“Actually, since early on.”
“Really?”
Snotty and sarcastic, the tone alone might have warned Rebecca to stop if she didn’t want things to get ugly. But she was not at her most sensitive and observant. “When early on?”
“Right at the beginning, Al. When he told all those lies to Waverly.”
“It wasn’t ‘all those lies.’ It was like a couple of things that had nothing to do with anything, and he didn’t want to muddy the waters.”
“Except it turned out they did have something to do with everything.”
“He didn’t know that,” Allie protested. “And he stayed while your dad called the police. I mean, why even admit he knew her?”
“Because he knew it would come out, and the best thing would be if he just owned up. Of course he knew her. Of course it was a shock, seeing her there on TV. What else was he going to do? Run out the door? No, he had to stay. You know that’s exactly the argument I made, Allie, so I get what you’re talking about.”
“And you still think there’s a chance he did it? He actually did it?”
Rebecca inclined her head affirmatively. “I’m not going to go over that again. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Of course I worry about you. You’re my best friend. And now I see you’re just getting back on your feet after the whole bar thing . . .”
“Oh, good, bring that up again.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying, Beck. That if you hadn’t worried about me and hadn’t pulled the strings that you did with your dad, I wouldn’t even be here. That no one else would have taken me.”
“I never felt that.”
“Never just a little tiny bit superior?”
“God! No. Not even a little bit. You were my friend, and I was trying to help you out.”
“As long as I’m second.”
“That is so not true.”
“And now—don’t think I don’t see it clear as a bell, Beck—Greg likes me and you’re jealous.”
“Of you and Greg? Are you kidding me?”
“I think it’s pretty damned obvious. Not wanting me to help him get a job and—oh, look at this!—as soon as I finally do something over your very
strong objections, guess what? Greg is back with a great opportunity, and you know who he’s got to thank for that? Me. That’s who. On my own, without having to do any part of it through you and your father.”
“My father? How is he even part of this conversation?”
“Because it’s no secret how he feels. I know the only reason he’s keeping me on is because of you. You don’t think I feel that all the time?”
“That just isn’t true. I don’t know how you can say that.”
“The other thing is that he thinks Greg is guilty, too. His own lawyers, and everybody thinks he’s guilty. The saddest thing is that you’re all wrong, and you just keep feeding yourselves these lies to keep believing what you already think you know. It’s horrible, you know that? Completely horrible.” Allie reached for her wineglass and drained it, then banged it down on the table and, unsteady, rose to her feet. “I don’t have to deal with this anymore, with being Miss Second Class, going out with the wrong guy whom you wish you could have and whom I happen to be in love with. Me. Who doesn’t get the first choice. Well, I got it now, and I’m keeping it, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Al. Come on. We’re not—”
“We’re not anything!” Allie yelled. “We’re not anything anymore. You want him and you can’t have him, and that’s what this is all about.” She cast an almost frantic gaze around the room. “I’m done with all of this! All of it!”
She ran from the room and down the hallway, slamming her door hard enough that the windows rattled.
R
EBECCA ALMOST TURNED
down her new roommate without an interview, because, really, how seriously was anybody going to take you if you hung out with a person named Bunny Schreckinger?
But the young woman was exactly Rebecca’s age. She had a good job as a corporate recruiter, no crazy boyfriend, and probably wouldn’t have any trouble making the rent. Another plus, she wasn’t a lawyer. Rebecca had enough lawyers in her life every day, all day, and maybe having a regular workingwoman for a roommate would be a nice change of pace.
What clinched the arrangement was Bunny’s bubbly personality and her enthusiasm over the idea that the two of them could conquer the city if they teamed up as the dynamic duo Beck and Shrek.
Deal.
• • •
O
UTSIDE
R
EBECCA’S OFFICE
window, the blessed, perhaps drought-breaking rain was coming down in nearly horizontal sheets. It had started around noon and only increased over the past eight hours as the dark, dark night had fallen. Now, alone in her office, she was catching up on some nonbillable administrative work that she’d let slide during the week she’d been up at Lake Tahoe with her mom and dad and brother between Christmas and New Year’s.
