by Sandra Brown
Diego had made himself at home inside the walk-in closet. A long hour and a half had elapsed before Wallace came upstairs.
From inside the closet Diego had heard the chirps of the security system as Wallace punched in the code numbers to set it for the night. Which posed a problem, of course. It meant that Diego couldn’t get out of the house without tripping the alarm. But he’d decided not to worry about that until the time came. First he’d had to figure out how to overpower a man who was twice his size.
Wallace had obliged him. As soon as he’d entered the bedroom, he’d headed for the adjacent bathroom and unzipped. He’d used both hands to aim.
Diego had come up behind him, placed one hand on his forehead and jerked it back at the same time he pressed his razor to the banker’s exposed throat. Wallace had cried out, not so much in fear as from shock. Reflexively he’d reached behind him with both hands and tried to twist around to ward off his attacker. Pee had sprayed the wall behind the commode.
Diego had sliced the back of his hand to show him he meant business. “You fight me, I’ll slit your throat.”
Wallace stopped struggling. Breathing heavily, he asked, “Who are you? What do you want? Money? Credit cards? Take them. I haven’t seen you. I can’t identify you. So just take what you want and get out.”
“I want your bitch.”
“What?”
“Your bitch. Tori. Where is she?”
Wallace had been taken aback by that. Diego could practically feel the thoughts racing through the banker’s head as he’d held it secure against his chest.
“Sh… she’s not here.”
“I know that, jerk face. Why do you think I’ve got a razor to your throat? I want to know where she is.”
“Why?”
Diego’s hand had moved like lightning and cut an inch-long slice into Wallace’s cheek.
“Jesus!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?” He’d thrust his knee into the back of Wallace’s, causing it to buckle, but it didn’t completely give way. The man was heavy and it was getting harder to hold him. “Get down on your knees.”
“Why? I’m cooperating here. I’m not fighting you.”
“Down on your knees,” Diego had said, straining the words through his teeth.
Wallace had complied. Diego liked this angle better. It afforded him more flexibility and options. It was also the position of a beggar, which worked to Diego’s advantage.
“Tell me where Tori is.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen or heard from her today.”
Diego flicked the razor and the bottom half of Wallace’s earlobe dropped onto his shoulder. Again, he’d cried out.
“It’s the whole ear next time. And then Tori won’t want you no more, you fat turd. Or any other snatch for that matter, because you’ll look like a freak. Where is Tori?”
The ear trick usually worked. Typically that was the last thing to go before they told Diego what he needed to know, and then he would end it with one deep cut across their throat. He’d had one man hold out until both ears and his nose were gone, but he’d been exceptionally ballsy.
Diego hoped the banker wouldn’t take that long. He didn’t like being inside this house. It occurred to him that Wallace might have activated a silent alarm, some kind of panic button that alerted police to an intruder and duress. He didn’t think so, but he hadn’t lived this long by being careless.
So now, after five minutes of this song and dance, he was ready to be done with Wallace and to say adios to The Bookkeeper forever. “One more time. That’s all I’m giving you, just because I’m a nice guy. Where is Tori?”
“I swear to you that I don’t know,” Wallace said. “I had one short text from her early this morning, saying she had to leave town on short notice.”
“Going where?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“I left it at the office.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot!” His shout echoed off the marble walls of the bathroom. He severed off a chunk of Wallace’s other ear.
Wallace sucked in air, but this time he didn’t cry out. “I tossed my phone on the chair when I came in here to pee. Go look. You’ll see.”
“I’ll see that you’re jacking me around.”
“No, I’m not. I swear.”
“You want me to go see if your phone is in the bedroom? Fine. Only thing is, I’ll have to kill you first, because I’m not letting go of you until you tell me what I want to know or until you’re dead.” He let that sink in. “Makes no difference to me, but you could make it easier on yourself.”
“I think you’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Tell me where Tori’s at.”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she?”
“If I knew I’d be with her.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me, or you die in the next five seconds.”
“I’m not telling you shit. I love her.”
Diego moved like a striking snake, but he didn’t cut the man’s throat. Instead, he bashed his head against the toilet. The big man fell heavily to the marble tile floor. His forehead left an interesting pattern of blood on the white porcelain toilet bowl.
Diego used a monogrammed towel to wipe his razor clean, then folded it closed and left the bathroom. The cell phone was exactly where Wallace had said. Diego, from his vantage point inside the closet, had missed him dropping it there on his way into the john.
Rapidly he made his way downstairs, avoiding the windows on the front of the house. He’d entered the house by way of the kitchen. There was only one light on and it was the one above the range. He held Wallace’s cell phone up to it and accessed his text messages. Tori. Eight forty-seven a.m. She said she was leaving town on short notice, but didn’t say where. Next Diego looked at Wallace’s call log. Many had been placed to Tori’s number. None had come in from her. The fat man had been telling him the truth.
Diego used his phone to call The Bookkeeper. “I’ve got Tori Shirah’s cell phone number.”
“I asked for her location.”
Diego recited the number and explained the text message.
