Page 154 of Never Alone
I set the phone face down on Miranda's table. My hand was still steady. I noticed that. I made a small note of it somewhere I could come back to later.
Detective Wilson was watching me. He hadn't moved while I was on the phone.
"He's hooked," Wilson said.
"Yeah."
My hand was still steady. I had three hours to keep it that way.
The Hotel Sterling was on Broad Street.
I arrived at seven-forty. I had taken twenty minutes to dress. The dress was navy. Wool crepe. Nicholas had bought it for our fifth anniversary at a shop in New York he had taken me to once and never again. It fit me the way it had fit me at twenty-six. I had not eaten well in eight months. The wire was taped flat at my sternum under it, between my breasts, the tape pulling slightly when I breathed in. I had stopped noticing it. I would notice it again in an hour.
I sat at the bar.
I had eighteen minutes alone before he came in. I used the eighteen minutes to find my breath. The bartender brought me a glass of wine I had not ordered. I held the stem and didn't drink it. The wine was a prop.
I thought about Cole. I knew where he was. He was in a van across the street, headphones on, with Sam, Tyler, and Davis on three sides of the hotel. He was hearing nothing yet. He would hear everything in twelve minutes.
I held my breath all the way in and all the way out, and I did the thing he had once told me he did before walking into a fire. Run the room. Find the exits. Decide which one was yours.
The bar at the Hotel Sterling had three exits. The lobby. The kitchen. The back patio.
I picked the lobby.
Nicholas came in at eight-oh-four.
He stopped in the doorway. He looked at me. The look on his face was the look of a man who had just been told he had won.
He had not aged. Eight months of running from him had aged me. He had not lost a step.
He crossed to me at the bar.
He took the room with him. He had always taken whatever room he was in.
He kissed my cheek.
His cologne was the cologne he had worn at our wedding. He had not changed it. He had not changed anything.
I didn't flinch. I had practiced not flinching in Miranda's office for an hour that afternoon.
"Natalie."
He said the name the way he always said it. Both syllables. The first one long. The second one his.
"Nicholas." My voice came out the way I had practiced it. Soft. Tentative. The voice he had always liked best.
The voice was waiting for me where I had left it. I had thought I had emptied it out of myself in eight months. It was right there.
"You look beautiful."
He held me at arm's length for a beat. He looked at me the way a man looks at a thing he believes he owns.
"Thank you."
I had said thank you to him a thousand times before. The muscle remembered.
"Let's sit. Somewhere private. The booth in the back."
