To let the evil out.
I still dreamed bad dreams and woke up in cold sweats. If I'd been able to keep a dog in my apartment on my shitty schedule, I would have had the biggest, meanest dog that ever lived. I'd have fed it steaks and kept it on my bed, just in case. Just in case. I had a gun instead, and cold comfort it was, though it was comfort all the same.
But Malcolm... in the middle of the ocean with him, with his hands on my body, the sun warming me, the sea breeze whipping my cares away, all our problems left behind on the shore... with Malcolm my fear had faded. I retained the habit, but there had been no drive behind it.
The betrayal of my family, my father's insanity, my mother's inability—or unwillingness—to keep me safe, had faded in the bright sun, in the warm breeze. The bones of the past bleached out at sea and crumbled to ash in the fire of our mutual desire.
Now that Malcolm was gone, I wasn't safe any more. And if he had been telling the truth about his secretary, there was one more person out in the world looking to destroy, to betray. If Malcolm had been telling the truth, he wasn't safe, even in jail. Hell, I probably wasn't safe.
What if Don suspected something? What if he did know Malcolm knew about his betrayal? What if he thought I knew where Malcolm had hidden his proof of Don's malfeasance? What if he knew where to find the evidence? He'd known Malcolm for a lot longer than I had. If anyone guessed accurately, it would be him...
No. No, I had no proof of any of that, had no proof even that Malcolm had been telling the truth, either. All I knew about Don was what Malcolm had told me, and what small things I had learned while I spoke with him on the phone, and he hadn't given any indication that he thought Malcolm had figured him out. Had he?
...Shit, I'd been too drunk to remember properly. Mostly I had a vague impression of being shouted at for no good reason and treated like I didn't have two brain cells to rub together.
He's not crazy.
The words came floating up to me from the depths of my memory.
Oh. Right. Now I remembered. He'd thought I was a woman hoping to exploit a rich but vulnerable man for her own gain. Not only had he thought it, but he had said it out loud. Admittedly he had been under quite a bit of stress at that point, what with Malcolm allegedly skipping the country right before all his plans were to come to fruition...
I bit my lip. He's not crazy. That meant that Don thought Malcolm was just acting a part, whereas I was now not so sure. Where did that leave me?
Lying on my fainting couch, feeling like shit and pining for a man that I'm suddenly not certain is really real. I wanted the Malcolm I knew to be the real Malcolm. I cared about him, or the man I thought I knew. Our time together, floating on the sea—it all seemed like a dream already, something that had happened to someone else, in another time and place. Was what we shared real, or had he only been manipulating me? The snatches of our interactions in my memory could have gone either way, it seemed...
I bit my lip, hard. What did it matter? I had to choose if I was going to believe him or believe his secretary, the FBI, the CIA, the Turkish Coast Guard, and, probably by now, the press. And if I knew anything about any of those guys, I'd go with Malcolm any day.
Which left me with one option: I had to get him out of prison. I couldn't let him waste away in there. He still had to finish his Masterpiece.
And I'd seen his attempts at art. There was something there.
I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling of the plane, my mind chasing itself around in circles.
I was no closer to figuring out what I should do when we reached New York and Felicia finally woke up.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” I said to her as the plane began its descent and she blinked around the cabin, clearly trying to remember where she was. She shot me a glare.
“Oh, shut up, Sadie,” she told me. “If you only knew how many nights of sleep I've been missing because you decided to get yourself pretend-kidnapped or whatever, off running around the world without even sending me a text, which, by the way, is totally rude because you're my personal assistant and you have a lot of vacation saved up, so you could have just told me you were taking your vacation days instead of letting me worry about it... You know the feds came and talked to me? They wanted to know if you'd talked to me at all about Malcolm, or if you'd left me a message or contacted me since you were kidnapped...” She trailed off. “What was my point?”
“I think you were trying to say you were tired.”
“Right! I am tired. And you are sunburned. Don't you know that's a great way to get cancer?
I shrugged. “I'll live.” It felt good to banter with her as if nothing had happened. Being as exasperating as possible to Felicia was always one of my favorite past times, and now it made the ache in my chest and the lump in my throat recede a little.