Текст книги "The Swan and the Jackal"
Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Chapter Thirteen
Fredrik
I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, but I’m wide awake when I arrive back at my house in Baltimore just after 10:00 a.m. the following day. Greta’s old beige Honda Civic is parked in the driveway. I pull in beside her and kill the engine.
I’m incredibly nervous, a feeling so foreign to me that at first I don’t know what to do with it.
Carrying my black leather travel bag in one hand, I head up the red brick driveway and feel like I can’t get to the front door fast enough. The door is locked and while I’m scrambling to get the right key, I’m expecting Greta to open the door as she normally does when she knows I’m on my way back. But this time, I realize, she isn’t aware of my early return.
Finally, I get the door open and head inside quietly.
The house smells of eggs and biscuits and sausage. It’s spotless as usual, not a speck of dust left on anything or even evidence of the breakfast she cooked other than the aroma lingering in the air. I set my bag carefully on the floor in the living room wanting to avoid letting them onto my presence. I move into the kitchen, stepping around the spot in the floor that always creaks when walking over it and head for the bar. My iPad is right where I left it before I went to Seattle, and in the same horizontal position as though Greta made sure to place it exactly as it was and hoped I wouldn’t notice. I unlock the screen and move my finger over the app, opening the live feed from the basement.
They’re sitting on Cassia’s bed talking. Seemingly harmless. Turning the volume up just slightly, I listen in on their conversation for several minutes. Nothing of significance. Greta is telling Cassia about her daughter and their trip to Monte Carlo last year. Cassia smiles so beautifully, so innocently, and it affects me in the worst of ways. I push down the pain and guilt that I feel for keeping her imprisoned for so long, keeping her from living life and seeing the world like I know she must dream about seeing it. That brightness in her brown eyes is unmistakable as she listens to Greta talk about Monte Carlo. She’s envisioning herself there. And rather than dwelling on the truth of her predicament, she just smiles and accepts it, instead.
I’m a fucking bastard.
With my palms pressed against the countertop, I drop my head slightly between my rigid shoulders and let out a long and miserable breath, shutting my eyes softly.
But when I open them again, I notice something that shocks me back into an upright position. My eyes grow wide with panic. Once I manage to shake off the paralyzing numbness my body has fallen victim to, I dash down the hallway toward the basement door, flinging it open and then taking the concrete steps two at a time until I make it to the bottom.
Greta and Cassia both jump at the sight of me, Cassia flinging herself against the wall on the other side of the bed.
I march over and snatch Cassia up into my arms.
“Why did you take it off?!” I shout at Greta, my voice and my face filled with reprimand.
Greta shoots to her feet while Cassia presses her head harshly against my chest. I hold her with one arm around the back of her waist and the other underneath the bends of her legs.
I glance briefly at Cassia’s ankle where her shackle is supposed to be, and then back at Greta who’s about five seconds away from meeting her maker.
“Please Fredrik,” Cassia cries into my chest, “don’t blame Greta. I begged her to remove it. It was hurting.” She fits her small hand around the side of my neck to hold on to me. I nearly wilt by her touch.
I shake it off fast and set Cassia back down on the bed.
“Bring it to me,” I demand Greta.
Greta, afraid to speak, scurries over and takes the chain into her hand. Crouching down on the floor in front of Cassia, I slide her thin yellow gown up her soft legs, grazing her skin with my fingertips and it reacts to my touch as tiny goose bumps appear.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Gustavsson.” Greta holds the shackle out to me. “I wouldn’t have let her escape. But I was concerned about her ankle. I cleaned it like you always asked me to.”
“I’ve told you never to remove it. Never.” With my hands on Cassia’s warm thighs, I turn my head slowly, indignantly, and look up at Greta standing over me to my right. “If she didn’t like you so much…” I grind my jaw and look away.
Calming myself, I give Cassia all of my attention again, sliding her leg in my free hand downward until I make it to her ankle. And then I stop and drop the shackle on the floor instead of putting it back on. Letting out a heavy sigh, I drop my gaze to my shoes, feeling even guiltier than I felt when I had been upstairs watching her from the live feed. I look back down at Cassia’s injured ankle. Blood has been drawn where the metal scraped against the back of her foot, just above her heel. And there are little blisters in a horizontal pattern on the inside of her ankle, just below the ankle bone. Her skin is yellowed by bruising, and red and inflamed around the cuts and blisters. Something clear glistens all over her skin, probably antibiotic ointment that Greta put on after cleaning it.
