Deadly Desires

by Ann Christopher

  Maybe they could explain how she’d vanished into thin air and wave their magic wands to get her back. There’d been some early discussion of her simply wandering away from the unlocked floor, but this theory had died a quick death because it’d been four months since she sat in that wheelchair and never got out, and even then she’d relied heavily on a walker.

  Mom had been kidnapped, vaporized, or abducted by aliens because there was no sign of her in any direction that he could see.

  He was betting on kidnapped, and a sickening knot of concrete had settled in his belly because he didn’t think he’d ever see her alive again. Was Kareem somewhere nearby, watching him right now, laughing at his growing panic? Was this the price Dexter had to pay for bringing that monster to justice, or was the greater vengeance still to come?

  The director, a whisper-thin woman who’d always exuded confidence with her somber suits, sensible shoes, and no-nonsense expression, wrung her hands like she was wringing the water from her delicates. He did not take this to be a good sign.

  “She hadn’t been gone that long when we noticed she was missing. Five minutes at the most—maybe less.”

  Dexter was in no mood to be gracious. “Five minutes is all it takes.”

  The aide who’d left Mom alone to answer a page at the other end of the wing reappeared from down the hallway, towing a guy in white behind her—the janitor, maybe.

  “Craig saw something,” the aide said triumphantly.

  Craig, a middle-aged guy with graying temples and an eager to help expression on his face, nodded. “Some black guy was pushing her down the hall. I thought he was her son or something.”

  “I’m her son,” Dexter told him. “What’d he look like?”

  Craig shrugged. “I only saw him from behind. Looked young. Dark pants. Dress shirt. About your height, I guess. Nothing special.”

  “Where were they?” Dexter demanded.

  “Back hallway near the beauty salon.”

  Dexter was already heading in that direction. “Show me.”

  Craig led the way and they were there in less than a minute, a nondescript corridor that dead-ended in the double glass doors leading to a small courtyard they’d already searched. But it wasn’t the courtyard that held Dexter’s attention this time. It was the freight elevator.

  “Where does this go?”

  “The basement and the roof.”

  The roof.

  Guided by instincts that sharpened by the second, he punched the button and stepped inside the massive car when it came, all but oblivious to the others as they piled in after him. After a short ride up—the place only had three stories—the doors slid open to reveal a short and dark hallway and a fire door with a blaring red exit sign over it.

  Dexter charged off the elevator and banged through the fire door, blinking against the sudden blinding sunshine. He glanced wildly around, his heart sinking with disappointment.

  There was nothing up here, and he’d been so sure. Industrial exhaust fan for God knew what ... air-conditioning units ... nothing but—Jesus.

  There she was. Sitting in her chair, her back to him, her head drooping with sleep, with the wheels one inch, if that, from the edge of a thirty-foot drop.

  Dexter froze and flung out a hand to stop anyone else from running up to save her. In his mind’s eye, he saw it all with a bowel-loosening burst of clarity: Mom startled awake, disoriented and combative, arms and legs flailing. Mom, who’d never hurt anybody and had been beloved by everyone who knew her, going over the edge and dying with a splat on concrete rather than peacefully asleep in her bed with her family by her side.

  Huh-uh. Not gonna happen.

  He crept forward, sparing a glance over his shoulder to give everyone the shh symbol. Which was unnecessary because they’d fallen into a hushed silence, and the loudest noise for miles around was the excruciating crunch of the gravel beneath his feet.

  Without warning, Mom’s head lolled. She snorted, startling herself awake, and looked around with a slow stiffening of her shoulders and an involuntary mewl of fear that stopped his heart.

  It was now or never.

  Springing forward with a burst of speed he hadn’t displayed since his DEA training days, he covered the remaining ten feet between them in point-two seconds, grabbed the chair’s handles—he hadn’t expected the brake to be on, and it wasn’t—and pulled her back to safety, which caused exactly the kind of disorientation he’d feared.