When the phone rang, she gave it the evil eye, then automatically saved the document she’d been working on and picked up. “Rebecca Hardy.”
“Hey, it’s me.” Shrek, in a nervous whisper.
“You sound funny. Is everything all right?”
“Not really. Your ex-roommate—Allie?—she’s here. She says her boyfriend hit her.”
“God, that asshole.” Rebecca hadn’t laid eyes on Allie since her former roommate
had gone to work at another firm within two weeks of moving out of their apartment and in with Greg Treadway. Tonight’s news didn’t shock her to her roots, but it was very disconcerting. “How bad is she?” she asked.
“Bad enough. Her jaw’s swollen and her lip is cut. I think it’s a nine-one-one moment, but she’s begging me not to make that call.”
“Oh, sure, let’s protect that jerk.”
“You know him?”
“He was my client last summer, and I’ve been afraid of something like this. Shit. Where is she now?”
“I’ve got her covered up on the couch. I told her I was calling you. Wait, just a second. Here she is.”
Allie’s voice came through fragile and raspy. “Hey, Beck. I’m so sorry to bother you, but I just had to get away and didn’t know where else I could go.”
“Don’t worry about that. Are you all right? That’s the main thing.”
“Mostly. I don’t know what happened. We were having this argument, about nothing, really, and all of a sudden he just—”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re all right now. Do you want to call the police from there, or should I do it from here?”
“No! I mean neither, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. If Greg hit you, you’ve got to report it.”
“Beck, please. You know the history, what it would look like. That can’t happen.”
“That’s especially why it has to happen, Al.”
“Can we please not talk about that right now?”
“Okay, but we’re going to have to talk about it sometime, and sooner rather than later. I can be home in twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. Are you okay till then?”
“I should be.”
“Okay. Just wait. I’ll be right there.”
• • •
“T
HE POINT IS,
Dad, I don’t know what to do.”
“I think you have to call the police and get this on the record, even if I don’t think there’s much you’ll be able to do, sweetie. If she’s adamant that she won’t talk to the police, you’re stuck. When they show up, she’ll just lie. If they’ve already patched things
up, which you can pretty much bet on, then the DV”—domestic violence—“guys ring their bell and Greg and Allie tell them they haven’t been fighting. And you, you’re not even a neighbor who filed a noise complaint. It’s a dead end, but I’d say probably still worth doing.”
“I can’t believe Allie would let this happen to her.”
“I’m afraid it happens every day.”
“I feel like I should do something more.”
Hardy’s sigh came through the line. “I hate to say ‘Get involved’ because of all the bad overtones, Beck, but my best advice to you is to get at least a little bit involved. Make her feel better tonight if you can. In terms of Greg, you can’t live her life for her, but maybe you can get her to think about things with him. If she wants to put up with this, there’s very little you can do. It’ll just have to run its course one way or the other.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Run its course like it did with Anlya.”
“Hopefully not like that.”
“He did that, didn’t he?”
“It’s looking more like that now than it did yesterday, I’ll give you that. And even yesterday, to me, it looked pretty good.”
“And I got him off.”
“That was your job, and you did it.”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that. But you see why I might feel just a teeny bit responsible for what’s happening now with him and Allie?”
“That’s between him and Allie, Beck. You didn’t put them together. If memory serves, and it always does, you went out of your way to talk her out of seeing him after the trial.”
“Only because I wanted him for myself,” she said with heavy irony. “Don’t forget that.”
“I never would. Bottom line, she can be your friend, but this isn’t your business.”
“She came to my apartment, Dad. Doesn’t that make it my business a little?”
“As far as that goes, be her friend, sure. Tonight. And speaking as your father, let’s not forget that from now on, we ought to be considering Greg a very dangerous guy. If you can think of a way to get some cops involved in how he’s treating Allie, that might not be a bad idea. As to you yourself doing anything
that might get his attention, I’d keep my distance. Really. You think you can do that for your old man’s sake?”
