She nods, opens the file on Charlotte Rowe, and stands.

As much as he hates being dismissed like this, his father also taught him that one of the keys to good salesmanship was also one of the keys to good negotiation. Never sell through the close.

“Cole?” Julia calls when he reaches the door.

He gives her his full attention again.

“No matter what this turns into,” she says, “make sure Dylan has no exit plan this time.”

28

The expansive view from the redwood deck Marty’s attached to his trailer relaxes Luke a little, helps him take his first real deep breaths since the moment Charley decided to stop traffic outside the library.

There aren’t a lot of houses in the grassy hills on the eastern side of the valley, so he’s not used to gazing down at his hometown from this angle. The town below looks like a tiny circuit board floating in a sea of ink, and across the valley, the mountains are coal black. Their peaks, which usually appear gentle and sloping, are etched against the darkening blue of the western sky. At their base, the street he lives on now is a slender fringe of lights.

By the time Marty emerges from the front door of his trailer, promised cup of coffee in hand, Luke’s reasonably confident he might be able to form a coherent sentence again. But when he takes the heavy ceramic mug from Marty’s grip, his hands shake.

He drinks from it too fast to catch the odor of whatever Marty’s spiked it with.

“Whiskey?” Luke asks after a few swallows. “You?”

“Always keep a bottle around to deal with newbies,” Marty says. “Big Book of AA recommends it. DTs are a bitch—sometimes there’s no other way. And not everyone can afford a fancy detox or rehab. Sometimes they gotta make do with Uncle Marty’s sofa.”

Love seat’s more like it, Luke thinks. He got a glimpse inside the trailer when he used the bathroom earlier. The place is immaculate, not quite as cramped as it seemed from the outside. His own vices have never reduced him to wedging himself onto another man’s love seat for a night or two or seven. Not yet anyway. But what are his vices? Anger? Regret? Arrogance? Do those even count? Or should he be more worried about his tortilla chip intake?

Marty leans against the deck rail, pops a piece of gum into his mouth. “Nicotine gum. Quit the smokes five years ago. I’ll quit the gum any day now. Promise.” He smiles and chews.

“Thank you,” Luke says. He’s not sure what he’s thanking Marty for exactly—the coffee, the spot of whiskey, or for going easier on him now that he’s clearly wrecked by the knowledge of what Charlotte can do.

Of what that drug can do, Luke corrects himself, in Charlotte.

The truck was the least of it. Watching her kick over a tree with one foot, then pull a fence post the size of a man out of the ground, all in the quiet serenity of a vast, open field and not some crazy science lab, was harder to take. He’s not sure why.

He’s not quite sure of anything anymore.

Except for one thing.

He’s embarrassed to be this beside himself. But if it’s transformed Marty from protective dad to nursemaid, that’s cool, at least. Cooler than having Marty treat him like some punk out to destroy Charley’s life.

He closes his eyes for a minute or two, listens to the poplar trees around the property making sounds like dry hands rubbing together.

“When she showed me what it could do . . . what she could do on that stuff, I whizzed myself a little,” Marty says.

“I get it.”

“No, I mean literally. She and Kayla, her attorney, they were jumping up and down like they’re at some campus women’s meeting, and I’m sitting there trying to keep more than a few drops from spilling out.”

Luke just stares at him.

Marty stares back. When he realizes Marty isn’t kidding, he cracks up. Then Marty cracks up, too.

The trailer’s front door opens and out steps Dr. Brewerton, who introduced herself to Luke earlier with a handshake twice as strong as his own. Her hair’s a salt-and-pepper pageboy cut. Her Ralph Lauren men’s dress shirt hugs her stout frame.

“Something funny out here?” she asks.

“Ah-uh. Everything’s serious when you’re here, Doc,” Marty says with a wink.

“Cute.” She laces her stethoscope around her neck. “You want to tell me what she took?”

“She didn’t take anything,” Marty says. “She thinks she got slipped something.”

