The Pact Read online

  THE COURTROOM ERUPTED, reporters running for their cell phones and Melanie Gold shouting and pointing a finger as her husband, pale and silent, dragged her away. "I need a recess, Your Honor," Jordan said tightly, and physically hauled Chris off the witness stand and out of the courtroom. Barrie Delaney laughed out loud. Gus sat very still, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. Beside her, James was rocking slightly back and forth, whispering, "Oh, God. Oh, my God." After a minute, he turned to Gus and reached for her hand, but what he saw in her face stopped him. "You knew," he whispered.

  Gus bowed her head, unable to admit it, equally unable to deny.

  She expected to feel a slight rush of the air beside her as James vacated his seat to pace, to think, to just get the hell away. But instead, she felt his hand, warm and firm, steal around hers. And she held on for dear life.

  BACK IN THE TINY VESTIBULE, Jordan sat with his head in his hands. He did not move, or speak, for a full sixty seconds. When he began to talk, his head was still lowered. "Is this about getting an appeal?" he said evenly. "Or do you just have a death wish?"

  "Neither," Chris said.

  "You want to tell me, then, what's going on?"

  Jordan's voice was soft, too soft for the roiling emotions in his head. He wanted to throttle Christopher Harte for making him look like an idiot, not once, but twice. He wanted to kick himself for being such a smartass and not asking Chris ten minutes ago what he was going to say on the stand. And he wanted to slap the grin off the prosecutor's face, because she knew and he knew who was going to win.

  "I wanted to tell you before," Chris said. "You just didn't want to listen."

  "Well, since you've fucked everything up royally, you might as well tell me everything." At the very outrageousness of that, Jordan laughed. For the first time in ten years, maybe longer, he was going to be forced to salvage a case with the truth. Because it was absolutely all he had left.

  He had learned long ago that the truth did not belong in a courtroom. No one--not the prosecutor, and more often, not the defendant--wanted it there. Trials were about evidence, counter-evidence, and theories. Not what had actually occurred. But the evidence and counter-evidence and theories had all just gone down the toilet. And the only thing Jordan had to fly with was this kid, this stupid kid, who felt honor bound to tell the world what had really happened.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jordan and Chris left the small room, shoulder to shoulder. Neither one of them was smiling. Neither one of them spoke. They walked quickly, their strides parting the crowds who had heard the rumors and who stared after them with their mouths gaping. At the door of the courtroom, Jordan turned to Chris. "Whatever I do, go along with it. Whatever I say, just play along." He saw Chris hesitate. "You owe me this," he hissed.

  Chris nodded, and together they pushed open the door.

  IT WAS SO QUIET IN THE COURTROOM that Chris could hear his own pulse. He was back on the witness stand, his hands sweating and shaking so badly he had to tuck them beneath his thighs. He had looked at his parents only once; his mother had been smiling weakly and nodding at him. His father--well, his father was still there.

  He did not let himself look at Emily's parents, although he could feel their fury, poker-hot, all the way from the gallery.

  He was very, very tired. The weave of the sportsjacket was scratchy through the thin oxford cloth shirt, and his new shoes had rubbed a blister on his heel. His head felt like it was going to burst.

  And then, suddenly, he heard Emily's voice. Clear, calm, familiar. She was telling him everything would be all right, saying that she wouldn't leave him. Chris glanced around wildly, trying to gauge if everyone else could hear this, too, hoping to see her, even as he felt a stillness stroke over his heart.

  "Chris," Jordan said again, "what happened the night of November seventh?"

  Chris took a deep breath and began to speak.

  THEN

  November 7, 1997

  He kept his eyes on it, the gun, on the small dent it made on the white skin at her temple. Her hands were shaking as badly as his, and he kept thinking, It's going to go off. And on the heels of that, But it's what she wants.

  Her eyes were squeezed shut; her teeth bit into her lower lip. She was holding her breath. She was expecting, he realized, great pain.

  He had seen her like this before.

  He remembered with great clarity a memory he had forgotten to tell Dr. Feinstein, surely his earliest one, since he was barely walking. He'd been running on the sidewalk and had fallen down. Bawling, he'd been lifted into his mother's arms, and had sat on the porch while she kissed his seemingly unscraped left knee and spread a Band-Aid across it for good measure. It was after he'd been soothed that he realized Emily was screaming, too, and getting the same treatment from her own mother. She'd been right next to him on the sidewalk, although she hadn't fallen. But on her left knee was a brand-new mottled bruise. "He cuts himself," his mother had laughed. "And she bleeds."

  It had happened other times when they were children--Chris would get hurt and find Emily wincing, or vice versa--she'd tumble off her bike and he'd cry out. The pediatrician called it sympathy pain, said it was something they'd outgrow.

  They hadn't.

  The gun slipped on Emily's temple, and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.

  He reached up with his hand and grabbed Emily's right wrist firmly. He was bigger than she was; he could draw the gun away from her head. With his free hand he pried Emily's fingers from the butt of the Colt and carefully uncocked the hammer. "I'm sorry," he said. "But you can't."

  It took a moment for Emily's eyes to focus on his, and when they did they darkened with confusion, shock, and then rage. "Yes I can," Emily said, grabbing for the gun, which Chris held out of her reach.

  "Chris," she said, after a minute. "If you love me, give it back."

  "I do love you!" Chris shouted, his face contorted.

  "If you can't stay with me, I understand," she said, looking down at the pistol. "Go, then. But let me do it."

  Chris's mouth tightened, and he waited, but she would not meet his eye. Look at me, he silently begged. Neither of us is going to win. And although he was not feeling the lead of a bullet, now that he'd opened himself up to it, he could clearly feel Emily's sorrow, which made it hard to breathe and impossible to think. He had to get out of there. He had to get far away from Emily, so that he would not feel anything at all.

  HE STUMBLED TO HIS FEET and crashed through the shrubbery that circled the carousel, his tears making the night curve crazy. Swiping the backs of his hands across his eyes, he started to run, until he reached the Jeep.

  He didn't get into the car, and realized he was waiting to hear the shot.

  A half hour passed, slow and viscous, and before Chris realized what he was doing he'd walked halfway back to the carousel. He saw Emily just where he'd left her, cross-legged on the floorboards with the gun cradled between her palms. She was stroking the length of it as she might have caressed a kitten, and she was crying so hard she could not catch her breath.

  Emily glanced up when she noticed his feet at the edge of the carousel. Her eyes were red; her nose was streaming. "I can't do it," she said, choking on her own words. "I can tell you to get the hell out of here, and I can yell and scream and say I want to, but I can't."

  Heart pounding, Chris pulled Emily to her feet. This is a sign, he thought. Tell her what it means. But as soon as she was standing, she pressed the gun into his palm. The pistol was slick with Emily's sweat, and as warm as her own skin. "I'm too much of a coward to kill myself," she whispered. "And too much of a coward to live." She lifted her eyes. "Where do I go from here?"

  Anything Chris was going to say dried in his throat. He knew that if he wanted to, he could wrench the gun away from Emily and throw it so far that she'd never be able to find it. He w