"But, eventually, you did do it."

  "But that was the closest I came to wanting to and I couldn't, so it's almost like it didn't count."

  "Okay, so let's say you really didn't want to," he says. "So, how come you did?"

  "I told you. It was the situation. I really didn't have a choice."

  "I think we all have a choice. I know you don't like it, but that's where I'm heading here. You wanna cope with things on the outside? You gotta own up to the deed. All the way."

  "You know what I remember?"

  "What?"

  "The goddamn look on their faces. The two of them. Like him getting Milo's share was obvious. Like it was totally fair."

  I heard Ben exhale and when I turned to look at him, he was pretending to be interested in that line of trees where my wounded duck had gone. And he pissed me off too, because instead of gritting his teeth or breathing heavy through his nose, he wore this little knowing smile on his face. I wanted to punch him in the mouth, but James was talking to me.

  "We just closed a deal that puts a lot of money in everyone's pocket and you don't look happy," James said.

  I turned and saw him looking at me, staring. I should have said something right then. Jessica would have ripped him. But, in a pinch like this, despite all the years of her coaching, despite working my ass off to be the big tough football player, I turned into the thing I was always afraid I'd become. My father.

  "No," I said, "I am."

  "Good," James said, looking at his watch. "I've got a four o'clock call."

  We piled out of the blind and into the boat. Russel brought us back, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth and his thick hands controlling both the dog and the motor. As we drove away in Bucky's Suburban I saw him cup his hands and lean over a flame. While Bucky drove us to the lodge, James quizzed us on the construction schedule. We sat in the back with Ben jammed in between me and Scott.

  "I've got to be honest, James," I said. "I'm a little worried about these union guys. I was thinking maybe we hire some security people. For the site. For us too, maybe."

  "All talk," James said, swatting his hand at air. He leaned across Bucky and pointed out the driver'sside window at the dead trees rising up from the water. "They're like bees, the union people. You don't bother them, they don't bother you. If that's what happened to Milo, it's because he stirred them up. I like those wood duck boxes, Buck. Let's put in some more."

  "But someone ran us off the road," Ben said.

  James turned around and looked at him, smiling.

  "What, some old lady? A crazy kid?"

  "We think some of Johnny G's guys," Ben said.

  Scott leaned forward and looked at Ben with narrow eyes.

  "Did they catch them?" he asked.

  Ben shook his head.

  "How do you know it was Johnny G?" James asked.

  "It was a black Suburban," Ben said. "They came right at us in that storm."

  James nodded, but turned his attention back to the curving road up ahead and said, "If I reacted every time one of these people looked at me funny, I'd still be digging basements."

  "Maybe just some extra guys at the site," I said.

  "Call the police," James said. "That's how we handle it. I set a precedent with these people a long time ago. We don't cut deals and we don't run scared."

  "The FBI's been watching Johnny G," Ben said.

  "Good," James said. "Get them involved."

  "They are," Ben said. "They want our help."

  Bucky pulled the Suburban to a stop in front of the lodge.

  "Okay," James said, hopping out. "Do that. I'll see you guys at dinner."

  Scott hopped out too, and Bucky. The three of them disappeared into the lodge.

  "You want to throw a line in the water before dark?" I said. It was my turn to smile.

  "Jesus," Ben said, looking at the door they'd gone through and shaking his head.

  "The man just stole twenty million dollars right out from under us and you think he's going to hire bodyguards?" I said.

  We got some gear and a boat and headed out onto the water. Down past the bridge, around a bend, there was a cove where these dead trees, bleached and broken, poked up out of the black water. The bass loved it in there and as soon as I cut the motor, I tied on a lure and tossed out my line. Ben stood up and rigged a popper of his own. He wound up and whipped his lure hard across the main body of water into another clump of dead trees.

  "Watch that thing," I said, flinching.

  A kingfisher chattered past and the croak of a nearby frog made the silence bigger. A locust buzzed and a small breeze rippled the water. Ben reeled in his lure without stopping until it bumped up into the boat.

