The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding

doing or arouse Jeff’s suspicion that she might be faking it. Not that he’d care one way or the other. Strangely enough, that was one of the things she liked best about him—this minimum of pretense. She grabbed his buttocks to push him even deeper inside her, feeling him shudder and release as her hands moved to his torso, absorbing the last of his energy.
    “How was that?” he asked, his proud smile looming above her.
    “Terrific,” Kristin told him. “Suzy has no idea what she missed out on tonight.”
    Jeff’s smile grew even wider as he flipped over onto his side, pulling Kristin’s arms across his waist. “She will,” Kristin thought she heard him say just before he drifted off to sleep.

FIVE
    “W HERE THE HELL ARE you taking me?” Tom wondered aloud, following Suzy’s car across the Venetian Causeway, suspended high over picturesque Biscayne Bay, into mainland Miami. Once across, the cars slowed to a virtual standstill at the intersection of Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast Fourteenth Street. “Shit. What now?” Where was everyone going? “Doesn’t anybody stay home anymore?” he shouted out his open window at no one in particular. It was after two in the morning, for shit’s sake. He was hot; he was tired; he was very drunk and more than a little queasy. So what was he doing running after some twat who’d rejected him once tonight already?
    A white Lexus SUV suddenly appeared from out of nowhere to cut in front of him. “Goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch,” Tom swore as the traffic began inching forward. “I’ll blow your motherfucking head off.” He reached for his gun, then quickly thought better of it, counting to ten, and then twenty, in a concerted effort to calm himself down. Much as the bastard deserved a bullet in the back of his big, fat, ugly head, Tom thought, the last thing he wanted was to create an unnecessary scene. Even honking his horn would be risky, he realized, forcing his hands into his lap. He didn’t want Suzy craning her neck around, straining to see what all the commotion was about. Besides, there were police everywhere. All he needed was for some inquisitive young cop to pull him over, smell his breath, and discover he was carrying. They’d haul his ass off to jail so fast his head would spin. Although it was already spinning pretty good, he thought, and laughed. He pictured Lainey having to come down to the station in her pajamas to bail him out, a screaming kid in each arm, her outraged parents following close behind, and the laugh quickly died in his throat.
    “What’s the matter with you?” he could hear her cry. “What are you doing chasing after some woman you saw in a bar when you have a wife and children and a houseful of responsibilities waiting for you at home?”
    Which is precisely the point, Tom thought now, and laughed again.
    “You think this is funny?” Lainey continued to berate him. “Are you insane? When are you going to grow up?”
    “When I damn well feel like it,” Tom shot back, banishing her to a far corner of his mind and shifting in his seat, trying to see over the top of the white SUV. Stupid car, he thought, imagining it taking the next corner at too high a speed, then flipping over and bursting into flames, its snot-nosed driver trapped inside, clawing at the windows as he struggled—frantically, and in vain—to escape the blaze. That’d be great, Tom thought.
    Suzy’s silver BMW turned left at the Museum of Science and the Space Transit Planetarium—whatever the hell that was—then continued southwest along the wide boulevard, before turning right onto Douglas Road. After that, Tom stopped paying attention to the signs. What difference did it make what street they were on? What was important was what happened when they got there.
    Ten minutes later, they were driving through the twisting labyrinth of streets that made up the upscale suburb of Coral Gables. “Coral Gables, shit,” Tom groaned. He hated Coral