“Shit,” I say under my breath.
I rise into a stand and pick Cassia up from the bed, wrapping my arms around her small form. She latches her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. Her body trembles against mine, though I know she’s only scared for Greta and not for herself.
“We’ll discuss this in the morning,” I say, turning to Greta who’s looking back at me with fear at rest in her features. “Be here at your usual time.”
“Yes, sir.” She bows her head and moves quickly toward the staircase.
The moment I hear the basement door close, I tighten my arms around Cassia’s body and shut my eyes to savor the moment.
“Please don’t hurt Greta,” she whispers in a teary voice into the side of my neck.
I swallow hard.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I whisper back, and cup the back of her soft blonde head within the palm of my free hand.
The feeling of her bare thighs tightening around my waist makes me hard. The warmth between her legs on my stomach. I try to ignore it, pushing my need to be with her far into the back of my mind. But it’s so difficult. Painful and torturous.
Cassia is my punishment. I know she is. For all of the horrific things I’ve done to people in all these years, I’ve known for the past year that she must’ve been sent as my punishment. And my undoing. I’d much rather be strapped to my own chair and my teeth be pulled out of my head, or needles be shoved underneath my fingernails or my skin be peeled from my muscles, than to suffer this kind of torture. I would rather die. Just kill me and get it over with. The pain of being near her and knowing that I can’t give in to my feelings for her, is the worst kind of pain I’ve ever felt.
And the only other thing I want more in this world than to find Seraphina, is for this pain to go away.
“I should be here more,” I say softly into her hair. “My job has been more demanding than usual. I never meant to neglect you.”
Cassia raises her head from my shoulder and peers deeply into my eyes as I hold her propped around my waist with her bottom in my hands.
This isn’t right.
I should stand her up.
I ignore my inner voice and stare back into her eyes, fighting eternally with my conscience.
The softness of Cassia’s fingertips trails down the sides of my face and then her lips fall on the corners of my mouth. One and then the other.
I should stop her
I should drop her on the bed and leave her be.
I do neither.
Instead, I hold her tighter and shut my eyes softly, seeking her lips with my own, though still reluctant to taste them. Because I know what it will do to me.
Before I let myself kiss her, I pull away and carry her toward the bathroom. I drag my hands gently across the bare flesh of her thighs as I set her down on the countertop.
I snap out of the forbidden thoughts again and pull her ankle into my hand.
“This looks bad,” I say. “I’m sorry for letting it get that way.”
“Greta took care of it,” she says kindly.
“Yes, but it shouldn’t have gone that far.” I step over to the tall shelf on the wall and open the cabinet, which is also usually locked, but isn’t. I take down some peroxide in a spray bottle and a clean wash cloth. “I’ll be here every day for the next week, at least,” I go on, spraying her ankle with the peroxide. “But I think it’s better that way.”
It still bothers me that I’ve been given a ‘leave of absence’ because I’m obviously too distracted to carry out my duties, but it’s for the best just the same.
“Fredrik?”
“Yeah?” I don’t look up at her, but continue cleaning her wounds though they’ve already been cleaned recently.
There is a bout of momentary silence and finally Cassia speaks up in a quiet voice. “I…well, I don’t want you to leave me again. Why can’t you stay here with me? Or, take me with you when you leave?”
I raise my eyes from my work and look into hers. She smiles softly, but I also see desperation in her delicate features.
“That’s not possible.” I look back down at her ankle.
Her mood shifts and I can sense that her smile has fallen.
“I wouldn’t run away,” she says; the desperation taking precedence in her voice. “I want to be here with you. I want to stay with you. You have to believe that.”
I drop her ankle more harshly than I intended and the back of her heel bumps against the cabinet door underneath the counter.
“Why do you feel that way?” I lash out, my eyebrows hardening in my forehead. “Cassia, look what I’ve done to you. How can you say or believe these things yourself? You’ve got to stop this—it’s making it harder on me!” I didn’t mean to say that last part, but by the time I realized it, the words had already fled my lips.
Cassia just looks at me, confusion and curiosity in her eyes.
“Harder on you why?”
I turn my back to her and walk back over to the cabinet and put the peroxide away.
