Deceptions: A Cainsville Novel (24 page)

G
abriel called after me, not raising his voice, just sharpening it, as if I were a puppy who’d escaped her harness.

I kept jogging. He finally surrendered to indignity and ran in front to cut me off.

“If you want me to call Ricky, I can do that for you. I would argue, however, that I’m better equipped to deal with this. I understand the situation, and if—”

“They did it. They
actually
did it.”

“My car is over here.”

“And mine”—I dangled my keys—“is over there.”

He grabbed the keys and whisked them out of my reach.

I could barely force the words out. “The only excuse you have for taking my keys—ever—is if I’ve been drinking—”

“You’re distraught. That’s equally impairing.” He dropped the keys into his inner jacket pocket.

I headed for a cab idling in front of the prison and climbed inside. Gabriel opened the other rear door, folded himself into the backseat, and gave the driver his address.

“Get the hell out,” I said. “Now.”

“I think you should both get out,” the driver said.

Gabriel handed him a hundred-dollar bill. The man pocketed it and put the car in drive.

Gabriel turned to me. “Earlier, I apologized for treating you poorly. While I know apologies are the normal way of expressing regret, I’ve never seen the point. In the rare instance that I do regret my actions, it would seem that the proper way to show it is through action. I behaved badly earlier. I am now making amends.”

“By stealing my keys and kidnapping me?”

He handed back my keys. I glowered at him.

“If you agree to return to my apartment with me, I’ll tell the driver to go back and we’ll take your car.”

“Oh, sorry, not kidnapping. Just coercion.”

“It’s a lesser charge.”

“Would stabbing you with my switchblade be a defensible action against that lesser charge?”

“No. However, as your lawyer, while I’m not supposed to advise you on how to commit a crime, I might suggest that if one wanted to stab a second party with one’s switchblade, one should wait until both parties have relocated to her car. That avoids witnesses”—he nodded at the driver—“and would allow her to claim defense against kidnapping, if the second party is driving.”

“I hate you.”

“So you’ve said. It’s situational. I don’t take it personally.”

“You should. I realize interpersonal relationships aren’t your forte, but a word of advice? You don’t fix problems by forcing people to do what you want.”

“Then I’ve been doing it wrong for a very long time. At immense profit and professional success.” He looked at me over his shades. “Perhaps
you’re
doing it wrong.”

“Gabriel . . .”

He removed his sunglasses. “While I cannot imagine otherwise wanting to force someone to spend time with me, I would concede that it’s probably not prudent—and certainly not legal—to do so. However, given that you are armed with both a knife and a gun, the choice is, ultimately, yours.”

“So you’ll understand if I stab or shoot you to escape?”

“Hypothetically, yes.”

The cabdriver cleared his throat. “I think I would like—”

“Take us back to the prison.” Gabriel turned to me. “It’s settled, then? You’ll come to my apartment?”

“Is that actually a request?”

He put his shades back on. “It’s beginning to seem prudent. May we take my car? I feel yours would be safer overnight in the parking lot.”

“Overnight?”

“Hypothetically.”

—

Back at the condo, we talked. Gabriel wasn’t convinced that I was right about my parents’ guilt. But that was his job, wasn’t it? Could he properly defend Pamela if he knew she’d committed the crimes?

“Most of the clients I defend are guilty,” he said. “They pay me to introduce reasonable doubt to the contrary. Which I do.”

“But if Pamela did it, how can I help you with her appeal?”

“I don’t believe that’s your decision to make.”

He was right, of course. Pamela was his client. I was his employee.

After a moment of silence, he said, “Your job is to investigate a case thoroughly and completely, and to bring me all evidence arguing for and
against
acquittal. What I do with that information is not your concern.”

“In general, I don’t have a problem with that,” I said. “Everyone is entitled to a defense, and it’s up to the prosecution to prove their case. But if you ask me to help free a sociopath or a rapist—”

“I don’t take those cases. Too many complications. But there are cases with ethical quandaries, even for me. You will always have the choice of refusing.”

“But with Pamela . . . This is different.”

“Remember that your birth parents have spent twenty-two years in prison. Whatever they did, one might argue that they’ve paid their debt. And pose no danger to society.”

Which they don’t if they killed to protect me. If, in some twisted way, that was their motive—

I got up and walked to the window.

“If you need to use the bathroom . . .” he began.

I turned a hard look on him. “I’m not going to puke on your floor, Gabriel. I just need—” I glanced at the door.

“If you want fresh air or a brisk walk, then I will gladly accompany you, but if your goal is to escape me and react in private, the answer is no.” He headed for his wall cabinet. “This is a difficult subject, and we are going to abandon it immediately in favor of . . .” He pulled out a bottle.

