Page 120 of Take Your Breath Away

Hardy’s eyebrows rose.

“But before she came to the Motel 6, she said she thought a car had been following her.”

“Not a bicycle,” Hardy said.

“A bicycle? No, a car. Why would you ask if it was a bicycle?”

Hardy shook her head. “Never mind.”

And then, suddenly, Albert crumpled. He put his face in his hands, lowered his head, and began to weep.

“I loved her,” he whispered. Hardy didn’t know whether he was referring to his mother, or to Candace DiCarlo. Maybe both.

His body was wracked with sobs for a few moments, and then, struggling to compose himself, he raised his head and looked pleadingly at Hardy.

“We meant no harm,” he said.

Fifty

Andrew

The mind can process a lot in half a second. Let’s take the first half of that half-second—a mere quarter of a second.

In that quarter, when I saw that it was Norman approaching Matt and me in the woods as I stood there, shovel in hand over Brie’s grave, I thought: You bastard.

It was Norman who’d hired Matt to kill Brie.

It all made sense. No, wait, let me qualify that. It didn’t make sense that you would kill your sister-in-law because you were afraid your wife was going to find out you had a one-night stand with her. In a sane world, that didn’t make any sense at all. But the thing was, insane things happened in our sane world all the time, and looked at from that perspective, yeah, it all made sense.

Maybe Brie had decided that she would tell her sister, Isabel, how she had betrayed her, even though she’d made me promise never to say a word. Brie was going to confess to her sister she’d had sex with Norman.

Norman knew, and had to stop her. He had her killed not only while I was away fishing with Greg, but while he was in Boston with Isabel. The perfect alibi.

It seemed pretty out-there, I admit. But someone had hired Matt to kill Brie, and Norman now seemed the most likely suspect. How else did one explain Norman’s arrival, at this moment, in these woods? The only explanation I could come up with, in that quarter of a second, was that Norman knew what was out here. Knew that Matt had buried Brie here. Knew that Matt was going to bring me here.

Knew Matt, period.

The possible reappearance of Brie—and I still had no idea what that was about—had unnerved Norman, and he’d clearly been in touch with Matt to ask what the hell might have gone wrong six years back.

All that thinking went into that first quarter-second. The next quarter-second was occupied with a more urgent thought.

This might be your only opportunity.

I guess it was more instinct than thought, because what I did at that moment when Matt turned to see who’d called out didn’t require much in the way of planning. I just acted.

I brought that shovel up level, turned that curved blade, with its pointed tip, into a spear, and charged Matt.

He still had the gun in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed in my direction, and when he heard me coming, closing that eight to ten feet between us, he turned back from looking at Norman to look at me, but not in time to aim.

He’d been standing there with his jacket open, and the only thing between his belly and my shovel was a flannel work shirt. And when the blade reached him, it cut through that shirt like it was made of gossamer.

“Fuck!” Matt screamed, stumbling backward as the blade sliced open his belly, creating a jagged, almost smile-like rip in his flesh.

He tripped over his own feet and hit the ground on his right side, the arm holding the gun slamming on the ground. But Matt managed to hold on to his weapon as he put his other hand to his stomach, blood seeping out between his fingers.

My attention was focused on that gun hand. In another half-second, Matt could have it pointed at me. Which was why I needed to pin that arm to the ground and wrestle it away from him.

The adrenaline was racing through me, and I wasn’t about to temper my responses. Which explains, I suppose, why I came down so hard on Matt’s arm with the shovel blade.