In For the Kill

by Shannon McKenna

  He couldn’t even bear to look at her, and she’d caused this disaster all by herself. By being slutty and grabby. Trying to have her cake and eat it, too. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy. She teetered on rubbery legs as she crouched, struggling with the buckles of her shoes.

  Sam stared fixedly at a point on the wall. “I’ll wait downstairs, if you need more time.”

  “No, I’m ready now,” she said, stumbling toward the door.

  She followed him down the stairs, clutching the banister with a death grip. He shrugged on a leather jacket, scooped up his phone, and stuck it in his pocket. Handed her the little red evening bag, all without looking at her. Swift, economical gestures. She followed him out into the damp dawn chill, wishing she’d made more of an effort to find her stockings. She hated the thought of him finding them. Throwing them away.

  “Watch the sidewalk,” he said brusquely without looking back. “Tree roots have buckled it. It’ll trip you.”

  “I see them.” She picked her way over the jagged planes of broken concrete and hesitated at the car. “I can call a car, you know.”

  “No, you can’t. Get in.” He looked at her, and his eyes widened as he took in her bare shoulders. “Jesus! Where the hell’s your jacket?”

  “I think I left it at the reception,” she said, shivering. “I’m okay.”

  He slipped his jacket off and held it out. “Put this on.”

  She shrank away. “Oh, no. I don’t need—”

  “Put. It. On.” His voice slashed, making her jump. She shrank back from the flash of furious emotion in his face. It was not worth crossing him, not in his current mood. She took the jacket.

  It was huge. The cuffs dangled inches below the ends of her fingers. It draped on her like a heavy cape. Warm, from his body. She huddled in it when she got into the car, so distracted that she was halfway home before she noticed that he hadn’t asked for directions.

  “How do you know where I live?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “It’s not hard to find an address.”

  “So you’ve been stalking me?”

  “Yeah.” The admission was utterly unapologetic.

  They sat on that for a few minutes as the dark night swept by.

  Sveti took a deep breath. “I stalked you, too,” she told him.

  His mouth twitched briefly. “I stalked you better.”

  “I don’t doubt that, being a cop and all. What did you find out?”

  He glanced at her. “Everything.”

  “Wow, that’s impressive,” she commented. “But be more specific.”

  He pondered that. “Well, your landlord bugs the shit out of me.”

  “Walter?” she said, taken aback. “Why? He’s a perfectly nice guy.”

  Sam grunted. “Don’t like the tattoos. What’s up with that hair?”

  “They’re dreads, Sam. You’re judging him for his fashion choices?”

  “Blond dreadlocks bite my ass,” he grumbled. “Fucking affected.”

  “It’s an image thing,” she explained. “He leads extreme sports expeditions. He has to look hip. You won’t see him today, though.”

  “I should hope not, at six in the morning.”

  “No, I mean, he’s gone. He and his girlfriend, Pam, just got married. They had a big barbecue for the neighbors and took off for Queensland yesterday to surf the Great Barrier Reef for their honeymoon. They got special, patterned shark-proof wetsuits for it.”

  Sam grunted. “So tell me about the six three, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound goateed black guy in the upstairs apartment.”

  “Oh, that’s Paul. Wonderful guy. Off to Chicago for the week to visit his boyfriend, William. They’re struggling with the distance thing, because they both like their jobs. William’s okay, but I have my doubts. He’s a lightweight, and he drinks too much. Paul deserves better.”

  “I see,” Sam said slowly.

  “They’re all great neighbors,” she babbled on. “I’m going to miss them. Paul’s all set to move down to my apartment next week. He’s in love with my bay window and my clawfoot tub.”

  She immediately regretted mentioning her impending departure.

  “So, you’re all alone in that big house right now? Not a soul?”

  She snorted at his sour tone. “You don’t like them when they’re at home. You don’t like them when they’re gone. There’s no pleasing you.”

  He shook his head. “You know exactly what pleases me.”