“All right, well, I didn’t see much evidence of it, to be frank. Her blood pressure’s slightly elevated. Heart rate’s the same, but not by much. Bruising on her arm looks to be about a week old, so I’m guessing that’s not related to whatever she got slipped today?”

Try four hours old, Luke thinks. He stares at the deck floor to keep these thoughts from the good doctor’s view.

“No, it’s not,” Marty says.

“What were her symptoms this afternoon?”

“Racing heart,” Marty lies. “Feeling kinda manic, I guess. She said it was like she’d downed a whole pot of coffee in several minutes, but she hadn’t had any caffeine all day.”

“Exactly the words she used,” Dr. Brewerton says.

“Yeah, well, they should be. I’m just quoting her.”

“People usually slip women things that slow them down, not speed them up.”

“I’m not in the habit of drugging women, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Marty,” the doctor says.

“What?”

“You sponsored me through my divorce from my husband and my marriage to my first wife. You really think you can’t trust me with what’s going on here?”

“There’s not more to this story, Marcia. She was feeling weird, and we just wanted to get her checked out is all.”

“All right, well, will you convince her to let me take her blood? That injury to her arm was clearly major. It could have left her with an infection that explains some of her symptoms today.”

“So you asked to take her blood and she said no?” Marty asks.

Dr. Brewerton nods.

Because she figures there’s a trace of something in her blood Dylan Fuckface and his benefactors won’t want the world to see.

“Then there’s probably no convincing her.” Marty gives the woman a sheepish smile.

With a weary frown, she looks back and forth between the two men, then sighs. “OK. You asked me to see if there was any reason she should be admitted to a hospital, and I’m not seeing one. The symptoms you describe appear to be gone, and nothing about her vitals is alarming. No restricted movement from the injury, either, or from any kind of blockage or stroke. Obviously, I can’t do the kind of tests a hospital could, which is why it’s always advisable to go to an ER for tachycardia or the like. But that’s the best I can do in your trailer.”

“Thanks, Marcia.”

She nods, grunts, and steps off the porch. As soon as she crosses the bottom step, she stops and turns. “And I’ll just say this, gentlemen, and don’t feel like you need to say anything back. If you all are seriously worried about her, and you’re not taking her to the hospital because you’re afraid of whoever did that to her arm, you all are being damn fools. ’Cause there’s resources. That’s all I’m saying. Good night.”

Marty nods. Luke nods. Then they sit there in silence as her Chevy Tahoe pulls out of the driveway and then downhill, toward town.

“How is that possible?” Luke asks.

“How’s what possible?”

“Normal blood pressure and heart rate, after what I watched her do all afternoon.”

“The miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, I guess.” Marty smacks his gum, probably in an effort to draw out more nicotine.

Suddenly a car whisks past the Tahoe, headed in their direction. It’s halfway between boxy and streamlined, with slender headlights and a shiny silver paint job, and it’s way nicer than most of the vehicles Luke sees around town. By the time it pulls in to the driveway, he can make out the Audi logo on the grill. The stylishly dressed black woman who steps from behind the wheel looks vaguely familiar. Like she might have played a minor role in a TV show he used to watch as a kid.

Charlotte’s lawyer. Trina’s lawyer, before she became Charley.

He’d monitored the news coverage around her lawsuit, seen footage of them walking in and out of courtrooms together. She looks just as confident and put together now, even though all she’s doing is mounting the front steps of Marty’s trailer.

She turns her attention to Luke. “You must be the asshole from high school.”

“Really?” Luke says. “Still?”

“It’s only been a day,” Marty says.

“Since high school?” Luke asks.

“You know what I mean,” Marty says. “Forgive Mr. Prescott’s jumpy nerves, Kayla. He got his first show of what Charley’s capable of this afternoon.”

“So the circle widens.” Kayla glares at him. Or maybe it’s not a glare. Maybe it’s just how she looks at people. People she thinks are assholes.

“Or,” Marty offers, “it stays wide because someone’s refusing to stay away. I thought Charley called off your background check this afternoon.”