“Jesus Christ.” Pacing away from her, he muttered a few more colorful phrases, none of which were G-rated. When he wheeled back around, he stared at her with a clear and strange combination of pure horror and unwilling admiration. “You’re a menace to yourself. You know that? Someone needs to put you in lockdown for your own safety.”
“I’ve been in lockdown ever since I married Kareem.” Sheer defiance made her hike up her chin. “I’m not going back.”
Sirens and flashing lights announced the arrival of the fire department and police before he could throttle her, which, judging by the hard glint in his eyes, was what he’d planned to do. Four engines pulled up, disgorging shouting firemen suited up with helmets, masks, and jackets like warriors from an invading army of aliens. They hustled around with hoses and ladders, and Kira watched with mild but detached interest, as though she was viewing a documentary about emergency procedures on TV.
Maybe that was shock setting in to buffer her from this latest Kareem-induced nightmare.
One of the firemen—the chief, maybe—hurried over and addressed Kira. “Are you the owner, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s inside?” he demanded.
“My husband. His lawyer.”
“Anyone else?”
“No, not that I know—Oh, no. Oh, my God.”
Brady stepped closer and rested a supportive hand on the small of her back, his face lined with concern. “What is it?”
“Wanda. My mother-in-law. She lived there too. I didn’t see her in the house, but I don’t know if she was there—”
They didn’t have to wait long for the answer to this mystery. The high-pitched screech of tires announced the arrival of another vehicle, and they all looked around in time to see a dark Mercedes sedan bounce onto the curb and shudder to a halt. The driver’s door flew open and Wanda lurched out, her mouth already open in a scream piercing enough to rupture every eardrum within a ten-mile radius.
“Oh, Lord, he sent me out to get him some salmon to cook for dinner. Lord, why did he send me? Why wasn’t I here, too? Why didn’t you take me, God?” Aging a thousand years right before Kira’s eyes, her body shrinking and curling in on itself, Wanda staggered a few short steps toward the house and collapsed to the lawn in a rag-doll heap.
“Why, God?” Raising her hands toward heaven, Wanda begged and sobbed for answers that would never come. “Why? Tell me why. Jesus, tell me why—yyy—yyy?”
There was a right thing to do here, but Kira couldn’t think what it was as she stared down at the woman who had never welcomed her to the family, never had a kind word for her, and never thought she was worthy of her precious son. Nor had Wanda ever seen Kareem for what he was, or recognized the role she had played in raising a man who built an empire by selling drugs to children. The battle lines had always been clear between them: Wanda didn’t like Kira, and Kira returned the feeling with interest.
Except that ...
Hadn’t Wanda comforted Kira after Kareem’s attack the other night? Hadn’t she held Kira and let her cry on her shoulder? Hadn’t she gone with Kira out into the cold dark night to find Max when he was lost? And wasn’t Wanda now, simply, an old woman who thought she’d lost her beloved only son?
This eleventh-hour compassion for her mother-in-law was an unwelcome surprise, but there was nothing Kira could do about it. Propelled by her unexpectedly soft heart, Kira knelt by Wanda, wrapped her arms around the woman’s fragile shoulders, and tried to comfort her as she rocked and shrieked.
They watched the fire together, and while Wanda wept to God, asking him to spare Kareem, Kira silently prayed for another miracle altogether.
Please let Kareem be in the house, after all. Please let him be dead.
Chapter 10
It was three in the morning before the fire was under control, and the first streaks of dawn were lighting the sky before the investigators could begin sifting through the ruins, looking for bodies. Dexter stayed on the periphery and out of the way the whole time, feeling edgy, useless, and, worst of all, foolish, because he wasn’t driven by any sense of DEA duty or professionalism, or even prurient interest in an impressive fire. No. The thing that kept him rooted to the spot was his irritating and misguided need to watch over Kira and make sure she was okay.