  That shut her right up. She stared out the window, face smarting.

  She’d been so stupid. So superficial, to act as if sex with Sam was some country she could visit like a tourist and come back unchanged. She was inside out, exploding with feelings she didn’t know how to manage, and his seething anger buzzed against her every naked nerve.

  Grim silence reigned for the rest of the drive.

  There was no parking in front of her apartment. “You can just let me off,” Sveti told him as he circled the block.

  “Not a fucking chance,” he growled. “I’ll park.”

  He found a place near the end of the block, maneuvered his car into it, and killed the engine. They sat in the chill dimness, both mute.

  She ached to say something that would be meaningful, something that would make sense of the flat finality of it. But no such thing existed. Thanking him was wrong. She was sure he would reject that violently. She wanted to give him some indication of how important this night had been to her, but that would only make things worse.

  What he wanted, she did not have to give. Tension tightened, like a knot of wet rope in her throat. This was so awful. No way to fix it.

  “So did it work?” There was a note of belligerence in his voice.

  An obvious trap, but she had to walk into it. “Did what work?”

  “Banging me. Is it out of your system? Do you feel better now?”

  Hurt twisted in her belly, like a claw. “Fuck you, Sam.”

  “Ah! That’s my girl! Don’t let anyone inside the superhero armor, Sveti. Don’t get distracted from saving the world. Keep yourself pure.”

  “Please, Sam. Stop,” she said. “This is a bad way to end it.”

  “There were a lot of alternative endings,” he said. “You didn’t choose any of them. This is all that’s left on the table.”

  That was all she could stand. She opened the door. “Good-bye.”

  She didn’t dare run, not in the dark, and in those heels. Thank God there was no one in the house to see her come slinking home in an evening gown. Not that they would judge. On the contrary, they would probably congratulate her and tell her it was about fucking time.

  Even so, she preferred to huddle alone and lick her wounds.

  She walked on the balls of her feet onto the porch, clutching the banister. Her thighs were sticky, her hip joints ached. Her private parts felt liquid and hot and sore. At least she was well and truly deflowered. She could cross that off her list of things to feel inadequate about—and replace it with a new list of stressors. Big ones.

  She was going to pay for this self-indulgence. She would be viciously sleep deprived for God only knew how long, and that was the best-case scenario, if the nightmares were all she had to deal with.

  The worst-case scenario saw her heavily medicated, unable to function out in the world. The conference, London, her new job, her amazing opportunity. She might have compromised that.

  And to top it all off, there was the stone-cold certainty that nothing in her future sex life, whomever it might be with, could ever measure up to last night’s intensity. She was dead sure of that.

  She fought to get the key into the lock. The automatic porch light had not flicked on. Maybe the bulb was burned out. In any case, it was light enough to see, more or less. She finally got inside, closed the door, and reached for the hall light.

  Air moved. She whirled, saw a blur—

  Wet cloth clamped over her face as she was inhaling to scream.

  She was
jerked into a bone-crushing, smothering grip. She kicked, connected, heard a muffled grunt. Her wrist was twisted, brutally hard. She fought not to inhale again, but her arms were trapped, her eyes blurred from drug fumes. Her lungs began to heave. Her belly rolled and flopped as her blood pressure plummeted.

  “Sweet dreams,” crooned a rasping voice, as she fell into darkness.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sam’s wrist would not turn to twist the key in the ignition. His fingers would not tighten around the gearshift to take the car out of park. He was paralyzed, watching through the rearview window as Sveti picked her halting way up the porch, fumbling with her key.

  His jacket hung down on her to midthigh. He saw that detail by the orange glow of the streetlight that filtered in through the trees.

  Why was there no porch light? He wanted to have a sharp talk about security with dreadlocked extreme sports dude. Being a giddy newlywed was no excuse for a landlord to get sloppy when he had tenants to protect.

