LITMIR.BIZ

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though, the literal storms are easier to handle.

      “God, help us,” he murmurs, one hand on the doorknob. Then he turns and whistles for the dog.

      

      Because a man on the radio keeps insisting the police have blocked the downtown exits off I-275, Gina avoids the interstate and drives toward Sonny’s office along a less-traveled route. Several ominous clouds have swept in from the bay by the time she reaches the edge of the downtown district; a gray curtain of rain hangs beneath them, obscuring her view of the river.

      On her approach to the Platt Street Bridge, she spots a policeman sitting in his cruiser. The brim of his hat shifts toward the rearview mirror, so he’s seen her.

      Well…Sonny always says it’s easier to beg forgiveness than permission. She could almost believe he was counting on her forgiveness for the affair…if she hadn’t found the bankbook.

      Rage rises in her cheeks as she stomps on the gas and steers around the police officer.

      On the far side of the bridge, she looks in her mirror and sees the cop stepping out of his car. He might be frustrated, but he won’t stop her. He’s needed at his post.

      Sonny is needed at home, but where has he been lately? With his mistress. With a young, pretty trophy tartlet.

      She turns north and heads up Ashley Drive, then brakes at an intersection. No one else moves on this riverside street, not even the police. She glances at the wet road, where the traffic light shivers in red reflection beside her car, then turns the asphalt green.

      She drives on. The haze of gasoline and diesel fumes that usually hovers over the downtown streets has been replaced by a thick humidity. She can almost feel the skin of the storm swelling like an overripe grapefruit. Soon it will burst.

      Just as she will burst if she fails to act.

      She is overcome with a memory, unshakable and vivid, of a character in a Flannery O’Connor short story. The woman’s thin skin is described as “tight as the skin on an onion” and her gray eyes are “sharp like the points of two ice picks.”

      Today Tampa wears the look of O. E. Parker’s coldhearted wife.

      After passing the light at Jackson, she spots the flashing bubble of another police vehicle. To avoid it, she heads the wrong direction down Kennedy, a one-way street, then breaks the law again as she drives north on southbound Tampa. After a quick turn, she pulls into the whitewashed entrance of the Lark Tower’s parking garage and guides her car up the slanted driveway.

      At the entry gate, she presses the red button, then takes a ticket. She looks to her left, where the parking attendant’s booth stands empty. The garage, in fact, is as quiet as a ghost town.

      The black-and-white striped arm lifts, allowing her to enter. She turns and glances in the rearview mirror. No lights flash behind her; no siren breaks the stillness. She glories briefly in her accomplishment, then follows the curving arrows past the visitors’ parking to the third level, reserved for tenants.

      She smiles after rounding the corner. Her instincts about her husband were spot-on, as usual: Sonny’s silver BMW is snuggled into its reserved space. He must have been in a hurry when he arrived, for he pulled in at an angle, carelessly trespassing on another tenant’s parking place.

      “How rude, darling.” Purposely remaining between the painted lines, Gina pulls into the space next to the BMW and crinkles her nose as the front of her Mercedes just misses her husband’s back bumper.

      She would have liked to hit his precious car, but she can’t afford to indulge a childish whim. She needs to get in and out of the building with as little fuss as possible.

      Gina kills the engine, then pulls her keys from the ignition. Pistol in the right pocket, keys in the left. She steps out of the car, gives Sonny’s unblemished bumper a regretful smile and strides toward the elevators on legs that tremble despite the dead calm in her heart.

      The designers of the Lark Tower have done their part to ease Tampa’s traffic congestion by reserving the six lowest floors for parking. On an ordinary day all six levels would be filled by tenants and visitors, but most of the spaces are vacant now.

      The garage is heavy with after-hours quiet, broken only by the echo of Gina’s footsteps and the tick of her cooling engine. She glances over her shoulder to be sure she’s alone, but no one has driven in or out since her arrival. Most everyone, apparently, has gone home.

      Sonny should have gone home, too. If he hadn’t been playing around with his girlfriend last night, he wouldn’t need to come to the office this morning.

      Twelve elevators at the center of the building provide access to the Lark Tower’s thirty-six floors. Six of the elevators are express, stopping only at levels one through seven and office levels twenty-five through thirty-six. A second bank of six elevators serves the first through twenty-fifth floors. A special plaque announces the eighth-floor location of the renowned Pierpoint Restaurant, home to one of Tampa’s finest chefs.

      Since Sonny’s office is on the uppermost level, Gina steps into the air-conditioned space at the express landing and presses the call button. While she waits, she checks her reflection in the polished bronze doors. In order to surprise her cheating husband, she needs one more thing.

      With Florida’s attorney general occupying five and a half floors of office space at the top of the building, the Lark Tower’s uppermost levels aren’t accessible to the public. Every visitor has to obtain an access card before the elevator will rise to the thirty-sixth floor, and Sonny believes the extra layer of security lends the offices of Rossman Life and Liability a certain cachet.

      A bell dings to signal an elevator’s arrival. Gina steps into the car, then turns and presses the button for the lowest level. The polished doors slide together, then the car lowers her to the marble-tiled lobby.

      Gina moves into the open area and strides toward the security station, where a tubby older man in a blue uniform blinks at her approach. She doesn’t recognize him, nor, apparently, does he know her. Not surprising, since she hasn’t visited Sonny’s office in months.

      Behind a granite-topped counter, the guard slides off his stool. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he calls, his voice ringing against the marble walls, “but the building is closed. We’re under an evacuation order.”

      Something in his appearance—perhaps the stun gun attached to his belt—sends a wave of reality crashing over her, as hard as the terrazzo beneath her loafers. She is about to do something that cannot be undone. She has planned a heinous act, a deed that would cause her children to gasp in revulsion if they knew what she had in mind.

      Can she really go through with this?

      How easy it would be to smile at the security guard, profess ignorance of the evacuation and take the elevator back to the parking garage. She could drive home to her sleeping children. They would never know what she’d planned or how far she’d gone—

      But they need not know anything. She won’t tell them about this, or the bankbook, or the forty-three-thousand-dollar bracelet Sonny gave to his Don CeSar date. She’ll keep everything from them, just as Sonny has kept secrets from her for who knows how many years.

      Yet some secrets refuse to stay buried. Matthew might find something in the office or Samantha might run into someone at the club who knows that woman. Idle gossip is a powerful force, and even if her plan goes off without a hitch, someone might guess at the truth….

      She sways on her feet as the walls blur and only half hears the security guard’s alarmed question: “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

      She puts out a hand and grips the edge of the counter. “Just give me…a minute.”

      Can she continue to ignore Sonny’s late hours? Can she pretend she doesn’t notice another woman’s perfume on his shirts? When the inevitable occurs and he comes in to ask for a divorce, can she look her children in the eye and say she didn’t see it coming?

      She

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