Deadly Desires

by Ann Christopher

  If seeing her former mother-in-law’s building had been a shock, laying eyes on the woman herself was a blow directly to Kira’s solar plexus. She stared, her righteous anger draining away.

  Saggy-skinned and hollow-eyed where she had always been pleasantly plump, Wanda looked as though she’d crammed fifty or sixty years of hard living into the last six months. She’d always been sleek and sharp, outfitted in Nordstrom’s finest clothes, with glowing skin and bright nails from her weekly mani-pedis, but now she wore a faded green tracksuit that had left its best days behind years ago, and her short hair was curled but had the mashed look of a do that hadn’t been combed in the last day or several.

  The woman who’d been critical of Kira’s every wardrobe, makeup, and hair selection for years now looked as though she’d just arrived home from a long night spent sleeping on a park bench.

  It got worse. The proud posture that used to propel her from room to room like a queen in training with an invisible book on her head had given way to the stoop-shouldered slouch of a woman who couldn’t find a reason to give a damn about anything the world had to offer. Her eyes held no life, only shadows.

  They stared at each other. Kira studied her eyes for a sign of the old spitfire and found none. That was too much, even for Kira.

  “My God, Wanda,” she blurted. “Are you sick?”

  The concern seemed to sting Wanda’s pride. Straightening, she drew the halves of her hoodie together and ran a self-conscious hand through her hair. “I’m fine.” Her rusty voice didn’t sound like it’d been used much lately. “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, Kira edged through the door and into the apartment, which seemed to consist of a kitchen with a sit-at Formica counter, living room, and, she was guessing, bedroom and bathroom in the back. She turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Other than the blaring TV, the most striking feature in the living room was ... Kareem.

  It was a shrine, with every inch of wall covered with snapshots of Kareem. As an adorable and chubby-cheeked baby; in his seventh-grade football uniform; as a proud five-year-old who’d lost his first tooth; oh, look—there’s Kareem graduating high school.

  “Why weren’t these destroyed in the explosion?” she wondered, aghast.

  “I got them from my sister.”

  Of course she did.

  Kira grabbed the remote from the coffee table and clicked off the TV (Wanda could stand to miss a repeat of Law & Order this one time), and tried to ignore the oppressive weight of Kareem’s piercing gaze bearing down on her from every angle as she gathered her thoughts.

  To her surprise, her mission had suddenly changed. The flowers weren’t important; saving Wanda from this self-imposed decline was.

  “This isn’t healthy, Wanda.”

  Wanda blinked, clearly losing the struggle to understand Kira’s heresy. “He was my son. I want to remember him.”

  “There’s a difference between remembering him and worshipping him. You have to let him go before you waste away to nothing.”

  “Let him go?” Wanda’s lips peeled back in a snarl. “Like you did? Well, it was easier for you, wasn’t it? You never loved him like I did, did you?”

  There it was. All that animosity, back in all its glory.

  Kira rubbed the back of her neck with rising frustration. Jesus. Why had she said anything about the pictures? If Wanda chose to wallow in her precious memories until she wasted away and died, that was her business, wasn’t it? And why did Kira feel the compelling need, even now, to defend herself to this woman who hated her enough to stalk her with flowers and memories?

  “Oh, I loved him. Even when he didn’t make it easy, I loved him.”

  This only seemed to feed Wanda’s irrational anger. Her face grew steadily redder with what had to be a serious spike in her blood pressure. “You’re not fooling anybody, Kira. You only married him for the money. I always knew that. And when times got tough, you forgot about the ‘or worse’ part of your vows, didn’t you? You turned your back on him. I never did.”

  So much for staying above the fray. This woman’s view of reality was so sickeningly skewed Kira couldn’t let it go unchallenged. “When times got tough? He ran a drug empire, Wanda—”

  Wanda crossed her arms and widened her stance, stubbornly believing in her fantasy world, despite all evidence to the contrary. “Nobody ever proved that.”

  “You know he did!”