  The door opened to darkness, which he also disliked. Light should spill out when a door was opened for her. The door shut. Gone. Home safe. His cue to go. But he waited for the light go on in her apartment. He knew which would flick on first, which second. He knew her path through her apartment, how her slim shadow wavered against the curtains. Sick, pining, pathetic bastard that he was.

  Her light did not turn on. He drummed his fingers against the steering column. Maybe she just felt like sulking in the dark. He did it himself often enough. Hell, he was doing it right now.

  But Sveti disliked darkness. Her lights were always on. Someone had told him that was because of the organ trafficking ordeal, which had involved a lot of darkness. He should have walked her to her door, but he probably would have ended up tossing her skirt up and fucking her again, on whatever flat surface presented itself first.

  The night’s events had not taken the edge off of his sexual obsession. It had inflamed the problem into monstrous proportions.

  Enough. She was home, choices made, ultimatums laid down. Time to go home, burn those sheets, and get on with whatever his life was going to be now. But his evil twin jerked the steering wheel around at the corner and sent him circling around the block. They said addictive substances eroded the brain’s capacity for impulse control. Sveti being his drug of choice, it followed that a night of boning her would have rendered his brain into slop. No longer capable of executive decisions. He was devolving. Snarling, rattling the bars of his cage.

  He cut the lights and jerked to a stop before turning the last corner, as soon as he had a sight line to the house. He turned off the engine and stared at that unlit bay window like a lovesick teenager, scrabbling for his final crumb. Come on, Sveti. Turn that sucker on.

  He wasn’t going to be able to leave until he saw that light.

  A flicker of movement drew his eye. Two men came out the front door, carrying a cardboard box. Something large, like a dishwasher. Weird time, for a pick-up. They hoisted the thing up into the back of a white van. It was early. Too early. Maybe the landlord was—

  No. He wasn’t. The landlord and the new wife were dodging sharks on the Great Barrier Reef. The third-floor neighbor was working on his long-distance relationship in Chicago. There was nobody in that big Victorian except for Sveti. Or at least, there should not be.

  The van’s taillights flicked on. It jerked away from the curb. He caught the first three letters of the plate before it left his line of vision. His car roared to life and turned the corner just in time to see which way the van went at the end of the block, and juddered to a halt in the spot the van had just vacated. Instinct screamed follow, now, but his instinct was fucked when it came to Sveti. There could be a legitimate explanation. Sveti could be stepping into her shower, humming, while he went racing off after a couple random guys whose only crime was to be transporting stuff outside of normal business hours. Thereby cementing his status as a psycho head case, a danger to himself and others.

  He groped for his phone as he sprinted toward the porch. It was not there. He’d left it in the pocket of the jacket Sveti wore. Too busy wallowing in his own goddamn hurt feelings to remember it. Fuck.

  He wrenched the screen door open. The front door was unlocked, and a glance at the faceplate of the lock showed a coating of oily graphite dust. He flung the door open.

  A crimson shoe lay on the floor, the straps torn loose. A red evening bag. Some change had spilled from it.

  He dove for his car, his body jangling. Asshole. Second-guessing himself. Tires squealed on the curve. Not much traffic yet. They could be on the freeway, or they could have turned anywhere. His detour had cost about forty seconds, maybe forty-five. Oh, God, oh, God.

  His heart thudded painfully when he saw a white van, stopped at the last light before the freeway on-ramp. He got closer, fingers white-knuckled on the wheel until he was close enough to read the plates.

  The light went green as he pegged the first three letters. Same. Yes.

  He got in line, two cars behind onto the on-ramp, breathing down panic. Jesus. No backup, no police, no phone, and he didn’t dare lose eye contact for a split second. Just him and his Glock 19. Fifteen in the magazine, one in the chamber. Not even a spare mag in his pocket.

  That was the cavalry.

  Whack. Yuri was kicking her on the ground, calling her names: whore, dirty cunt. His breath stank like dead things. Whack. Whack.