“Because, Cassia, it can never happen. Nothing more than what has already happened between us, can ever happen.” I can’t look at her.
“Because of Seraphina,” she says.
I nod. “Yes. Because of Seraphina.” I hate the truth. I hate myself because of the truth.
This is the ultimate punishment.
“But I’m in love with you,” she says quietly from behind and my heart collapses inside my chest with a crushing force.
“Don’t say that!” I swing around at her. “You’re not in love with me, Cassia! You don’t even know what you’re saying!”
Tears glisten in the corners of her eyes and all I want to do is crush her against me and never let her go. But I can’t and I won’t. Her brown doe-like eyes look up at me with such pain that I can hardly bear the consequences. Her plump lips tremble around the edges. Her long, blonde hair lays like silk over her petite bare shoulders, stopping just below her breasts that are somewhat visible through the thin satin fabric of the yellow gown she wears. I wonder why she never dresses in the regular clothes I bought for her. But I only wonder for a brief moment.
I try to avert my eyes until she says, “That woman has such a hold on your heart that it can’t breathe. She’s the reason your heart is dark. Look what she’s done to you. Look what she’s doing to you every day of your life.” My hands have compressed into fists down at my sides. “Why won’t you look at me?” Her voice begins to rise with desperation.
I look up and my eyes fall on hers.
“Seraphina is evil,” she says. “And look what she’s doing to you.” A trace of anger laces her words.
But it’s not the anger that attracts my attention, it’s something cryptic that lies beneath it.
“What are you saying, Cassia?”
She shakes her head gently and her gaze falls toward the floor.
“Cassia?” I say in a cautionary tone. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No,” she says after a long pause.
“You’re lying.”
She looks up. Pain and resentment and love resides in her eyes.
I step closer.
“What have you remembered?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me the truth!” My fingers dig into the palms of my hands. “What have you remembered?!”
“Nothing!”
She slaps her hands against the countertop.
“Goddammit! I don’t remember anything!”
“You’re lying!”
My hands fly to her upper arms and I shake her so hard her head bobs back and forth on her neck.
“Tell me the truth, Cassia!”
The side of my face stings when she frees one arm and slaps me so hard across the cheek that I hear a ringing in my ears. I grab her wrists into my hands and shove her against the wall where the mirror used to be, pressing my body between her opened thighs. Her feet raise up onto the counter. Her eyes expand as largely as they can, her pouty mouth lies halfway open as her breath expels rapidly from her lips. I can feel her heart beating in her wrists secured beneath my tightening fingers.
Leaning forward even farther, my eyes bore into hers, my lips are inches from her own. “You’re going to tell me what you remember, Cassia, or I swear to fucking God I’ll put you in that chair.” My voice is calm, but harsh and unforgiving.
“Fuck you,” she says and it’s more surprising than the slap was across my face.
I pull back just inches and look at her. Tears pour from the corners of her eyes. It’s not defiance I see in her, but pure, unadulterated pain.
“I remember,” she says, trembling. “I remember everything about Seraphina. How I know her. Why she wants me dead. I remember.” She sniffles. It’s tearing me up inside to see her this way. But I can’t let her get to me. Not now of all the times she’s done it since I’ve had possession of her.
“Tell. Me. What. You. Know.”
She shakes her head and my hands tighten around her wrists pressed against the wall behind her head.
“I won’t tell you anything until you tell me everything.”
Gritting my teeth, I hold my position with her body against the wall for mere seconds before finally letting go. I take a step backward. My mind is thick with merciless thoughts. A dark, soulless haze momentarily covers my vision and all I see in front of me is who I wish she was. Seraphina. The other half of my soul. The only other person in this world who can control me, who can control my urges, my violent, murderous tendencies. Because if she were here, I could fuck her. I could take my anger and guilt and pain and vengeance out on her and she would love me for it. Because Seraphina never wanted me to be gentle. She wanted me to hurt her. She wanted me to make her bleed. She wanted to feel it when I released my darkest side because she was only ever at peace with herself when someone darker than her was in control. I was the only person darker than Seraphina. Together, we could not be broken.
I need her now.
I need her now because Cassia can be broken. And I don’t want to hurt Cassia. I could never live with myself if I allowed my demons to ravage her like I ravaged Seraphina.
