Let Me Go (47 page)

Archie smiled at that, and maybe it was the morphine, but he felt strangely happy. Lying there next to her, he thought that maybe he could remember what Claire had said about Susan warming him with her body. He had a memory of being very, very cold and then there being a warm presence beside him.

He glanced over at the bedside table where the balled-up piece of paper still lay. Then, very slowly, careful not to wake Susan, Archie reached over her and plucked the wad of paper from the table. He brought it to his chest, his hand trailing IV lines, and with a glance at Susan, he gingerly uncrumpled the square of yellow paper and flattened it out. He had a second copy at home, written in Gretchen's elegant handwriting, but Archie had a feeling that Henry had found it and destroyed it. The ten digits stared back at him from the wrinkled yellow paper. They were his connection to Gretchen.
“If you need me, darling,”
she'd said. Archie had looked at the telephone number so many times that he thought he knew it by heart, but now the digits looked unfamiliar to him, already reordering and fading in his memory.

Archie glanced at Susan. Then he closed his hand, crumpling the note in his fist. A plastic trash bin sat against the wall on the other side of his IV pole. Archie tossed the balled-up Post-it note at it overhand and it sailed through the air and into the trash.

Then he settled back into the bed with Susan. He was suddenly wide awake. Susan squirmed in her sleep, and Archie had to brace himself as her knee pressed again into his tender stitches, but he didn't care. He stayed very still, trying to be as small as possible, to give her enough room to be comfortable. Her mouth was open slightly, and her breath was hot against his shoulder, making the hair on the back of his neck bristle. His wound didn't hurt while he was still, and the morphine filled him with a woozy contentment. Susan moved in her sleep again and flopped a foot across his shin. He stayed awake for a long time, watching her like that, and then, finally, he slept.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

Thanks, as always, to my writing group: Chuck Palahniuk, Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Erin Leonard, Mary Wysong, Suzy Vitello, Diana Jordan, and Cheryl Strayed. You could all write these books by now. My good friend and editor, Kelley Ragland, has unfailing instincts when it comes to my work, and has made this book better in a hundred ways. Joy Harris and Adam Reed, your awesomeness knows no bounds. Andy Martin and George Witte, you have always been my champions, and I will always be grateful to you. Hector DeJean, my publicist at Minotaur, thank you for being tall and able to talk comics, and thank you for all that publicity stuff, too. Everyone at St. Martin's Press/Minotaur is so classy and decent and smart. My husband and best friend, Marc Mohan, gave me a skull for Christmas. “I know you like dead things,” he said. How lucky am I? Eliza Fantastic Mohan, this is the book I wrote when you were in first grade and finished when you were in second grade. If you are reading this, and you are under twenty-five, you are in big trouble, missy. A terrific bookstore here in Portland—Murder by the Book—will have gone out of business by the time this book is published. They have always been lovely to me and have hosted wonderful events, and they will be missed. Go buy a book at a local independent bookstore in their memory. Courtenay Hameister, Jason Rouse, and Sean McGrath, thank you for occasionally inviting me into the LiveWire writers' room. There is nothing like sketch comedy to cleanse the palate after a day of unapologetic heathenism and murder. Allison Frost and the gang at OPB's Think Out Loud, I do a little dance every time you invite me to be a Culture Club guest. Thank you, Bill and Mary, for the surveillance, and for the absinthe. And last, the world lost a good dog this year. Franklin, the Australian shepherd who finds the skeleton at the beginning of
The Night Season,
has died. He never did find a human corpse in real life, but he gave it one hell of a go and I think he got close a couple of times.

 

ALSO BY CHELSEA CAIN

Kill You Twice

The Night Season

Evil at Heart

Sweetheart

Heartsick

 

About the Author

CHELSEA CAIN's first five novels featuring Archie Sheridan were all
New York Times
bestsellers. Also the author of
Confessions of a Teen Sleuth,
a parody based on the life of Nancy Drew, and several nonfiction titles, she was born in Iowa, raised in Bellingham, Washington, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. Visit her at
www.chelseacain.com
.

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

LET ME GO.
Copyright © 2013 by Verite Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by Ervin Serrano

Cover photographs by Dan Barnes/Getty Images and Hayden Verry/Arcangel Images

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Cain, Chelsea.

    Let me go / Chelsea Cain. — First edition.

            pages cm

    ISBN 978-0-312-61981-7 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-250-02238-7 (e-book)

  1.  Sheridan, Archie (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2.  Ward, Susan (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   3.  Women journalists—Fiction.   4.  Murder—Investigation—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3603.A385L38 2013

    813'.6—dc23

2013009825

e-ISBN 9781250022387

First Edition: August 2013