Phoenix

My wrist hurts like hell. I'm pretty sure it's broken. I'm pretty sure that James knows it's broken, but for whatever reason, he decides to keep his mouth shut and not tell me as he fashions a splint to hold it in place. I have it cradled in my lap.

Amy, arms bound behind her back, sits in the seat behind me. James actually put a seat belt on her, loading her into the car before picking up the shotgun with some bits of cloth. Deftly, with expert finesse, he disassembles it and wraps it up in a blanket, then puts it in the back.

With the door open, he leans over.

"Amy, I want to help you."

"Yeah, right."

"I can't do that if you decide not to cooperate with me."

"You sound like a cop."

"I was one in another life. Look at me."

She looks up at him, watery eyes full of tears above a pug nose. I can see the resemblance now. Neither the girl nor her older sister were hard on the eyes, but I just don't see them that way.

"You're in trouble. You're going to be in a lot of trouble. You're probably going to go to prison. Things don't have to be as hard on you as they could be. It'll be easier if you help us."

"Help you?" she says.

"How did you know where we were?" James asks.

Amy swallows. "I don't know who she is. I only talked to her on the phone once. The rest was by email. She sent me the address for that place in the woods where you were this morning and she sent me the gun in a box. I almost shit myself when it was delivered to my apartment."

"Where's your apartment?"

"Bayonne."

"What about travel?" James asks. "Did this woman buy you any plane tickets?"

She blinks, looking from him to me to him again. "Plane tickets? No. What the hell are you talking about?"

"You've never been to Los—" I start, but James silences me with a look.

"You didn't follow us last week?"

"I've been to his office and here, that's it. She sent me the access code for a back door to the building and an ID card to scan to get in."

"Did you bring anything with you?"

She glares at me.

"Just a little present," she says.

"What about the house? Was that you?"

"I've walked past it fifty times," she says bitterly. "I walked right past you a hundred times," she snarls, glaring. "You were the most important thing in my sister's life, and you didn't even notice me."

"Did you hop the back fence into the courtyard or not?"

She shakes her head. "No."

He looks at me. "We need to move. Need to get that wrist looked at." Then he looks back to her.

"You've been set up."

"Who—"

"Not now," he says, gently cutting me off. "Hold on, this is a little bit of a bumpy ride.

It takes an hour to reach a hospital, and I resent taking up the state of Pennsylvania on that tax forgiveness deal they offered me to move part of the business to the state by the time we get there. James brings out a wheel chair and puts Amy in it, wheeling her in. I walk and check in at the desk.

After they triage me, I end up waiting for an X-ray while James talks to the police. They end up putting Amy, tearful and sobbing, in the back of one of their cruisers, handcuffed.

Getting a cast put on my wrist sucks, but they did give me a Tylenol-3.

James looms beside the bed, big arms folded.

"They're going to want to take a statement from you," he says. "This isn't going to stay quiet."

I sigh.

"I don't care anymore. She's been caught."

"It's not over," he says.

I blink. "I figured. She said—"

"That wasn't her in LA, and I believe her. She looked like she could barely tie her shoes, much less follow your charter flight and hunt down where we were staying and plan all that. She was set up."

"Set up?"

"Set up," he says, nodding. "Somebody wanted her to take the fall."

"For what?"

"Killing you," he says.

A chill runs down my spine—more, it feels like I've been dunked in freezing water.

"Agatha," I hiss.

"Agatha," James says, "but let's not jump to conclusions."

"Oh, come on. What are the chances I have two stalkers?"

"Not impossible."

I snort. "How do we prove it was her?"

"I don't know yet. Let me work on that."

Sighing, I fall back into the bed.

"I want to go home," I say.

"Yeah," James says, "Yeah. At least there won't be any traffic."

I sigh.

It's almost daylight by the time I can finally leave. I climb into the seat beside James, crank it back, and close my eyes. The next time I open them, it's as I groggily sit up and look around as he drives through Lower Manhattan.

"What do I do with this car, anyway?"

"Just park it in front of the house, the service will come get it."

He does just that and follows me into the house. I felt violated in here before, and now I feel perfectly safe. Odd how a change of scenery does that. My hand starts to shake, and I stare at it.

"You've been through a lot," James says.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Not crack."