  Wanda shook her head. “I never saw him do anything illegal.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  This conversation was so surreal and bewildering that Kira had to back up a step and regroup. She may as well have been trying to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity in a discussion with Max.

  “He attacked me, Wanda. You were there that night—”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Wanda insisted, pressing a hand to her face, which was now losing color. “I didn’t see—”

  Kira lost it. White-hot rage erupted out of her, spewing shrapnel in every direction. “He raped me! You saw the blood—”

  “You drove him to it!”

  Kira flinched, too stunned to respond.

  It wasn’t the accusation that was so disturbing. It was the fact that Wanda had allowed her grief to unhinge her to the point that she had no problems blocking out what she had seen and heard that night.

  Well, Kira decided. Fair enough. How else could a woman who’d raised a monster manage to look herself in the mirror?

  So Wanda was delusional. Fine. This was America, and that was her right. But some terrible weakness inside Kira wouldn’t let her go until she’d wrung at least one small confession out of the bereaved mother here. One small flicker of acknowledgment that Kareem hadn’t been a saint—that was all Kira needed.

  “I’m wondering, Wanda,” Kira said, calmer now. “If Kareem was such a fine specimen of humanity, why didn’t he leave you, his beloved and loyal mother, a little money to live on? He had bank accounts all over the world. You know he did. So why did he leave you to live like this?”

  The remaining bit of color in Wanda’s cheeks leeched away. “You get out of my house. Don’t you ever come back here!”

  “How do you live with yourself ?”

  Wanda marched to the door and flung it open with a bang that rattled the thin walls. A vein was now pulsing visibly in her neck. “The thing you need to understand, Baby Girl,” she said, making pointed use of Kareem’s nickname for her, “is that Kareem was everything and you are, and always will be, nothing. I don’t have to tolerate you now that he’s gone, and I don’t want to ever see you again. Get out.”

  Get out. Right. Excellent suggestion.

  Drained, Kira was at the threshold before she remembered the purpose of her visit. “I won’t come again. But I’m going to live my life and I’m not going to apologize for it. If you have a problem with that, then you should keep it to yourself.” She paused, making sure she had Wanda’s full attention. “Don’t send me flowers again. I don’t need you playing head games with me.”

  Wanda’s eyes widened. “What flowers?”

  Kira rolled onto her back with a low murmur, lured closer to consciousness by the slow glide of fingers across her eyebrows and over her cheek. Beneath the luxuriant softness of her fluffy duvet and cotton sheets, her body felt weightless, pliant, except for the tightening coil of need in her belly. She undulated and arched, seeking more of that addictive touch, ceding control to the desire and letting go with a serrated sigh.

  Dexter.

  He was here and she was his, and that was as it should be.

  “You came,” she breathed.

  The answering whisper was so faint it might have come from somewhere inside her.

  “I couldn’t stay away.”

  There was no need to open her eyes, no need for hesitation or shame. In a sleepy strip tease, she slipped the linens down and away, revealing her body in its filmy cotton nightie and demo
nstrating what she needed him to do by first doing it herself.

  She ran her fingers down the sensitive curve where her neck met shoulder, and then along the gentle slope of her breasts, which were swelling with a sweet and insistent ache. His fingers followed, adding to the pleasure by running across her pebbled nipples—back and forth, sure and unhurried—until the coos overflowed her throat and poured out of her mouth....

  Yes. God, yes.

  She smiled, reaching for him, needing his weight pressing her into the mattress and his relentless thrust between her legs, and if she just—

  Her hands closed around nothing.

  Everything became ... wrong.

  Scrambling into a sitting position, she thunked her spine against the headboard, clearing away the remnants of her dream with the sharp finality of a popped balloon.

  She was, suddenly and jarringly, awake.

  Awake. Bewildered. And, increasingly, scared.

  The room was cool and quiet, illuminated only by the soft blue glow of her alarm clock and the negligible trickle of moonlight through the slats of her wooden blinds. Two thirty-five. Nothing was out of place, but the air felt heavy. Pregnant. And the shadows—chairs, armoire, desk—seemed clearer somehow. More menacing.