  "You've got to snap it a few times," I said, showing him with a few flicks of my wrist. "Then let it lay. Like it's wounded. That's when they'll hit it."

  "I don't see you catching anything," he said, knitting his blond eyebrows and winding up again. This time, when he whipped his arm, the drag screeched. I saw a bright light and felt a bolt of current flash between my lip and my brain. Ben's face lost its color and his mouth made a big O as he reached for me. I felt the cold metal of the second treble hook rattling against the plastic belly of the lure as they bumped against my chin.

  "Holy shit, Thane, I'm sorry. Holy shit."

  I dropped my pole and felt for the lure that was hooked through my bottom lip.

  "Pliers," I said. "In the tackle box."

  Blood dribbled off my chin. Ben's hands shook as he dug through the box. Most pliers have cutters on the base. All you do is cut the barb off and the hook passes right back through without making a mess.

  "There aren't any," he said in a high voice. "Just this."

  In his hand was a buck knife in a leather case. I shook my head and held out my hand.

  "Holy shit," Ben said.

  I opened the knife, handed it back to Ben, and rolled my lip over the top of my thumb.

  "Cut it," I said.

  "I can't."

  "In about two minutes this fucker is going to hurt a hundred times worse than it already does. Cut down through my fucking lip and hurry up."

  All that I said speaking from the back of my throat and without the use of my lips, but Ben got the idea anyway. He eased the blade toward my mouth. I gripped his wrist to help steady him. His forehead glowed with sweat. I could feel the edge of the blade along my lip. When he slit it open, I saw stars and lost my breath. I dropped his wrist. The lure clattered on the bottom of the boat and I roared in pain, clutching my face.

  "Jesus. I am so sorry."

  "Fuck!" I screamed, sitting down hard. My howl echoed off the far hill and back out across the water.

  "Fuck you, Ben, and fuck them."

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and my blood pattered into the bottom of the boat. I grabbed the tackle box and ripped some gauze pads out of the little first aid kit, clamping them on my lip. Nasty, right?

  Well, that was nothing.

  When we got back to the lodge, I went straight to the bar and wrapped a bundle of ice in a paper towel for my lip. I knocked off two quick glasses of scotch, and one of the serving girls walked by and told me Jessica was here. I checked the room list and went upstairs. The rooms had names like Railroad, Hunting, and Iroquois. They were decorated that way. We were in the Fishing Room. Jessica's Louis Vuitton overnight bag was on the bed, but she was nowhere in sight. Back downstairs, Steven, the chef, told me he saw her go past in a bathing suit and a robe so he figured she was on her way to the hot tub room.

  I jogged down the spiral stairs to the lower level. One of the monastery doors to the hot tub room was open and steam curled up toward the thick log beams in the ceiling. I could smell the chemicals over the musky scent of wood, leather, and animal fur from the mounted moose. My lip throbbed. When I opened the door, I heard Jessica's laugh above the bubbling tub, but couldn't see anything through the hot wet cloud. There were some dim yellow wall sconces and a couple of lights glowing under the roiling water, but otherwise it had the dark close feel of an animal den. When I stepped to the edge of the enormous cobblestone tub, that's when I saw her, sitting in the back corner. Yes, she had a robe wrapped around her bathing suit and just her feet were in the water. But on the other side of the tub, with his hairy arms up on the sides, a cup of beer in one hand, head back, and laughing along with her so hard I could see the fillings, was Scott. And I'll tell you the truth. Then, at that moment, it was no fleeting dark thing. It was like a glob of concrete in my gut and everything was red.

  12

  "WHAT'S SO FUNNY?" I asked.

  "Oh, Thaney," she said, getting up and holding the front of the robe together. "Hi, honey."

  Scott's mouth closed, but the grin stayed.

  Jessica waded across and touched my collarbone. "We were laughing about when Scott took you down that black diamond in Vermont."

  I touched my lip and stared.

  "Oh. What happened?" she said.