“All well and good,” The Bookkeeper said tightly, “but where is she?”
“Wallace doesn’t know.”
“You didn’t get it from him?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t? Present tense?”
“What good would it do to kill him?”
“What’s the matter with you, Diego? A dead man can’t identify you.”
“Neither can Wallace. He didn’t see me.”
After a sustained silence The Bookkeeper asked, “Where are you now?”
“Still inside his house.”
“So try again. He’s got fingers, toes, a penis.”
“It wouldn’t do any good.” Above all else, Diego trusted his instincts, and Wallace seemed the type who would die protecting his ladylove.
“He says he doesn’t know where she is, and I believe him,” he stressed to The Bookkeeper.
“No loose ends, Diego.”
“I’m telling you, he didn’t see me, and I never mentioned you.”
“You’ve never left a victim alive. Why now? Why have you gone soft?”
“I haven’t. But I haven’t lost my marbles either. Killing Wallace would be risky because I can’t just sneak away. Once I open a door to this place, all hell’s gonna break loose. If I can’t outrun the police, I don’t want to be caught with a dead man.”
“You’re refusing to deliver what I asked for?”
“What you asked for can’t be had. It would be a waste to kill a man over information he ain’t got.”
There was a long silence on the other end, then, “This is the second time this week that you’ve disappointed me, Diego.” The silkiness of The Bookkeeper’s tone sen
t a tingle down Diego’s spine.
Anyone who knew anything about The Bookkeeper knew what happened to people who disappointed or failed. Diego didn’t fear being rubbed out. He was too talented to be squandered. No, The Bookkeeper would use some other means to punish him, some other—
Sudden realization came crashing down on him like a ton of bricks. This is the second time.
Diego’s stomach lurched. He thought he might vomit. He disconnected and, without even considering the consequences, opened the kitchen door. Alarm bells went off. The noise was deafening, but it barely registered with Diego. The fear clamoring inside his head portended something far worse than arrest.
He sprinted across the stone terrace and over the lawn. By the time he reached the estate wall, he was winded, but he didn’t even pause to catch his breath. He scaled the wall using the leafy vine for footholds and handholds. When he reached the top, he threw his legs over and jumped. He landed hard on the ground twelve feet below. His knees absorbed the impact, and it hurt like hell, but the pain didn’t slow him.
He heard the whoop-whoop of approaching police car sirens, but he took the most direct route to his stolen car, even though it meant being out in the open as opposed to keeping to the shadows.
No one apprehended him. When he reached the car, he was wet with sweat and shaking so uncontrollably he barely managed to get it started. Heedless of it drawing notice, he pulled the car away from the curb with a squeal of tires.
He leaned into the steering wheel, gripping it with fingers that had turned bone-white with fear and fury. He’d never been taught to pray and knew no god, so he bargained with abstractions and fervently appealed to whatever unnamed supreme power was listening.
He broke his unbroken law and drove directly to his building. The tires smoked when he brought the car to a jarring halt. He bolted out, not even bothering to cut off the engine or close the door.
A cutting torch had been used to excise the lock on the exterior door, which stood ajar. Diego plunged through it into total darkness. He raced through the dank corridors and bolted down the staircases that he knew by feel.
When he reached the lower level and saw the door to his domain standing open, he drew up short. His breath made a horrible sawing noise, and that was the only sound in the entire building. He thought he might die from the pain in his chest. He almost hoped he would, so he wouldn’t have to know.
But he had to know.
He forced himself to walk to the lighted doorway and look into the room that had been his safe haven. Until tonight.
Isobel was lying on her back on the bed. She’d been stripped naked and obscenely positioned. Her face had been brutalized. Her limbs were bruised and bore scratches. There were bite marks, so deeply impressed that they’d broken through her golden skin. There was dried semen. And blood.
He’d been kept away all day so that The Bookkeeper’s facilitators could take their time terrorizing, torturing, and killing Isobel and, by doing so, teach Diego a hard lesson in blind obedience.
Only her beautiful, silky black hair had escaped the assault. When Diego knelt beside the bed, it was her hair he stroked, her hair that he crooned to, that he held against his face and cried into.
His knees had grown numb by the time he finally got to his feet. He rearranged Isobel’s body to restore her modesty. He gently unclasped her silver crucifix. He kissed her cut and swollen lips, their first kiss also being their last. Finally, he pulled a blanket over her.
He surveyed the room, taking account of everything in it, and deciding there was nothing there he cared to salvage, not even the expensive rug. He poured the goldfish into the toilet and flushed. It was a mercy killing. Better that than to boil to death.
He made a pile of his belongings in the center of the room, set a lighter to them, and waited to make certain that the fire would catch. When he turned his back on the room, flames were already licking at the covers on the bed, Isobel’s funeral bier.
Slowly, laboriously, he made his way up through the former factory to street level. He could already smell smoke, and reasoned that it wouldn’t take long for the blaze to eat the building whole.
The car was gone, of course. It didn’t matter. He struck off down the sidewalk, staying close to the buildings, keeping his right hand around the razor in his pants pocket, thinking that possibly The Bookkeeper wasn’t finished with him yet.
