attempts to lower the tension were ineffective, and under the circumstances it’s impressive that she came out the tempered one. She’s a lot stronger than her trembling suggests.
I accept her olive branch and pass her one in return. “The death I can handle. It’s the bad breath and yellow teeth I find troublesome.”
Melody puckers, tries to bring moisture to her mouth. “Why not try the nicotine gum?”
I shake my head and scrunch my nose. “You can’t intimidate people by snuffing out chewed gum on their forearms.”
Indeed, that came off a little dark; I was trying to strike a chord, not a nerve. I force a chuckle, then slide up a blade of the blinds in her room, see the marshal still out on the brightly moonlit sand.
“John Bovaro,” she says, the first thing she has said this loud, the first attempt at trying to get someone’s attention. I walk back in the center of the room and lean on the dresser. “Or, what, you go by Johnny? Little John?”
I slide my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Actually, if you really want to know, I prefer Jonathan.”
She gives me a look identical to the one Peter did when I told him the same thing; he’d responded with a blank stare, followed by, “Seriously?”
The difference: Melody giggles and says, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
I smile, let her know she can feel free to even the playing field however she sees fit. I walk to the chair next to the window, glance out at the shoreline once more—the marshal is still spellbound on the beach—and reach down to the back of the chair and grab her robe and hand it to her. “Here. If you want to slip into something dry.” She doesn’t immediately take it. I move closer, practically put it in her hands. I read the uncertainty and confusion in her gaze, so I try to cement what I hope she is already thinking. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
There would be no way for her to understand that this moment might generate nightmares for me, too, how close I am right now to possibly losing her forever. Anything goes wrong—the marshal returns, I lose this margin of trust, one of our crew comes bursting through her door—and the result will be one from a collection of disasters.
She takes the robe.
I walk away and keep my back to her, surprised at how aware I am of the sound of the fabric being pulled from her body, the smooth swish of something being dragged against her skin.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You may,” she says, my signal to turn back around.
“How’d you know I was on to you back in Maryland?”
“What do you mean?”
I run all of Gardner’s knowledge and accessibilities through my head, try to determine which person in my family was next to receive the very information I used. “In Columbia. How did you know I was following you?”
She licks her lips and shakes her head, squints in confusion like she’s trying to solve two puzzles at once. “I had no idea who you were until a few minutes ago.”
I look down and try to understand what might have happened. “You mean, someone else from my family threatened you?”
“No.”
“Then why are you being relocated?”
The confusion in her eyes suddenly disappears and she looks at me like a child deciding whether to tell her parent the truth or fortify an existing lie. “I, uh… I decided I was bored and needed a change.”
The truth not only sets you free, it occasionally launches you from your prison. “You mean… you made up a threat to get the government to relocate you, to get you a new identity.”
She pauses, then nods. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Because you were bored.”
She barely grins, seemingly surprised at her talent for manipulation. “Yeah.”
This might be the biggest rush I’ve ever felt with a woman, the closest I might’ve ever come to finding a female so closely aligned to my own way of life. She’s almost a criminal.
“Stickin’ it to the man,” I say as I offer my palm for a high-five, a move I immediately regret, though we both seem taken aback when she weakly slaps my leather-covered hand, more of a wipe of her palm against mine, but it is the very first positive shared physical contact she and I have had, the first time she reached out to touch me. And I imagine she’s thinking the same thing I am: This person is real. For