Chapter 27
Kat
Ten days later
The first timeI left Alex Blake, it was agony. I remembered lying on my bed, in my old bedroom in my mother and stepfather’s house, curled up and crying. I remembered feeling hopeless and numb.
The second time I left him, I didn’t curl up and cry. I kept my chin up and kept walking, even as I felt everything dying inside.
I was back in Nashville. I’d driven myself, because Alex had lent me a car. No questions, no arguments. I’d driven the entire ten hours fighting tears and thinking about Alex and me driving the other way, of stopping at that rest stop, of Alex saying I’m sorry.
It had taken something extraordinary for him to say that. To mean it.
Back in Nashville, I’d gone to the police station as requested, like a good girl. I’d sat behind one-way glass and looked at a lineup. I immediately recognized one of the men I’d seen behind the bar on the night that changed my life. I pointed him out.
But it wasn’t that simple. I had to go back the next day, and the next. The police wanted to interview me, and then people from the FBI and the DEA wanted to interview me, and I had to supply a written statement. The DEA wanted their own written statement.
The man I’d identified, who was named Brian Santos, was apparently a big deal. They wanted me to be really, really sure he was the man I’d seen that night. Look again, Miss Sloane. Are you sure? Look just one more time.
I told them over and over again: I saw him with a duffel bag in his hand, that’s all.
I went back to Knoxy’s and picked up my final paycheck—a whopping four hundred and eighty dollars. My car had been towed from the parking lot across the street, so instead of paying ransom to get it back, I kept the car Alex had given me.
There was a second lineup. This time, they wanted me to identify the second man I’d seen in the parking lot. They made each man in the lineup say the same sentence: “What are you looking at, bitch?” Every time those words came out of a man’s mouth, my hands shook harder. But I knew him right away, just like I’d known Brian Santos.
I went back to my old apartment. The locks had been changed, and when I found the landlord, he was livid. He’d had to pay to fix the broken door, he said. Any of my things that Alex had left behind when he came that last time, the landlord had thrown out. He was going to rent the place to someone else, and I owed him five hundred dollars in back rent. If I wanted to fight him, I could hire a lawyer and take him to court.
I paid him the five hundred, which was my paycheck plus twenty bucks. So much for money.
I checked into a hotel, using my credit card—no luxury suite this time—and cried in the shower. I was just so very, very tired. When I had finished my cry and put my pajamas on, I called Alex.
“Let me come to Nashville,” he said the second he heard my voice. “I can catch a flight in an hour.”
It was so tempting. “You dropped everything and came to Nashville once already.”
“So? I’ll do it again.”
Did I want Alex here? Yes, I did. Maybe it was crazy to try and handle everything by myself. But I knew I was right—I didn’t want to lean on anyone else just yet. It was just how I was made. “Not yet,” I told Alex. “Soon.”
“Say the word, Kat. I’m going crazy here.”
I had brought the camera Alex had given me. I also had my laptop—Alex had had the screen repaired after the man who ransacked my apartment had broken it. I spent the evening looking at the pictures I’d taken at White Rock Lake Park, assessing my own skills.
I wasn’t a bartender anymore. I was out twenty bucks. But I was really, really good at taking pictures.
The next day, I went to a clinic and had my broken fingers examined. They were put into a soft binding, because they were almost healed. The doctor told me to start doing hand exercises to bring up the strength and flexibility in the damaged fingers. She estimated I would get most of the use of my fingers back, but not all. “You’ll barely notice the difference eventually,” she said. “You’ll go about your life just as normal. But there will be some residual damage.”
“That’s the story of my life,” I told her.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing.”
After I left the clinic, I got another call to come to the police station. This time, they wanted me to listen to a voice lineup of men who might be my attacker. Each man was going to say, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” I had to pick out which, if any, of them had tried to kill me.
Residual damage, indeed.
I went back to the police station. I listened to the voices. I remembered the feel of the blow to my back, the way my arm hit the concrete. I stared down at my bandaged fingers. Residual damage.
“None of them are him,” I said.
They asked if I was sure. I said yes.
They asked again. I got up and left.