Having been grilled by the police, she currently stood a few feet away, watching the proceedings wrapped in one of those silvery space-age blankets that the firemen had produced from somewhere. Her cheeks were shiny with ointment, her hands bandaged, her brows and hair singed. Given her concussion, it had to be a supreme act of will that kept her on her feet, and that was one of the things that fascinated him about her: that hidden strength. She wouldn’t sit down until she dropped, and she’d never give up. Why was that so intriguing? If she wanted to indulge her obsessive side and freeze her ass off out here in the cold, that was her business, wasn’t it? What did it have to do with him?
He couldn’t figure it out, but he damn sure wasn’t going home and getting in the bed where he belonged, either.
She’d bought a Glock—a nicer model than his, by the way, because he’d had her show it to him—and come here to confront Kareem with it. What kind of crazy shit was that? Was she suicidal or what? He’d bet his left testicle—and he was very fond of his testicles—that she’d never handled a gun before. She just didn’t seem like the type, way too princess-y.
So what was she trying to do?
Did she not understand that a man like Kareem, a thug since birth who was a murderer on top of all his other lovely traits, was likely to have the gun out of her hands and shoot her with it before she could aim and fire? Did this trophy wife and college student really think she could walk into the lion’s den, go toe to toe with that fiend, and come out alive?
Well ... she had come out alive, hadn’t she?
And what was behind her maniacal need to go back into the burning house and find her loving husband, he wondered moodily, watching her accept a steaming mug of coffee from one of the neighbors with a quiet word of thanks. Was she really hoping he was dead? Or was she still in love with him? That was a possibility, wasn’t it? That was a whole syndrome, wasn’t it—abusers and the women who loved them?
Why did the mere thought make his stomach clench?
Maybe she was that damaged and scarred. Maybe she and Kareem had a whole codependency thing going. Clearly her mental state was questionable at best, given the fact that she’d married Kareem in the first place. On the other hand, she was nineteen when she married him, and only twenty-three now, and God knew Dexter’d been unaccountably stupid when he was that age, so he couldn’t judge.
Either way, he could understand her suspicions and hysterical need to verify Kareem’s fate, whatever it was. Kareem Gregory, as they all knew from long and painful experience, was a slippery player of the shrewdest kind. That was why he was still walking free when, if there was any justice in the world, or even a marginally functional justice system, he should have been buried under the jail years ago. If you gave him an inch, he’d steal ten miles. If there was a loophole, he’d find it. If there was a one-millimeter opening, he’d flatten himself like the cockroach he was and crawl through it.
He wouldn’t put it past Kareem to blow up his own house to prevent the feds from seizing it and to fake his own death to stay out of jail. If there was a Machiavellian trick to pull, Kareem was first in line.
So, yeah, this whole explosion could be a ruse, and if he hadn’t been here and seen the fire with his own two eyes, he’d say it was a ruse. But the thing was, he had seen. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t figure out a plausible way that Kareem—even Kareem—could pull off a stunt like this, no matter what Kira suspected.
The crazy thing was, if he had to stake say, a year’s salary on it, he’d say she was as sane as he was.
She was, in short, a mystery that he couldn’t figure out—
Oh, shit.
They’d found a body. Through the damaged picture window, he
could see several investigators lifting a black body bag between them. Kira saw it, too. With a gasp, she dropped her blanket and ran toward the house, intercepting some workers who were unfolding a stretcher on the front porch just as Dexter got there. Her mother-in-law, who’d been sitting in the back of one of the police cruisers where it was relatively warm, was two steps behind her.
“Oh, Lord, Jesus.” Wanda resumed her tortured lament, getting in the way and plucking at the body bag as they placed it on the stretcher. “Please don’t tell me it’s my boy. Please don’t tell me. Jesus, please—”
One of the workers blocked her from throwing herself over the body and gripped her arm to keep her upright. “The coroner will be out in a minute, ma’am.”
Kira, looking wild-eyed and moving like a woman possessed, met the coroner at the door as she emerged. There was one moment when the women’s gazes connected and it might have gone either way, but then the coroner put her hand on Kira’s arm and squeezed it.
“I’m so sorry.”
