Forty-Five

FORTY-FIVE

MARTIN LEAVES FIRST. ONCE he's gone, Ben doesn't even raise the possibility of spending the night.

The man I love now and the man I used to love were both in one room with me and somehow I felt as alone as I ever had in my life.

Dr. Sam has given me pills to help me sleep when and if I need them. But I don't take them. Or reach into the kitchen cabinet for the bottle of Jameson.

To process the events of the evening, I walk Rip, lock up the house, set the alarm. My Glock 27, the new one Jimmy got me for Christmas for being both naughty and nice, is in the top drawer of my nightstand. Ben saw it there one night and asked if I thought I needed the gun to protect me from him.

"Other way around," I told him.

I think about Martin now. Not only out here, but in the same room with Edmund McKenzie and Bobby Salvatore before he was in the same room with me.

I think about Bobby Salvatore, hiding in plain sight at an Allen Reese party. The same Allen Reese whom my client called his sworn scumbag worst enemy.

As tired as I am, it's almost too much to process.

The only sound in the bedroom is Rip snoring softly on the throw rug at the end of the bed.

Sure, at least he can go right to sleep after a night like this.

Finally, perhaps by the grace of God—about time She gave a girl a break—I'm asleep and dreaming. In this one, my mother is with me again. Only I'm the one in the bed and she's sitting next to me, holding my hand.

Then she's leaning forward, close to my ear. She has something important to say, something she's been waiting my whole life to tell me.

Before she can, the moment is shattered by a ringtone and I'm wide awake all over again.

Rip is sitting up now. I can see his head over the foot of the bed, and he's wide awake, too, and panting.

It's my phone. I've finally ditched the Boston College fight song and gone with a normal ringtone.

At first, I can't hear the voice at the other end of the line.

Then I realize it's Jimmy.

"You… need… need to come get me."

"Jimmy, what happened?"

"A lot."

He tells me where he is before the line goes dead.