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.“I think I really do love you, Sara,” he said.“And it scares me.”“I love you, too, Nick.” She raised her hands to his shoulders and pushed him back from her, so that she could look into his eyes.“But it doesn’t scare me.It excites me.” She reassured him with a broad smile.Nick became aware, belatedly, of a rhythmic high-pitched tone emanating from the Mercedes.He turned to glance at the car, realizing that its door was still ajar and that Sara had left the engine running.“Aren’t you coming inside?” he asked her.“Aren’t you going to stay?”Sara laughed.“I didn’t come here to stay with you,” she said lightly.“I came here to pick you up and bring you home with me.”Nick looked at her in question.She had never once invited him to the house in Bellevue.The only time he had seen it was when he followed her there, that same morning that he had seen her disappear into the Four Seasons Hotel.Nick found himself overcome with memories of the two of them together in his small studio.Lying in bed.Waking up in the middle of the night to run downtown and find a place to eat.Sitting on the pathetic sofa reading, Sara’s head heavy in his lap.As dazed as Nick had become in the last weeks, these had been some of the most powerful, most meaningful moments of his life.“The house is mine now, Nick,” Sara said.“There’s no need for us to stay here in this ridiculous little apartment any longer.My mother is away, down in San Francisco with her sister.They invited me to come down, too—for Christmas—but I wanted to be here with you.”“I hadn’t realized.” It hadn’t crossed Nick’s mind that the estate would belong to Sara now that Jason Hamlin was dead.“Jason didn’t have any children of his own?”Sara frowned at the idea.“He was a bachelor until he met my mom.I told you that.” She leaned forward and gave Nick another tight hug.“Wait until you see the house, darling.You’re not going to believe how beautiful it is.”Nick glanced up at the windows of his apartment.“Maybe I should get a few of my things together,” he said.“I don’t know, some of my clothes.A toothbrush.” Relaxing, realizing how lucky he was, he laughed.“Are we going to be there long?”Sara tugged his hands.“I’ll stay here with the car.But don’t keep me waiting.Grab enough for a couple days.After that, we’ll go shopping.I want to wipe the slate clean, Nick.I mean it.I want to start fresh in every way.”Nick stood by himself on the pier behind the Hamlin estate.The view over Lake Washington, looking back at the city of Seattle, was extraordinary.The gigantic mansion dominated this corner of the bay.From where he stood, Nick was able to see a number of the other houses along the shore, set in lavish gardens, surrounded by lush evergreen trees.A seaplane like the one Hamlin had piloted to San Juan Island was descending toward the small airport in Renton, at the southern end of the lake.In the far distance Mount Rainier was crowned with a cap of white snow, blending into the clouds as the sky emptied of color.At his back, the grounds behind the Hamlin house stepped up from the pier on a series of terraces.A tennis court was carved so discreetly into the side of the bluff that it complemented the landscaping.A huge light blue pool could just as easily have been an elegant fountain.Nick had never experienced wealth like this before.He had never even imagined that wealth on this scale could exist.It seemed inconceivable that a single man could earn enough in a lifetime to own an estate like this one—let alone the house on San Juan Island and the vineyard in Napa, and who knew what else as well.This was what Sam wanted to grab for himself.This was the prize Sam had had his eyes on.This was what Sam had been willing to risk the sanity of his own brother to attain: a life led in a house on the shore of a lake of sapphire water, on the edge of this rainy city, lost in the far corner of the Pacific Northwest.Nick was all at once overcome with a memory of the house he and Sam had grown up in, and a sad smile flitted across his face.As fiercely competitive as Sam had always been, it had never occurred to him back then that he didn’t have everything he would ever in his life need, right there on his doorstep.The two brothers had always had everything they could conceive of in each other.When had that comfortable happiness been lost?“Sam was still alive when Jackson Ferry took my shoes and left me in the parking lot,” Nick recalled out loud.Standing at the end of the pier, he closed his eyes against the seductive view and tried to remember the course of events the night that Sam was murdered.It felt like something that had happened twenty years before.Little pieces of the tragedy stuck with him in snapshots: His hand on the handle of the knife as it slid into Sam’s chest.Jackson Ferry’s face emerging suddenly from the pitch-black shadows.Standing barefoot on the pavement in Elliott Bay Park.His memory broke down, though, when he tried to string the images together.Try as he might, there were black periods he couldn’t seem to fill with any color.“I was on the ground,” Nick said under his breath, trying to give shape to the unease gnawing at the back of his mind, “lying on my stomach when Ferry took my shoes.” He remembered trying to turn over.He tried to resist the homeless man, but couldn’t.“He shoved his foot into my back.He took my shoes, then he left.I turned over and got up onto my knees and found Sam.” Once again, Nick closed his eyes, squeezing them shut to try to recall the image to his mind.“I reached down.I was about to check his pulse.And then something happened, and Sam opened his eyes.”Sam’s cell phone had rung in his jacket pocket.Nick opened his eyes.The sun had continued to set, and the heavier clouds above him had turned into charcoal.Farther off, a patch of blue sky had become blood red.Across the water, the color was trapped in the windows of the taller buildings, glimmering as if they had caught fire.“Did I answer the phone?” he whispered.“Yes.I took it from Sam’s pocket, and I flipped it open.”It’s Sam.He’s been stabbed.Send an ambulance now, please.We’re on the waterfront, just beneath Pike Place Market.Hurry, please.Hurry!“Who was it?” Nick asked himself.“Who called Sam? Was it someone I knew?” He shook his head.Someone was walking toward him from the shadows.He could hear the footsteps in his mind.The person’s shoes scraped on the gravel.And then nothing.“There was someone else there,” Nick said.He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, trying to force himself to remember.“Or was it just the drugs?” he asked himself, frustrated.“No, I’m sure someone else was there.There must have been.”Nick was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t hear Sara approach.She came up behind him, carrying a tall crystal flute of champagne in either hand.“Are you feeling well enough for a small celebration?”Nick was startled by her voice.A burst of adrenaline spiked his heart, and for a second he felt himself overcome with a now familiar feeling of dizziness and disorientation.He fought to maintain control
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