Page 51 of Her Rival

"Hollis."

"What's up, kid."

"I need a discreet thing. Not for me. For a friend. I don't want it going through Coach or through Mrs. Caldwell. I want to pay for it directly. I want a man who's going to be in Vegas through Sunday tracked. I want to know where he is, where he stays, where he goes. I do not want him approached. I do not want him spoken to. Eyes only until I tell you otherwise. Can you do that."

"On a Friday night with no notice."

"Yes."

"For how much."

"Whatever it costs. Send me the number tomorrow. Bill me directly."

A pause.

"Sturgill. You okay."

"I'm fine. I need this on a man named Hartley out of Calvert, Tennessee. I'll send you what I have in five minutes."

"Send it."

He hung up.

I sent him the photograph. The time it had been delivered to Brynn's doorman. The area code of the cell phone Dani's father had called from. A brief list of the three options the man had given Dani, the deadline, and the fact that she'd threatened to call the police but hadn't.

I did not write Dani's name in any of the emails.

He wrote back at eleven oh four. On it. Will report tomorrow noon.

I put the phone face-down on the counter.

I sat at the island in my big stupid house with my hands flat on the counter where the photograph had been, and I thought about a woman in a guest room down the hall who hadn't locked her door, and the man in Tennessee who'd spent her entire life teaching her how to do exactly what he wanted her to do in moments like this, and the very small clean thing I'd been able to do tonight, which was to be the room she walked into and not the room she'd been bracing for.

I hadn't yelled. Hadn't asked the wrong questions. Hadn't put my hand on hers across a counter without being invited. Hadn't taken her bag off her shoulder. Hadn't made any decision for her she hadn't asked me to make. I'd asked her to sit and she'd sat. I'd asked if she wanted the guest room and she'd said yes. I'd asked if she wanted to talk in the morning and she'd said yes. I'd put her father's photograph back in her hand because the photograph was hers to keep or throw away.

The only decision I'd made without asking her was the call to Hollis Briar.

I'd tell her about it in the morning. Over coffee. In clear language. No apology, because the apology would be a performance and we weren't going to do that. The call was a call I'd made because I was not, in the world I was choosing to live in starting tonight, going to let a man drive into my city with a deadline on my woman and not have eyes on him by the time he checked in wherever he was checking in.

That was the decision I'd made. I'd made it in the kitchen at ten forty-five. I hadn't asked her.

I'd tell her at seven.

I sat at the island in the dark another hour and didn't move. The valley below was alight. The city below was alight. The house was quiet. Somewhere down the hall a woman was either sleeping or not sleeping in a bed that had never been slept in, in a house I'd never let anyone see, and I sat with the fact of her presence the way I'd sat with the photograph an hour earlier. Slowly. Taking it in. Letting the reaction belong to the air around me and not to my mouth.

Around midnight I went to bed.

I didn't sleep right away.

When I did, I slept the deepest I'd slept since before Monday morning in the conference room two and a half weeks ago.

In the morning I woke up at six.

I made coffee.

I waited.

She came out of the guest room at six forty-three in the same clothes she'd come in.