Sometime during my soulless haze, Cassia managed to slide off the counter and now she stands in front of me.
How did I get here?
I look up to find that I’ve already stepped out of the bathroom, but I never remember walking through the doorway.
“Fredrik,” Cassia’s voice is soft and pleading and concerned.
I put up both hands, creating a wall between us. She stops and looks upon me with hurt in her eyes.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” I say calmly and avoiding eye contact. “Tell me what you remember.”
“I’m sorry,” she says gently and not at all out of anger, “but I meant what I said. You owe me that much. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care if you put me in that chair again.” I feel her presence as she steps up closer, but I take another step back. “Do what you have to.”
A last desperate attempt consumes me and I swing the rest of the way around at her. “I can’t tell you!” I lean over into her face, but she stands her ground rather than shrinking away from me as I halfway expected her to do. “Why are you making this so hard, Cassia?” My voice begins to calm, reduced from anger to pleading. “I can’t talk to you about Seraphina. Not you, of all people in this fucking world! Why can’t you understand that?!”
Cassia reaches up and wipes the tears from her eyes. Then very slowly, as if it’s the last thing she wants, she turns on her heels and walks toward the corner I often find her in.
She sits down, pressing her back against the wall and pulling her knees toward her chest with her gown stretched over them.
Then she looks up at me and says one last time, “Do what you have to do.”
Wanting to put my fist through a wall, I storm over to the shackle and chain, taking it up into my hand and approach her with it. Crouching down beside her, I take her uninjured ankle and lock the shackle around it. She doesn’t look at me much less fight me.
I make my way to the staircase and stop only long enough to hear her say, “I’ll forgive you, Fredrik. For whatever you have to do to me,” and I swallow down the pain her words caused and leave her sitting there.
I can’t torture her. Maybe she knows it. Maybe she’s playing me for a fool, using reverse psychology on me. I don’t know, but I can’t do that to her.
But I will do something.
Before this day is over, she’ll tell me what she remembers.
I’ll get it out of her. One way or another.
Chapter Fourteen
Fredrik
I spend the rest of the day ignoring Cassia, and only checking in on her every so often by way of the video feed streaming from her room. I’ve thought of everything and the only idea that comes to mind is forcing her to watch another interrogation. Forcing her to watch me kill a man. For a while, it was what I intended to do. Instead of making her watch from one side of the basement, I was going to tie her to a chair in the interrogation room with me and let her see it up close and personal. Let her witness the horrific torture that she can barely stand to see through a television screen. Smell the fresh blood as it’s drawn, the sweat.
But there’s only one problem: I don’t have anyone to torture. No one left like Dante Furlong who I know deserves to be put through that. The closest ‘backup’ I have is four hours from here and I can’t leave Cassia alone in the basement for that long.
Feeling utterly defeated, and angry, and resentful towards Cassia for keeping the one thing from me that I need, I shoot up from the sofa, accidently knocking my portable tray with my dinner over onto the floor. Reaching up with both hands, I drag them through the top of my dark hair, clenching my teeth and biting back the roar sitting behind my tongue.
My arms fall to my sides and I look up at the ceiling, letting the defeat do what it wants with me.
But then suddenly a thought flickers in my mind and all is right in the world again. I take the iPad from the sofa beside me and switch on the camera in my bedroom. In a split screen, Cassia looks up instantly when she hears the television in her room come on. She stares at the live feed of my empty bedroom for a moment, curious, confused, and nervous.
If I can’t scare or torture the information out of her, I’ll draw it out in an equally cruel way.
I slip my feet down into my dress shoes and then my arms into the sleeves of my suit jacket, afterwards shrugging my long coat on. As I walk briskly through the kitchen I swipe my keys from the counter and leave the house.
* * *
It’s not usually my style, picking a woman up from a noisy bar like this one that smells of ash trays and cheap whiskey. The place is loud with drunk voices and some kind of classic rock continuously streams from the speakers of a juke box. I typically hunt in quieter places where wine is served and I can hear myself think. But this isn’t a typical night and I don’t have time to hunt in my usual places.
I’m out of place, dressed in an Armani suit and shiny black shoes and an eight thousand dollar watch. It’s all drawing attention, but that only makes it easier for me.