  Panting, she looked wildly around, desperate to identify the thing—what was it?—that made such an exquisite dream—had it been a dream?—into something shapeless and threatening, but there was nothing that she could see.

  Nothing to blame for morphing the gentle hands on her body from Dexter’s into Kareem’s.

  Yet she couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t regulate her pulse.

  Was it the man’s voice? There had been a voice, hadn’t there?

  And he’d said ... he’d said something to her, she was sure of that, but the voice hadn’t been right for Dexter, had it? Only Kareem had that mellow, sardonic bass. And it was Kareem’s presence working in her mind and here in her precious bedroom sanctuary, a presence so strong she’d swear she caught a trace of his earthy cologne.

  She’d been dreaming, though, and, after the day she’d had, it made perfect sense that Kareem’s malignant memory would storm into her mind like barbarian hordes attacking some defenseless castle.

  Just a dream, you crazy woman. Nothing but a dream.

  The thought comforted her until she heard the approaching jingle of Max’s tags from the hallway, which was fine. What wasn’t fine was the faint, almost indistinguishable sound—was it a sound, or was it her imagination? Was she going insane, or, worse, already insane?—of a door clicking closed.

  Chapter 24

  Dexter’s heart sank the moment he saw Mom, and any hopes he’d had of experiencing a pleasant visit with her this evening died a fiery death. Having seen no sign of her in the activity room, where the other seniors were gearing up for a craft project that seemed to involve a lot of popsicle sticks and colored pom-poms, he walked down the hall and found her in her private room, sitting in her wheelchair and glaring at the splashing fountain outside her open window.

  That familiar expression—flat-lipped, narrow-eyed, and generally surly—boded ill for him, and his footsteps slowed accordingly.

  She was mad at the world, just like he was.

  Today’s shitty day was an exact replica of the last two, the movie Groundhog Day come to life in an endless loop: a savage tension headache, snarling at underlings who’d done nothing wrong, and, yes, wishing he could smash everything in sight, all because he didn’t know what to do about Kira.

  Oh, but there’d been one notable incident this afternoon, hadn’t there? His old buddy Jayne had poked her head in his office and he, a decorated career law-enforcement official with a spotless record and a reputation for being so uncompromisingly honest and honorable that even Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane from High Noon could look to him for guidance, had stared his longtime friend in the face and lied.

  It went something like this:

  Jayne: “Sorry if I overstepped the other day.”

  Dexter, scowling: “No problem.”

  Jayne: “Are we cool?”

  Dexter, still scowling: “You bet.”

  Jayne, looking unconvinced and wary: “Great. Are you, ah ... okay?”

  Dexter, attempting a smile that made his cheeks hurt: “Peachy.”

  Jayne: “You haven’t heard from our favorite confidential informant, have you?”

  Dexter, thinking fast and hard while trying not to blink or fidget: “Kerry Randolph? Why do you ask?”

  Jayne: “He’s gone off the grid. He didn’t show up for a scheduled meeting. I think he’s fled the jurisdiction.”

  Dexter, slipping on his wow, what a surprise! mask: “Oh, shit.”

  Jayne: “Did you know anything about this? Did he say anything to you?”

  Dexter, eaten alive by guilt and shame, yet still willing to lie and lie again if that was what Kira needed him to do, and to hell with his honor and professionalism: “Nope.”

  So now here he was, hoping for a moment’s comfort from dear old Mom, and maybe, if he was really lucky, a passing moment of lucidity, and Mommy Dearest looked like she wanted to rise up out of that chair and bash his skull in.

  Still, he tried.

  “Hey, Mom. How are you doing today?”

  When he’d crossed the room and leaned down to give her the usual kiss on the cheek, she turned her head and strained away from him, a rejection that still hurt even though he should be used to it by now.

  “What do you want?”