I didn’t cry in the shower that night. I lay on the bed in my hotel room, with something mindless on the TV, staring at the ceiling and thinking.
I’d spent so many years thinking about nothing. Now I was thinking about everything.
I called Alex. He answered the same way as before: “Kat, let me come to Nashville.”
“The tattoo on my hip,” I said. “I got it after we split. It’s about you.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“That’s why I wouldn’t have it removed when you asked,” I continued. “Didn’t you guess it? Even a little?”
“I hoped,” he admitted. “But it was pretty egotistical to assume. You could have met someone else. Someone you loved.”
“More than you?” My voice was rising; I was almost yelling. “Are you crazy? I loved you so much I couldn’t think straight. What kind of woman do you think I am?”
His voice was calm, but I knew him well, and there was an edge to it. “I don’t know, Kat. Maybe the kind of woman who kept my ring all these years and never told me.”
“How do you know that?”
“You kept it in the pocket of your jeans. How many times have I undressed you in the past two weeks? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? But if you want the actual moment, it was the night after I gave you the camera. I took your jeans off you and I felt the shape in the pocket, and I didn’t have to take it out to know what it was.”
Tears were running down my face again. When had I become so prone to crying? Alex was turning me into someone I didn’t recognize. “It’s a nice ring. I didn’t want to get rid of it.”
“I know. I kept mine, too.”
We could have said all of these things when we were together. During any of the times we’d had dinner together, or just talked, or any of the times we’d lain in bed. You’d think those would be better places to have this conversation, instead of over the phone from a hotel.
But for some reason, I couldn’t say these things then. I could say them now.
“I always keep mine in my pocket,” I told him. “Where do you keep yours?”
“In the drawer of my nightstand. I guess you didn’t do enough snooping while you were here. I’ve never even considered getting rid of it.” He sighed. “Kat, let me come to Nashville.”
“Not yet. Soon.”
There were more trips to the police station, more interviews. They tried, like Damon had, to convince me to testify in court. I told them to go fuck themselves. I’d already almost died once, and I wasn’t volunteering to do it again. That last conversation with Alex had cracked me open like an egg. I wanted to start living, not dying.
I went to a second voice lineup, listened to a second batch of men say, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” This time, I recognized one of them right away. I got asked over and over if I was sure. I was.
The detectives exchanged a Serious Look when I picked out the voice. When I asked why, they said that the DNA results had come back from the blood, and the man it matched was in the lineup. I had picked out my attacker without a second’s hesitation.
It was the man we’d seen in the hospital parking lot. He worked for the organization that moved drugs through Nashville and up to the East Coast. When I’d seen Brian Santos and his buddy behind Knoxy’s, he’d been given orders to make me go away. He’d brought two business associates with him. Now he was in custody, and it was only a matter of time before they nailed the other two.
It was over.
“I’m ready,” I said to Alex when I called him that night.
“Thank fucking God,” Alex said, his voice rough. “I’m on my way to Nashville. Don’t move. Just sit there.”
“What are we doing?” I asked him. “Dallas? New York?”
“We’ll decide later. Right now, I just want you back. I want you happy. I want whatever you want. I love you.”
He’d said those words to me before, a long time ago. They had changed my life then. They did it again now.
“I love you, too,” I said. “But before we do anything, I think we need a vacation.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You cancelled the only vacation you ever had for me. We need a do-over.”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want. But you don’t like flying, so we have to go somewhere we can drive.”
“Screw that,” I said. “I’m done being afraid. Just give me a few shots of whiskey and a sleep mask.”
Alex paused, and then he laughed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine. If I’m with you, no matter where it is, I’ll be fine.”
“Then pack your things and meet me at the Nashville airport in three hours. Call me when you get there.”
Excitement trickled into my belly, the first feeling I’d had in so long that something good, really good, was going to happen. “Are we going to Hawaii?”
“I don’t think so. I have another place in mind. Bring your passport and your camera. And don’t plan to come back to Nashville.”
I was grinning now—really smiling, my whole body warm with anticipation. I was getting out of here. And most of all, I was going to see Alex.
My Alex. At last.
“I’m ready,” I said again.
“Finally,” Alex said. “So am I. Let’s get started.”