The Killing Game(120)

Carter was numb with shock. She didn’t know all his moves, but she sure as hell knew a lot of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

Carter assessed his next move. Slowly, he moved his hand toward his pocket. He suspected she had a gun, but he could be on her in a flash. And from what he could tell, she looked tasty. Young, trim, smart. His cock stirred at the thought. He hadn’t gotten to have Andi, but this female detective was ripe for the picking.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said sharply.

“You’ve got me all wrong.” His fingers were inside the flap of his jacket pocket.

“Stop.”

No time to waste. He rushed her.

“Fucking stop right there!” another female voice rang out from the shadows. He turned and saw the muzzle of a gun staring him in the face. “Game over, *,” she snarled.

For a moment he almost ran, but then he calmed himself down and raised his hands. It’s never over. They don’t have anything on me. I’m too smart for them. Like brilliant, untouchable, reclusive Bobby Fischer, the youngest International Grandmaster of chess at age fifteen. The best chess player of all time. And Bobby disappeared for years and years. I’ll get off, and then I can, too. I’m just that smart.





Epilogue



Luke sat on a barstool at Tiny Tim’s nursing a beer. Andi was beside him, twirling the stem on the glass of Chardonnay she wasn’t really drinking. She’d recovered from the near drowning, but she was still feeling scared. She knew Carter had been taken into custody, but it didn’t erase the fear.

Luke’s pals from the Portland PD, Amberson, Yates, and DeSantos, had gathered at the bar to send off the Carrera brothers to the great hereafter. It certainly wasn’t a sad occasion, but it wasn’t really a joyous one either. After all, Peg Bellows had been a victim of the shootout at her cabin.

Ray Bolchoy was there, too, quietly sitting in a corner, sporting an ironic smile. Luke had said he was actually jumping for joy. That was just Ray’s style.

“It’s not the ending I wanted,” Luke was saying, referring to Peg Bellows’s death. “And I actually would have loved facing the Carreras across a courtroom for their misdeeds.”

“Rule number sixty-seven,” Bolchoy said loudly. “No crying over a dead Carrera.”

They all looked at him and his smile grew wider. “Not really a rule, but it should be,” he admitted.

“Come back to the force,” Opal said to Luke. She was tall, black, and commanding.

“I heard there’re cutbacks,” he responded, finishing his beer.

“They’ll find a way to fit you in.” She looked over at Andi and said, “Talk him into it.”

“I’m doing work for my brother,” he told Opal. “I kind of like being my own boss.”

“You’re gonna work for the defense? That’ll curl Iris’s hair.”

Luke shrugged and smiled. He’d told Andi about his ex, and then Iris had phoned him after their interview with Pauline Kirby aired earlier that week. Luke hadn’t wanted to do it, but Andi had been the one who wanted to tell her story about Carter to the world.

The newswoman had also done a segment with Detectives Rafferty and Sandler, and the overall piece had painted the Carreras as the nasty dogs in the manger they were.

An hour later they said good-bye to his pals and headed to her cabin. Luke was already half moved-in; they were going to make their living arrangement permanent. Neither of them had spoken of marriage; it was too soon. But there was a subject Andi needed to talk to him about.

As Luke pulled her car up next to his in the driveway, she said, making conversation, screwing up her courage, “I’m glad Emma’s going to be okay.”

“If the Carreras had lived, she could have testified against Brian because she saw him.”

They both climbed out of the car and walked through a misting rain to her cabin door. The willow wreath was still there, and Andi recalled Luke making it for her. She swallowed and said, as they crossed the threshold, “You know what I said about not needing condoms?” His head whipped around in surprise and she added quickly, “No, not that. I’m not pregnant. I just want you to know that my pregnancy with Greg was an anomaly. It’s unlikely it will ever happen again. I’ve been through IVF and testing and you name it, and then I lost his baby, too. What I’m saying is, no matter what happens in the future between us, that’s the reality of my life.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

They walked inside the cabin together, but Andi couldn’t leave it there. “Okay? What does that mean?”

“It means I love you, Andi. I almost lost you, and that about killed me. I never want that to happen again. I’d like to have children, sure. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. But I’m not running out on you just because it might not ever happen.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

He regarded her steadily. “But I see your point. Maybe we don’t need condoms. Maybe we just roll the dice and see what happens.”

“Are you ready for that? I mean, if by some miracle it did happen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She felt tears star her lashes. “Okay, then.”