Jackal’s footage would be a nightmare. There was enough there to show something, enough there that he wouldn’t want it to get out, but Carrigan could say, very rightly, that he’d come to his senses, stopped, went home to his loving wife before he did something he regretted forever. These photographs wouldn’t scare him enough to cough up $50K, that was for damn sure.

Silently, I scooted off him until there was a little space between us on the couch. I tried not to picture Jackal laughing at me. Think you’re such hot shit now?

I remembered, then, how the rest of the conversation with Ellen the first night with Klein had gone. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” I’d said to her. That much was true. But hadn’t I added, after: “But there’s plenty of girls who would do it, there’s plenty of girls I could find to take your place”? And she’d looked up at me with her big eyes and that little please like me smile, and that’s when she’d said it: “Put me in, Coach.” I hadn’t even laughed.

I didn’t bother to button my dress as I moved to the kitchen to refresh our drinks. I could hear him behind me, moving restlessly on the couch, putting himself back together. I didn’t bother to tell him that it was all right, because it wasn’t. I added a few ice cubes to the glass of nice-but-not-top-shelf bourbon and thought of what to say.

Baby, it happens to all men. It’s not a big deal. We can still have a good time, if you know what I mean. But what sort of good time could we have now that that was worth fifty large?

When I turned around, refilled tumblers in hand, Carrigan was already standing, halfway to the door. Not meeting my eyes.

“Don’t go,” I cried out, the words coming out more strangled and frantic than I’d meant to sound. Carrigan frowned at me, his shirt half untucked, the pleats of his pants crumpled from the couch.

I had to keep him there, somehow. I had to give him enough time to relax, recover. If he left, I’d never see him again, I was sure of that. I’d be too embarrassing, a moment he’d want to forget—there’d be no other chance. I was starting to panic and trying not to show it. I could think of Jackal above me, packing up his camera equipment. This time, it had been me that fucked it.