Need You Now Read Online Free PDF Page B

dyed much darker, more of a chestnut color. It suited her, but what a different look it was.
    “What the hell is going on, Lilly?”
    “Do you mean what am I doing here?”
    “That’s only the beginning. Do you have any idea what just happened to me?”
    “Yes, I do.” She turned her head slowly, offering her profile. In the dim glow of a neon beer sign on the wall, I noticed the swelling on her neck, just below the jawbone. Her makeup was hiding the remnants of a flesh wound just like mine. It was an upsetting sight, and given our personal status, I probably cared too much and in ways that I had no business caring.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    She drew a breath, and on the exhale offered a weak response. “For a while, I suppose. Until they figure out that I decided not to hang around for the mock execution to turn into a real one. I cut my hair and got on a plane out of Singapore so fast that I barely had time to pack a bag.”
    “Who are they ?”
    “Are you sure you want to know?”
    “Well, so far today I’ve learned that you may have hidden God only knows how many billions in Cushman’s Ponzi scheme, that the bank fired you for trying to access information about numbered accounts, and that a professional hit man has promised to send both of us the way of Gerry Collins if you don’t tell him where the Cushman money is. How much worse can it get?”
    She looked away, presumably in shame, but my sympathy had its limits. “That thug who threatened me said not to call the police,” I said, “but I’m in serious need of some answers, Lilly.”
    Her eyes welled, and she was suddenly on the verge of tears.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, not sure why I was apologizing. I didn’t deal well with tears in general, and the fact was that, until our breakup, my previous record for staying mad at Lilly had been about eight seconds.
    “I don’t blame you if you can’t stand the sight of me,” she said.
    “It’s not that.”
    “I wanted to call or text you, but there’s no such thing as a secure electronic communication. I was even going to send a handwritten letter by old-fashioned snail mail, figuring that was the only way to make sure they wouldn’t intercept it. But I was afraid you wouldn’t open it.”
    My head was starting to spin. “Every time the conversation starts to sound slightly normal, you throw in another layer that sounds completely crazy. Why would anyone intercept your calls and texts to me?”
    “Bad stuff is going on. Has been going on since . . . we talked on the beach.”
    “Must be why that bird shit on my head.”
    My sarcasm made her smile a little, and I almost regretted the fact that I’d elicited a glimpse of the old Lilly. Almost. Love that smile.
    “No,” she said, turning serious again. “This is bad, Patrick. It started when we were together, and I knew it might come to the point where it would hurt you. I tried to tell you more on the beach, but . . . I couldn’t. I chickened out, I guess. I opted for the clean break.”
    “So, you dumped me . . . to protect me?”
    “I could lie to you and say that I’m the best person on earth and was just trying to insulate you from all this. But my thought process wasn’t that clear. I needed out. With everything that was going on, you were . . . it was too much to handle.”
    “Okay,” I said, trying not to seem too deflated. “Honesty is good. Not good for the ego, but overall—in a cosmic, utopian, Judeo-Christian, don’t-get-your-hopes-up kind of way—good.”
    “Stop,” she said. “All I’m saying is that it was not black and white. Of course I was afraid something might happen to you. That’s why it almost killed me when I found out they had you.”
    “But how did you find that out?”
    “They called me and said, ‘We have your boyfriend.’ Then they tapped me into some kind of eavesdropping device they’d planted on your iPhone.”
    That explained the strange ping I’d heard. “If you knew I was