The Cold Kiss by John Rector Page A

zipper ran along the top, and when I reached for it, Sara grabbed my hand.
    She didn’t say anything.
    I looked at her then unzipped the bag and pulled the canvas flap back.
    Sara was still holding my hand, but neither of us said anything for a long time. At that moment, nothing else existed.
    Eventually, Sara turned toward me.
    I saw her out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t smiling or crying or anything. There was no emotion at all, and when she spoke, her voice was perfectly calm.
    “How much do you think is there?”

11
    It took a while to count, and when I finished I put the last few bundles of cash back in the suitcase and said, “Almost two million, plus what we’ve got in the backpack.”
    Sara nodded, didn’t speak.
    She was sitting on the chair by the table. She’d changed into a pair of green sweatpants and an oversized white T-shirt. Her hair was still wet, but she didn’t seem to care about that anymore.
    I zipped the flap on the suitcase then set it on the floor and slid it under the bed. My hands were shaking, and I reached for my jacket and took the pack of cigarettes out of the pocket. I tapped one out then lit it using one of the candles.
    This time, Sara didn’t complain.
    I sat on the edge of the bed and rested my arms against my knees and tried to think. The idea of two million dollars made it hard to focus, and all I ended up doing was watching a thin ribbon of smoke trail up from my cigarette and unravel into the air around me.
    I’d just counted it, I’d held it in my hands, but I still couldn’t believe it was real. Even the possibility of that much money was foreign to me.
    For years, growing up, Vincent and I would spend nights sleeping in cars or abandoned houses. There was never any money, and sometimes we’d go days without food.
    Back then, twenty dollars seemed like a fortune, and I tried to imagine what Vincent would’ve thought about two million. It was hard to do, but picturing the look on his face made me smile.
    “That’s all we have to do,” Sara said. “It’s easy.”
    “What’s all we have to do?”
    “Turn it over to the cops.” She nodded, her eyes distant. “We won’t have anything, so there won’t be any reason to come after us. We’ll just keep going like we never met him at all.”
    “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would we give it to the cops?”
    “We’ll be completely out of it. We’ll be safe.”
    “Sara?”
    “The police can deal with it.”
    “We’re not giving this money to the cops.”
    She looked at me. “We have to.”
    “No, we don’t,” I said. “We’re going to do what we talked about. We’ll tell the police what happened, but we’re not going to mention the suitcase or any of the money. We’ll give them the backpack with his clothes and tell them it was all he had on him when we picked him—”
    “No!” Sara stood up fast, her voice loud. “We can’t do that. Things are different now.”
    “Nothing’s different.”
    “Everything is different.” Her voice got louder with each word. “Someone shot him because of this money, and now he’s dead. If we keep it, they’ll come after us, too.”
    “Who’ll come after us?”
    “Whoever owns this money. Whoever killed him.”
    I held up my hands and tried to calm her down, but she stepped away and backed up against the wall.
    “No, Nate.”
    “Sara, come on.” I kept my voice soft. “No one knows he had this money.”
    “Someone does.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because someone shot him, Nate, and because he had that damn gun. You said it was an assassin’s gun.”
    “I could be wrong about that.” I lied. “But even if I’m not, it doesn’t mean—”
    “Just stop. This kind of thing happens all the time in movies, and it always ends up bad.”
    “In movies?”
    “He was running from someone because of that money and now he’s dead. If we take it then they’ll come after us.”
    “This isn’t a movie.”
    Sara looked away. There