Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,17

in his words struck deep. Woodenly, she moved to the talking points she’d developed in her head, the ones she’d saved in case they ever had this conversation.

“I know this resides completely outside most people’s comfort levels, but it’s rational. Monogamy doesn’t make sense. Love isn’t a finite resource; it’s not depreciable.”

He barked out a humorless laugh. “What, is it like goodwill, then? Do you perform yearly impairment tests on your marriage?”

“I’m saying use doesn’t deplete it.”

Corbett didn’t reply, but he looked more and more agitated. They arrived at their building and headed down to the parking garage. Nora floundered for the right thing to say, some way to convey the necessity of all the choices she’d made for the last fifteen years. Was there any way to translate the architecture of a life to someone standing outside it? To show them that if one single pillar was moved, everything could come crashing down? But Corbett was done trying to deconstruct her; he’d already shifted back to the more pressing topic.

“Gregg Abbott came to Parrish for you,” he murmured, so low she almost didn’t hear it. “He wants it to be you.”

“I made it clear to him today that I’m impartial,” she shook her head, then—thinking of Logan—amended, “at least as far as he’s concerned.”

Corbett didn’t seem to notice her qualification. They walked into the garage and stopped next to their adjoining parking spots. An emotion crossed his face, twitching at the corners of his eyes before it disappeared and his expression hardened. “If that’s true then you can take this case.”

“But …” she trailed off.

“Listen to me. He thinks you’re biased. He thinks he can influence you.” Corbett stepped closer, grasping Nora by the shoulder, and for a moment they stood frozen, rooted to the dark cement floor in the bowels of the city. When Corbett spoke again, his voice sounded like a stranger’s. “He has no idea who he’s dealing with.”

* * *

Nora lived in Steeplechase, a housing development tucked in the wooded hills south of St. Paul and built on the site of an old horse ranch. Some of her newer neighbors didn’t know the history of the land. They thought they had a knack for growing heirloom tomatoes and Nora merely smiled at their enthusiastic endorsements of organic gardening; mentioning the decades of horse shit fertilizing their lawns wasn’t on her list of neighborhood conversation points. Veering away from the sprawling mansions, she drove into a cul-de-sac of townhomes that backed up to the abandoned horse trails snaking for miles through the woods. Before she’d joined Strike, she’d disappeared into those trails every night.

Inside, the kitchen and great room were empty. She found Henry in his room, playing some fighting game on his computer. He was locked in hand-to-hand combat when she knocked on the open door.

“Geez, Mom, you scared me.” He didn’t flinch or even blink an eye.

“Don’t say ‘geez,’ it’s slang.”

“Jesus, Mom, you scared me.” He smirked without taking his eyes off the screen. The other fighter spun a 360-degree somersault in midair, ending with a kick that shot blue flames into Henry, who immediately lost half his energy. Her son didn’t hesitate before attacking again, though, running headlong into another blinding shot from his opponent. She didn’t allow him to play shooting games, so he consistently found ones like this that skirted the edge of acceptable violence.

“Can I watch?”

He shrugged, which meant yes in ten-year-old. She pulled up a stool that was too small for either of them, a relic of his younger years she’d yet to donate to Goodwill, and sat down. During the school year she helped Henry with his homework, an hour they spent together after dinner where she coached him through long division and the scientific method, but in the summertime she had no place in his daily routine. He and Mike were an exuberant party of two, always off on some biking adventure, attending ball games or cat video festivals. They sent Nora pictures which she scrolled through in airports or while sitting in court waiting to testify.

“Why didn’t you duck that?” she asked, as another jolt of blue flames caught Henry’s fighter square in the chest. She resisted the urge to comb her fingers through his shaggy blond hair. He never liked being groomed.

Henry shrugged.

“You keep running into those fire things. Can’t you back up or dodge him?”

“For a minute, maybe, but Nathan’s like eighteen levels higher than me. He’s gonna kill me anyway. If I’m gonna