all likelihood.” I nodded and I swallowed, because that—another decade to add to my upcoming prison sentence—was what I had come to terms with during the drive from Echo Park to the Chateau Marmont. I was prepared to be noble, to take my lashes, to finally do the right thing. But she was already shaking her head, dismissing the idea out of hand.
“No. No police. No big trial. No publicity. Think about it—Vanessa Liebling, taken in by a hustler? It’ll be everywhere, Vanity Fair, New York magazine, all the blogs. My whole family history dragged out into the light for everyone to gawk at. I’ll be absolutely destroyed. Benny, too. And then my baby, she’ll grow up and find out everything about who her father was. I can’t do that to her. She can’t ever know she’s an O’Brien; she has to be a Liebling.” She must have noticed the baffled expression on my face—that was what she was worried about?—because she shrugged, straightened up a little. “All I have left is my name.”
“OK, then. We go up there and confront him together. Two against one, maybe he’ll leave on his own accord.”
She shook her head again. “You said it yourself, he’s not going to just leave because we’ve asked him politely, is he? I think he’s fully capable of violence, don’t you? You should have seen what he did with my great-uncle’s sword.” The tendons of her neck worked up and down. “Besides, even if he does leave, I’ll still have to spend the rest of my life hiding from him—no way could I ever be online, because what if he somehow figures out that we have a kid together? He’ll come back, he’ll use her to get at me.” One of her hands crept to her stomach, cupped it protectively. “You know it’s true. Nothing is ever going to stop him as long as he thinks he has power over me.”
She leaned in closer to me. She blinked at me, her breath sweet in my face. “We have to do something drastic. We have to show him that he can’t mess with us. We need leverage, something that will really scare him.”
Silence fell on the room. Below, in the courtyard, a group of teenagers giggled in the hotel pool; a wineglass shattered on stone. I looked over to the console by the door, where I’d left the bag I’d brought with me: a paper lunch sack, stuffed with papers.
“I think I might have something,” I said.
* * *
—
I pick up the gun again and point it at the door while Vanessa creeps forward and removes the oar, then flings the door open. We both flinch, waiting for Michael to explode out the door. There isn’t anything dangerous down there—at least Vanessa didn’t think there was—but who knows what could be repurposed into a weapon? A lamp, a fork, a coffee table.
Instead, we see him sitting there at the top of the stairs, blinking out at us from the dark.
He stands, his eyes moving from the gun in my hand to the lake beyond my shoulder, likely trying to pinpoint exactly where we are. Then he steps out onto the deck, his shoes squeaking in the snow.
“So, what now?” he snarls. “You gonna make me walk the plank?”
Vanessa and I look at each other. I recall Vanessa’s shivery whisper as she sat beside me in the hotel room last night, the fragility of her voice undercutting the darkness of her plan. (Vanessa, the privileged heiress, a natural con underneath it all.) First he has to think you’re on his side, so that he drops his guard, she said. I’ll figure out a way to get him out of the house and down to the boat. Out on the lake, he’ll be vulnerable. Out there, we’ll be in control. But here’s the thing: He has to think we are capable of killing him.
“It would probably be easier just to shoot you,” I say now.
“This is madness.” He shivers, blows on his hands, looks imploringly at Vanessa. “You could’ve just let me go, for chrissake. I’m no threat to you.”
Vanessa moves a little, so that I’m standing in