14. Jett #3
"Don't tell Brynn yet."
"What."
"Don't tell Brynn yet. Let me think. Tomorrow morning, before noon, you and I decide together whether you tell Brynn and Victoria.
There are reasons to. There are reasons not to.
I'd like a few hours to think before we decide.
If you tell them tonight, the entire Caldwell apparatus goes into motion in a way that doesn't include either of us.
I'd like the next few hours to be ours."
"Okay."
She held the look.
"Why don't you want me to tell Brynn," she said.
"Because Brynn is going to ask why I'm involved, and we haven't yet agreed on the answer to that question, and I'd prefer we agree on it before her mother is arranging the lawyers and her boyfriend is arranging the security and you and I are standing in a room with five other people we haven't figured out how to look at. "
"You want to figure out how to look at me."
"I'm working on it."
"What's the working on it consist of."
"It consists of me sitting at my own kitchen island with you across from me at ten forty-five at night with your father's photograph between us, trying to do the next correct thing.
And the next correct thing is to put you up in my guest room and lock the front door and not let anyone touch you.
And the correct thing after that is whatever you decide it is in the morning. "
She did not look away from me. She didn't say anything for a while.
"I drove here," she said.
"I know."
"I drove here because the number my hand reached for tonight was yours, and I haven't yet figured out what that means, and I'd like a little while not to figure it out."
"You can have a little while."
"Okay."
"Hartley."
"Yes."
"Do you want the guest room, or do you want to go home."
She thought about it. Actually thought about it.
I watched her face do the work, the weighing, whether the safer thing was here in a strange bed or there in a strange building, whether the safer thing was alone or not alone, whether the safer thing was to drive forty minutes back down a desert road at almost eleven at night with a photograph she now couldn't unsee in her bag.
"Guest room," she said.
"Okay."
"For the night."
"However long you want it."
"And in the morning we talk."
"In the morning," I agreed.
I stood up. Took the photograph off the counter. Put it back in its envelope. Handed the envelope back to her. I did not keep it. It was hers. The keeping of it was hers. The reading of it was hers. The decision about what to do with it was hers.
She took it back. Put it in her bag.
"Come on," I said. "I'll show you the room."
I walked her down the hall to the guest suite I hadn't used since I'd moved in, the one I'd stocked with towels and toiletries and clean sheets the way you stock a guest room when you've hired a service to do it in a house you'll never let anybody see.
The bed was made. The bathroom had toothbrushes still in plastic.
The lamp on the nightstand turned on when I touched it.
I didn't say any of this. I let her see the room.
Let her decide whether it was a room she could sleep in.
She stood in the middle of it with her bag on her shoulder. Looked at the bed. Looked at the lamp. Looked at me.
"This room has never been slept in," she said.
"It hasn't."
"Why does a house this big have a guest room that's never been slept in."
"Because I haven't had a guest in this house in two years."
She didn't respond to that. She set her bag down on the bench at the foot of the bed.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
"Jett."
"Yeah."
"You haven't asked me a single question tonight that wasn't about my safety."
"I know."
"You're going to have to ask me other questions at some point."
"I know that too."
"But not tonight."
"No," I said. "Not tonight."
I stood in the doorway with my hand on the doorframe.
She was three feet away. We'd been three feet apart in the video review room ten days ago, and less than a foot apart in the entryway the night before, and we were three feet apart again, and the three feet was a new kind of three feet.
A deliberate one. A three feet I was choosing on purpose.
"Sleep," I said. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything. I'm a light sleeper. I won't lock you in."
"You won't lock me in," she repeated, like she was making sure she'd heard it right.
"No. The door of this room locks from the inside only. There's a deadbolt on the front door of the house, but you can hear it from in here if it moves. Nobody's getting in this house tonight. I want you to know that before you close your eyes."
She nodded.
"Goodnight, Hartley."
"Goodnight, Jett."
I closed the door.
I stood in the hallway with my hand still on the doorframe, listening for whether she'd lock it.
She did not.
I walked back to the kitchen. Picked up my phone.
Took a photograph of the photograph she'd taken back, which I'd asked her permission to do before she handed it to me and which she'd given with a small dry nod.
I sent it to a man in California whose name I hadn't said out loud in three years and who was the only private investigator I'd ever paid a retainer to, an old retainer I'd let lapse last summer that I now paid back into within ninety seconds of taking the picture.
I wrote three sentences in the email. Attached the photograph. Sent it.
Then I deleted the email from my sent folder. Habit.
I picked the phone up again. Texted Mary Beth.
If you get a call from a Vegas number you don't recognize in the next 48 hours, answer. I'm fine. Just need somebody who knows my voice on the other end.
She replied inside of two minutes. Okay.
I put the phone down.
I did not call Coach. I did not call Rhett. I did not call Victoria.
I did call one number. An old one. The head of security for the entire Caldwell sports and entertainment empire, a man named Hollis Briar I'd met at the championship after-party, who'd taken the time to write his cell on a cocktail napkin and tell me to call him if I ever needed anything, which I had not until that moment intended to ever do. He picked up on the second ring.
"Sturgill."
"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.