Today's Reading
"If you send this photo out, people might see it—like anyone—people you know! Your family. I could show it around here for...revenge, or I don't know. You're not safe in this, either. You would look just as bad screwing A stranger, it could ruin..."
"John. Look around. Does it look like I have anything left to lose?"
After a few silent moments, he gives what might be interpreted as a tiny nod and then walks out into the icy morning air and across the street to whatever bar or club his car is at, I assume.
I'm shaking. My hands are trembling. I can't believe what I just did. I don't even know who I am right now.
Three hours later, I'm in my apartment eating canned ravioli and trying to get the satellite TV channels to come in when I see a Ford truck pull up on the side of the building. A large man in a hooded raincoat pushes something under the door of the office. My heart leaps. When the truck is far enough down the street, I push my feet into slippers and run next door. I let myself into the office and grab a manila envelope from the floor.
Back in the warmth of my apartment, I sit on the detested plaid sofa and spread the crisp cash-machine bills out on the coffee table. A thousand dollars. Oh, my God. I can't believe it worked. I never would have sent those photos. He could have called my bluff. He also could have not taken it as relatively well as he did and attacked me instead...or worse.
I can’t do something like this again. I must have been out of my mind last night. I promise myself that I won’t do something like this again.
I wish more than anything that I kept that promise.
CHAPTER TWO
ANNA
Seven months later
A steamy July rain sizzles and pops off the hot pavement of the Gas ’N Go parking lot, and I know something bad is coming. It’s his silence that rattles me—the tremble in his voice when we spoke this morning. Why won’t he answer my calls?
A bearded trucker in a Pabst T-shirt places his Dr. Pepper on the counter, and I tap my foot impatiently as the cashier says they’re turning over shifts and he has to wait for the night guy to come in and switch registers. He nods outside, where a young man in a mullet, who must be the night guy, takes his time getting inside. I watch him flick the butt of his Winston Light behind the Polar Ice chest and eat the slimy end of a Slim Jim while he sits on a propane tank under the store awning and scrolls on his phone.
“Are you kidding me?” I mutter, but the trucker doesn’t make a fuss. He just lays a couple bucks in change on the counter, adjusts his ball cap and covers his face with one arm as he rushes back to his rig.
I check my phone. It’s seven minutes after five, so I assume Slim Jim guy is officially late, and I don’t have time for this. I put down the gas station wine and Henry’s favorite powdered mini donuts and sprint to my car.
I turn on the ignition—the pounding of the rain on the metal roof is deafening. I feel tears spring to my eyes, and I don’t know why, I just know something’s happened. It’s not like him to miss my calls. Ever. Certainly not all day. I punch the call icon under Henry’s name on my phone. It rings through. Shit.
I speed through glossy two-lane roads toward our house. I know things haven’t been good lately. He lost his teaching job. I’m between journalism jobs, but we’re fine. It’s a rocky patch is all. We’re not broke. We have prospects. He has more time for his own art, we’re spending more evenings together—dinners, right? It’ll be fine. I go over the pep talk in my head, so it’s ready when I find him.
When I get there, I take the stairs two at a time and fling open the door, rain soaked and breathless, and...nothing. I don't know what I expected. An empty wine bottle is still on the coffee table and last night's curry sits in greasy take-out boxes on top of the trash, and it's so quiet the tick of the wall clock is startling.
I try to think of any reason Henry would not be picking up the phone. There could be a dozen reasons. It died, he lost it, he has it on silent by accident. Sometimes when he's painting he'll put it on silent, and I get that.
But it was the way he sounded before I left for work this morning. It wasn't the same as his usual depression I've come to grow used to these last few months—it was a hollow sound—an emptiness when he spoke. And it's not that he said anything alarming, just goodbye, see ya tonight, but something about it rattled me.
This excerpt is from the ebook edition.
Monday, August 5 we begin the book The Bin Laden Plot by Rick Campbell.
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