He for sure as hell wasn’t finished with The Bookkeeper.
Chapter 41
When Bonnell Wallace regained consciousness, he was lying face up on the floor of his bathroom. Someone was bending over him, shining a flashlight into his eye, which he held pried open with a gloved hand.
“Mr. Wallace, can you hear me?”
“Turn off that goddamn light.” It was driving splinters of pain through the top of Wallace’s skull from the inside. The EMT didn’t do as asked. Instead he pried open Wallace’s other eye and waved the flashlight an inch from his eyeball.
Wallace swatted at the hand wearing the blue glove. Or tried. He connected with nothing but air and realized that he was seeing double and that he had aimed for the wrong image.
“Mr. Wallace, lie still, please. You’ve got a concussion.”
“I’m all right. Did you catch him?”
“Who?”
“The bastard who did this to me.”
“The back door was standing open when we got here. Your assailant got away.”
Wallace was struggling to sit up while the pair of EMTs were trying to hold him down. “I need to talk to the cops.”
“They’re searching the property, Mr. Wallace.”
“Go get them.”
“You can talk with the officers later. They’ll want your statement. In the meantime, we’ll transport you to the ER and let them X-ray—”
“You’re not transporting me anywhere.” Wallace knocked aside the young man’s arm, and this time his aim was perfect. “Get off me. I’m all right. I’ve got to warn Tori. Bring me my phone. It’s on the bedroom chair.”
The two EMTs consulted each other with a look. One got up and disappeared through the doorway. Seconds later, he called back, “No phone on the chair.”
Wallace gave a low moan. “He took my phone. My phone has her number in it.”
“Whose number?”
“Jesus! Whose do you think? Tori’s.”
“Sir, please lie back and let us—”
He grabbed the young man by the front of his uniform shirt. “I told you, I’m fine. But if anything happens to Tori, I’m coming after you first, and I’ll make your life a living hell. So you had better get a cop in here now!”
Coburn had been trained to sleep as efficiently as he’d been trained to do everything else. He woke up after two hours, feeling revived if not completely rested.
Honor was still lying as though welded to him. His right arm had gone to sleep. It tingled, but he left it where it was, sandwiched between her breasts. He didn’t want to wake her up until he had to. Besides, his arm felt good there.
Her right hand was on his chest, and he was shocked to realize that, in sleep, he’d covered it with his left hand, keeping it there, directly over his heart.
He had to admit: She’d got to him. This demure second-grade schoolteacher, who’d been faithful to her husband, but who had fucked him with the same fervor with which she’d fought him two days ago, had crawled under his mean ol’ hide.
Her features were soft and feminine, but she was no creampuff where and when it mattered. Even those times when he’d been ready to strangle her for doing something reckless, he’d admired her courage. He believed she would have killed him, or died trying, if he’d harmed her kid.
Thinking of Emily caused him to smile. The little chatterbox. It relieved him to know that she was safe, but he wasn’t as glad to be rid of her as he had thought he would be. He probably wouldn’t see her again, but he would never look at one of those red bug-eyed things without thinking about her. He also knew that
whenever he recalled her kissing his cheek with such unqualified trust and acceptance, it was going to ache just a little in the vicinity of his heart.
It ached now.
But he pushed those thoughts aside. Lately, he’d been thinking a lot of stupid shit, and he couldn’t explain the sentimentality except that this was one crazy, mucked-up mission and had been ever since he’d fled the warehouse. No wonder he’d gone sappy. No wonder that, instead of planning what he was going to do next, he was lying here soaking up the warmth of Honor’s nakedness, letting it seep into his body like a healing balm.
Damn, she’d been sweet. Tight and hot and slick for want of him. Go figure.
And when he realized that he was the first lover she’d taken since her husband died, he’d felt like Superman. But that was also when it became confusing, when it had evolved from straight screwing into something else, when he’d wanted to feel her hands on his body, when he’d wanted her to know that it wasn’t a memory or a ghost, but a flesh-and-blood man who was rocking her world, making her come. He had wanted her to know that it was him.
And that scared him.
Because never before in his life had he needed or wanted anybody needing or wanting him.
Good thing that this setup was short-term and when it was over he could walk away, no strings attached. They would return to their previous lives and never see each other again. He’d made it clear that’s how it would be, and she’d accepted it.
So, okay, yeah, he had let her snuggle up next to him to sleep. If she wanted to hold him, fine. Fine. As long as they both understood that the intimacy was temporary.
But there was no denying how good it felt having her against him. Each breath she took wafted across his skin. The soft, smooth inside of her thigh was resting on top of his. Her breasts pillowed his arm. The back of his hand was nestled in the V of her thighs, and if he turned his hand and cupped her with his palm…
His cock woke up and stretched.
They could do it just once more, right? What could it hurt? He wasn’t going to tell anybody. She sure as hell wasn’t. If he turned his hand into her and began stroking her there, she would wake up smiling and drowsy and ready for him again.