  “You stop that!” Her hand lashed out and caught him squarely in the jaw, loosening a couple of his molars if he wasn’t mistaken. “What you trying to do to me, boy? You leave me alone!”

  When the stars cleared from his vision, Dexter sank to his knees in front of her, leaning in to hug her around the waist, even if she bloodied his nose for it.

  “I love you, you cranky old woman. I love you.”

  Mom wasn’t feeling the affection. “Get off me!” Planting her hands on his shoulders, she gave him a hard push, and as he was settling back on his haunches, he felt the rough scratch of cardboard against his chin.

  There was cardboard in her lap.

  No, not cardboard, he realized with rising dread. An envelope made from that heavy, expensive ivory paper people used for wedding invitations and birth announcements. There was a name on the front, written in blue ink by someone with perfect penmanship:

  Dexter.

  His hands shook as he opened it, a fact that would embarrass him later, if and when this nightmare day ever ended. Taking a deep breath, he read the single line on the embossed card:

  I can take away anything you love.

  “No.” Frantic with a fear that made what he’d just gone through seem like an hour-long, full body massage, he stared at the card and tried to figure out what the fuck he should do now, because Kira hadn’t answered any of the texts or returned any of the messages he’d left for her in the last hour, and he was beginning to think he’d never see her alive again. “No!”

  Only when she let herself and Max onto the quiet boat did Kira’s heart rate slow to anything approaching normal. The shaking in all of her frigid limbs hadn’t stopped, though, but that was the least of her worries at the moment. She set her purse and Max (now in his carrier because she’d never had him on a boat before and didn’t have time to chase him away from the edge of the deck to keep him from jumping into the water) next to the sofa and checked her watch again.

  Almost time for Dexter to meet her there.

  Thank God they’d had this date already arranged; she hadn’t dared call him from either of her phones. What if Kareem had them both tapped? Hell, with Kareem, that was probably a foregone conclusion, along with a video camera of some kind, probably stashed in her light fixture or some such.

  Max whined, wanting to be let out, but she ignored him in favor of adrenaline-fueled pacing.

  It all made sense now. Max’s disappearance. Her phone being off the charger—that was probably when Kareem put a listening device in it. The flowers. Even the dream of someone touching her, she realized, shuddering. That was Kareem. It was all Kareem.

  That’d been him at Findlay Market earlier, too, and—

  Footsteps sounded out on the dock, growing closer, and Max did his little warning rumble to let her know someone was coming.

  Dexter!

  Oh, thank God.

  Thank God, thank God, thank God—

  With a happy cry, she raced back up the four steps to greet him in the entry area and threw the door open.

  It wasn’t Dexter, though.

  It was Kareem.

  “Hello, wife.”

  Forcing his way inside and using a vicious backhand so lightning-fast it almost didn’t register with her vision, he sent her tumbling back down the steps and to the floor, where she landed with a brain-jarring thud.

  It took a minute for the disorienting flashes of light and ringing in her ears to taper off enough for her to know which end was up. Giving her head a shake in a largely futile attemp
t to clear it, she struggled to her hands and knees, willing her eyes to focus. When they finally did, she saw his legs looming over her, right in her face, and his expensive loafers were polished and scuff-free, his dark slacks perfectly creased.

  The sight of those legs in that easy, unconcerned stance, as though he was in line at Starbucks, staring at the overhead menu while he made his selection, enraged her. Galvanized her.

  Why was this man still alive, walking the earth with his evil?

  Worse, why had she let him catch her off guard again?

  This was it, she decided. Screw it. Maybe he would kill her today—hell, he probably would—but she intended to take a pound of his bloody flesh with her when she went.

  A primal sound burned its way out of her throat, part war cry and part furious roar, and with it came a burst of suicidal strength. With a little help from God, she intended to take this fucker’s head off before she died.

