He took another step away from me, but those gold eyes remained on my face.
“Meaning... yes. There is someone else here. Obviously. I’ll take care of it.”
“Take care of it?” I continued to stare at him, fighting to make sense of his words. For some reason, what he was saying still wasn’t quite computing.
He shrugged more normally the second time, his expression still wholly unapologetic.
Even so, I got the strangest impression that I made him nervous in some way.
That might have been funny if I wasn’t still trying to decide if I’d just followed a real-life serial killer into his home and let him take my coat.
Looking away from me after another strangely loaded pause, he turned towards the door of a closet set into the wall near the edge of the foyer. Rather than hanging my jacket up on a hanger or even a hook, he simply opened the door and tossed it inside, then shut the door with a click.
I watched him do it, fighting a sudden, absurd desire to laugh.
A female voice rose from the back room. “Hey, sexy man! Where did you go?”
I froze.
Suddenly, I understood. Like really understood.
He had company. Not business-type company. The other kind.
My skin flushed.
Before I could think of what to say, he raised his voice.
“Hey!” he said. Hesitating, he seemed to be thinking. “...You.” He frowned, still thinking. “...Person. I need you to leave... something’s come up.”
I stared at him incredulously, fighting another insane desire to laugh. “You don’t know her name? And you’re really shouting at her to leave? From here?”
He gave me a questioning look.
Then, without a word, he walked away from me, moving silently on shoeless feet. Again, I couldn’t help but note that odd grace of his, somewhere between a martial artist and a dancer. He glanced back at me long enough to motion towards the couch.
“Sit,” he said.
It sounded closer to a command than an offer.
Staring at his heavily-muscled back and the large, stylized dragon tattoo that crawled over most of it, I folded my arms as he walked away from me and into another part of his apartment. I didn’t move from the foyer after he’d left, staring around his living room as I tried to decide what to do. I still hadn’t regained my balance from any of this. Part of me thought I should open the door and leave before he came back.
Assuming he let me go, that is, and didn’t lock me out of the elevator.
Either way, I was way past quietly checking out his background at this point, under the radar of both him and Nick. I was in his damned home.
Nick might really arrest me for this.
I was still standing roughly where Black had left me when he walked briskly back into the main room.
This time, he wasn’t alone.
One of his tanned hands clamped around the upper arm of a woman who was trying to both keep up with him and shove her foot into a four-inch heeled pump at the same time. She was muttering at him angrily as she walked. Her shirt was still halfway unbuttoned as he steered her, and untucked from the black pencil-skirt she wore under a white silk dress shirt and black suit jacket.
“I still don’t get what business would come up now, while we were––”
She glanced up to see me and came to a dead stop.
“What the fuck?” she burst out.
I couldn’t help noticing that her lipstick was smeared, her blond hair tousled.
“What the fuck is this?” she demanded, waving the high-heeled shoe at me. “Is this your so-called ‘business emergency’? You stopped in the middle of giving me head because a better offer came along?”
I winced.
Black didn’t. Instead he gave me a puzzled look, as if thinking about her question. Then he looked back at her. He looked about to answer, but she turned, hitting him squarely in the chest with the sharp end of her shoe.
“You complete dick. Is this your fucking wife? Are you married?”
“No,” he said absently. He resumed steering her towards the door and, blanching, I found myself moving into the living room if only to get out of their way.
She didn’t seem to be listening to him though. She glared at me with some of the bluest eyes I’d ever seen as they walked past me. “Your husband’s a prick. You know that? A total fucking prick...”
I could only gape at the two of them.
“He gives good head though,” she sneered, still obviously trying to make me angry. Glaring up at him next, she added, “...At least when he bothers to finish.”
He might not have even heard her, from his tone.
“Feel free to use the card I gave you,” he said, his voice polite as he continued to steer her towards the door of his apartment. “I can’t promise I’ll be available...”
She let out another incredulous snort, swinging at him again with the shoe.
She glared at me from the door, even as he reached for the handle. He opened it in one smooth move. She swung the heeled shoe at his head that time but he ducked it easily, his expression still neutral as he moved behind her. With an insistent but not really a rough push, one hand on the small of her back and the other still gripping her arm, he guided her without preamble through the opening of the door.
Then he released her, leaving her in the corridor.
Before she could turn around, he closed the door firmly behind her.
From the outside, she banged on the door with her shoe, raising her voice.
“Asshole!” I heard muffled through the wood. “Fucking asshole!”
I think my mouth was still hanging open when my eyes shifted from the door back up to his face. He now wore a shirt at least, although it still hung open over his chest. I watched as he began to button it up. Watching him dress himself, hearing the woman curse at him from outside the door, I fought another absurd desire to laugh.
“You didn’t sit down,” he said, frowning slightly as he worked the catches of his shirt.
I shut my mouth with a snap, folding my arms.
The woman continued to curse at him from the hallway.
“One moment,” he said, turning from me.