  I dodged her touch and backed away. Scott shrugged and shook his head.

  "Ben hooked my lip," I said, growling. "I'm ready to kill him."

  Scott laughed again. Short this time, and over the rumbling water he said, "He's a menace. Is that ice?

  You should ice it."

  "Yeah," I said. "That's what this is."

  "You want to change for dinner?" Jessica said.

  "Unless you want to go in a towel."

  "Come on, grumpy," she said, smiling happily, taking my arm, and leading me out of the room into the breathable air.

  I shook free from her grip and headed past the movie theater for the back stairs.

  "Where are you going?" she said, following me and still talking in that singsong voice like nothing was wrong.

  "You can't go up through the main room like that," I said. "You think this is a fucking spa?"

  "Honey, stop it," she said, her voice getting small.

  "Stop it," I said, mimicking. "What the fuck? You're in the hot tub with some other guy?"

  I stomped up, through the kitchen quick, avoiding the stares of the staff in their whites as they darted around the stainless steel. No one was in the top hall and I took a quick left into the Fishing Room, slamming the door and throwing the old iron bolt behind Jessica. I threw my package of ice down, smashing it on the floor, and turned on her.

  "It was Scott," she said. "I wasn't in there with him. I was leaving. He came in. We were talking. You always do this."

  "You make me do this," I said.

  "You make yourself," she said. "I'm good with people. You know that. I'm friendly."

  "Right."

  "Come here, you," she said. "Let's forget it. Here."

  She tossed her robe on the bed and slipped off the straps of her bathing suit, kissing me and moving my hand to her breast. I couldn't get out of my pants fast enough and she did everything to me that I liked best, and her hair whipped around, stinging my flesh with its wet tips. It wasn't until I was lying there on my back with my sweat drying and my breathing starting to slow that I even felt that lip again.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I get crazy."

  She lay next to me with her arm bent up over her head. I turned and kissed her cheek and traced the smooth arcing scar on the palm of her hand. She flinched and pulled it away.

  "Don't," she said, finding her robe and pulling it around her.

  "Why? It's smooth. I like it."

  "I told you a thousand times. It tickles."

  She turned her head away and I propped myself up on one elbow. I took her chin and tilted her face back toward mine. There were tears in her eyes.

  "What's the matter?"

  She shook her head and lay flat on her back, cinching the tie around her waist.

  "Tell me."

  She closed her eyes and tears sprung from their dark slits.

  "I don't like when you look at me like you did down there."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I told you."

  "It wasn't an accident," she said, her face crumpling. "I always said it was, but it wasn't."

  "What are you talking about? What happened?"

  "This," she said, showing me the scar again.

  She took a deep breath and let it out, forcing a smile. "She told me and told me, but I couldn't listen. She had these diamond earrings. Little things."

  She laughed, staring up at the ceiling, and shook her head, sniffing.

  "And she'd hide them from me so I couldn't wear them. I was six. And part of me thought it was like a game. You know, she'd yell and raise her hand like she was going to hit me, but she'd only spank me and throw me down and hold out her hand and I'd take them off and give them back.

  "And then one day I found them in my father's socks and I was out in the yard, playing with some other kids. I was on the swing and they were all looking and pointing because I had diamonds and I was more proud for her than I was for myself, because people where we lived just didn't have diamonds.

  "You should have heard her scream. She yanked me off the swing and dragged me into the house.

  'Never, never, never,' she said. And she threw the kettle across the kitchen and she just planted my hand on the burner."

  Jessica started to sob and I said, no, no, no, and held her tight, and the ache went from my stomach to my heart.

  "It's the smell," she said, burying her nose into my ribs, shuddering like a small wet puppy. "I can still smell it. Don't look at me like that anymore."

  I held her for a while, looking at the clock, knowing that soon we'd have to go down. Her breathing got slow and regular and I thought she might even be asleep.

  I thought back to when we first met. I thought of how she grew up and how that had to be a part of why she was so determined to get to the top. She could have had a lot of guys, someone who could have given her everything, but she chose me.

