Stirred

She was crying now, and the acrid stench of urine in the air belonged to her.

“Try not to throw up. You’ll choke to death and miss all the fun.”

He reached into the duffle and took out a roll of duct tape.

Tore off a strip, slapped it down over her mouth just as it occurred to her to scream again.

For a moment, the tears blinded her.

When she blinked them away, she saw a knife with a curved blade, and on some plane of consciousness removed from this moment, it occurred to her that it resembled the talon of a bird of prey.

Moaning through the tape now, begging him not to do this, making desperate promises.

He sat on her waist, her hands bound behind her back, and no amount of squirming could jolt him off.

Luther glanced over his shoulder—a quick look up and down the river walk.

She turned her head as well and through the blades of grass saw the path still empty.

“Like I told you,” he said, “the city is ours.”

He grabbed her chin, turned her head back toward him. She stared into his eyes, trying to make some co

“It’s coming,” he said. “Are you ready?”

She shook her head, tears welling again.

“Fighting it isn’t going to stop a thing. This is your last moment. I suggest you try to meet it with grace. If it helps, I didn’t pick you because of any perceived flaw. You were a nice woman, and I’m sure you’d have made Rob, or anyone else, very happy. Just your bad luck is all. You were just one of many that I’ve been watching. If any of the other Shedds had been receptive, you and I would never have met.”

But all she could think was, I’m sorry. For the things she’d failed to do or been too scared to try. For the people she’d mistreated, for the relationships her pride had destroyed, for the stone wall of a daughter she’d been to her parents over bullshit that didn’t matter, but mostly for the years she’d wasted waiting for someone to complete her when she should have been working on completing herself.

The tears came freely now, and Luther’s dark eyes crinkled.

“I wept not, so to stone within I grew,” he whispered.

His voice ripped her away from all the stu

“They’re going to write about you tomorrow,” he said. “They’re going to make you famous.”

She opened her eyes and saw him pointing that talon toward the glowing Chicago Sun-Times sign, looming above the both of them like a neon cloud.

Then he turned the knife on her.

And the cutting began.

March 31, 9:15 A.M.

“Nervous?”

I glanced over at Phin, sitting next to me in the ER waiting room, and then back down at my gym shoes, my toe tapping so fast the Velcro straps were a blur.

I hated these shoes. Velcro was a way of shouting to the world, “I give up! I don’t care about my appearance anymore!”

But it was true. I’d traded a four-hundred-dollar pair of Yves Saint Laurent pumps for some thirty-five-dollar Keds because my feet were too swollen to fit into anything remotely sexy. Worse than that was the XL T-shirt stretched taut over my waist, pulled over the no-belly shorts, which were still so tight I had the first two buttons undone. My body had become a hideous travesty, courtesy of the alien living inside of me.

An alien that was also trying to kill me, apparently not satisfied with mere physical ruination.

“Why should I be nervous?” I said. It came out clipped and more high-pitched than I would have liked. The air-conditioning was lukewarm, and the smell of lemon bleach was giving me a headache. “I either got better or I didn’t. Either way, I still look like Humpty Dumpty.”

“You look beautiful, Jack.” Phin reached over and took one of my sweaty hands.

“I hate when you say that.”

“You do. You’re glowing.”

His blue eyes shone in a pure, wholesome, loving way that made me want to smack him in the mouth. I turned away, staring at the other unfortunates in the waiting room.

ERs were the worst. An impromptu collection of people brought together by bad news and circumstance. Not that I preferred my ob-gyn’s office. Her waiting room was filled with women half my age who liked to chat. Invariably their first question was always, “How old are you?”

Old enough to have known better than to get pregnant this late in life.

Phin’s fingers caressed my hand and then sneakily rested on my wrist.

I pulled away.

“Just checking,” he said.

“You don’t need to check again. That’s the reason we’re here, isn’t it?”

When we took my blood pressure this morning, it had been 160/100—dangerously high. So now we were at the ER checking my urine for protein to see if the preeclampsia had gotten worse. If it had, both Phin and my doctor were going to insist on inducing. But I was still three weeks early. Much as I wanted this kid out of my body, I feared getting this kid out of my body even more.

At forty-eight years old, I was still too young to be a mother. If I had three weeks left of being childless, I’d take them, even if all I was fit to do was eat fried pork rinds and watch soap operas with my feet propped up.

“Phin, you got any pork rinds?”

In preparation for my birth, Phin had begun carrying around a diaper bag, which, instead of diapers, he kept filled with various unhealthy snacks and several equally unhealthy firearms. It had gotten to the point where my shoulder holster didn’t fit anymore and my ankle holster was too far down for me to reach, so Phin stayed armed for the both of us.

He fished around in the bag—a hideous accessory with Kermit the Frog on it—and came up with a bag of BBQ Fritos. Not as good as pork rinds, but they’d do in a pinch. I tore the bag open with my teeth and dug in.

Phin slapped his jeans, dug out his cell. He squinted at the screen.

“All clear,” he read. “How about Mezcal?”

My business partner, Harry McGlade, was waiting outside the emergency room, standing guard. Many months ago, I’d run into a very bad man who’d promised he’d look me up again. Harry, Phin, and my old partner from the force, Herb Benedict, had taken that threat seriously, to the point of keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on me. As gallant as the gesture was, after more than half a year of tripping over them, I’d had enough of my trio of protectors. This was compounded by the fact that McGlade had taken it upon himself to name my forthcoming baby. Because I had the unfortunate moniker of Jack Daniels, McGlade figured the child should naturally be named after some kind of liquor.

“Text him back,” I said. “Tell McGlade I’d rather name my kid Helga or Fa

“I kinda like Mezcal,” Phin said.

“You also liked Peppermint Schnapps.”

“Pepper is a cool name for a little girl.”

“Sure it is. Why don’t we just buy her a little stripper pole for her crib?”

Phin smiled. He had two days’ growth of beard and wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans. Last year he’d been bald from chemo, and even though he was in remission, he’d kept the look and had taken to shaving his head. All he needed was a gold hoop in his ear and he would have resembled a sexier version of Mr. Clean.

“This drink-name idea is growing on me,” he said. “I can see myself as the proud papa, pushing along a baby carriage filled with little Stoli.”