It doesn’t take long after I’m seated at the bar with my shoes propped on the stool’s spindle to find the woman I want. Dark hair that streams past her shoulders. Her eyes are brown, I can tell even from this far across the room. She’s petite, wearing a loose-fitting black skirt that stops just above her knees, and a pair of black women’s cowboy boots on her feet. A long-sleeved black top that buttons down the front covers her upper-body, but the top few buttons have been left undone revealing her cleavage. A long, silver chain necklace is draped around her dainty, cream-colored throat with a pendant dangling on the end that dips below her breasts.
She’s single. At least for tonight she is. I can tell by the way the two men standing next to her by the pool table are eyeing her and her friend. The way both women smile and blush when the men say how beautiful they are and how much they’d like to take them home tonight. I can’t actually hear what they’re saying, but whatever their exact words, it all translates to the same thing.
The dark-haired woman, the one I want, has already made eye contact with me once.
This will be easy.
I sit hunched over the bar with my arms resting on the bar top, a small glass of whiskey in my right hand. I run the tips of my fingers up and down the artistic indentions in the side of the glass to appear distracted. My long black coat is draped on the back of the stool behind me. I left the suit jacket on, unbuttoned, and my white dress-shirt untucked from my slacks.
Finally, I take a small drink, letting the rim of the glass linger near my lips afterwards. I glance over again to my left and sure enough the woman sees me as if she’s been waiting for me to look.
Far too easy.
She smiles inwardly and then looks at her light-haired friend. Words are passed between them, but I get the feeling they’re not close, probably just met tonight because the other woman seems more interested in the two men than their conversation. Soon, all four of them are looking my way, the two men with disappointment on their faces.
The dark-haired woman takes her small black purse up from the table in the corner and tucks it underneath her arm.
She walks toward me, swishing her shapely hips gently underneath her skirt.
“Hi,” she says shyly as she steps up, but I get the feeling there’s little shy about her. Perhaps she’s pretending to be the shy type, but I already sense that it’s not in her nature to turn a man like me away, one who she knows deep down inside of her somewhere is the kind of man who embodies sexual control.
“Good evening,” I return with a faint smile.
She blushes.
I stand halfway from my stool and gesture at the empty one next to me, indicating for her to sit down. She does, propping her boot on the spindle to push herself onto the seat. She sets her little purse on the bar.
She smells good, like perfumed powder lightly dusting her skin. Her hair has been freshly washed and even though she has been drinking, I can still faintly smell traces of her minty toothpaste.
I gesture for the bartender who comes over and waits.
“Would you like a drink?” I ask the woman.
She smiles and her brown eyes appear to twinkle.
“Sure, thanks,” she says. “Rum & Coke.”
As the bartender goes to make her drink, I take another sip of mine and push the glass out of my way. I turn around on the stool to face her, leaving my right elbow on the bar.
“It’s not often men like you come in here,” she says.
The bartender places her glass down and then leaves us alone again.
“Men like me?” I inquire casually.
She nods with a blush growing in her cheeks.
“Well, yeah,” she says, fingering the indentions in her glass as I had been doing. “A businessman of sorts by the looks of it. With an accent at that.” She glances at my watch peeking from beneath my jacket sleeve. “And men don’t usually come in here wearing Rolex’s.”
Interesting. She actually knows a Rolex when she sees one and doesn’t even need to get a closer look. Gold-digger? Wealthy herself? She could be a lot of different things, but one thing she isn’t is demure, and she has a deep relationship with money. But she’s far from being vulnerable. No, this one is good at a game of her own. She could easily fool a man into thinking she’s vulnerable. But I’m not a man who is easily fooled. I just wonder if she’s good enough to realize that.
“Gwen,” she introduces herself. “What brings you to a place like this? Needed to drown your sorrows? Trouble with the wife?” She glances at my bare ring finger.
“Fredrik,” I introduce with a dark, faint smile. “Fortunately I have no sorrows to drown. And certainly no wife.”
She grins and takes another sip. Then she slides the glass out of the way with the tips of her long, slender fingers, afterwards propping her elbow on the bar top. She crosses her legs and stealthily pulls the ends of her dress over the top of her knee by tugging the fabric in her lap with her free hand. She has sexy knees attached to long, flexible legs.
Gwen is a very confident woman hiding behind the guise of a shy Jane. She’s a hunter, like me. And she’s used to getting her way. She’s used to men who drool at the sight of her, who can’t get past staring at her breasts long enough to see that they’re being played.
