My Darling Husband(44)

Baxter skitters backward. “What? What is it?”

I stomp again, moving closer to the shelving. “A cockroach just crawled over my foot. A big one.”

The cockroach ruse is lame, I know, and it’s a good thing it’s dark down here because my cheeks have got to be an ugly purple. I am stomping empty air, everything about me visibly rattled, but at least it fits the ridiculous scene. And at least my lie does exactly what I needed it to: it got Bax off my arm and gave me room to move, while also sticking the man’s gaze to the floor.

I eye the distance between me and Cam’s workbench. Six, maybe seven feet.

“It went under there.” I gesture to the row of hard-shell suitcases, lined up under a bottom shelf by color and size.

The man makes a disgusted sound. “Leave it.”

I whip the suitcases one by one away from the wall, wheeling them into a messy spin behind me. They crash into the room like bumper cars, backing up Baxter and the man even farther. Bugs have never been Baxter’s favorite, but bees and cockroaches are the stuff of nightmares. He shoves his thumb into his mouth and starts sucking.

The man leans a shoulder against a wall stud. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m looking for the cockroach.”

“Why?”

“Why else? So I can kill it.”

It’s bullshit, of course. But moving down the line of suitcases has me edging closer and closer to Cam’s workbench, taking stock of the tools hanging from a pressed-wood pegboard, assessing which would make the most deadly weapon. A box cutter, a lug wrench, a drill bit, a big, fat, sharp nail. Anything I can wound him with, maybe sink into an eye socket.

“You’re not supposed to stomp on those things, you know.” He’s put even more space between us now, a good ten feet at least. “Their eggs squirt all over the soles of your shoes and then you drag them all through the house. A couple of days from now, you’ll have a hundred baby cockroaches.”

I look over my shoulder, but in my head I’m running through the logistics. One more step toward the stairs and he’ll lose sight of my right arm. One more suitcase and I’ll be standing in reach of the workbench.

“I’m pretty sure that’s an old wives’ tale,” I say, creeping closer to the bench. “And it’s too late anyway. My Terminix guy told me by the time I see one roach, there are a million more crawling around behind the walls.” It’s why I pay him to spray the shit out of this place every other month, so we don’t have bugs. I shove a box away from the wall and stomp on the empty floor. “Bax, go get the broom, will you? I think I saw it at the bottom of the stairs.”

Baxter shakes his head. His feet stay rooted to the floor, his gaze to the spot where I just stomped on empty air.

The man doesn’t move, either. “What? Why?”

I whirl around, positioning myself one more step to the right. Two feet, no more, the line of tools within arm’s reach. I pick my target in my periphery, a blue-handled screwdriver at the end of the board, thin and six inches long. One unwatched second, that’s all I need.

“So I can sweep it out before it disappears behind the wall.”

“Just leave it and let’s go. Did you hear that, Beatrix?” He leans his upper body back into the hall, craning his neck to holler into the empty rooms. “We’re going back upstairs, so that leaves just you down here with about a million cockroaches.”

He turns back, rounding us up with his gun and marching us back toward the stairs. Baxter whines for me to carry him again, and I hoist him onto a hip and drag us both up the stairs.

But as we’re coming up to the main level, I tug my right sleeve over my hand and prick the pad of my thumb with the screwdriver, and a thrill travels up my spine. It’s a Phillips-head, the point sharp enough to break the skin.

Bring it on, asshole.

I’m ready.



C A M


5:24 p.m.


I sit in my truck in the bank parking lot, traffic drumming on the other side of the bushes at my bumper, and scroll through the messages on my phone. Missed calls from my mother, a buttload of bills and marketing emails, a flurry of texts from Flavio and a local Housewife hounding me to cater a dinner for the cast and a hundred of their closest friends. I ignore them all, searching for the one I need, but it’s not there.

Ed’s silence cannot be a good sign. It means he couldn’t talk his boss into fronting the funds for my IRA or, at best, that he doesn’t yet have an answer. Either way, I’m screwed.

Jade’s words ring on a constant loop through my head, the way her voice sounded on the phone, how fear turned it high and thin. The sound of it shoots a new jolt of adrenaline through my veins, turning me radioactive. I can’t shake the image of her beaten and bloody and tied to that chair, helpless to stop the bastard from going after the Bees—an image that breaks me.

I run a shaking hand down my face and force myself to focus.

Stick with the plan.

Get the money.

Go get Jade and the Bees.

This mantra is the only thing keeping me sane.

I pull up Ed’s contact card and tap the number for his cell, my leg jiggling against the steering wheel. To my left, a neat line of crepe myrtles flutter under a stiff wind, and I start the car and crank up the heat even though I’m sweating. Panic sweat, the kind that makes you feel cold and slightly nauseous, like you’re coming down with the flu. I gun the gas and the vents spew lukewarm air.