“Claire,” Paul repeated, “get your wallet.”
She dropped the keys into her purse. She pulled out her wallet and handed it to the man.
He jammed it into his pocket, then held out his hand again. “Phone.”
Claire retrieved her iPhone. All of her contacts. Her vacation photos from the last few years. St. Martin. London. Paris. Munich.
“The ring, too.” The man glanced up and down the alley. Claire did the same. There was no one. Even the side streets were empty. Her back was still to the wall. The corner leading to the main road was an arm’s length away. There were people on the street. Lots of people.
The man read her thoughts. “Don’t be stupid. Take off the ring.”
Claire took off her wedding ring. This was okay to lose. They had insurance. It wasn’t even her original ring. They had picked it out years ago when Paul had finally finished his internship and passed his Registration Exam.
“Earrings,” the man ordered. “Come on, bitch, move.”
Claire reached up to her earlobe. Her hands had started to tremble. She hadn’t remembered putting in the diamond studs this morning, but now she could see herself standing in front of her jewelry box.
Was this her life passing before her eyes—vacant recollections of things?
“Hurry.” The man waved his free hand to urge her on.
Claire fumbled with the backs on her diamond studs. The tremble made her fingers thick and useless. She saw herself at Tiffany picking out the earrings. Thirty-second birthday. Paul giving her a “can you believe we’re doing this?” look as the saleslady took them back to the special secret room where high-dollar purchases were made.
Claire dropped the earrings in the man’s open hand. She was shaking. Her heart beat like a snare drum.
“That’s it.” Paul turned around. His back was pressed against Claire. Blocking her. Protecting her. He still had his hands in the air. “You have everything.”
Claire could see the man over Paul’s shoulder. He wasn’t holding a gun. He was holding a knife. A long, sharp knife with a serrated edge and a hook at the point that looked like the sort of thing a hunter would use to gut an animal.
Paul said, “There’s nothing else. Just go.”
The man didn’t go. He was looking at Claire like he’d found something more expensive to steal than her thirty-six-thousand-dollar earrings. His lips tweaked in a smile. One of his front teeth was plated in gold. She realized that the rattlesnake tattoo had a matching gold fang.
And then she realized that this wasn’t just a robbery.
So did Paul. He said, “I have money.”
“No shit.” The man’s fist hammered into Paul’s chest. Claire felt the impact in her own chest, his shoulder blades cutting into her collarbone. His head snapping into her face. The back of her head banged against the brick wall.
Claire was momentarily stunned. Stars fireworked in front of her eyes. She tasted blood in her mouth. She blinked. She looked down. Paul was writhing on the ground.
“Paul—” She reached for him but her scalp ignited in white-hot pain. The man had grabbed her by the hair. He wrenched her down the alley. Claire stumbled. Her knee grazed the pavement. The man kept walking, almost jogging. She had to bend at the waist to alleviate some of the agony. One of her heels broke off. She tried to look back. Paul was clutching his arm like he was having a heart attack.
“No,” she whispered, even as she wondered why she wasn’t screaming. “No-no-no.”
The man dragged her forward. Claire could hear herself wheezing. Her lungs had filled with sand. He was taking her toward the side street. There was a black van that she hadn’t noticed before. Claire dug her fingernails into his wrist. He jerked her head. She tripped. He jerked her again. The pain was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the terror. She wanted to scream. She needed to scream. But her throat was choked closed by the knowledge of what was coming. He was going to take her somewhere else in that van. Somewhere private. Somewhere awful that she might not ever leave again.
“No …” she begged. “Please … no … no …”
The man let go of Claire, but not because she’d asked him to. He spun around, the knife out in front of him. Paul was up on his feet. He was running toward the man. He let out a guttural howl as he lunged into the air.
It all happened very quickly. Too quickly. There was no slowing of time so that Claire could bear witness to every millisecond of her husband’s struggle.
Paul could’ve outrun this man on a treadmill or solved an equation before the guy had a chance to sharpen his pencil, but his opponent had something over Paul Scott that they didn’t teach in graduate school: how to fight with a knife.
There was only a whistling noise as the blade sliced through the air. Claire had expected more sounds: a sudden slap as the hooked tip of the knife punctured Paul’s skin. A grinding noise as the serrated edge sawed past his ribs. A scrape as the blade separated tendon and cartilage.
Paul’s hands went to his belly. The pearl handle of the knife stuck up between his fingers. He stumbled back against the wall, mouth open, eyes almost comically wide. He was wearing his navy-blue Tom Ford suit that was too tight across his shoulders. Claire had made a mental note to get the seam let out but now it was too late because the jacket was soaked with blood.
Paul looked down at his hands. The blade was sunk in to the hilt, almost equidistant between his navel and his heart. His blue shirt flowered with blood. He looked shocked. They were both shocked. They were supposed to have an early dinner tonight, celebrate Claire’s successful navigation of the criminal justice system, not bleed to death in a cold, dank alley.
She heard footsteps. The Snake Man was running away, their rings and jewelry jangling in his pockets.
“Help,” Claire said, but it was a whisper, so low that she could barely hear the sound of her own voice. “H-help,” she stuttered. But who could help them? Paul was always the one who brought help. Paul was the one who took care of everything.
Until now.
He slid down the brick wall and landed hard on the ground. Claire knelt beside him. Her hands moved out in front of her but she didn’t know where to touch him. Eighteen years of loving him. Eighteen years of sharing his bed. She had pressed her hand to his forehead to check for fevers, wiped his face when he was sick, kissed his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, even slapped him once out of anger, but now she did not know where to touch him.
“Claire.”
Paul’s voice. She knew his voice. Claire went to her husband. She wrapped her arms and legs around him. She pulled him close to her chest. She pressed her lips to the side of his head. She could feel the heat leaving his body. “Paul, please. Be okay. You have to be okay.”
“I’m okay,” Paul said, and it seemed like the truth until it wasn’t anymore. The tremor started in his legs and worked into a violent shaking by the time it reached the rest of his body. His teeth chattered. His eyelids fluttered.
He said, “I love you.”
“Please,” she whispered, burying her face in his neck. She smelled his aftershave. Felt a rough patch of beard he’d missed with the razor this morning. Everywhere she touched him, his skin was so very, very cold. “Please don’t leave me, Paul. Please.”