"I don't know," he says thoughtfully.

"I want to go to bed and get some sleep, and I want you to come with me."

He doesn't argue. After shedding our clothes, the pair of us crawl into my bed and I'm asleep again so fast that I'm barely aware of it. It's just suddenly mid-afternoon on Saturday and I'm lying in bed. James sits up, chin resting on his hand, deep in thought.

"Was she right?" he says, after a time.

"Who?"

"Amy," he says. "She said you..."

"Love you?" I say, a little too quickly.

I sit up and rest against his back.

"It seems crazy, doesn't it? You just came into my life. The rational part of me is against it. It makes no sense. Yet it's true. I've never felt about anyone the way I feel about you, right now. Yes. I love you."

"Same," he says.

I almost fall asleep leaning on his back, but flop back into the pillows.

"I'm so tired."

"I'm trying to figure out who it was."

"No one knew where the cabin was," I say.

"Right, but Amy found you by following us back from your building. She just had to know to go there. That widens the field quite a bit. Who knew about the place in Los Angeles?"

I shrug. "Everyone with access to my calendar. That's a handful of people. You talked to them all."

He mulls that over, scratching at his chin.

"Who booked it?"

"Amanda," I say without a moment's hesitation. "No, it can't be her."

"Someone is leaking information to Agatha," he says thoughtfully. "If it's your assistant, she's in a prime position. She doesn't just know where you're going, she sets dates and times. Didn't you say she came with you from the old company?"

"Yes," I say. "I don't believe it's her."

"I'm not so sure," he says. "Not so sure at all."

"What do we do, then?"

"Let me think," he says, falling back into the bed beside me.

Thinking turns into sleeping.

The next time we really get up, it's Sunday morning. Groggy, I wander down to the kitchen and choose a packaged meal at random. James joins me a few minutes later, and we both eat standing up, more like a pair of bachelors than a couple. Yet, we move around each other with casual, practiced ease, like we've been doing it for years.

"You're moving in here," I say, not asking a question.

"I thought I already did."

"You know what I mean."

He nods. "Guess I am."

"If you want, we can bring your sister here. There's no need for her to stay in a facility. Whatever care she needs, she can get here."

"She can be a real handful," he says. "You haven't met her."

"I'm sure it'll be fine."

He sighs. "She might not really understand what we are."

"What are we?"

He gives me a blank look. "Gay?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose we are."

He stares at me for a few moments, then goes back to eating.

"I want some air. Should we go out?"

"Sure."

Outside, it's gone from unusually crisp to hot for late summer, and a brisk walk has me sweating. Carrying my forearm in a cast has me a little off balance. At least it's my left hand, but still, I won't be typing for a good long while.

"I need a vacation," I announce.

"The last time you took a vacation, you got kidnapped," James says.

"I know. That was yesterday."

I stop and sit back on a bench along the wall outside the Central Park Zoo on Fifth Avenue. Sunday is still a busy day for tourists, and the zoo attracts a lot of families with kids.

"I let you down," James says, sitting beside me. "If I hadn't left..."

"If you hadn't left, you wouldn't be human. I told you to leave, remember?"

"I remember," he says. He seems to chew on that for a while, working his jaw.

"You can't hold everything bad that happens to everyone around you against yourself, you know that, right?"

"I know that."

"I'm not sure you do."

He looks down and says nothing. I stand and start walking uptown, towards the far end of the Museum Mile.

James walks beside me in silence as we thread through the crowds. I'm still not famous. I think I'd better keep it that way. The last thing I'm craving right now is attention.

"Don't look or adjust your pace," he says nonchalantly. "We're being followed."

I twitch slightly, catching myself just as I start to look over my shoulder.

"By who?"

"Woman, six foot five, yoga pants and a green sweatshirt, wearing a baseball cap under the hood. Keeping her head down. I can't ID her."

"What do we do?"

"This," he says, veering up the grand steps to the entrance of the Met.

"Can you buy us a ticket?"

I check us in with my membership card instead, then head off into the Egyptian collection, to the right of the museum entrance. There's a reconstructed tomb just inside, with a pair of museum guides reminding new visitors to mind their bags and purses so they don't knock anything over.

Pretending to examine one of the displays, I spot her.