I watched as he walked to a low table in the living room, scooping up what looked like a hands-free phone from the glass surface.
He fitted it around his ear. Touching a button on one side he spoke at once.
“I have a situation here,” he said. “In the hallway outside my residence. Can you handle it? I have a meeting. And don’t interrupt me for the rest of the afternoon.”
He didn’t appear to wait for an answer but clicked the same button on the hands-free and unhooked the earpiece from his ear, tossing it on the same glass table. He looked up at me, buttoning his sleeve cuffs now that the front of his shirt was done up.
“Would you like a drink?” he said.
Again, I got the oddest feeling from him that I made him nervous.
It was such a different reaction from how he spoke to me in that interrogation room, much less how he’d talked to the blond just now, I frowned, more confused than anything.
Making up my mind in the same set of seconds, I followed him the rest of the way into the living room. Without preamble, I walked directly to a white leather chair and sat, folding one leg precisely over the other.
“A drink?” he repeated.
“Something non-alcoholic, sure.”
He nodded, once.
Even the nod looked strange on him.
When he retreated into the kitchen, which was open with long lights hanging down from the ceiling over a granite-topped bar, I turned my head, looking over my shoulder to speak to him.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell that was all about?” I said mildly.
He’d just finished gargling water and spitting it out in the sink. I looked away, grimacing when I remembered the woman’s words. When I looked up next, he met my gaze from behind the open, stainless-st
eel refrigerator door. His voice conveyed genuine surprise.
“You need an explanation for that?”
Thinking about his words, I felt my frown deepen.
“No,” I sighed. “I guess not.” I looked back at him, watching him pour me a glass of what looked like rose-tinted water. “What am I doing here, Mr. Black? You must know I had no intention of visiting you here...”
“Planning a little B&E, were we?” he said, giving me a faint smile from behind the bar. “I find I am doing that very same thing. Great minds think alike...”
Breaking and entering. Cute.
“Hardly,” I retorted. “I didn’t even know you lived in the building.”
He nodded absently, but didn’t seem interested in pursuing that line of discussion.
Capping the glass jug with the rose-tinted water, he stuck the container back in the door of his fridge then walked the two glasses around the bar and back towards me. Handing me one as he passed, he sank into the couch across from me, laying an arm on the back cushion and staring at me levelly. Like in the interrogation room, he didn’t hide his appraisal at all.
“You’re a P.I.,” I said finally.
“Obviously,” he said. “Why would we discuss what you already know?”
Thinking about that, I pursed my lips. “Okay.” Thinking again, I looked up. “Did you kill that girl?”
“You must know what I told your handsome cop about that?”
“I know what you told him, yes.”
There was a silence.
Then he sighed, letting out a strange sound, a kind of clicking of his tongue on the roof of his mouth. Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his thighs, measuring me again with his eyes.
“How did you get here?” he said.
I frowned, staring at him. Taking a sip of the rose-colored water, I was surprised to find it was some kind of fruit juice, and extremely fresh.
“Pomegranate,” he said absently. “Are you going to tell me? How you got here?”
“I drove,” I said, giving him a perplexed look. “I took the elevator. Who cares?”
He made that clicking sound again. That time, he sounded openly impatient.
“Here,” he said. “How did you get here?” He motioned around us, including the view out the windows on all sides of us.
“San Francisco?” I said, still confused. “I was born here. Why? Where are you from? I can hear the accent... but I admit, I can’t place it at all.”
His frown deepened.
Before I could pursue that line of questioning, or make sense of the stare he continued to level at me, he regained his feet. I watched him walk to the long window facing the bay. He folded his arms, gazing out over the view without seeming to see it. When he turned to stare at me, his mouth was set in a harder frown.
“Can I have some of your blood?”
I froze. “What?”
Seeing my expression, he made that clicking sound again. “Not like that. I simply want a sample. With a syringe. Hygienically.”
“What the hell for?”
Before he could answer, I found myself standing as well, placing the glass of juice on his glass table with more deliberation than necessary. I saw him watch me do it, even as he turned to face me, his feet planted evenly as he refolded his arms.
“Look,” I said, waving off my own question. “Forget it. I don’t think I want to know. In fact, I think I’d better go.”
Turning, I started to make my way to his front door.
Before I could reach for the handle of his closet, the same closet where he’d tossed my jacket when I first came inside, he stood between me and it. I froze again, staring up at him as he put his muscular bulk between me and the exit to his apartment.
“Get out of my way,” I told him, my voice a low warning.
“Does that cop know you are here?” he said, narrowing his gaze down at me. “Your friend. He doesn’t know, does he?”
I felt myself tense even more. Was that a threat?
He glanced down at my arms and legs, as if sensing I was gearing up for the possibility that I might have to fight him. He exhaled in a kind of sigh, and that time, the expression on his face bordered on frustrated.
Or maybe that was still impatience I saw in his gold eyes.
