Damn. I wished Allie would get here already. I really couldn’t cook at all. I couldn’t even figure out why I wanted to do this, except for a burning desire to please—the same desire that always simmered beneath the surface, now burning white-hot, fanned by my lingering unease from the gun I’d gotten yesterday and my trepidation about tomorrow night. I would get to see Luke again. Then after it was all done, I would return here. I would come back, but something compelled me to fix things with Allie, with Claire, with everyone before I left, tying a knot in the loose, winding threads before they ran out.
Claire found me in the kitchen, and together we prepared a big grilled steak to share and asparagus, something fitting for a last meal. Claire, Adrian, and I ate together, a mishmash family, human trinkets collected by a reclusive owner. Allie arrived with dessert, as she most often did, and we all four feasted.
Although Adrian was just as comfortable with a girl’s night as me, maybe more, he excused himself, perhaps sensing the particular gravity of the night’s festivities. I wished the mood were lighter, my apprehension further from the surface.
At least Claire and Allie seemed mostly unaffected. They chatted as if they didn’t notice my quietness, as if they had known each other forever. I loved that about them. They were both so vibrant, fighting and laughing their way through life. I paled in comparison, a single note in contrast to their harmonies, a single trick to perform again and again.
As they bent their heads together, their laughing faces lit by the glow of a laptop, I noticed how much they looked like each other. Both petite, both brunettes. Claire’s face was thinner, her nose a little longer, but the resemblance was remarkable. It wasn’t an altogether uncommon look, but uneasily, I wondered if I would still have saved Claire if she hadn’t looked so much like Allie.
When Claire looked up at me slyly, I had to ask. “What are you two up to?”
Allie grinned. “Claire wanted to see him in uniform.”
Claire smacked Allie’s arm. “Hey, that was you.”
I came around the laptop. On the screen, the CPD’s Web site was pulled open to Luke’s profile. He stared unseeing at the camera, his green eyes more of a misty hazel in the camera’s lighting. He seemed younger than I remembered, but possibly the picture was old. His youth didn’t detract from his severity. And in his full uniform regalia, he looked very upstanding. The very opposite of what a prostitute could aspire to have for herself.
Both Allie and Claire waited expectantly. Claire seemed a little nervous, as though I might get mad at them. Allie looked mischievous, probably expecting the same thing but knowing she could handle me.
“Well?” I raised my eyebrow. “What are we rating him?”
“Eight out of ten,” Allie said. “Would let him bang my best friend.”
“Next,” I said.
Luke blinked off the screen, taking his solemn sexiness with him. The next guy had olive skin and a Hispanic heritage. More than that, he had a gleam in his eye that was sadly not wicked at all.
“Four out of ten,” Claire said. “Would steal his wallet but not his rosary.”
“You can tell religious fervor from his face?” Allie asked doubtfully.
I concurred. “Virgin Mary tattoo on his back.”
The next listing was a butch female cop and then another man, older but with a decidedly roguish smile.
“This one’s a good tipper,” I remarked.
“Follow the formula,” Claire said.
I examined the picture, mentally comparing him to hundreds of other men. “My guess is…good hygiene. Corny dirty talk.”
“I’d hit that,” Allie said. “He has a silver-fox thing going on.”
“Oh no,” I teased. “Are you panting after a cop? I should tell Colin what you’ve been up to.”
“No, don’t.” Her voice filled with playful fear. “I wouldn’t be able to walk for a week.”
Claire looked up sharply.
“It’s a figure of speech,” I said to soothe her.
Allie’s face softened. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“So you’ve never really been sore?” Claire demanded. “It never really hurts?”
“Not the way you’re thinking. Not with someone who cares about you.”
Allie’s eyes clouded over, and I wondered whether she really believed that. If so, she had healed more than I realized. More than I had. Years ago, our friend had hurt her—raped her. We had both been shell-shocked. He had cared about her. Not enough, though. Not in the right way. No, I still didn’t understand. Who could comprehend evil? Who understood what made friends and fathers do what they did? Claire’s quiet questions disrupted my thoughts.