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“Oh, okay, deputy. I’m not in Missouri. I’m…”
“Yeah,” he drawls. “Don’t say where, okay?” Either he has no idea how surveillance works and he doesn’t realize that anyone who was able to listen in would be able to locate both of our phones to the nearest shrub, or he knows something I don’t know.
From my time cross-examining witnesses on the stand, I know it’s never sensible or safe to assume someone is ignorant. So I go along with it.
He says, “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, Eve. All the same, I can’t risk talking about it on the phone to you.”
Journal
Regret
Eve, I can never regret having you. I only regret losing you. I miss the time when you were part of me. For me, you always will be. I only wish there was a way I could bring us together. Maybe you wouldn’t want that and I would totally understand. It is what I want more than anything, though.
Only now, I know if I came anywhere near you, it would put you in great danger. It hurts me, but I couldn’t do that to you. Not unless there was no other way.
I wish I could tell you face to face. I could say so much more. There’s too much to tell that I can’t risk committing to paper.
Journal
Bad things
The Agency forces me into situations where I have to do terrible things. I have no choice. The people on the other side deserve them, but I don’t deserve to have to do them.
I made a mistake. I admit it. It was a bad choice. I could say that daddy made me do it, but I did it. By any measure, the DEA thugs made me do much worse things, and they weren’t doing it to try and help out a sick old man.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have helped him the way he asked.
Not in the way he begged me to.
Not the way he demanded, even with the terrible threats in his mindless desperation.
But I don’t deserve this.
Chapter Seven
I meet deputy Buckle at two in the afternoon in Joe’s, a dark Missouri roadhouse, about halfway between nowhere and nowhere much else. In the hot, musty gloom, the carpet clings to the soles and gives off a rare vintage scent. A blend of Thunderbird and stale Sam Adams.
I’m grateful no girls seem to be climbing onto the bar top in their underwear. Maybe it’s too early.
Buckle is in a dark corner booth. “Did I really have to come all the way out here?”
“For your sake, Eve, I don’t want you to risk being seen.”
I wonder if that is why he chose this particular roadside lounge.
“I know this all seems hayseeds and hillbillies to you, from your big city law firm, but, you know, people around here, for the most part, they tend to do what I tell them and shut up about it.”
He has a way of gently swaggering, even while he’s sitting down.
“I know, deputy. It’s the gun.”
“No, I don’t think it’s only that. Here’s the thing, though,” he says, “Oh, you want a beer.” He raises his hand.
“Thanks. I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t a question. You don’t have to drink it. You’ll definitely be noticed if you don’t have a drink in front of you.”
A girl in tiny denim cut-off twinkles at me and slouches next to the deputy. He tells her, “Two Blue Moon Belgian Whites, darling.”