  "I didn't get it," I said, lying back and looking up at the ceiling.

  "Get what?" she asked.

  "James gave Milo's equity to Scott," I said. "That's why I was crazy downstairs. I'm sorry."

  "God damn," she said, spitting her words. "He did it to you again. If he's going to treat you like this, why don't you just give that union the work they want? If James won't give you a piece of the action, I bet they will."

  All I could do was laugh.

  "Sure, that's funny," she said. "Why couldn't you do something? I'm serious. We got that pool, didn't we?"

  "That was different, a small favor. You do business with these people," I said, shaking my head, "and they own you. I bet that's how Milo got killed. We're talking the real thing here. He was feeding them information, keeping the project going forward. We snuck in the steel and they blamed him. You make a mistake with that union, you're done."

  "And James doesn't own you?" she asked. The corners of her mouth turned down and her eyes wrinkled. She took my wrist and removed my hand from her stomach, looked away, and sighed.

  "He said he's got an announcement tonight that we're all going to like," I said in a whisper, twisting my finger up into a lock of her hair. "What if I was the president?"

  She turned over, looking into my eyes, still suspicious. "He said that?"

  I shrugged. "What else would make me happy after losing Milo's share?"

  "If it's true--" she said.

  "It's got to be."

  "You'd get a huge salary," she said, the pace of her words picking up. "You'd have to be a partner in every project going forward, right? We could still do the house. We'd have to finance it, but we could do it. You'd run everything, and . . ."

  "What?" I asked after a minute.

  She gripped my hand, squeezing tight.

  "Those goddamn planes," she said. "If you needed one this time, you'd just take it."

  "Don't talk about that," I said, touching her face with the backs of my fingers and shaking my head.

  "Don't ruin it."

  13

  I DRESSED IN THE CLOTHES Jessica laid out for me. She helped me into a jacket that went over a button-down shirt that was open at the collar. Then she put a Tylenol with codeine into my hand and said I should put down the bag of ice. She wore a conservative pants suit with her hair in a black velvet band that made her look even younger than usual. We walked downstairs, hand in hand. She kissed everyone on the cheek and shook their hands. A pro.

  "Don't make a big thing out of your lip," she said in a whisper, brushing some lint off my collar and pushing my finger away from my face. "They'll see it."

  Everyone was in the bar, dozens of them, mingling with drinks in their hands. I got into the corner with a double scotch and watched her. People came to her, warming themselves on her smile, the tilt of her head, the sparkle in her eye. Finally, even James found his way. She kissed his cheek and motioned me over with her eyes.

  "We're very excited," she was saying when I got there.

  James smiled at her and said, "You know. I'm excited too. Every day I'm excited. I've got the greatest wife in the world and the greatest family."

  "And now, on top of it all, this project is going," Jessica said. "It's amazing."

  "A lot of hard work," James said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "A lot by this guy here. He and Scott are really the ones that make this company run. He's great, you know that?"

  "I think so," she said, touching my other shoulder.

  I looked at my shoes.

  "Jesus. What did you do to your lip?" James asked.

  I said it was no big deal, but I told the story and he had a laugh and told me that would teach me to do anything with Ben that had to do with hunting or fishing. Then he excused himself and went to talk with Jim Morris, our CFO and one of the partners from the early days. Jessica squeezed my arm and, in a whisper, she said, "You're getting it."

  "He said Scott and I made it happen. Scott."

  "He gave Scott the money," she said. "He's got to give you the title. Scott doesn't need it. You know I'm right about these things."

  Bucky cleared his throat. He stood in the doorway looking uncomfortable in a tight blue blazer and told everyone that dinner was being served in the wine cellar.

  The walls of the wine cellar were dry-laid stone. Old-world style where the crack between each gray rock was a dark fissure, even in the barrel-vaulted ceilings. They flew five guys over from Italy to make it. The floors were clay, packed solid, and the heavy chain railings that hung suspended along the staircases were completely immovable.