Wanda’s wails kicked into overdrive, but Kira stayed calm. “It’s Kareem?”
“I believe so,” the coroner said. “We also found the lawyer.”
Kira nodded as if she’d expected this much, but continued her interrogation. “How do you know it’s Kareem?”
“We won’t know for sure, not until the autopsy, and I’ll have to check his dental records, but there was a monitoring band on his ankle. And he was in the area of the great room, where you said they were.”
Kira nodded again. “It looks like Kareem, yeah, but it could be anyone.”
The coroner, who was probably used to dealing with relatives in denial, gave her a kindly look. “I think it’s him.”
“I don’t.” Murder flashed in Kira’s eyes, and for a moment, Dexter was afraid she’d pull out that Glock again. “I want to see him,” she said, and reached for the zipper.
The coroner covered her hand with her own, stopping her. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. You don’t want to see him like this.”
Dexter had been thinking the same thing. The body bag wasn’t the smooth and flat shape of, say, a man who’d died while sleeping peacefully in his bed. It was humped and misshapen, as though the body inside had either died while twisted in the throes of agony or been roasted and solidified into an unrecognizable horror of a pretzel.
Much as Dexter had wished—and wished often and hard—for Kareem to suffer a painful death for all his sins, he hadn’t quite had this in mind. No one was asking him for his vote, but he agreed with the coroner: Kira never needed to see what was on the other side of that zipper.
Apparently Kira disagreed. She laughed the hard, maniacal laugh of the unhinged, jerked free, and grabbed for the zipper again. “The hell I don’t.”
The coroner signaled to some of the uniforms, one of whom took Kira by the arm and pulled her away, hissing and all but spitting. The unhappy sight of some punk manhandling Kira woke a dormant but vicious beast deep inside Dexter, and his fingers twitched for his own Glock. Luckily, some modicum of common sense remained and took charge.
“I’ve got her.” He flashed the uniform a look that must have communicated his violent intent, because the guy winced, dropped his hands immediately, and backed up a step or two. “Come on, Kira.”
She tried to shake him off. “I need to see him. I have to make sure—”
Dexter kept his arm around her shoulders and held on, steering her out of the way so they could wheel the stretcher to the ambulance. Only when the stretcher was safely inside and the doors shut behind it did some of the tension leave her body. It was probably safe now for him to let her go, but the feel of her body was too good to sacrifice to any social niceties.
“He’s gone, Kira,” he said gently. “It’s over.”
“Don’t you get it, Brady?” He felt the kick in his gut as she looked up at him with those big brown eyes, which were shadowed and haunted. Hunted. “It’ll never be over.”
Dexter took her to his house to pick up the dog, which she could not, apparently, live for another second without seeing. Pulling into his driveway, he saw the place through her eyes. This was not good for his morale. He found his brain scrolling through a catalog of ridiculous and demoralizing thoughts that went something like this:
Why had he stayed in this crappy neighborhood?
His little cottage looked like a potting shed compared to her former home, the torched McMansion.
Thank God the next-door kid had cut the grass yesterday like he was supposed to.
So he was surprised when she stared out the window and emitted one of those enthusiastic little gasps that women do.
“This is your house, Brady?”
Putting the car in park, he cut the engine.
“You were expecting—?”
She shot him an amused glance before she unbuckled and got out. “With you? Military barracks. One bed. One chair. No dust.”
Irritated by this assessment of his stern personality, which was more accurate than she probably suspected, he climbed out, slamming the door.
She, meanwhile, was admiring the flower boxes on the two picture windows framing the front door. Since it was the dead of winter, they were currently empty, but—whatever. They seemed to float her boat.
“I love flower boxes. What do you keep in them?”
“Petunias,” he said grudgingly.
Nodding with approval, she scanned the yard, her glance touching the landscaping rocks, the blue spruce that wasn’t as blue as it should have been, and the Japanese maple. “What color petunias?”
“Ah ... pink.”
