radiator?”
“I have to explain a few things to you, and I want you to stay calm as I explain them. Promise me you’ll stay calm?”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “How can I promise not to react to something when I don’t know what it is?”
“Fair enough.”
“Start talking. I don’t have much time left.”
“Yeah, speaking of that… Listen, Bell. I didn’t want it to happen like this, but this idiot screwed it up. You weren’t supposed to be anywhere near when he dosed Kevin Drexel.”
CHAPTER 37
ALL OF THE blood in my veins turned to ice.
“Youhad my husband killed?”
