Page 160 of Just One Look

And variations on the theme.

What had shedone?She’d blown an hour past her appointment to drop off Webster, but that wasn’t all. She was going to miss herflight.

Wait, though. Maybe Marko or Nyree would come get Webster, if she explained. In which case, she could get an Uber from here, and she could still make it. Maybe.

She had her finger on the button, ready to push it, when she thought,Wait. Wait.

Her life was a treadmill, and it always had been. Or—no, not a treadmill, because it was always changing. A highway. A New Zealand one, full of twists and turns and hills. Unspooling endlessly, mile after mile and day after day, but there was no place to stop on this highway. You couldn’t get off. You had to keep driving.

Days go by.

She grabbed her purse. She told Webster, when he came bounding up to her outside, “Not this time. Be good. I’ll see you …” She was having to catch her breath, then. What was shedoing?What was shethinking?This was not her life!

“I’ll see you later,” she told him. And latched the gate.

* * *

This was an extremely odd dinner,Luka thought. The request for his company had been odd enough. Nyreehadbeen flushed when he’d got here, but if she was ill, she was hiding it well. Marko was still cooking when he arrived, too, which put paid to the idea that dinner had been ready and he’d needed to rush over, and even when they sat down to eat, Nyree was popping up and down, checking her phone surreptitiously under the table, and generally not behaving like a woman dying for his company. Or feverish, for that matter.

Just now, she was saying, “So has the media rung you, asked you to be on TV to tell all about it? Hero All Black, saving three lives?” And checked her phone again.

He said, “Not really. My agent texted this morning, and I told her no. That’s the last I’ve heard of it.”

Marko said, “You buggered the neck again doing it, eh. That’s how it looks to me, anyway.”

“Yeh,” Luka said.

“How bad?” Marko asked.

“Injections,” he said. Why were they talking about this? Also, Nyree’s hands were under the table again, and she was clearly texting.

“It’s worse than that, I’m thinking,” Marko said. “Small wonder, from the sound of it. Reckon there wasn’t much else you could do, though.”

“No,” Luka said. “There wasn’t.” For two women and a baby? Even if it was a trade for his neck, for his career … there’d been no choice. Or … no. That wasn’t quite right, was it?

The thing about choices was, you had to live with them afterwards. Hehadmade a choice, and he could live with it. He couldn’t have lived with the other one.

He was lighter, somehow, thinking it. And then he was thinking,Wait. Wait.He was getting a view through the two-way mirror again, and the hair was rising on his arms.

Nyree was frowning down at her phone, and Luka said, “I’m sorry,” and got to his feet. “I need to go.”

Nyree said, “Wait.”

* * *

She was cold,she was hungry, and this was stupid. She switched the car on again for about the sixth time and let the heater warm her. Her phone chimed with a text, and she read it, because what else did she have to do?

Piper, saying,Can we meet for lunch?Which would have mattered so much a week ago, but now? She was staring at it, trying to think of how to answer, knowing shecouldn’tanswer, not right now, when the phone rang.

Nyree. Elizabeth had told her already that, no, she couldn’t come to dinner, and that she wasn’t bringing Webster. Why did she keep bothering her?

She picked up. “Hi. I’m sorry about the mixup with Webster. I …”

“Shut up,” Nyree said, and she blinked. All righty, then. “Are you still flying out tonight?” Nyree asked. “Are you at the airport, or what? I don’t want to hear that you’re not bringing Webster. I can see that you’re not bringing Webster. What’s happening? Where are you?”

“Uh … no. Not at the airport. I’m …” She didn’t want to say this, not after she’d told Nyree so much already on Monday. She’d had to tell her, though, hadn’t she? To explain about Webster. To explain about Luka, too. About what had happened up there in Northland, and about the horrible drive home.

She hadn’t said, “He told me he loved me, but it turns out he didn’t,” because if she had, she’d have cried. She had a feeling Nyree knew anyway, though.