“I don’t need—”

“Stop.” His gaze met mine. “You don’t like me attempting to control a situation, but it works both ways. If you are upset, and you don’t allow me to stay with you or offer you a drink, then where do you leave me? Sitting and staring awkwardly as you suffer, which is exactly the reaction that will bother you the most.”

“I’m sorry.”

He poured two drinks. “I’m not asking you to be sorry, Olivia. I’m asking you to allow me to give you this”—he handed me a glass—“and not to argue about it.”

I took the drink and sat on the floor in front of the window. He turned down the lights until they were barely a glow on the ceiling, the room lit by the city outside, the sun fallen, endless lights lifting the darkness. Then he lowered himself, somewhat awkwardly, beside me and began to talk. Gradually, between the drink and the dark and the low and steady rumble of his voice, I relaxed and stretched out on the floor, until, finally, exhaustion won out, and I drifted off to sleep.

I
woke in Gabriel’s bed, and there was a moment in the confusion of sleep, when I smelled something that reminded me of him—his soap or his shampoo or his own faint smell—that I smiled and reached out, expecting to find him there. Of course he wasn’t, and as soon as I realized what I was doing—and what I was thinking—I jumped up, guilt slapping me as hard as if he’d actually been in bed with me.

I stayed propped up on one arm, breathing hard, pushing aside the fog of sleep, until my heart rate slowed and I could tell myself I’d done nothing wrong,
thought
nothing wrong. Wak-ing confusion, that was all.

I dropped back onto the pillow, pulled up the sheets, and fell back to sleep.

When the dream came, it was harmless enough. I was wandering through dark and empty halls, searching for Ricky, more annoyed than worried. Something had happened—I couldn’t remember what—and we’d been separated, and I needed to get back to him, which should have been much easier than it seemed. I kept walking and calling and walking and calling . . .

That’s when I fell in the hole. Or it seemed to be a hole, and I seemed to have fallen in, but with the illogic of dreams, I couldn’t quite be sure. One moment I was wandering and the next I was in the dark, and in a full-out panic, the air thinning with each breath as I raced around the room, one hand on the walls, searching for an exit, for a ladder, for a hatch, anything, knowing I wouldn’t find it because I’d been searching for hours and I was trapped here in this box. A huge wooden box. When I realized that’s what it was, I screamed until my throat was raw. I was running around the perimeter of the room one more time when I kicked something. I crouched, feeling around in the pitch-dark. My fingers closed on a thin metal rectangle.

My phone! I fumbled to turn it on, holding my breath until . . .

Yes, it switched on. It had barely any power, but I had a signal. My fingers flew to the keypad, speed-dialing, and I thought I was calling Ricky, but when the name popped up, it was Gabriel’s.

The call nearly went to voice mail before he answered.

“Oh God, thank God.” The words rushed out. “I’m trapped. There’s not much air, and I’ve lost Ricky, and I need your help. I really need your help.”

Silence.

“Gabriel?”

“Yes?”

I gripped the phone tighter and raised my voice. “Can you hear me? I’ll text if you can’t. I don’t have much battery left.”

“I can hear you, Olivia.” His voice was cool, almost icy.

“I need your help. I really, really need your help. I’m trapped—”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Good. Thank you. I can send you the coordinates—”

“No need.”

“You have them?” I exhaled. “So you’re on your way?”

“No. I’m not.”

The line went dead. I thought I’d lost the battery, but when I looked, I still had a little. I called back, and the line rang and rang and rang, and then he picked up . . . and disconnected. And my phone turned off, plunging me into darkness.

“Gabriel!” I bolted up, his name on my lips. The room was pitch-black, and I couldn’t remember where I was, still half lost in that dream—

The door opened, moonlight flooding around a dark figure.

“Olivia?”

Gabriel started through the doorway, then pulled himself up short and flipped on the light instead.

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, sorry.” I ran my hands over my face, trying to banish the dream.

“A vision?”

I shook my head. “Garden-variety nightmare.”

I kept struggling to push the dream away, but it wouldn’t go, alarm and dread swirling in my gut.

“Are we okay?” I asked.

“What?”

I wanted to say, never mind, I was being silly, go on back to sleep, but the words came out anyway. “Is everything okay? With us?”

His brow furrowed, and he said, “Of course,” but there was something in the way he said it, something in his eyes, still too close to sleep, that wall not yet up, letting me catch a flicker that said we weren’t okay, not really.

“Have I done something?”

“What?” He seemed ready to step into the room but again stopped short, his hand on the doorframe now. Keeping his distance.

Something’s wrong . . .

No, it’s not. You’re in his
bed
. He’s doing the right thing, the proper thing. Staying out.

