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No, the fucking sky was falling.
‘She was a DEA agent,’ Lindsay said, his eyes drilling into me so intensely I itched. ‘Somebody shot her.’
No shit. I wanted to look away, but to look away would be admitting guilt.
‘And?’ I challenged. I tried to recall whether looking up or looking down signalled a lie. In the end, I couldn’t remember at all, so I kept my gaze glued to Lindsay’s eyes.
‘I think you killed her,’ Lindsay said softly.
There it was. The real reason he wanted to see me so desperately. My head swam – drowned – in what might happen next. I saw walls and prison bars, and a cell door slamming shut in my face.
‘Fuck you.’
Lindsay didn’t answer.
‘What do you need from me?’ I asked slowly, a crushing feeling of defeat pressing down on me.
‘I need to know what they did to you,’ Lindsay said. ‘And what they made you do for them.’
‘How? When?’
‘Soon. Very soon.’
I swallowed thickly. ‘How am I supposed to trust you?’ I asked. ‘What if you’re just like everybody else?’ And suddenly I wanted to cry. Because he didn’t seem like everybody else. Lindsay Price seemed like a real stand-up guy. Maybe he wasn’t. He could have been an axe murderer, for all I knew. Could have been working for Emilio.
‘I’m not like the men you’re used to,’ Lindsay said. He put his hand on my arm in a comforting gesture, and surprisingly, I didn’t shrug it off. It was warm.
‘What are you like, then?’ I whispered. My eyes burned with unshed tears as a lump grew in my throat.
‘I believe in justice,’ he said, handing me the gun back. ‘But I also believe in survival. I believe that sometimes, the law doesn’t understand what a person can endure before they break.’
I stared at the gun in my hands in disbelief. ‘I thought–’
‘A gesture of goodwill,’ he interrupted. ‘That gun is my only piece of evidence linking you to Alexandra Baxter’s murder. I know you killed her, Mariana. I don’t need to take your gun to know that. I only need to take your gun to prove that.’
‘If Emilio finds out I’ve spoken to you, he’ll kill me,’ I said, my hands shaking as they cupped the gun.
Lindsay nodded. ‘Don’t tell anyone. Don’t write it down, don’t even think about our conversation until the next time we meet. Understood?’
I nodded.
‘I know what they did to your family,’ he added. ‘For what it’s worth . . . I’m sorry.’
In the edges of my mind, I saw them screaming as they burned. I didn’t want to see that. I looked out of my window. ‘How long does that sedative last?’ I asked him, changing the subject as I stared at the gold-tinted stack of glass that made up the Wynn.
Lindsay tapped a button in his armrest and a screen unfolded from the ceiling. He aimed a small remote and it flashed to life, a black and white image of a hotel room becoming visible. He pointed to the middle of the screen. ‘Long enough.’
I peered closer, picking Dornan’s still frame on the couch in the centre of the suite. I glanced at Lindsay as something unsettling occurred to me. ‘What happens next?’ I asked quietly.
‘That depends,’ Lindsay replied. ‘The situation isn’t as clear-cut as it was. You’re now not compelled to testify. You’ll have to choose. We can’t force you to give evidence against your husband.’ He said the word ‘husband’ like he was talking about having to wipe dog shit off his shoe. I got the feeling he really didn’t like Dornan.
Neither did I, anymore, so we had that in common.
‘No shit,’ I replied. ‘Could’ve gotten here a day earlier, saved me the pain.’ I flashed my tattooed finger at him.
‘I think you like the pain,’ Lindsay murmured, his tone almost sad. ‘I think you don’t remember how to survive without pain. You’re always either running at it, or away from it, but what you can’t see is that you’re going to drown in it. Either that, or your husband will kill you. At this rate, I’d put my money on him.’
Ouch.
