Chapter 9: Alive

Tierney opened the door.

The man on the landing was tall and tanned, with thinning sandy hair, and a white scar ran through it above his left ear.

He was forty-six years old and wore a pressed blue shirt, and he looked prosperous and friendly.

"Hello, Miriam," Darren Bristow said.

His voice was exactly as I remembered it.

I had not heard it in ten years, and my whole body went cold at the first word.

"You've gotten pretty," he said, stepping in. "You always were. Tierney, he's not going to hit me, is he?"

"Declan won't," Tierney said. "Declan knows better."

Declan had moved in front of me without a word.

"Get out," he said.

"I'm a guest." Darren smiled and touched his scar. "Seven stitches. A concussion that lasted most of a year. I couldn't read a menu for six months."

"Good," I said.

His smile thinned.

"Five minutes," he said. "I'll make this short, because I'm a reasonable man. In three months you come into four million dollars."

"Tierney and I would like one of them."

"One million," Tierney said gently. "That's very fair, Miri."

"For what?" Declan said.

"For ten years of silence," Darren said. "For not walking into a courtroom with a tire iron your wife's fingerprints are all over."

I laughed.

It surprised all three of them.

"A tire iron," I said. "From a man who dragged a nineteen-year-old girl out to a parking lot by her hair."

Darren's eyes flickered.

"I'd say you attacked me from behind," he said. "Out of nowhere."

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