HE DAY OF horse’s release from prison was marked on the dairy on my phone, and I had made a small mark in the corner of that day on the planner in my office at the Bureau. The date was on was also on a sticky note on my fridge at home.
I wasn’t expecting him to call, obviously, but I hoped that we might run into each other somehow. I’d thought that I would probably find a way to be somewhere he was likely to be. Where that would be, I didn’t really know. Maybe a deli, maybe a bar. I certainly hadn’t expected to find him out on the New Jersey shore.
Fate had a funny way to play it out, though. Hardly more than a day out of jail and there he is, right in the path of another part of my investigation. The question burned louder, larger in the back of my mind. How wrong had I been about this man?
Out in the wind, on the roof of the bureau building, I slunk past the helicopter and hunched by a hut to make the call. Braced against the twentieth-story wind, I didn’t want to risk being overheard. The sharp chill scratched at my bones. I tried to tell myself there was nothing guilty about my wanting to make the call somewhere I wouldn’t be seen. That it was just a sensible precaution.
But having anyone know that I was talking to him at all would have carried way too many risks to even consider. I huddled against a concrete wall and hugged my arm tight. The phone was pressed to my ear while I waited for him to answer.
The caller ID on my phone was switched off so no number would come up on his screen. Whether I had a relationship of any kind with Horse was moot at this point, but the Bureau is a hornet’s nest of competitive, testosterone savagery and I knew that I couldn’t trust the other Agents, even those on my own team. Save one, maybe.
My job, and my career, with the Bureau would be over in a New York minute if it got out that I had even the hint of a personal connection with a felon. Especially a felon with a connection to my investigation.
He answered but he didn’t say anything. Just listened.
I said, “Horse? I know you’re there.”
“How did you get this number?”
“I ran a check on the phones that were out at Tarryfield last night. There were only two that I couldn’t account for. The other one’s still there, so I figured this one had to be you.”
My day took on a new shade. The sound of his voice wound me up and tore at me. It stirred up an anger that rose from my gut. Controlling my voice took more effort than I expected. “Look, can we just talk?”
“Sure. How ’bout them Yankees?”
There was a silence. I started again. “I could just haul you in for questioning.”
“And you’d do that. Misuse your position that way.”
“I think you’re connected to someone in my investigation.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Horse, let’s not kid around. You weren’t hanging out at Tarryfield for the good air. You weren’t going for a moonlight swim.”
“What evidence do you have?”
“How do I get through to you, Horse, I’m concerned for your safety. I’m not trying to pin anything on you.”
“Well, that’s a change of tactic, Special Agent.”
“What the hell…”
He cut me off. “So you’re tracking me now, right?”
“Horse…”
“Track this.”
I heard a whoosh of air. Then some confused stuttering digital noise. I imagined the phone spinning high in the air in a long upward arc. Then there was silence.
“Horse!” and I heard a splash, and then a short, deep gurgle before the phone cut out completely.
A bitter iron taste burned the back of my throat. I thought we’d been real with each other. That night, he must have been doing his bad boy ‘one time deal’ routine the whole fucking time. Playing me. And I had fallen for it like a schoolgirl, like a dumb, drooling teenager.
All the time he was in prison it burned me up. Every moment, every exchange, every word that had passed between us that night I’d kept freshly polished, painstakingly treasured. Because it was all a part of something that I knew was connected to the case that I had spent so long on. That’s the reason I told myself.
There was another reason, too, a personal one. But I couldn’t think about any of that now.
He must have gotten something out of me that night, although I still couldn’t figure out what it could have been, other than a notch on his bad boy belt. It was just as much of a mystery to me now as it had been when I arrested him.
It had been the same as when he was jailed. Jailed on a reduced charge, but still the charge was for something I was pretty sure he hadn’t done. It churned me up but he would never give me the chance to explain.
He would never find out how the barrel of his gun came to go missing, how it was that the ten-to-fifteen suddenly dropped to five. And he would never thank me for it.