The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(119)

Evi’s heart was in her throat, beating so fast she thought it might burst.

Eric looked perplexed. “Hello? Who is this?”

What was he hearing? Could he see the guilt on her face for not having told him about the call last night? Would he know by looking at her that she was keeping something from him? What would she say when he ended the call?

“Hello?” he said again, then shrugged and put the phone back in its cradle. “Wrong number, I guess.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m going to make some tea,” Evi said, popping up from the sofa. “Would you like some?”

“No, thanks, sweetie. Do you want me to get it?” he asked. “You still look pale to me.”

“No, no. I want to stretch my legs,” she said too brightly, already heading for the kitchen.

She wasn’t sure her legs would carry her that far. They felt like limp noodles beneath her. She turned and went into the kitchen, immediately rushing to the sink and bending over, her head swimming, her stomach flipping. She thought she would vomit. She was shaking and sweating and cold all at once.

What if the caller had spoken? What if the voice had whispered, “It all worked out for you?” Would Eric have taken one look at her and known she’d heard it before?

Why couldn’t this all just go away? No one could change the past. The years had grown over those secrets like vines hiding a ruin from another lifetime.

“Ev?”

She bolted upright at the sound of her husband’s voice coming from the dining room. She fumbled to turn the faucet on, grabbed the kettle off the stove.

“Ev? Is everything okay in here?” Eric asked as he walked into the kitchen.

“Yeah, fine. It’s all fine.”

He took the teakettle from her and put it on the stove to heat, then turned back to her, his expression serious.

“What’s going on with you? You almost jumped out of your skin when the phone rang,” he said. “You’re a nervous wreck. What’s up?”

He put one gentle hand on her shoulder and tipped her chin up with the other. “You know there’s nothing you can’t tell me. You know that, right?”

She looked up at him, so handsome, so earnest, her knight in shining armor. What should she tell him? The lie that it was nothing? The lie that there was something going on at work? Should she tell him about the note that had come in the mail, or the shadow she might have seen in the backyard, or the call she had kept from him?

It all worked out for you . . .

Should she tell him she had knowledge of a murder and had kept that secret for most of her life?

“Evi . . .” He said her name on a sigh, like he was disappointed in her or frustrated with her. He had every reason to be. He had always been so patient with her, and still she didn’t trust him?

No. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It was that he had trusted her, and she didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve him.

It all worked out for you . . . But it shouldn’t have. The mistakes that had been made all those years ago couldn’t be abandoned and forgotten. The effects of those mistakes continued to ripple forward through time and touch the lives of all concerned, and the lives of every person those people had touched, like Eric, like Mia . . .

Could she even stop it now with the truth?

She drew a shuddering breath to speak, still not knowing what she would say.

The teakettle screamed, startling her.

Eric turned and took it off the burner, turning off the flame.

“Let’s go sit down,” he said.

Evi felt like she had already missed her window of opportunity to do the right thing, that anything she said now would be viewed as the result of coercion, not something volunteered because she knew he had a right to hear it.

Something banged against the back door as she poured the steaming water into her mug, and she flinched and splashed water on the counter.

“What the hell?” Eric asked. He leaned over the sink and looked out the window, trying to see past his own reflection.

“It’s getting windy,” he murmured. “I meant to put that patio umbrella in the garage a week ago.”

“Just leave it,” Evi said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No. We’ll hear that thing thumping all night,” he said, going into the laundry room/mud room. “It won’t take five minutes. I’ll just stick it in the garage and deal with it tomorrow.”

He grabbed a heavy jacket off a hook on the wall and threw it on, and stepped into a pair of work boots with the laces undone.

“I wish you’d just leave it,” Evi said.

“I’ll be right back. You won’t even have time to miss me,” he said, shooting her a wink as he opened the door.

But in the next instant, time went into slow motion, and what must have been only seconds seemed to last an eternity.

Eric didn’t see the monster coming. He was glancing back at her as he opened the door. Evi saw what rushed at them out of the darkness. The face was surreal: a horrific white mask with blood-red details and a demonic grimace twisting the black mouth into the shape of a horseshoe. Two black holes stared where the eyes should have been. A bristling black mustache sprouted sideways beneath the elaborately flared nostrils of the red nose.