“I see. Did you tell them about…this?”
Her knees wobbled. Julia sat down again. Some of it was the culmination of the day’s events, some of it was the profound relief that Will had returned unharmed.
If he was Will Chastain. But even that automatic mental disqualifier felt feeble now. She’d started accepting him as who he said he was some time before. For better or worse, she’d bought into his story.
And now she coveted his presence. Disheveled and weathered though he was, he exuded confidence and something more.
Determination. That was it. Nothing was going to stop him. No one was going to keep him from Leo. What must it be like to be loved like that, wanted like that? It struck her that if Leo was ever going to return to her—to them—Will was going to have to be a part of it. And she wanted to be a part of it, too.
She said, “I didn’t mention any of…this.”
“Because?”
“I guess I thought we should talk about it first,” she said.
“Then let’s talk.”
“First tell me what happened out there,” she said, gesturing at the only other chair in the room. It was orange and armless, not really comfortable, chosen for its color and price tag rather than its function. That had seemed the way to decorate to Julia who, before decorating this house, had never even chosen a bedspread for herself.
He brought her the sack which she’d more or less forgotten about until he placed it in her hands. It was the pillowcase off her bed, a fact she’d registered when he’d come through the door with it dangling from his hand. In it, she found all her missing items.
Trinkets. Mementoes of a scratchy past, of people whose faces had faded in her mind.
Studying the bullet-sheared wall and the mess of stuffing and plaster and glass swept against the baseboard, Will whistled. “Thank the Lord our thief is a lousy shot or you’d be dead,” he said as he perched on the edge of the orange chair. There were bright smears of blood on the scarf still wrapped around his arm. There were also new streaks of mud on his pants and caked on his shoes. He looked absolutely exhausted.
At first Nicole had often commented on her husband’s good looks and his success as an architect. The comments had morphed, though, into how cruel he was. No specifics, just words like selfish and callous which Julia had always understood to mean he wasn’t giving Nicole everything she wanted.
He said, “I chased him through at least five backyards. Woke up every dog in the neighborhood. The guy had a limp, but he ran like hell. I think I would have caught him except that I slipped in some mud and he scampered over another fence. I heard a car door, but by the time I got to the fence and looked over, he was peeling away from the curb.”
Julia, proud that her kick had connected with the intruder’s leg, said, “Was the car the same—”
“As the one from the parking garage? I don’t know. It could have been. Same low profile, same general color but other than that…I just don’t know.”
“It has to be connected,” Julia said.
“Explain.”
“Well, just that so many odd and terrible things have happened today. First the blowout on the freeway—”
He sat forward, hands gripped together between his knees, eyes burning. “Yes. Tell me about that.”
She shrugged. “What’s to tell? The tire blew.”
“How fast were you driving?”
“Well, the freeway was crowded. I’d just slowed down to about fifty when the right front tire blew.”
“Which lane were you in?”
“Far left. It was hairy for a few minutes but I managed to get the car across three lanes to the shoulder. I was kind of shaken up. A guy behind me stopped. He insisted on taking off the old tire and putting on the spare. He wasn’t very proficient. And he was dressed in a suit. The drizzle made it nasty out there and I let him help me.”
“It strikes me that you’re the kind of woman who changes her own tire,” Will said.
“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment. “He was so insistent,” she said. “He had an accent I couldn’t place. I thought maybe it was a matter of honor for him. I asked him where he was from, but he didn’t seem to understand me. In the end it was just easier…or so I thought at first…but he was an absolute klutz and I was late and then Leo was gone—”
He was at her side. Taking her hands, he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. She hadn’t known she was shaking until she felt his warm, solid embrace.
It was tempting to lean, tempting to give him her burdens. Tempting to depend on him. Taking a step away, she took a deep breath and did none of those things.
“What did the guy on the freeway look like?”
Biting her lip in concentration, she forced his image into her mind. “Medium build. Dark hair and eyes. A little bit of a tan which I noticed because you don’t see that very often in San Francisco in April. Dark suit.” She shrugged and added, “Kind of average.”
“Sounds pretty much like the guy who shot at you just now, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. It could have been the same man. Of course, her description was so vague it could have fit lots of people. Besides, it was dark and her shooter hadn’t spoken this time. She’d made all the racket.
“Show me your flat tire,” Will said.
She started to ask why and let it go. She couldn’t see what the tire would tell him, but she was beginning to trust his instincts. Taking a flashlight off the kitchen counter, she took him through the empty garage to the driveway where she’d parked the car and opened the trunk. Will took the flashlight from her and examined the tire. She’d been in such a hurry that she’d just thrown it in without cinching it down. The panic of the moments when she realized she was going to be late picking up Leo at the airport came rushing back.
“Look,” Will said, focusing the light on the tire. “See this hole? That’s the entry wound, so to speak. The shredded rubber on the opposite side is where it exited. If the traffic hadn’t slowed…if you’d been racing along at seventy you would have lost control for sure.”
She stared at the hole, refusing to believe what her eyes told her.
“Someone shot your tire,” he said.
The concrete beneath Julia’s feet seemed to rumble.
“That’s why the guy who stopped behind you didn’t want you fooling with the tire,” Will added. “You weren’t supposed to survive this attack.”
“But he must have known I’d see the tire later—”
“You’re forgetting the attempt to run you down in the parking garage and then the ‘burglar’ in your house, lying in wait for you with a gun—the tire would have disappeared, Julia.”
She stared at the hole, jumping when Will slammed the trunk. Looking up and down the empty street, he took her arm. “Go back in the house, please,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “First, leave me your keys so I can move the car into the garage. Lock all the doors. I’ll be in right after you.”
She did as he asked without argument.
An entry wound, Will had called it.
A place where a bullet had pierced the tire before exploding out the other side. Shot with the hope that the car would pile into others, causing a catastrophic wreck, killing who knew how many people. Killing her.
What in the world was going on?
A