Amanda throws her hood back and looks at me. James is startled, to my surprise. I don't usually expect him to be caught off guard. She walks towards us and slows down, without stopping, and pulls out her cell phone as if to take a photo of one of the displays.

Looking up from the phone she says, "There somewhere quieter where we can talk?"

I glance at James, and he nods.

"Go to the second floor, to the storage collection. Head straight back."

She nods and stalks off, looking for the elevator.

James glances at me.

"What do you think this is about?" he says.

"I was about to ask you."

"She doesn't want to be seen and she wants to talk to us in a public place," he says. "I'm open to hearing what she has to say. We don't really have more than speculation against her right now."

"Let's go."

James falls in behind me. I lead the way to the elevator, then into the storage collection. Part of the second floor is dedicated to a compact viewing area with a large number of lesser pieces all crammed into one big room, tightly packed. Amanda is pretending to care about some late eighteenth century portrait of a man that looks like the fried chicken guy's grandfather, eyeing us as we walk up.

"Okay," I say, "we're here."

She turns to face me.

"I've been telling Agatha where you go and what you do since you started the company and hired me. I've been on the payroll the whole time. I'm the one who told Amy where to go."

My head spins. Anger rises in a hot flash, and James grabs my elbow.

"Say what you need to say," he says.

She shakes her head. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt. She promised me she was just going to intimidate you into folding the company back into Breslin Industries. She's been giving me stock options, said they'd skyrocket once the acquisition went through. After what happened, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. You weren't supposed to get hurt," she repeats, dully. "That lunatic could have killed you."

"Yes," James says, coldly. "She could have. She put a gun to his head."

"I'm standing right here," I snap.

Amanda swallows.

"Alright, look. I'll testify, or give a deposition, or whatever it is you need me to do, I don't watch cop shows."

James looks at me.

"Sounds like she can finger Agatha for a conspiracy charge. Felony for sure."

I pause.

"That could be very, very bad for Breslin Industries," I say.

"Phoenix," he says. "Don't you dare think of blowing this off."

"Tens of thousands of people work for the company, James."

"Yeah, I'm with him," Amanda cuts in. "She tried to kill you, Phoenix. That's not what I signed up for."

"What did you sign up for?" I snap.

Her gaze falls to the floor. "Money," she mumbles.

"I thought we were friends," I say, my voice cracking a little.

"I...I thought we were too. I swear I didn't know she was going to hurt you."

"I believe her," James says.

"I'm afraid to go home. She's been to my place. She knows where I live. If she'd do something to get Phoenix killed, she wouldn't think twice about me."

"Come with us," I volunteer.

James shoots me a look, but nods.

"Are you sure? After what I did?"

"Are you ready to accept responsibility for it?"

"Yes," she says, sighing. "God, I thought I was going to be rich."

"You might have been if you'd just believed in me," I find myself saying, bitterly.

She ends up walking between us, as if we're guarding her. At James's direction, we exit through the back of the museum to the sculpture garden and Great Lawn. It's a surprisingly long walk across Central Park from one side to the other.

Amanda puts her hood up and keeps her eyes down. I do the same, and we slowly make our way downtown, through flatiron and finally to the Village. She slumps against the wall once we're in my house.

"I was afraid I'd get shot," she says.

"Put her in the guest bedroom," James says.

I nod, and we show her to it.

"I hate to have to do this," James says, "but put your arms out. I'm going to frisk you. I won't get handsy."

She nods unsteadily and does as he asks. He collects her wallet and phone, but there's nothing else.

"What now?"

"Now," James says, "we go to the police in the morning. I'll call in a favor, skip the bullshit and get right to a detective. I'm going to call the Philly police, too."

"My life is ruined," Amanda whimpers. "I thought I was doing the right thing. You have to believe me."

I put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll pay your legal fees. I can get you a good lawyer."

"What?" she says.

"What?" James says, in the same instant.

I look at him.

"She didn't have to come forward. She could have left us in the dark and let Agatha take another shot, you realize that."

"Right, but—"

"But nothing," I say. "She's not going to get off scot-free, but she wants to make amends for what she did and we're going to recognize that."

James studies me a moment, then nods.

"Alright," he says, "let's do what we need to do."