Tonight will be interesting for her, if not an eye-opener.
If this were any other night and finding my ex-wife wasn’t a priority, I might want to hunt this woman a little longer. Take my time. Feel her out to figure out her game. I’d play it just because I can, and because she’s not so unlike me and would probably enjoy it, too.
“What is that?” she asks. “The accent.”
Her eyes seem to light up with the possibilities, as though the thought of sleeping with a man with an accent excites her.
I incline toward her, closing the space between us and inhale her scent. My gaze scans the curvature of her neck and the plumpness of her mauve-colored lips. “Swedish,” I answer and let my eyes fall on hers. I lean in closer so that she can feel the heat of my breath on the side of her neck. “I should tell you, Gwen”—her body leans into mine eagerly—“I never waste time with the mating ritual, getting to know one another before we fuck by offering little spoonfuls of personal information to break the ice.” I sense her body tense up and her breathing begins to deepen, but she makes no effort to pull away from me. “If you want to leave with me, then let’s go. I can promise you one thing.”
I pull away and look at her, waiting for her answer. Her eyes are wide and that plump mouth of hers sits partially agape. She’s no longer the confident, game-playing woman she was when she walked over here. She’s stunned for probably the first time in her life.
She hesitates for a long, contemplative moment and finally asks, “What can you promise me, exactly?” Then she laughs nervously and adds, “That you won’t kill me and throw my body in a dumpster?” She seems only slightly concerned about that prospect.
I smile and curl my fingers around my glass before bringing it to my lips and taking a drink. “No, I won’t do that,” I say and set the glass back down. “But I will have my way with you—that is if you can handle it. I won’t lie to you, I’m not gentle.”
She bites down tenderly on the corner of her bottom lip.
Gwen pauses and then turns slowly on the stool, facing forward. She takes another small drink and sets the glass down letting her fingertips linger on the wet rim. I’ve seen that look of excitement and conflict in a woman before. It’s unmistakable, the look of a woman who wants to taste the darkness no matter the risks. Her cream-colored skin is flush with heat. Her long, slender fingers continue to dance around the rim of the glass in a slow, repetitive movement. The inner ridge of her bottom lip stays moist as the tip of her wet tongue carefully traces it.
Quietly reading her thoughts, which are as loud as the music playing in the background, I oblige and drop my right arm from the bar, slipping my hand between her thighs and carefully breaking them apart. Without looking at me—and without objection—her body relents and her legs come uncrossed on the stool.
Like the rest of the bar, the area is dark, only the orange and red glow from various bar lights humming against the walls. The shadow plays against Gwen’s profile, accentuating the way her throat moves every few seconds when she swallows. And when my fingers slip behind the elastic of her thin panties in the bend of her leg, the shadow reveals her mouth parting even more with anticipation.
Grazing her little bead of sex, Gwen gasps lightly and both of her hands collapse around her glass on the bar, her fingers loose, but restless. Her legs part farther, giving me—begging me—more access.
I slide my middle finger inside of her and feel her tighten around me, wanting to hold me there. Her eyes close softly. Her back has straightened like a proper English girl. Her shoulders are slightly stiff, her breasts heaving between them with every pleasure-filled breath she takes, but tries to contain for the sake of being in public. And only when she feels the sensation of my finger sliding carefully out of her does she turn her head to look at me again. Placing my hand over the top of my glass, I let my middle finger fall between the others and dip into the whiskey before taking a drink. I set the glass down, afterwards placing the tip of my wet finger into my mouth and tasting her.
She just stares at me. Lustful. Conflicted. Confused.
Then I stand from the stool and remove my long coat from the back of it, sliding my arms down into the sleeves. Gwen watches me quietly, intensely, still fighting with the angel on her shoulder which lost to the devil on the other side the moment I touched her.
I drop a fifty-dollar bill on the bar beside my glass.
And then I walk away.
I don’t look back as I make my way to the front exit, passing occupied tables and busy waitresses and pushing myself through thick wisps of cigarette smoke.
As casually as I had gone in, I walk back outside into the frigid air, pulling my coat together in the front as the wind brushes bitingly against my face. Before I step off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, I hear the music and the voices from inside the bar funnel from the front door as Gwen steps from it behind me.