She trailed him to the front door, still assessing everything in her field of vision. “I always wanted flower boxes.” She paused, her voice faltering. “Kareem always said no.”
Kareem was a fucking blight on humanity.
“Well,” he said quietly, “now you can do what you want, can’t you?”
Instead of answering, she did another one of those stare-up-into-his-face maneuvers, and his thoughts scrambled accordingly. Much as he’d tried, there was no bracing for the impact those sparkling eyes had on him. It would be great if they could develop some sort of early warning system for when she planned to look at him like that. Something like the bell on a cat’s collar. Give him a chance to prepare.
“You didn’t have to chauffeur me. I could have driven myself.”
There were thoughts in his head and words in his mouth, but the two systems seemed to have trouble connecting and crystallizing into something coherent. Still, he tried.
“I don’t think so. When you’ve just gotten out of the hospital, threatened someone with a gun, watched your house burn down, and spent all night in the freezing cold without sleep, you get driven. It’s a rule. Check the manual.”
Those eyes crinkled at him. “I know you’re not my biggest fan, Brady, but I like you. You’re good people.”
If there was an answer to this pronouncement, it ran and hid from him. Fumbling and silenced, he worked on unlocking the door and getting it open. Max met them in the small entry, racing around the corner from the living room, his little nails clicking on the tile. With a happy cry, Kira squatted to pick him up, which was quite a project since the little guy was wagging and squirming with clear canine joy.
Unaccountably touched by this reunion scene, Dexter stilled and watched.
Kira straightened with the dog tucked under her arm in a football hold. “Mommy missed you,” she cooed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Yes, she did. Mommy missed her sweet little puppy. Were you a good boy for Brady? Huh? Were you a good boy?”
After a minute of this enthusiastic cuddling and loving, Kira seemed to catch herself. Flushing with embarrassment, she swiped at her wet eyes and shot Dexter an apologetic smile.
“I love my dog.”
“I see that.”
Her face twisted with remembered pain, but she quickly mastered it. “Kareem hated Max. He turned him out into the woods th
e other night to punish me.”
Seething with quiet fury, Dexter looked at Kira’s face. Then he looked at Max, with his dangling ears and doggy smile. The little guy had been a quiet and mellow guest, much neater and more considerate than some of his college buddies. He thought about Kareem and all the sick ways he’d found to punish his wife for her crimes, whether real or imagined, and, once again, felt the urgent need to distinguish himself from that monster in every conceivable way.
“I would never hurt Max,” he told her.
Another dimpling smile, one that made his chest squeeze. “I know that.”
“Ah.” Turning away, he tried to gather his thoughts and decided he should make like a host. It took about two steps for him to reach the tiny kitchen and another half step to get to the fridge. When had he last gone to the store? Was the milk any good, or had it turned to cottage cheese three weeks ago? What about the eggs?
“I’ll make some coffee,” he babbled. “And I’ve got oatmeal—it’s only instant; you probably prefer the stuff you really have to cook—and cereal. That’s my biggest food group around here, so you can have your choice, unless you want one of those healthy tree-bark cereals. I don’t believe in those. And I’m not sure about the milk.” Picking up the carton, he gave it a tentative sniff and didn’t immediately keel over dead. “You might be taking your life into your hands with this stuff. I had some bananas, but—oh.” Embarrassed, he picked up the squishy brown remnants of what may once have been a bunch of bananas and dropped them into the trash. “Okay. So we’ll pass on the bananas—”
“Brady.”
“Yeah?” He paused in his relentless quest to find something edible to serve this woman, feeling surly and clumsy, like a bad-tempered chimp with his knuckles scraping the floor.
She was in the kitchen now, apparently operating under the mistaken belief that the tiny galley could accommodate more than either an adult male or two children under the age of twelve at the same time. “I know this isn’t Cracker Barrel. You don’t have to feed me.”
This graciousness did nothing to improve his sour mood. “Someone needs to.” Moving to the cabinet, he surveyed the cereal options. Cap’n Crunch? What the hell was a grown man doing with Cap’n Crunch in the—
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