The Comfort of Black (25 page)

“I almost shot you,” she said, lowering the gun.

Black's gaze swept over the bedroom and then rested back on her face. She saw something there. Sadness? Pity? Frustration?

“No, you didn't,” he said.

“You have misplaced confidence in me, then.”

“No,” he answered, taking the gun from her hand. “The safety is on. What are you doing?”

Hannah sighed. “Looking at things online that I'm immediately trying to forget.”

Black removed a backpack that appeared fuller than it was when he'd left. He dropped it to the bed. “I saw your father,” he said.

The words punched Hannah in the chest.

“He's in Seattle?”

“I saw him meet with Dallin in a parking garage. Risky move, actually. With all the press, Dallin's been pretty good about laying low. But if he was seen with your father, the press would certainly have more than a few questions.”

“How…how did he look?”

His eyebrows lifted just a bit.

“Smooth or Dallin?”

Hannah didn't know why she asked the question, and she didn't have a real answer. Who
was
she talking about?

“I…I guess Smoo—Billy.”

“Smooth looked like Smooth. A little older than I last saw him.”

“What about Dallin?”

“Dallin looked stressed. Nervous.”

“What did they say?”

“I don't know. I couldn't get that close.”

“You get photos?”

“No, nothing. I couldn't stay.”

The thought of her father and her husband meeting face to face seemed as unreal as anything else that had happened. The men were so different, though now perhaps not as different as she had once thought.

For the millionth time the question flashed in her mind: was the plan Dallin's or Billy's? If Dallin wanted to get rid of Hannah, why would he need Billy? Hannah had barely discussed Billy in all their years together. Perhaps Dallin needed someone from the criminal world to put the plan together, but that seemed unlikely. Dallin had a swarm of people and nearly endless funds at his disposal. A cretin like Billy would add little to the equation.

More likely, Billy sought out Dallin. Getting out of prison, Billy would need money, and Hannah could only imagine the thoughts going through Billy's head when he learned his oldest daughter was wealthy.

That little bitch? Never expected her to amount to shit. Guess her face finally healed, she grew a pair of fine tits, and fucked her way into fortune. And, seeing she got her good looks from her daddy, seems only fair she pays me a royalty fee
.

Then Billy probably hatched the plan after working for Black, seeing what he did, learning the craft of making people disappear. Probably thought,
well, damn, this is a pretty cool trick. Maybe I can make Hannie disappear, and take some of that money in the process. Wouldn't that be sweet?

It made sense to Hannah, up until the point when Billy actually approached Dallin. Dallin knew what Billy had done to Hannah, and Hannah couldn't imagine any other reaction from her husband except the one where Dallin beat the shit out of Billy.

But that hadn't happened, had it? No, the two had met, and rather than Dallin crushing her father, he chose to conspire with him. Conspired to get rid of his wife, first agreeing to an elaborate plan to make her want to disappear, then changing that plan to actually having her killed.

Why?

It was the question Hannah wanted answered most. She burned to hear Dallin's answer, to see his face as he tried to come up with any reasonable explanation he could tell her, and finding none, telling the truth, whatever that possibly was.

“So I think we can do it,” Black said. He turned and sat on the edge of the bed, next to her, the long-abused mattress sagging like the back of an old plow horse.

She turned to him. “When?”

“Tomorrow. It's not a great plan, but I've had worse. And it's the only way, if this is what you want.”

She looked at his face, his day-old stubble that had turned into three, the ridges around his eyes, the few stray black hairs that swooped across his forehead. But most of what she saw were his eyes, because, when they looked at her, they were piercing.

“It's what I want,” she said. “I have to talk to Dallin.”

“And we need his money,” Black said.

“We need
my
money.”

“Yes, sorry. Your money.” He let out a slight sigh, one sounding like fatigue rather than concern. “I'd go fifty-fifty on our chances.”

“In your line of work, are those good odds?”

Black lay flat on the bed.

“Nope.”

D
AY
29

When Hannah saw Dallin, she was flooded with thoughts and emotions, mostly negative ones, questioning ones, feelings of confusion, anger. But, rising up from within her swell of emotion, the same sentence kept looping in her mind, a thought that had started as a raindrop and gradually built into a river over the past three days. She couldn't control when the words would pop into her head, and the moment she finally saw her husband it came suddenly and louder than ever.

I should have had my period by now
.

“Get down,” Black said. “It's time.”

Hannah bent forward in the back of the car Black had rented with a fake driver's license and credit card. They'd arrived in Seattle before dawn, before the sun painted the heavy rainclouds with a dull orange, and before Dallin left the apartment for work. In the days Black spent trailing him, he noticed that, while Dallin was never far from security during the day, he always drove to work alone.

“Stay down until I tell you,” Black said. “I don't want him to see you. It's starting to rain. That's going to help us.”

Hannah had only seen the side of Dallin's face, briefly, looking north down the street as he was preparing to turn in that direction. She saw the familiar sweep of his hair, the line of his nose which crooked just enough to give him an aristocratic air. She saw the BMW he had bought her as a gift but usually drove himself. All of this in a few
seconds but it was enough to attack her senses, quicken her pulse, and fill her with both fear and surging anger. Yet the words were still there.

I should have had my period by now
.

Not that she was so regular with her period you could wind your watch to her cycle. Even as a teen she could be off by a few days, and the more she worked out, the more irregular she became. But in the last couple of months, ever since Dallin finally agreed it was time to start a family, Hannah had been particularly cognizant of her cycle. The last time she had sex with him—the last time they would probably ever have sex, she thought distantly—she'd been a week into her cycle.

Of course, Dallin wasn't the only man she'd had sex with since then. The first few times she and Black were together he'd pulled out, and then in the motel they had used condoms. Well, most of the time.

