Page 157 of Never Alone
"Multiple, sir. Stalking. Violation of a protective order. Conspiracy to commit assault."
"I'd like to call my attorney."
"You'll have that opportunity at the station."
Wilson reached for him.
Nicholas didn't resist.
He let the cuffs go on without a sound. The officers turned him toward the lobby. The bar had gone quiet. The bartender. The few other patrons. The server with the ponytail. All of them were watching the man in the gray suit being walked out in cuffs.
Nicholas looked at me over his shoulder.
He looked at me for a long beat.
I held his look. I didn't look away. I'd spent ten years looking away from him, and I was not going to spend the last look of my life as his wife doing it again.
Then he was gone.
I sat at the booth.
The wire was still taped to my sternum. The wine glass was still on the table. The appetizer he had ordered for us had not come yet.
The bar was coming back around me. Sound first. Then the breath of the other people. Then the room.
A woman in plainclothes came over to me. A different officer, female, the one Wilson had positioned at the bar. She had been a stranger an hour ago. Right now, she was the only person in the room I trusted to tell me what came next.
"Ms. Marin."
"Yes."
She crouched a little so her eyes were level with mine. The way you crouched to a child or to someone you didn't want to startle.
"He's gone. You did good. Come with me."
She helped me up. Her hand was firm on my arm without being a grip. She had probably done this before, too.
She walked me out through the lobby. The other officer was at the door. He opened it. The street outside was lit and warm. There was a van parked across the corner with its rear doors open.
Cole was already out of the van.
He was walking toward me.
I went to him.
I made it the length of the sidewalk, and his good arm came around me. I put my face into his shoulder, the one that wasn't broken, and I let myself stop being the woman I had been for the last hour. I had been her long enough. I didn't have to be her anymore.
"You did it," he said quietly in my ear.
"Yeah."
His hand was at the back of my head. The same hand that had wiped a tear at the hospital.
He said my name. Not the name on the wire. Not the name Nicholas had said into the receiver. The name Cole had been saying for months.
"You did it, Tessa."
"Yeah."