  Letting her thighs do all the work, she leapt out of her crouch and caught him around the waist (he emitted an oof of surprise, and that damn sure sounded like music to her ears), making him slam into the wall with a force that caused one of the framed photos to fall and shatter.

  A high-pitched bellow came out of his twisted mouth, and she realized, with dawning clarity and hope, that it had nothing to do with being taken by surprise. He was ... injured. His left shoulder was, in fact, now oozing blood through his tan silk shirt like some violent ink blotch.

  If he was hurt, then she had a chance.

  A small chance, but a chance.

  The Glock. If she could just get to her Glock.

  They staggered, mirroring each other as they both tried to get their feet under them. His face contorted with an animalistic black rage, Kareem lunged for her just as she dove for her purse on the floor. Kareem was quicker. Hooking her with his good right arm, he brought her down and they crashed to the floor together with enough force to knock every molecule of oxygen out of her crushed lungs.

  For one terrible second, she stared up into the feral glitter of his eyes as he straddled her, gasping for air and wondering if she was looking into the face of her own death.

  But the maneuver took something out of him, too, and he cried out, cursing and favoring that shoulder.

  Kira made her move, bending her knee and slamming it into his back with everything she was worth.

  Pay dirt.

  He screamed and fell off her, giving her enough room to roll to her belly and try to escape with a military crawl. It didn’t work. Blessed with the reflexes of a young Muhammad Ali, he grabbed her ankle with his good hand and yanked her back while she kicked desperately, trying to connect with his face.

  Survive, Kira. All you have to do is survive until help comes. It doesn’t matter if he breaks a few of your bones. Just survive.

  She kicked again and felt a satisfying crunch beneath her foot, but it came at a high price: his big hand clamped down around that ankle and twisted, wrenching it until, through the searing pain that shot all the way up and out of her head and through her ears, she heard a snap.

  Agony caught her in a death grip, trying to hold her under until she drowned in it. Yelling with rage—he would not do this to her!—and fighting for consciousness, she reached overhead, stretching out across the floor and grappling for something—anything, God, anything—to use against him.

  She found it, waiting for her on the lower shelf of the coffee table.

  With a guttural cry, she twisted back around and jammed the serrated branches of a basketball-sized piece of petrified coral into his face and neck until the thrilling trickle of his warm blood flowed over her fingers.

  He shrieked with the kind of bloodcurdling sound she hadn’t realized a human could make.

  That was her moment. She broke free, scuttling backward on her butt and dragging her useless leg with her, heading the last four feet in the direction of her purse and the Glock, but he’d recovered already and, worse, had a weapon.

  The six-inch length of a killing blade gleamed in his hand.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Despite the sliced and bleeding side of his face, a smile touched his lips. “Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”

  Chapter 31

  Being attacked and beaten was one thing. She could deal with that. Being shot? No problem. Quick and easy. Bring it on.

  The sight of that hunting knife made her throat seize up with dry sobs. “Please don’t,” she said, still creeping backward on her butt. “Please don’t cut me.”

  He wasn’t doing much better, but at least he’d reached his weapon. Using his good arm, he levered himself to his knees to loom over her, swiped some of the sweat and blood off his face, and widened that malevolent grin.

  “What should we talk about before I kill you, Baby Girl?”

  She made sounds. Terrible sounds. Laughing and sobbing, all mixed together, so choked and manic it took her several long beats to gather her thoughts and activate her voice.

  “Why aren’t you dead, you son of a bitch? Did they kick you out of hell?”

  He didn’t seem offended. If anything, she amused him. “I was in Miami, getting my face done. Not that you can appreciate that now that you’ve sliced most of my skin off, but I thought they did a pretty good job.”

  He angled his head this way and that, presumably so she could admire the remnants of his narrower nose, sharper cheekbones and brand new chin cleft.

  Sweat dripped into her eyes, but she blinked and swiped it back, determined to keep him talking for as long as possible.

  “Why’d you do that, pray tell?”