“Don’t you want to know what I was really doing there?” he said, his sculpted lips still tilted in a slight frown. “At the park yesterday morning?”
“Sure,” I said, folding my own arms. “What were you really doing there, Mr. Black?”
“I was hunting,” he said at once.
“Hunting?” I said, feeling my jaw tense again.
“Yes.”
“Girls? Or serial killers?”
“Neither,” he said. Then he shrugged, as if rethinking his words. “...Or perhaps both. I was hunting one of ours.”
Refocusing on me, he frowned again, probably from the perplexed look I aimed at him.
He looked me over in a single flick of his gold eyes.
“Not human,” he clarified. When I still didn’t speak, he repeated with more emphasis, “...One of ours. Of course, I now think it’s possible they might be killing these humans for sport. I’m just not sure why. I’d hoped you’d help me find out.”
I stared up at him.
That time, I had no idea what to say to him at all.
Six
QUESTIONS
“WHAT DID YOU mean before?” I watched him from where I stood in the middle of his sunken living room, my voice openly wary. “One of ours? One of our whats, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He acted like he hadn’t heard me.
For the last minute or so, I’d been watching him pace and think.
He didn’t seem to be over the fact that I’d insisted I was human.
Yes, as in my insisting to him that I was actually a human being.
Now he leaned over his kitchen bar, staring down at an electronic tablet resting on the black counter. Now that I stood next to it, I realized the bar wasn’t granite at all but some denser, more-expensive looking stone. It almost looked volcanic.
Black might have been working from the concentrated look in his eyes, or perhaps he was just actively ignoring me.
I was about to give up, to just walk out for real, when he spoke.
“Would you like to accompany me?” he said, tapping through a sequence on the tablet without looking up. “I was more or less serious about the B&E. I plan to go tonight.”
That strange nervousness I’d seen on him when I’d first gotten to his apartment seemed to have vanished. He was back to treating me with almost a clinical detachment.
“Go where?” I said, bewildered. “What do you mean, B&E?”
“I wasn’t lying to your Inspector Tanaka about going through a list of the most frequently-used wedding sites,” he said, not looking up from whatever he was doing on the tablet. “...But I misspoke. I should have said wedding-related sites, not wedding sites per se. Which includes a number of locations beyond just those where actual marriage ceremonies frequently occur.” He narrowed his eyes, sliding his finger across the front of the tablet. “So places where engagement photos are taken. Places where receptions occur... etc.” Glancing up at me with those gold eyes, he added, “I can see why that might have been confusing.”
“Where are you going tonight?” I asked again.
“I’ve created a sort of algorithm,” he explained, again as if I hadn’t spoken. “Probability factors for wedding-related activities to occur, combined with a subset for the other variables the killer has displayed...” He glanced up a second time, cocking an eyebrow at me. “I thought perhaps we could visit the next one on the list together.”
“Which is where?” I said.
Again, he acted like he hadn’t heard me.
I fought the interest out of my voice in spite of myself, trying to make it annoyance.
“Are you going to tell me where you’re going or not?” I thought a few seconds more an
d added, “You know Nick’ll have a tail on you?”
He met my gaze directly that time. His lips slid upwards in a faint smile. “By ‘Nick,’ I presume you mean Inspector Tanaka?”
I flushed, although I couldn’t for the life of me have said why. “Yes.”
“I am not concerned.” He paused, studying my eyes. “Are you? I am guessing he told you to stay away from me. From what I saw, he very clearly intended to tell you to stay away from me when he left me in that interrogation room this morning. He seemed quite intent on bullying you on that point, if necessary...” He smiled at me. “I’m glad to see that he succeeded in that about as well as I expected.”
I frowned.
Putting down my now-empty glass of pomegranate juice on his kitchen counter, it struck me again to wonder what I was doing. Rather than conducting any kind of examination, I think it was safe to say that I was now simply “hanging out” with Quentin Black at his apartment.
He seemed to be perfectly comfortable with that fact as well.
Moreover, now we were discussing a murder case we had no earthly business discussing.
No wonder Nick thought I had some kind of past with this guy.
“Did you read his mind for that?” I said, deciding to be direct.
“Yes,” he said absently.
I watched him use his finger to slide open a new screen on the tablet. I wasn’t close enough to see what he was looking at, so I sighed in frustration, and partly in defeat.
“What are you looking at?” I demanded.
“Specs for the building.”
“Which building?” I said. “Are you really not going to tell me?”
“The Legion of Honor,” he said, glancing up. “It’s next on our list. I thought it best to break in tonight, when it is closed. I strongly suspect our friend will wait until it’s closed as well... so we should endeavor to get there before he does.”
“It’s definitely a man then?” I said, catching his pronoun use.
He shrugged. “Statistical probability.”
I fought not to ask him one of the dozen or so questions that rose to my mind. Exhaling in frustration when he didn’t go on, I picked one and asked it anyway.
“What in God’s name makes you think he’ll be there tonight?” I said.
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