The Comfort of Black (27 page)

“He'll kill you,” Dallin said to her.

Hannah didn't know which
he
Dallin was referring to. Billy? Black? The idea she was at a point in her life where death threats against her needed greater specificity nearly made her laugh. Nearly.

“No, you're talking to me now,” Black said. “You're going to tell us how,
exactly
how, we access that money. It's planned for Billy, isn't it? Have you given it to him yet?”

Dallin wouldn't look at him. He kept staring at Hannah with desperate, defeated eyes, rendered gray by the contrast of the dull-red slap mark on his cheek.

“It wasn't supposed to end up like this,” he said. “Hannah, I'm telling you, you were supposed to be fine.”

“Fine?”
she said. “How do you define
fine
?”

“Dallin,” Black said, “I'm losing my patience.”

Dallin ignored him and strained against the tape. Hannah didn't think he was trying to escape.
He wants to touch me. Put his hands on my arms, tell me “the truth.” If he could only touch me, he might be able to control me. And his lack of control is driving him mad
.

“Hannah,” he said, “you have to believe me. They made me do this. They…Billy…he knew about—”

Black got up from the bed and smacked the back of Dallin's head. “Dallin! We're talking about the money. We're not talking about anything else right now.”

Dallin turned, spitting as he yelled back. “You can have the fucking money! I don't care. I'll tell you how to get it. Now give me a
goddamn minute
with my wife.” Dallin's body shook in the chair, and his forehead had the wet, sickly glaze of someone
stricken with the flu. His next words were more controlled, steadied. “Please, just let me talk to her. Alone.”

Hannah looked at Black when she heard the word
alone
.

“No,” said Black.

“Yes,” said Hannah.

“
Hannah
.”

“It's okay,” she said. “I don't need your help. I don't need protection. He's taped to the chair and I have a gun, for God's sake.”

“But it's not necessary,” Black said.

Hannah's gaze moved from Black to Dallin. “You've been married before. You understand the need for a husband and wife to talk, don't you?”

“Hannah…”

“It's okay, Black. If you're worried I'm going to do something stupid, you don't need to be.” She kept looking at Dallin as she spoke, and the room felt suddenly a little cooler, a little larger. “I'm in control now.” She took one step closer to her husband. “I'm in control.”

Black moved over next to her, leaned in, and whispered in her ear. “We need that money, Hannah. It's the only way this works. It's the only way to leave for good.”

Hannah nodded, understanding the words but hardly hearing them. Black stood next to her a few moments longer, as if his mere presence, his body near hers, would somehow get her to change her mind. When it didn't, he told her, “I'll be right outside.”

And then he left, the breeze from the closing motel room door stirring up a new swarm of dust motes, which swirled and danced in the incandescent light.

And then it was quiet.

Hannah was alone with her husband.

She wanted to kill him.

I know what you see, Hannie. You see me in that chair, don't you? You see the man who wronged you, and now you want to do something about it. You can now. You can do what you couldn't do when you were just a kid. You can light that fire this time. He ain't going anywhere. You can watch him burn
.

“Fuck you,” she said, her words directed to both her husband and her father. “I'm not like you.”

But you are and you know it. Stop trying to hide the moldy cake beneath the icing. You're no better than me. When you shot that redneck…you tell yourself he woulda done bad things to you, but you liked it, didn't you?

Hannah closed her eyes and slowed her breath. She stilled her mind, neither repelling nor inviting any further thoughts. She didn't speak, at least not at first. It wasn't that she didn't have anything to say. Rather, she had too much. Too many questions, and she had to be ready for the answers. This was perhaps the last time she would ever see Dallin, and whatever he said in this shitty, dark motel room would stay with her forever.

Hannah sat on the corner of the bed and rested her hands on her knees, the hard edges of the gun pressing from inside her coat pocket against the side of her leg. She wasn't holding it, but it would take only a second to grab it and fire. Her gaze swept over Dallin's torso and arms, which appeared securely strapped to the chair. But she wasn't stupid. Hannah knew, if he wanted, Dallin could half-stand in the chair and try to slam into her. Or into the wall, and try to break the chair apart. But he wouldn't get far. She would shoot him first.

She wouldn't hesitate. There was no question in her mind.

He seemed to understand this, for he sat motionless in his chair, a schoolboy freshly chastised. He didn't take his gaze off her, and Hannah considered how much the look of confidence had changed since she'd first met him in the lobby of the hotel all those years ago. The cocky boy who told her he'd just got funding for his company, he was moving to Seattle, and he was taking her out to dinner. The colorful light in his eyes back then was pure, full of the future in wait, coated in a perfect blend of confidence and naiveté.

Now that color was replaced by a dull haze, cataracts of bad decisions, and any hope left was not for the distant future but simply for the next few minutes.

Dallin broke the lengthy silence first. “I love you.”

“Give me the account information,” she said.

“
Hannah
.”

“Black is right about the money. And since I have no idea how the rest of this conversation is going to go, I had better get the money now.”

“If I give you the information, you won't have any need for me,” he said.

“I have no need for you at all,” she said. “This is about your needs, Dallin. If you feel a need not to bleed to death on this dirty motel carpet, you'll give me the account information.” She pulled the gun out of her coat pocket and placed it on the bed next to her. “Now.”

His gaze shifted from the gun to her face. “It's in an account. Offshore. I haven't given…given Billy access to it yet. Everything changed when he…when he said to…you know. With the change of plan.”

“You mean when he said to have me killed?” Hannah said.

Dallin slowly nodded.

“Give me the information.”

“I can access it on my phone.”

“We're not turning your phone on. Try again.”

“It's a file. On the SD card.”

“Give me the file name and password. Now.”