  This is the dementia talking, he reminded himself, and his head was fine with that. His heart, meanwhile, was crushed.

  “I’m here to see how you’re doing.”

  That gaze, almost feral with its hot suspicion, swung back around then. “Bullshit,” said the woman who’d never let a vulgar word pass her lips until after she was felled by a stroke. “You don’t care about me.”

  “Mom,” he began.

  “Screw you,” she snapped. “You get the hell out of here. And take your flowers with you.”

  That was when he saw the bouquet and, simultaneously, felt ice replace the breath in his lungs. They were familiar, those flowers, and he sure as hell hadn’t brought them. Sporting pinks in every conceivable color under the rainbow, the bouquet included roses, hydrangeas, and all the other unidentified flowers he’d seen in Kira’s birthday bouquet.

  “Where ... did you get those, Mom?” he asked carefully. “Who brought them?”

  Mom, petulant as a three-year-old at bath time, crossed her arms and poked her lips out. “You did. And you can take them with you.”

  “It wasn’t me. I need you to try to remember who—”

  “Don’t you lie to me, boy,” she shrieked. “Don’t you lie to me!”

  The shrieking was always a prelude to a full and usually paranoid meltdown, and this time was no different. By the time he’d rounded up the harried nurse and had Mom sedated and settled into bed for the night, he was fighting frazzled nerves and emotional exhaustion, and he needed to go home for a beer and a shower.

  But those flowers.

  When the nurse was tucking the covers up around Mom’s shoulders, he pointed to them and asked, “Who sent those?”

  The nurse cocked her head and gave him a funny look, making that icy sensation leach past his lungs and into every far corner of his body.

  “The aide said it was a handsome black man. I thought that meant you.”

  “No,” Dexter said slowly. “It wasn’t me.”

  The suspicion wouldn’t get out of Brady’s head.

  Actually, it wasn’t even a suspicion. That was giving it way too much credit.

  It was, at best, a fleeting thought. A vague unease. A niggling doubt that was too far-fetched to ever see the light of day. If he had any sense, he’d put it out of his mind—forever—and focus on something job-related and productive.

  Like catching drug dealers and allied bad guys.

  “You in for lunch, Brady?”


  Except that this doubt was as relentless as a beaver felling trees and building his dam. As insidious as a colony of termites eating its way through a log cabin. As horrifying as the slice of a dorsal fin through the water while children played in the surf.

  Anyway, it was impossible. Of course it was.

  “Brady? You going to keep picking lint out of your navel, or are you coming with us for lunch?”

  Startled out of the gathering darkness inside his head, Dexter blinked and realized that the rest of the world was still there. The stack of paperwork on his desk still demanded attention, phones were still ringing outside his office, and Grant, one of the best special agents on his team, was still leaning against the door, eyeballing him as though he suspected him of cracking up, and waiting for his answer.

  “Nah. Bring me back something.”

  “Such as?”

  Dexter shrugged. “Surprise me.”

  “Great,” Grant said, turning and heading out the door. “One fruit plate special coming up. Extra cottage cheese.”

  Dexter snorted. “You bring me back some shit like that and you’re fired.”

  Grant spared him a wave over his shoulder and kept going.

  Dexter, meanwhile, stared at the report that needed his signature and saw only that same fucking doubt. The flowers to Mom had set this wheel in motion. Who was the mysterious visitor who’d brought them? Why hadn’t any of the dozens of employees in that freaking nursing home gotten a better look at him? Mom didn’t get that many visitors; why hadn’t they noticed some new guy bearing flowers?

  The disturbing thing was, he and his mother didn’t have any family in town, and anyone who came to town for a visit would also check in with Dexter.

  The flowers themselves ...

  Why wasn’t there a card?

  Why hadn’t his calls this morning to several of the local florists turned up any information?

  Why were his mother’s flowers the same as Kira’s flowers?

  That was why this doubt had him in a stranglehold.

  There were too many unanswered questions, and he didn’t believe in coincidence. What had the villain said in the James Bond movie Goldfinger?