Free Virtue Falls by Christina Dodd Page A

into the microwave. He got out a fork and his good steak knife—it was actually a stiletto, but he wasn’t allowed to own one of those either, so he called it a steak knife—and put it on the coffee table.
    On the TV, a rerun of CSI . Like he needed to watch that noble shit about duty and honor and esprit de corps. He changed the channel, found The Punisher , one of the best, most violent, stupidest movies of all time, and left it.
    He flipped the steak, watched it sizzle another minute, then pulled the plate out of the microwave and lovingly laid the steak beside the steaming potatoes. Going to the couch, he sat down, put the plate on the table, and pulled the pistol from his waistband. He placed it beside the plate, within easy reach.
    The movie had ended. The local news blared, the silly anchor team making much of insignificant details in the Las Vegas area while ignoring the big shit that was important. He used the remote to mute them, picking up his knife and fork, and with exquisite care, he carved the steak.
    Perfect. The blood ran red onto the white plate, embracing the pile of potatoes.
    Elizabeth would have turned her head away. She seldom ate steak, and when she did, it was always well done. Blood made her squeamish. Once after he’d been shot, she had rushed to the ER to see him, taken one look, and had fainted so hard and so fast she’d needed medical attention for a concussion.
    So during the whole time of their marriage, Garik had eaten his steak medium. When she had told him she wanted a divorce, he’d pointed out his steakly sacrifice, but she had said, in that supremely reasonable tone which bugged the shit out of him, that if not for him and his carnivorous habits, she would be a vegetarian. And anyway, eating to please each other didn’t make for a happy marriage.
    Apparently not.
    Now he lifted a bite of tender, rare steak to his lips, chewed and swallowed, and smiled.
    Heaven.
    Piercing one of the green beans with his fork, he lifted it in a salute. “To you, Elizabeth,” he said, and ate it, too.
    His pleasure in the moment slipped … Damn, but he missed that woman. He hadn’t understood her. The stuff she cared about! Stuff like rocks and quakes and volcanoes. Stuff that bored him silly, and when he tried to get her interested in what was important, like crime and passion and violence, she’d pointed out that people change, come and go, but the earth was forever. She had always been so calm, so logical … so remote.
    Except in bed. My God, he’d never met a woman like that, who hid a fiery passion beneath a cool, inquiring, scientific mind. He wished … well, he wished a lot of things, most of them to do with Elizabeth, and all of them impossible now.
    He shrugged. Water over the dam, or under the bridge, or whatever it was. It had taken him more than a year to get himself to this point of Zen acceptance. He wasn’t going to screw it up now thinking about what might have been.
    Instead, he once again submerged himself in the meal, in the cheesy, salty potatoes, in the steak, in the beans and the bacon.
    He’d love to enjoy a glass of wine, but he had decided he didn’t want anyone to say alcohol had influenced his decision.
    As a last dinner went, this one was pretty fine. Any man on death row would be glad for this, and when he had finished—he ate every bite, even the green beans—he leaned back against the couch and sipped his espresso, laced with cinnamon and whipped cream.
    All he needed now was a woman. But since Elizabeth had left him, he hadn’t been much good at sex. He figured that was a big part of his problem. No sex, no pressure valve, and Garik the perfect-record FBI agent gets fed up with the bullshit regulations and loses his temper. And gets in big trouble. Yeah, man.
    So no, he wasn’t going to go looking for sex for dessert. Going out in a blaze of impotence would be too humiliating.
    Instead, he reached for the pistol.
    It wasn’t his service pistol. The FBI