“We've just a short window here,” Black said as he drove. “It takes him about twenty minutes to get to work, but once he's on the highway there's nothing we can do. So it needs to be within the next few blocks.”

Stop focusing on your body
, she told herself.
Now's not the time
.

“Okay, he's turning now. Soon.”

The sound of rain pelting the car became suddenly heavy and loud, like they were driving through a swarm of locusts.

“Hold on,” Black said. “Right behind him. Light coming up.”

Hannah wrapped her arms around her legs, assuming a crash position.

“Get ready…”

She squeezed her legs and wondered if the seatbelt, which she still had around her, did any good in this position.

“Now.”

Two seconds of silence and then a jolt as the car rolled into the back of Dallin's—
Hannah's
—BMW. The impact was light, really just a rolling bump, but Hannah felt the jolt through her whole body.

“Here we go. Keep low.”

She pictured Dallin in the BMW, annoyed but resigned to the fact he had to deal with someone rear-ending him. In the rain. She felt Black accelerate for a few seconds and then pull to the right, slow down, and then finally stop. Black said nothing else as he got out of the car, and the sound of rain filled Hannah's ears in the brief moments the car door was open.

Dallin would stay in his car, Hannah thought. He would roll down the window and make the guilty party come to him. He would want to stay dry as they exchanged insurance information. If he was lucky, he'd be back on his way to work in five minutes.

Cars blared their horns as they passed by.

Hannah used every ounce of her will not to sit up and look. Right about now Black would be leaning into Dallin's car, removing the keys from the ignition, and subtly brandishing his gun.

You're coming with me, or you're going to die here on the street
.

Would Dallin resist?

Seconds stretched into a least a minute, a minute that felt like an hour. Still bent forward, Hannah's rapid breaths warmed the skin on her legs. The police could show up at any time. Another motorist could see Black's gun—which Black wouldn't actually take out unless he had to—and decide to interfere. Their car could get rear-ended by someone not paying attention, a possibility compounded by the driving rain. A million different ways for it all to go wrong and only one way for it to go right.

Finally a car door opened. Passenger side. Hannah tensed but remained low. She heard weight settle into the passenger seat, directly in front of her.

Then she smelled him. He smelled like Dallin, the Dallin who used the same soap every day, the same shampoo, the same Ralph Lauren
eau de toilette
. In the midst of his plan to have his wife killed, in the midst of keeping up an appearance of concern for her, Dallin had still sprayed the two or three little bursts of that fucking cologne on his neck every morning, as if everything was the same as it was last month.

Hannah had once loved his smell, but now his scent seemed like rot to her. Decaying flesh sloughing off bones.

A moment later the driver's-side door opened.

The seat pushed back as Black settled into the car.

Hannah grabbed the gun that had been resting on the floor of the car. Back near the motel, in the woods, Black had shown her how to use it. The handle, cool at first, quickly warmed from the heat of her hand.

The car lurched to the left and a blaring horn shot through her brain. She heard the tires squeal on the wet pavement as Black accelerated down the street.

“What about my car?”

Dallin. It was the first time she heard his voice since the Four Seasons, since he told Hannah how sorry he was and told Peter she had mace in her purse.

“You don't need your car,” Black said.

“Where is she?” Dallin asked. His voice was shaky, even desperate sounding.

Where Hannah was—directly behind him, crouched on the floor inches away but perfectly hidden behind the passenger seat.

Black remained silent for a moment. Hannah tensed even more as she felt the car turn right and then accelerate. On-ramp to the highway, she guessed.

“Just stay quiet and stay still,” Black answered. “If you can't do that, it's going to be a problem.”

But Dallin couldn't remain silent.

“Did…did you do it? You just disappeared on us. Is she gone?”

She could almost hear Black smile.

“Now what do you think?” Black asked. “That was a lot of money you offered me to kill her. Think I'd turn that down?”

Before Dallin answered, Hannah sat up and leveled the gun at her husband's face, who had just turned at the movement.

If she could replace the honeymoon photo Dallin broke when he slammed Hannah against the wall, she would replace it with a picture of his face in this exact moment.

Hannah smiled. “Hi, honey.”

How easy it would be to pull the trigger. Just a few pounds of pressure. His face was less than six inches from the nose of the gun. If she fired, the nine-millimeter bullet would smash into the bridge of his nose, rendering it to pulp on its journey through skull and brain. Instant death. Blood and brain matter all over the front seat, the windshield, the dashboard.

Hannah didn't fantasize about seeing that happen, yet neither did the thought upset her. A month ago she wanted a baby with this man. Now the thought of his head spread across a car interior made her sad only in a detached way, like reading an article about an atrocity in a country two oceans away.

“Hannah,” he gasped. “Oh, thank God you're okay.” Dallin's eyes remained wide as he looked at her, smiling, the kind of smile she normally would have believed meant he was truly happy to see her. But she had learned the depth of his acting ability.

He reached out to touch her but she yanked her head back.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Your face. It's all bruised. Hannah, what happened?”

She didn't answer, the silence felt wonderful. Hannah looked forward and saw Black flash his gaze at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes shone in the yellow morning light. He gave her a look of assurance, a look of his belief in her. They had a plan, and they would stick with it.

“Baby, they
made
me do it. I didn't have a choice.” Dallin twisted in his seat to face fully.

“Keep your eyes forward,” Black said.

“I'm just—”

“You're just doing exactly everything I tell you to do. Face forward and shut the fuck up. She's not going to say a word to you, not now, at least. Her job is to keep the gun trained on your head while I drive, and if you think she's going to have a problem pulling the trigger, you're an idiot. I've seen her shoot a man before. Killing you would just be gravy.”