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was jumbled and rambling, and it felt like knives were stabbing me when I got to the part I dreaded most. Which was going up to that room.
    “I don’t know why I did it, David.” I sat on a stool at the kitchen island holding a tissue, shaking my head. “I was just so angry from the things you said to me last night. Then Pam didn’t show up. This guy came up to the bar . . .”
    It took everything I had to get the words out. I watched Dave’s face twitch in surprise at first, as he realized what I was telling him, then go blank, maybe waiting for the part when I said I was joking, which never came. Then it simply slackened with the most confused, heartbreaking look.
    “Dave, I swear to you, nothing really happened between us up there.” I reached out and took his hand. “I give you my word. I stopped it before it really got anywhere. I was just so angry, David—”
    “You went up to this guy’s room?” He stared at me shell-shocked, and pulled his hand away. “To do what? To screw someone, Wendy?”
    “Sweetheart, I never meant to hurt you.” I latched back onto him, my heart almost falling off a cliff. “My relationship with you means more to me than anything in the world, and I realize what I’ve done. But that’s not it! That’s not all I’m trying to tell you, David. Something else happened up there. Something even more important.”
    “You shot someone?” His face screwed up in confusion. “What the hell did he do to you, Wendy?” His concern was mixed with anger and accusation. He searched my face and arms as if looking for signs of a struggle.
    “Nothing. He didn’t do anything to me, Dave. The guy’s dead. He was shot. By someone else. Someone else came into the room—as I was in the bathroom. Freshening up.”
    “Freshening up?” This time the edge of accusation in his voice was clear.
    “Dave, just listen to me! The guy was killed. Thank God I was in there, or I’d be dead too.” I took him through what happened. Hearing the killer’s voice. Curtis pushing the gun off the bed. Watching him be killed.
    Picking up the gun and having no other choice than to do what I did.
    My tears cleared and now there was only the deepest urgency in my eyes. “The guy was going to shoot me, David. I identified myself. I told him I was an ex-cop. I gave him every chance to put his weapon down. He didn’t. What he did do was raise it up to me. I shot him, David. I had no choice. He would have shot me!”
    I drew myself close to him. I needed to feel his support so badly. Stiffly, he put his arm around me as my heart pattered against him. Then I finally felt him draw me close. Hesitantly. His arms seemed remote and strange.
    “I don’t even know how to react to this, Wendy. What did the police say?”
    I shook my head against him. “I never went to the police, Dave. I couldn’t.”
    “You shot a murderer in self-defense. You’d just watched him kill someone, right? No one would question it.”
    “That’s not all that happened, Dave. I was scared. I realized my life was about to fall apart. Because of where I was. I just wanted to get home to you.” I lifted my face. “But that’s not all . . . The guy I shot wasn’t just a murderer. I checked him out and saw his ID after. He was a government agent, Dave. He was from Homeland Security.”
    The rest I told him as if in one long, rambling sentence. How I ran from the hotel room, straight into the killer’s partner. How he shot at me, and I had to run. “I fled down the fire stairs, David. I’m lucky to be alive.”
    “Oh God, Wendy . . .” I sensed both sympathy and disbelief in his voice. I didn’t know if I would believe it if he was telling it to me.
    “I don’t know what I stumbled into, Dave. But whatever it was, it was a murder. And something these people wanted to cover up. If I went to the police, they would have brought me back to the hotel, to the very people who were trying to kill me. I’ve never been so afraid in