I’m in Gabriel’s bed.

Oh God, what am I doing? I shouldn’t be here. Not in his apartment. Not in his bed. It doesn’t matter if he’s over there. It doesn’t matter if there hasn’t been a word, a touch, even a look between us. I’ve crossed a line. I know I have, and that’s what counts. Not what I’ve done. What I feel.

“Olivia?” He took a half step in, his hand still firmly on the doorframe. “What did you see?”

“You left.”

Did I just say that? Stop talking. Please stop talking.

Only it was as if I were still trapped in the dream, no more able to halt the words than plug a dam with my finger.

“You left, and I didn’t know why. I was trapped in the dark, and I couldn’t get out, and I called and you wouldn’t come.”

He frowned, head tilting as if confused, that sleepy look still in his eyes, not yet fully awake, not yet fully aware. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It was a nightmare, and now I’m babbling—”

“It
was
a nightmare,” he said. “Not a vision. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

“Anytime you need me, I’m here. If you call, I’ll come.”

“I know.”

A surreal moment of silence followed, both of us still dazed with sleep, the barriers down as we looked at each other.

I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t.

I pushed up, swinging my legs out of the bed. “I’m going to take the couch.”

His frown deepened. “Why?”

“I think I should.”

“Why?”

He kept looking at me, confusion in his eyes. Innocent confusion. He seemed so young then. A boy who didn’t understand what was going on, why he was in trouble, what he’d done wrong.

He put me here to be thoughtful. Because I fell asleep on his floor, and I’ve had a difficult day, so he’s being kind. That’s all it is. All it’s ever going to be. Kind and thoughtful, which is as close as I’ll ever get to him, and it’s closer than anyone else gets, so I need to take it and be grateful and say, “It’s enough.”

And if I can’t?

Then that’s my problem, and I need to do something about it—starting with stepping back over that line, with getting the hell out of his bed.

I set my feet on the floor and stood. “I shouldn’t take your room.”

“But I put you here.”

“It’s yours. I’ll take the couch.”

“Why?”

He kept giving me that look, the confusion deepening to something like disappointment, like hurt, as if he’d tried to be kind and thoughtful, and I was rejecting it, and he didn’t know why. That little boy, reaching out and being pushed away.

Goddamn it, Gabriel. Don’t look at me like that. Wake up. Snap out of it, pull that wall back up and retreat behind it. For once, that’s what I want, because when you look at me like that, it makes me think that there could be more, that I could—

I swallowed hard and stepped toward him. “I need to leave.”

“What?” He blinked. “Why? Did I do something?”

Snap out of it, Gabriel. Please, please, please, snap out of it.

“I just want to go for a walk,” I said. “I need some air.”

He rubbed his hands over his face, harder now, raking his fingers through his hair, and when he spoke again, his voice was more his own, though still younger, less formal. “Okay. Can I go with you?” Another rub over his face, his shoulders straightening, voice deepening another octave. “I should go with you.”

“I . . .”

I looked at him. The boy was gone, the man back, but the wall stayed down, the confusion lingering, not sure why I needed to leave, still feeling as if he’d done something wrong, like me in the dream, rejected and lost and not understanding why.

“I’ll walk behind you, Olivia. I would simply prefer you weren’t out alone at this hour.” His voice dropped. “Whatever you saw, it was only a nightmare. I’m not going anywhere.”

I nodded.

“Could it have been connected to the vision?” he asked. “From the park? We still haven’t discussed that. I know you were going to talk to Rose first, but I would prefer . . .” He raked back his hair again, rolling his shoulders, as if still searching for equilibrium. “It might help if you talked about it. Perhaps that is upsetting you.”

I’m so lost right now. My parents . . . I think they . . . I’m sure they . . . And you and Ricky . . . So lost and so confused. Except I’m not confused at all. I know what I feel—for you—and I want to blame it on the visions, to tell myself I’m just reliving a role. But I’m not. What I feel for you . . .

Oh God, what I feel for you. I don’t want that. I want Ricky, and only Ricky, and no confusion, because he doesn’t deserve confusion. Neither of you do.

I want to run. Get the hell out of here and run to Ricky, and tell myself I never felt like this—that I was upset about my parents and half asleep and caught in that nightmare, and I got mixed up. I just got mixed up.

But I look at you, and I know I can’t run. Because you won’t understand. You let yourself reach out, and I cannot reject that. I cannot let you feel rejected. You need someone, now more than ever, and I desperately want to be that someone, even if it’s never going to be more than talking in front of your window and falling asleep and waking in your bed—alone.

“I’d like to talk about it,” I said. “I know it’s the middle of the night . . .”

“I’ll make coffee.”