Read No Way Back: A Novel for Free Online

garage. Once in my kitchen, surrounded by all our familiar things, I actually felt myself start to feel safe, for the first time since the incident. Dave wasn’t back yet. I threw off my coat, pulled off my boots, and heaved myself into a chair in the den. I had to decide what to do.
    It all seemed like a dream to me—a haunting, nightmarish one. Had it all actually happened? I’d witnessed the execution of a defenseless man. I’d killed a government agent in self-defense. A rogue agent maybe. One who was about to kill me. But if I came forward, I’d probably destroy my life. A woman in the hotel room of a man she had met at the bar only an hour before? Who guiltily fled the scene? Over and over I replayed the seconds leading up to my firing that gun: the intruder shooting Curtis without even blinking. The second gun pushed off the edge of the bed within my reach. Screaming at Hruseff that I was an ex-cop and to put down his gun. Then the calculating expression that came over his face and the panic in my chest as he raised his gun toward me.
    I’d had no choice. I knew I would have been dead if I hadn’t pulled that trigger.
    But how could I ever explain it? To the police? Or to my husband?
    He could walk through that door at any time. That this horrible thing had happened . . . that I was in a hotel room to screw some guy. Would he even believe that I had stopped it? That I had come to my senses? Would it even matter? Everything would fall apart. My marriage. My relationship with the kids, whom I’d basically raised and whom I adored.
    Our trust.
    My whole fucking life.
    Sorry, honey, hope dinner went well with the prospective new partners and all, but while you were having salmon tartare at the Gotham Bar and Grill, your pretty little wife just killed a government agent after she was about to fuck a . . .
    Hot flashes running all over me suddenly made it feel like it was a hundred degrees.
    I got up, went into the bedroom, pulled off my clothes, and hopped into the shower, trying to wash off the oily film of guilt and complicity. It felt good, almost freeing, to be clean again. I was in my robe, in the kitchen having a cup of tea, when I heard the automatic garage door go up and then the back door open as Dave came in.
    “How did it go?” I asked, my heart beating nervously. The first words we’d said to each other all day.
    “Good. It went well.” He nodded. At first a bit stiffly. He’d worn his Zegna cashmere blazer and the green striped tie I’d bought for him last Christmas. He looked a little bit like Woody Harrelson, only handsomer, in my view. Then he grinned. “Actually, it went really, really well. I’m starting to think this might work out.”
    I ran over and buried myself in his arms.
    Did I say that this was my second marriage? For both of us. Dave’s first was with a magazine editor who developed a serious prescription pill problem, and he got custody of the kids. Mine was just a youthful mistake at twenty-one that lasted a year. We’d both put in a lot to make this one work. And for the most part it had.
    “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said, patting my shoulders. He could feel me shuddering against him, and I couldn’t stop crying. “Jeez, Pam must’ve been one hell of a support system . . .”
    I couldn’t let go of him.
    “Hey, what’s going on? This isn’t like you, Wend. Look . . .” He stroked my hair. “I know we have to talk. I know I said some things last night. Maybe this meeting was on my mind, I don’t know . . .”
    “No, that’s not it. That doesn’t matter.” I looked at him and wiped my eyes. “Dave, something happened in the city tonight. You have to listen to me. I’ve stepped into a nightmare.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    I didn’t know where to begin, so I just blurted it out.
    “Dave, I shot someone tonight. I killed him.”
    “What? What do you mean you shot someone, Wendy? What are you talking about?”
    “Dave, please just listen to me!”
    It