  “Well, you see,” he said conversationally, “it was all part of my plan. I blow up the house to keep the feds from getting it, I die, I hide out in Miami for a while and get a new face, and then I come back, take care of a little business, and then ride off with you into the sunset. Somewhere that Johnny Law can’t catch me. Brilliant, wasn’t it?”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do you know how easy it is to tamper with a gas line if you don’t care if it looks like arson?”

  “Apparently I don’t. Go figure.”

  “I slipped out the back. I wasn’t planning on you showing up. Good thing you didn’t stay too long, eh?”

  “Did you care about Jacob Radcliffe dying in your little inferno?”

  The question seemed to baffle him. “Why would I care about that piece of shit attorney who couldn’t keep me out of jail to save his life?”

  She stared at him, speechless with horror. This was what evil looked like up close. No horns. No fangs or forked tongue. Just a man without a conscience.

  “Who died for you?”

  He gave his good shoulder an irritated twitch, as though he didn’t want the interesting parts of his story to get lost in favor of meaningless details. “He worked for me. Nobody important.”

  Kira struggled to make her lungs work, each breath a conscious effort. “Did he know he was going to die for you that day?”

  “Nah. I just told him I needed him as a decoy while I slipped out for a while. He was already in the house that night when you showed up, waiting in the den. Did I mention I had two ankle bracelets, both programmed the same? He wore one, I wore the other one. Easy as pie when you’ve got the money to pay a few people.”

  Impressive. Why hadn’t she thought of that back when she was so certain he hadn’t died? “And did you pay off the coroner, too?”

  “Oh, no. Just the woman in the dentist’s office. But then she had to go, too. Can’t have loose ends dangling. It’s bad business.”

  “You were at the funeral, weren’t you? I felt you there.”

  “Damn straight you felt me there. You almost knocked me over. I was the man with the cane. Remember?”

  She did, vaguely. “Why didn’t anyone see you?”

  “Probably because they didn’t expect to. And I had sunglasses on with my hat pulled low and my scarf up high.”

  Kira flashed back to Wanda’s de
vastation that day, her sobs and her agony at the loss of her only child. She was no fan of Wanda, certainly, but she hadn’t deserved that. And to think that Kareem was there the whole time, just like she’d thought, watching the show.

  “You’re sick.” She laughed and cried, staring up at the ceiling and wishing she could see God. She really needed to ask him whether he’d meant to create such a perfect monster when he produced Kareem. “Why did I never see that about you?”

  Wrong choice of words, apparently. His satisfied smile faded away, leaving only his malignant stare. “Don’t move one more inch—”

  She froze, her palms planted on the floor behind her, just a foot from her purse, if that.

  “—and think about the names we want to use on each other because I can think of a couple for you, you fucking ho.”

  Kira didn’t dare breathe.

  She wondered if Dexter was on his way.

  She prayed that he was, and that she’d live long enough to tell him how much she loved him. Why hadn’t she said it when she’d had the chance?

  She prayed harder that he’d stay far away from this boat and this monster. That he’d live, even if she died today.

  “Huh, Baby Girl?” Her silence only seemed to enrage Kareem, who lowered those heavy brows into a fearsome frown. Holding the knife higher, between them, he examined it in minute detail, angling the blade so it reflected the light, mesmerizing her with terror. Would the steel be cold? Hot? Would he slice or stab her? How long would it take for her to bleed to death? “Cat got your tongue?”

  Kira didn’t answer.

  “You want to tell me why you fucked Kerry, one of my lieutenants? Or maybe you want to start with why you fucked Brady, the DEA agent who brought me down? Which one do you want to start with?”

  There was no way to answer this, and Kira didn’t even try.

  “Answer me, you little bitch,” Kareem roared, lunging for her.

  Oh, God. She was such a liar.

  She wasn’t strong. She was afraid of pain. She wasn’t ready to die. Not like this.