212 LP: A Novel by Alafair Burke Page A

said, smiling.
    Ellie knew she should be grateful for his response. She should be thankful that he wanted to support her, to comfort her, to watch her sleep the way she’d sometimes catch him in the morning. And she wanted to accept his offer. She wanted to be the kind of woman whose first instinct was to run to a man who cared about her when she was under pressure.
    But one of the things she loved about Max was that he seemed to understand her, even when she had trouble understanding herself. And he was comfortable and confident and took everything in stride. Unlike other men she’d dated, she never had to worry aboutMax making it all about him. It was all the more reason to wish she could give him what he wanted.
    “I’m sorry. Tomorrow, okay? I promise. Tonight I just need to kick the blankets, squish the pillows, drool onto the sheets, and snore like an old fat man. And I really don’t want you to see me like that.”
    “Might kill the magic.”
    “Exactly.” She held his gaze and brushed his forearm.
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “I’m holding you to it.”
    “You better.”
    “Well, get some rest, all right? You’ve earned it.”
     
    Outside on Twenty-first Street, to the west, Ellie spotted a familiar figure leaning against the white stone of the building, smoking a cigarette. Jess.
    She smiled at her older brother as she imagined all of the one-liners he must have come up with at her expense since she’d called him the night before from jail.
    “Hey, you.” She caught a whiff of smoke and wondered when she’d stop missing it.
    He removed an unopened pack of Marlboros from his faded jean jacket and handed them to her.
    “I quit, remember?” She had, for the most part.
    “I hear they’re currency where you’re from.”
    “Funny.”
    “I’m serious. Anything you want. Soap. Candy. Porn. A shiv. Reefer. The white pony. These bad boys can get you anything on the inside.” He shook the cigarettes for emphasis.
    “Is that all you got?” she asked dryly.
    “Of course not. I figured I’d go with the prop comedy first. Let the rest of my lines trickle out over the next few days. Weeks. Months, if necessary.”
    “Oh, good. Something to look forward to.”
    “Are you up for a drink, or are you too jacked up on bootleg hootch from your time in the joint?”
    “Oh, I think I can stay awake long enough for a drink.”
    “You know I only treat at one place.”
    “You know the torment that awaits me in there?”
    The bar in question was Plug Uglies, a classic old watering hole around the corner on Third Avenue. Thanks to its proximity to the precinct and an absurdly cheap happy hour, one could always count on finding a row of cops drinking there at this time of day.
    “C’mon. Cheap drinks. A little darts. Some shuffleboard. You’ve got to take your lumps from the house sometime, or it’s only going to fester.”
    “ The house. Listen to you with the cop talk.”
    “Jesus, I’ve been spending too much time with you.”
    Ellie and Jess had been raised in the same home, with the same intense homicide detective as a father, but had dealt with their police-dominated environment in opposite ways. Jess had rebelled, shunning any kind of hierarchy or ordered regime that might even begin to resemble a law enforcement culture. Ellie, on the other hand, had breathed it all in and had allowed it to define her.
    She pulled the wrapper from the Marlboros. Just one drag. She’d earned it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    6:15 P.M.
    I nside the tiny efficiency studio that Glen Forrest Communities called her mother’s “apartment,” Katie Battle filled a green-tinted glass with water from the sink and placed it on the small rosewood table that doubled as both nightstand and end table between the empty bed and the chair that her mother currently occupied. Once she received the e-mail about her mother’s latest fall, she’d wrapped up the tour with the Jenning couple and made it to the assisted living center as