Rebecca sighed. “I’ll try, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll really try. Meanwhile, they’re waiting for me at my apartment, and I really should be going by now.”
“Then by all means go,” her father said. “Ride like the wind, but carefully, okay? The roads are a mess.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said, thinking, Jesus.
• • •
R
EBECCA, OUT OF
breath, hair dripping onto her already soaked raincoat, came in through her building’s front entrance and half ran down the hallway to her apartment. Her hands were shaking with the cold or nerves, and it took her a couple of stabs to get the key in and turn it. Finally, it caught and she pushed at the door, which opened directly into the living room.
When she stepped in, the light was a little unnaturally dim, but she saw Shrek on the couch and Allie, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the facing chair, their expressions tense and furtive. “Hi, guys,” she began. “Sorry that took so long. It’s just crazy—”
Before she could go any further, and before it could dawn on her that the two women were each sitting in a strained and unnatural position, their faces painted with fear, someone kicked at the door and it slammed closed behind her.
Startled, she whirled. Greg Treadway stood a couple of feet behind her, his hand outstretched, holding a gun pointing directly at her face, the O at the end of the barrel drawing all of her attention. “That really wasn’t too long, Rebecca,” he said. “I’d say it was just about perfect. I only beat you here by about ten minutes. I’m afraid it took me a while to figure out where Allie must have gone. I know, now that we’re all here, it’s so obvious. That was a little slow of me, but no worries. You were a little slower. Now get away from the door. Easy. Sit on the couch with your roommate, here, and put your purse on the floor by your feet. Now.”
Rebecca obeyed, stealing a glance at the other two women, both of whom sat straight up, terrified, meek, and submissive, hands folded in their laps. It was immediately clear to Rebecca that if any of them had a chance—even
if only to buy a few more precious moments of life for all of them—it would be her.
She started to speak, but nothing came out. Clearing her throat, she leveled her gaze at him. “Greg,” she said, “what are you doing?”
Out of the shadows now, he stood—the gun for the moment at his side—under the wide arch that delineated the living room’s entrance. “I would think that would be obvious, wouldn’t you?”
“Not really, no. I see the gun, but that makes no sense. What are you going to do with a gun? Since when do you even have a gun?”
This brought a small acknowledging nod. “Since that great patriot Trevor Ames hired me. He believes in every American’s God-given right to bear arms, and I must say that, after a lot of reflection, I don’t think he’s all wrong. When he brings new people on board, the first thing he does is cut a bonus check that we’re supposed to use to buy the weapon of our choice, if we don’t already have one.”
She pointed. “And that’s the gun you bought?”
“No. No, no, no, Beck. If it were my gun, registered to me, then I really couldn’t use it the way I need to tonight. A guy learns a few things if he spends some time in jail, believe me. This”—he held it up—“is a gun I bought on the street in Oakland last month when I first started to think that things with me and Allie were going to end badly. Eventually. I thought it would be a good idea to be prepared for when the day came.”
“For what, exactly?”
He tsked. “Rebecca, you’re not that slow. You’re not slow at all.”
“You’re going to kill the three of us? In cold blood?” She shook her head. “There’s just no way, Greg. No fucking way.” She started to get up.
Stepping forward, he raised the gun, pointing it at her face. “Sit back down, or I swear to God I will shoot you dead right now.”
She hesitated for a second, cast a frustrated glance at Shrek and at Allie, then sighed and lowered herself back down. “Do you mind telling us why? And while we’re at it, why Anlya?”
He was standing five feet or so from her, in front of the faux mantel. “That was a mistake. I never meant for that to happen. I’m not the kind of person who would . . . or I wasn’t. I’m still not. This is not going to continue, after tonight, I mean. This is not how I wanted anything to turn out.
I just wanted her to move out. It wasn’t working between us, and she just kept fighting me on it.”
“You’re talking Allie now?”
“Of course. What did it sound like?”
Allie found her voice. “I’ll move out, Greg. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. I’ll never talk about any of this. I’ll never tell anybody you hit me.”
“You made me hit you! You could have just left.”