Twenty-Four
Dinner was a quiet affair. The hotel was quiet, too, but dinner was quieter somehow. As if being along had produced its own sort of sound, and now that Erin was together with someone else, unsure of what to say or how to act now that she was a killer, it was gone. All that was left was the feeling of uncertainty.
Was this how her sister had felt, in those final moments? Alone and afraid and like there's nothing in the world that can really touch you any more? Even as the knife went in, did she think that it didn't matter that it hurt any more?
Erin could see the expressions on Roy's face. The uncertainty, the questions that he didn't want to ask. He was worried about her, and she had to admit that maybe he should be. Maybe something was wrong with her. No, she thought. Not maybe. Something was certainly wrong with her.
But she didn't know how to make it go away. She was being used by Craig, and now that had come back to ruin her. It all came back to her sister's death.
What had her sister died for? To send a message? Or had she died for real, and she had just played into Craig's hand? That was the reason she was doing any of this. She needed to get revenge for Becca. But now things were going to far, too fast, and Erin was fighting for any air she could get.
Roy asked something that she didn't quite hear.
"What?"
"Is your food good?"
She looked down at a steak she hadn't realized she had already eaten half of. The whole thing had been too mechanical, too mindless. She was stuck inside her head, stuck with the thoughts and doubts that she wanted nothing more than to be rid of.
"Yeah, I guess."
"Erin, are you okay?"
She thought for a moment about telling Roy all about what she had been thinking, about what she was so upset about. But that wouldn't have helped. She needed reassurance, but she needed it from the outside. From someone who wasn't just telling her what she wanted to hear. More than that, she needed something real that wasn't going to be over as soon as the trail dried up or her sister's murderer was caught.
She dropped her fork unintentionally, her unsteady fingers just unable to keep closed around the neck of it. She grabbed it again, too hard, staring as if her vision could melt the steel in her hands if she wanted it badly enough.
Craig's hand on hers came out of nowhere.
"Erin, I need you to talk to me."
"What's the point?"
"The point of what?"
"Of anything. This. Why are we at this dinner?"
"You have to eat some time, don't you?"
"Why me? There are girls in Virginia, aren't there?"
Roy shrugged. "Why anyone? I don't have a good reason. There are girls in Virginia. Probably even cops, unless the other agents are all pulling a big prank on me by stuffing their bras."
She looked at him flatly, ignoring the joke. "So why me? You're just going to leave, and I'm going to be left here. With nothing. Just another job. Only family left in the world is my father, and he—"
Erin stopped herself. It never helped to talk about Dad. It made situations uglier. It made things worse. Made her worse. Talking about him was the absolute last thing that she wanted to do, but there she'd almost gone off and opened that can of worms.
"What happened, Erin?"
"It was a long time ago, and I don't want to talk about it."
"It seems like you're still pretty upset by it, though. Are you sure it wouldn't help to talk about it?"
"No. I don't want to talk about it and I'm not going to. Drop it, okay?"
Roy's look was almost disappointed, but he nodded. "Consider it dropped."
"Good."
Erin took another bite of the steak. It was good, now that she was paying attention. It wasn't as hot as it had been when it came out of the kitchen, but it still had plenty of warmth, so it didn't taste like she was biting into day-old shoe leather.
"Do you want to do anything after dinner? Catch a movie? Anything like that?"
Erin didn't particularly want to do much of anything, but it wasn't anywhere near time that she could go to sleep. She shrugged instead.
"Anything you wanted to see in particular?"
She didn't answer. He must have been noticing by now, the way she'd been acting. But she couldn't stop herself. She was making a spectacle of herself, acting like a child, but she couldn't stop herself in spite of knowing what she was doing was absurd and wrong.
"Erin, hey. We don't have to if you don't want to."
"No, it's fine. I just—"
"If you don't want to talk about it here, I understand. We can talk about it in the car, if it would help."
"Sure." She wasn't sure that she wanted to talk about anything, no matter where it was. She wasn't sure that she wanted an F.B.I. agent involved in her life, and she sure as hell wasn't sure she wanted to cozy up to a guy who lived two thousand miles away, in a completely different life.
He said they were both cops, and they were. But that was where the similarities ended. She worked the local scene. There were usual suspects. She had a long string of partners that went by in a blur, where he didn't seem to have one. Not one of her partners had put in the work to keep up with her. She might as well have been alone. But that wasn't a choice, so they just kept moving her over as people kept drumming out.
She took a breath and another bite of steak. Another mouthful of water. By the time she slipped into the passenger seat of the government car that Roy was driving around, she almost felt human again.
"You want to tell me what's got you so upset?"
She looked at Roy for a minute, considering whether or not she wanted to have this conversation. Ever. She didn't, but she wasn't in her right mind. Maybe she would feel better after. Anything that would get rid of the quiet inside her head.
"I don't know what I'm doing any more."
"What's that supposed to mean? Babe?"
"I just don't know. What if I'm just doing what they want me to? And what if I don't hear it coming next time? What if they sneak right into wherever I'm at, a pillow over my face, and bang—dead?
"What if I do hear it again? Every time they send another goon in to get me, I wake up in time, I get ready, and there's another body on my floor? What if it stops hurting when I have to shoot someone?"
They sat in silence for a long time. Roy's hands twisted on the steering wheel, the leather making a soft straining noise as he squeezed it.
"Then you'll keep doing what you have to do."
"I don't know if that's good enough."
"I do. I've seen how tough you are. You've made your best effort to make sure that I know every bit of it, and I'm not an idiot. But you're kind, too. Soft inside. What you're telling me now is, you took it personal. It's not your failure, is what I'm telling you, okay? It's nothing you did wrong."
Erin didn't believe him, and the realization made her eyes sting. Before she knew what was happening, Roy had drawn her up in his arms and she was crying again. She'd promised herself she wasn't going to, not after Dad left.
So much for that.