Dallin did, no longer resisting. Hannah opened the motel-room
door and relayed the details to Black, who still had Dallin's phone. She hoped Black could use the SD card in his own phone, which was cut off from any GPS tracking.

When she closed the door again, Dallin said, “Your father is not going to stop looking for you.”

“I'm willing to bet I can run faster than he can,” she said.

The next few minutes were spent mostly in silence. Hannah sat on the edge of the bed and stared blankly at the wall. Dallin twice attempted to talk to her, but she wouldn't answer him.

A knock at the door. Hannah got up and answered.

Black had a smile on his face.

“It's there,” he said. “All of it. I contacted Peter and gave him the info, and he transferred it to our account.”

Hannah nodded. She didn't even feel happy or relieved.

“Don't kill him, Hannah,” he said. “You're not like that.”

Hannah blinked and looked up at him. “Everyone thinks they know me,” was all she said. Then she closed the door, leaving Black to the sunlight.

“Is it true?” she asked.

Dallin didn't answer at first, and then he mumbled, “Is what true?” But it wasn't really a question, because he knew exactly what she was talking about. He was just trying to buy time, and Hannah remained silent, letting him. She had all the time in the world.

A yell came from the neighboring room, the muffled shriek of a child's excitement, a sound of being discovered during hide-and-seek. The thin plaster motel wall separated a child's happiness and a man's life untethering.

Dallin remained silent for another minute, and, as if seeing no other way to get beyond the place they were now, he looked up and said:

“Yes.”

The urge to throw up welled through Hannah, making her hands clammy and her mouth water. She pushed it down.

“You've been fucking my sister,” she said. “And Connor—my nephew. He's your
son
.”

“I wasn't simply…” Dallin stopped himself, likely knowing there was no explanation that would make it any better. “Yes,” he said.

“How long?” she asked.

“Two years.” Pause. Then he added, “A little longer.”

The image of Justine's television interview flashed through her mind. Justine, all made up, just the right touch of concern on her face. Justine, suggesting Hannah perhaps found another man…

“Cunt,” she said.

Dallin let out a long, slow exhale, as if he knew it would perhaps be his last.

“All those nights at work. Weekends. The whole time you were with her?”

“Not all the time,” he said.

“I'm such a fucking idiot,” she said. “I didn't see any of it.”

“Because you became a drunk,” he said simply. “And that's something I should have seen earlier. You had everything, Hannah. You had a husband who loved you. You had money. Friends. And you just kept drinking more and more.”

“Don't you put this on me,” she said. “Don't you fucking dare.”

But he continued. “I tried getting through to you, but you always kept it in control just enough. You drank just enough to keep you short of needing rehab but past the point where you stopped giving a shit about me.”

“
That's…not…true
.”

“It is true, Hannah. It's true and you know it.”

“Well, I'm not drinking anymore.” She didn't know why she bothered telling him this. What did she want, his respect?

“That's good, Hannah.”

Hannah eyed the gun on the bed. How easy it would be to make him pay for everything. One flash. One bang. Over.

No, I came here for answers. I don't have to like them
.

“So you figured Justine—a younger, sober version of me—would make you happy?”

Dallin stifled a sob. Hannah had perhaps seen her husband cry a handful of times in all their years together.

“I…I didn't mean for it to start, and I take full responsibility for everything. But now I realize…I know she planned it all along. She wanted to take me from you. She wanted the life you had. She wanted the baby you weren't having with me.”

The last sentence flipped Hannah's stomach to the point she had to sit on the bed.

“And I
was
happy with her,” he continued. “For a while I truly was. And then she got pregnant. I freaked out. I wanted…I wanted her to get…to terminate it. She refused.”

Hannah thought back to when Justine announced she was
pregnant. She said it was her boyfriend's, who quickly left the picture after that. It was in the spring, and for several months Dallin had been busier than ever. Traveling. Nights. Weekends. It had been a particularly bad time in their relationship.

“But I loved her, Hannah. I'm not going to lie. I loved her and wanted to be with her. Connor…Connor is the greatest thing in my life, and I couldn't even be honest about him. I'd have to make up an excuse with you just to sneak over there and see him. And when we went over to Justine's place together, I'd have to sit there and pretend to be an uncle. It ripped my heart out.”

Hannah's voice was barely more than a whisper. “Don't try to make me feel sorry for you.”

“I'm telling you the truth, Hannah. It's what you want, isn't it? I'm not going to hide anything else. Hell, if it wasn't for Connor, I wouldn't even care if you killed me.”

“He deserves a better dad than you,” she said. “And a better mother.”

His eyes narrowed and a bead of sweat snaked from his forehead over the bridge of his nose.

“I'm a good father,” he said.

Hannah finally picked up the gun and pointed it at his head. “You're not a good anything.”

Dallin closed his eyes.

“Why not divorce me?” she asked. The gun quivered in her grip and she lowered it, not wanting him to see her hand shaking it. “If you love her, why not just end our marriage?”

His eyes remained closed as he spoke. “When Justine and I first…started…I thought that's what I wanted. We talked about it from time to time, but she was always telling me we had to take it slow. We had to be smart. But when she got pregnant, she changed.”

“Changed how?”

“She became possessive. She demanded more of my time. Started telling me I had to leave you. And she…she started to become very hateful of you. Saying horrible things.”

“What kind of things?” Hannah whispered.

He shook his head slightly. “Things about your past. About how you were the reason your father was always so angry. She…blamed you for his going to prison.”

Hannah clenched her jaw. “He went to prison because he fucking
beat
me near death.”

“I know. I know. But in her mind, despite the kind of man he was with your family, he kept a weird kind of stability. With him gone, your mom spiraled downward. Justine blames you for her death. I think a part of her always hated you for that. And then…then you both move out here. You became successful. She didn't.”