Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Two Phones

The phone lit at nine o'clock exactly.

Ray sat on the couch in the motel room with Nico beside him.

The Bureau technician sat in the corner, a thin man with headphones and a face.

The technician held up three fingers, then two, then one, and pointed.

Ray answered.

"Ray," Vera said. "Oh, thank God."

Her voice was warm, and the old reflex went through him.

He let it.

"I'm here," he said. His own voice came out low and flat and dull with tiredness, and he heard the technician's eyebrows lift.

"I've been out of my mind. Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"Wrists. I'll live."

"Where's the boy?"

"Gone. I lost him in the woods. I think he went into the river."

A pause.

"Truly?"

"I went in after him, up to my waist. I didn't find him."

Nico, beside him, put a hand over his own mouth to keep from laughing.

Ray did not look at him.

"I'm tired, Vera. I've been awake since the lodge."

"Of course you are, dear."

"I thought about what you said. The pension. The letter."

He waited, one second, two.

"I want it," he said.

The line was quiet so long that he thought it had cut.

"Do you?" Vera said at last, and her voice was soft and full of something he had never heard in it before.

Relief, and under the relief, a small hard satisfaction.

"Oh, Ray."

"I'm so glad."

"You know I only ever wanted the best for you."

"Tell me about the ramp," he said.

The technician went very still.

"What?"

"I keep thinking about it. The text. I want to know why you did it."

"Dear, it's late. We can talk when you're rested."

"I'll sleep better if I know."

"Leo was leaving me," Vera said.

"He said he was going to the Bureau."

"Alden Kroll's man bought the garage code, for twelve thousand dollars. I did not know what they meant to do with it. I truly did not."

"You sent me away."

"I sent you for a car."

In the corner, a green light on the technician's box pulsed steady.

Ray breathed out.

"Where do I get the pension?" he said.

"Thursday."

"The lobby of the Drake, at noon."

"A man will bring you papers to sign." Her voice warmed again.

"And Ray, I'll want an address."

"For the boy's body, if it turns up."

"Or if it doesn't."

"Where are you sleeping?"

He had the address in his head, a sixteenth-floor unit on Wells Street that Joan had named.

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