I plunked down on the edge of the bed and squeezed my eyes shut. Here it comes, I thought, and tried to brace myself. “Just say it, will you?”

He hesitated. He was a cop; he picked up nuances. “What exactly are you expecting me to say?”

My peepers popped open. “I don’t have the faintest idea,” I said.

“Liar,” Tucker countered. “Give it up, Moje. You’ve on the peck about something, I can tell by your tone, and you’ve obviously written a script for this particular conversation, so how about feeding me my lines?”

Heat surged into my face. “If you want to go back to your wife and kids, it’s your business,” I blurted.

“Go back to—?”

A wonderful/horrible possibility dawned on me. Wonderful because I might be wrong, and horrible for the same reason. The chances seemed good that I’d just made an ass out of myself.

I tried to brave it through. “Isn’t that what you were going to tell me?”

“No,” he said. He sounded terse and, at the same time, as though he might be trying not to laugh. “It isn’t. If you’re thinking of picking up some extra bucks as a phone psychic, forget it. You don’t have the goods.”

I rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed, feeling like the mother of all fools. Maybe if I pulled the garbage bag over my head and cinched the pull-ties at my waist, I could end it all. It would save Joseph the trouble, along with that pesky stretch in prison.

“Are you still there?” Tucker pressed.

“Yeah,” I squeaked.

“I’m not going back to Allison,” he said, “so put that out of your head.”

I reached for the garbage bag. Pondered the cons of self-suffocation. There weren’t any pros, as it turned out. “Then what?” Very small voice.

“It’s job-related. As in, I’m going to disappear for a couple of days, minimum. If you see my face on the evening news, or on the front page, don’t panic. Right now, that’s all I can say.”

“Okay,” I said uncertainly.

Tucker was a man of his word. He hung up without even saying goodbye.

I stared at the phone. If you see my face on the evening news, or on the front page, don’t panic. What the hell did that mean?

I dug out the charger and plugged the cell in to power up, then pushed a few buttons on the bedside console. The plasma TV came on, and I used the remote to scroll for the Phoenix stations.

Everybody Loves Raymond was wrapping up the second or third rerun of the evening.

I waited it out, watched the news.

Nothing about Tucker’s face or any other part of his anatomy.