  Splash. Sveti coughed and sputtered, choking. The room spun, dim and foggy. She blinked, frantically. She was in a warehouse. Maybe a barn. A damp, ancient one that stank of mold and mouse shit. Crates and boxes were piled high, but the boxes were deformed, giving in to gravity, contents decaying. Light filtered through high, dirty windows.

  Yuri stood in front of her. No, not Yuri. Yuri was in a maximum-security prison in Siberia. This man was taller, broader. His features were thick and blunt, his eyes were hot little pale points burning inside shadowy pits. His graying hair was buzzed short. His mouth was moving, but she heard nothing.

  There was another man in the shadows, smaller, wearing a black ski mask. His dark eyes glittered through the slits in the mask.

  Splash. The pale man heaved a plastic pitcher full of ice water in her face again. His voice boomed suddenly in her ear, volume spiking.

  “. . . vetlana,” he yelled. “Pay attention! Wake up!”

  “Wha . . . who?” She coughed out water, shuddering as rivulets soaked her chest, her back. She could not move her arms, to wipe water from her eyes, or push back the hair clinging to her face. She was bound. She could not see it, beneath her skirt, but it felt like duct tape. There was a big plastic basin full of water and floating ice.

  The man held up a dripping plastic pitcher. “We need to talk.”

  She tried to speak and ended up coughing again. “Who are you?”

  His yellowed teeth flashed. “That’s not relevant.”

  It finally sank in. That wasn’t English. The man was speaking Ukrainian. Terror stabbed, like lightning. “What do you want?”

  The man set a rickety chair down in front of her and straddled it.

  “Everything,” he said. “Everything you have.”

  “My friends are expecting me,” she said. “I’m supposed to be at work at eight o’clock. If I’m not there—”

  “You have given notice at your jobs and volunteer activities. You sold your car, too, no? You are leaving the country.”

  “How do you know all this? Have you been following me?”

  “Not exactly, not until just recently,” the man said. “But keeping an eye on you, most definitely. For years.”

  “What do you want?” she repeated.

  “We’ll get to that. First, tell me about the man you spent the night with after leaving the wedding party last night.”

  She was stupefied for a moment. “What man? I went out, after the wedding. I met some friends, went to a couple of clubs. One of my friends gave me a ride home. There was no man.”

  “Don
’t lie. We followed you home from the wedding, and then to his house. You were there for hours. Did you enjoy your night of passion? Were you satisfied by Lt. Petrie, of the Portland Police Bureau? Were you left with longings unfulfilled? Tell us. Maybe we could help. My colleagues and I stand ready to serve.”

  Her stomach churned. “My friends will find you, and they will crush you,” she said.

  “They might, but it will be too late for you.” He pulled out a wicked, narrow-bladed knife and hooked up the sodden hem of her skirt with it. Cold air rushed in, chilling her naked flesh still further.

  The other guy moved closer to look under her skirt. To think she had fancied herself to be unafraid, of pain, of death. Hah. She had no excuse for being so arrogant. She’d gotten soft. Forgotten how it felt.

  “Nice,” the other man said in English.

  “Yes,” the pale-eyed man agreed. “Very.”

  She spat at them. The smaller, masked man stepped forward and jerked his hand up to hit her.

  “No,” the other one said sharply. “Not yet.”

  The man stepped back, with bad grace. The pale man leaned forward, his weight making the chair creak. He let the knife dangle between his thick fingers, like a flashing pendulum, back and forth.

  She lifted her chin, waiting.

  He laughed. “So haughty. Just like your whore mother.”

  That sent a jolt of electricity through her spine. “What about my mother?” she demanded. “What do you know about her?”

  The man tut-tutted. “One thing at a time. I am going to ask you a series of questions. Answer them honestly, and we will let you go.”

  That was bullshit, but there was nothing to be gained by calling the man out on it. “What questions?”

  “It’s amazing, the resemblance.” The man’s low, insidious tone filled her with dread. “And Sonia wore a red slut dress, just like yours, the night she died. Poor Svetlana. All alone in the world.”