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when I took the PD job.
    â€œI have commitments. I can’t just throw them off.”
    â€œCommitments to whom? The partners at Baker?”
    â€œI
really
don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just enjoy this moment. Right here. Right now. That’s a pretty good mantra. Don’t you think?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, feeling self-conscious for having pried, and slightly angry at her for letting me feel that way. I figured she’d walk away and find Rebecca now, but she didn’t.
    â€œI came over here to ask you if you wanted to get out of here.”
    I looked up. “Are you serious?”
    She nodded, draining her beer.
    That was good enough for me.

    We slept together that night, and twice more that week, all at my place.
    She’d wanted to know what I was doing living in such a dump, and I’d told her about being shot a year and a half ago, having my law office burned, being forced to sell my condo and losing all the equity.
    â€œMy brother once represented the manager here,” I said, explaining how I’d ended up at the Seward.
    I suppose it was possible trysting in the Tenderloin turned her on. But more likely she was merely safeguarding her freedom, intending to be the one who walked out, who decided when that would be. I couldn’t blame her for wanting control, but at the same time I tried not to recognize these precautions for what they were.
Right here, right now,
she’d said. Perhaps she could feel my own hope like an electric charge, a burnt smell in the air.
    We’d just made love, and she was studying the scars on my chest and stomach with minute attention. “Have you ever thought about carrying a gun?”
    â€œI have one.” I hesitated. “But it’s unregistered.”
    She was both amused and disturbed. “Why?”
    â€œA former client gave it to me. I made the decision a long time ago that if I ever had to shoot to kill in self-defense, I wasn’t going to wait around for the cops to show up.”
    She laughed, then seemed to realize I was serious. “Because of your family?”
    â€œSomething like that. If anyone ever wants to kill me, it’ll be because of some issues between my father and a man named Bo Wilder. Unfortunately, the backstory would be viewed by the police as incriminating. Bo thinks my family owes him because of a favor he thinks he did for us. We disagree and don’t feel it was much of a favor. But if I have to explain any of this to the police, I’d be talking us into prison.”
    â€œSo your plan is?”
    â€œIf it ever comes to that—and I don’t think it will—my plan is to shoot the people who are trying to shoot me, run, and ditch the gun.”
    I hadn’t intended to get into these complicated explanations, and I could see my answers disturbed her. “You have it here?”
    I took the gun, a Bersa 9mm, from the drawer where I stored it wrapped in an old shirt.
    â€œJust carrying this you’re committing a felony,” she said. “If you’re going to own a pistol, you need a permit.”
    â€œI’ve actually been meaning to get rid of it. You’re right. It’s a stupid liability.” I wrapped the gun back up. I didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to deal with it, which was exactly why it was still in my drawer months after I’d resolved to throw it away.
    â€œWe could get rid of it together,” she said. Then gathering her legs underneath her and kneeling in bed, she said: “It could be a turn-on. We can pretend you just shot somebody, and you came to me for help.”
    Her eyes were glinting. It was a side of her I hadn’t seen before. I couldn’t tell whether she was serious or not, and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I assumed that Jordan had lived the sort of sheltered life that meant she couldn’t possibly know anything about fear.
    I was hoping to let it go. But that