Page 138 of Hard to Kill

I work all of Saturday on trial stuff, throwing myself into the grind, knowing the day will end with the dinner I’m preparing for Dr. Ben Kalinsky and myself. For the first time in weeks, I’ve decided to go fancy with ingredients from Balsam Farms: mushroom Asiago chicken pasta as the main course, preceded by an apple harvest salad.

For dessert I’m reaching for the sky, a chocolate soufflé I’ve prepped to go into the oven as we start the main course.

“What’s the occasion?” Ben says, pouring us more wine.

“It’s not really very complicated,” I say, leaning across thetable, nearly knocking over my wineglass as I do, and then kissing him.

I pull back, smiling at him. “The occasion is that I love you.”

“You’re right. Not that complicated at all.”

“I still am, you know. Complicated as all get-out.”

“Just another reason why I love you. And why I’m so happy that you’re getting back to workyoulove.”

“You mean being a criminal lawyer instead of running around with a gun and behaving like one?”

“Like that.”

The soufflé is beyond a guilty pleasure. We clean up the kitchen and share a brandy in the living room and then shut the bedroom door on Rip the dog and make love, after which I experience the best night of sleep I’ve had in a long time.

I tell myself I’m getting back to my day job, even knowing that my full-time job is cancer.

The next night, alone with Rip, and pizza from Astro’s, I’m deep into a dreamless sleep for a change, no visits in the night from either of my parents, when I hear my phone. The clock on my bedside table reads 12:01.

UNKNOWNCALLER.

I instinctively reach for the Glock.

“It’s McKenzie,” I hear. “You have to help me.”

My old friend Edmund McKenzie. He sounds as if calling from the middle of a wind tunnel.

“Why in the world would I do something like that?”

“They’re gonna kill me, Cunniff!”

“Where the hell are you?”

“I ran up into Walking Dunes in Montauk after I ditched my car.”

A pause.

“They were following me, but my car was faster.”

“Why there?”

“I’ll explain everything when you get here. Just hurry. I figured they’d come for me eventually.”

There’s a pause, and now just the sound of the wind.

“I’m tired of looking over my shoulder,” he says.

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because I know everything you want to know,” he says. “But I can’t tell you if I’m dead.”

ONE HUNDRED TEN