by J. R. Ward
Jim fought the urge to punch his fist through the wall. “For once in your miserable, godforsaken life, can you do something without expecting anything back? Try it. Maybe you’ll like it. You could start now.”
“Sorry. Everything is a negotiation.”
“Did your father beat the morality out of you? Or were you just born a shit?”
“You could ask him, but he’s been dead for years. Poor guy got in the way of my bullet. Damn shame, really.”
Jim bit his frickin’ lip and clenched every muscle in his jaw and neck. “Please…I need to know about her. Just tell me. It’s important.”
Naturally, Matthias the fucker didn’t fall for the mother-may-I shit. “The ‘favor’ I supposedly owe you only gets you so far. Then if you want more, you have to give me something to earn it. Up to you. And before you ask, the assignment I have in mind is right up your alley.”
“I don’t kill people anymore.”
“Hmm.”
“Matthias, I need to know who she is.”
“I’m sure you do. And you know where to find me.”
The line went dead, and for a moment, Jim seriously considered firing the phone across the room. The only thing that stopped him was Dog, who lifted his sleepy head and somehow managed to drain the urge right out of Jim’s arm.
He dropped the phone on the bedspread.
As his mind raced and his temper seethed, he didn’t know what the fuck to do with himself…so he just reached out to the animal and tried to pat down the fur that was sticking straight up between his ears.
“Get a load of this ’do, man. You look like Einstein when you wake up…you really do.”
Eye contact was everything when you were in jail.
Vin had learned this during his forays through the juvie system: Behind bars, how you met the stares of the guys you were in with was your Hello, My Name Is… and there were five main categories.
Junkies had unfocused peepers, usually because they couldn’t control their optic nerves any better than they could their sweat glands, bowels, or nervous systems. As the prison equivalent of lawn sculpture, they tended to pick a place and stay there, and for the most part, they kept out of the drama because they didn’t instigate and easy targets were a bore.
Dime-sizers, on the other hand, who were usually on their first trip through the penal system and more than a little freaked out, had stares like Ping-Pong balls, all willy-nilly, not-for-longs, their eyes bouncing around. This made them perfect candidates for ridicule and verbal harassment, but generally not fists—because they’d be the ones who’d yell for the guards at the drop of a hat.
Motherfuckers, in contrast, had seeker stares, always probing for weakness and ready to pounce. They were the ones who picked at everyone and loved playing the harasser, but they were not the dangerous ones. They instigated, but let the hotheads follow through—they were kids in the sandbox who broke toys and blamed it on others.
Hotheads had crazy eyes and loved to fight. All it took was the slimmest of openings and they were ready to go to town. ’Nuff said.
And finally, you had your bona fide sociopaths, the ones who didn’t give a fuck and could kill you and eat your liver. Or not. Didn’t matter either way. Their eyes drifted around, ocular sharks that swam in the middle distance of the room for the most part—until they ID’d a victim.
As Vin sat among a representative sample of the above, he was part of none of these groups, falling into a category that was fairly atypical: He stayed out of people’s biz and expected others to extend the same courtesy. And if they didn’t?
“Nice suit you got there.”
With Vin’s back against the concrete wall, and his eyes on the floor, he didn’t have to glance up to know that out of the eleven other guys in the holding bin, he was the only one with a pair of lapels.
Ah, yes, a motherfucker stepping up to the plate.
Vin deliberately shifted forward and put his elbows on his knees. Bringing his fist into his palm, he slowly swiveled his head toward the guy who’d spoken.
Wiry. Tattooed up the neck. Earrings. Hair cut so short that his skull showed. And as the SOB smiled like he was looking forward to a meal he intended to enjoy, he flashed a chipped front tooth.
Clearly he thought he had a dime-sized newbie by the tail.
Vin flashed his own teeth and one by one cracked the knuckles on his striking hand. “You like my threads, asshole?”
As the reply came back at him, Mr. Personality was instantly cured of his this-is-gonna-be-funsies. His brown eyes did a quick measure of the size of Vin’s fist and then returned to the steady stare that was locked on him.
“I asked you,” Vin said loud and slow, “do you like my threads, asshole.”
While the guy considered his answer, Vin hoped the response was obnoxious, and something about that must have come through: As the rest of the men made like spectators at a tennis match, going back and forth, back and forth, the tension eased out of the motherfucker’s shoulders.
“Yeah, it’s real nice. Real nice suit. Yeah.”
Vin stayed right where he was as the other guy settled back on the bench. And then one by one he met the stares of the peanut gallery…and one by one the men looked down at the floor. Only then did Vin relax a little.
As half of his brain stayed plugged into office politics, such as they were, the other part went back to churning over how the hell he’d ended up where he was. Devina had lied through her teeth to the police, and so help him God, he was going to find out what the fuck had really happened. And “buddy”? What the hell was she talking about?
He thought back to the blue dress that had smelled like men’s cologne. The idea that she’d been fucking around on him made him dangerously psychotic, so he forced his brain to consider the more important stuff. Like, oh, the fact that she had been beaten by someone other than him, but it was his cock and balls in the clink.
Christ, if only his security system at home had the same kind of monitoring shit his office did. Then he’d have a video of every room, twenty-four/seven.
The chiming of keys announced the arrival of a guard. “DiPietro, your lawyer is here.”
Vin got up off the bench, and as the door slid open with a clang, he stepped out and put his hands behind his back, presenting himself to the guard for cuffing.
Which seemed to surprise the guy with the keys, but not the ones who’d just witnessed Vin be all ready to Rocky it with the motherfucker.
There was a click, click and then he and the badge walked down a hall to another bank of iron bars that had to be released by someone on the far side. After that they hung another right and a left and stopped in front of a door that was something out of a high school, the thing painted blech beige, its window marked with chicken wire embedded in the glass.
Inside the interrogation room, Mick Rhodes was leaning back against the far wall, his wingtips crossed, his double-breasted suit the kind that Mr. Personality would also have approved of.
Mick stayed quiet as the guard released the cuffs and ducked out of the room. After the door shut, the lawyer shook his head. “Never expected this one.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What the hell happened, Vin?” Mick then nodded up at a security camera, indicating that attorney-client privilege was probably more of a theory than an actuality here in the station house.
Vin sat down at the little table, taking one of the two chairs. “No fucking clue. I came home around midnight and the cops were in my place—which had been trashed. They told me Devina was in the hospital and she said I was the one who’d put her there. My alibi is airtight, though. I was at my office for the whole afternoon and into the evening. I can get them videos of me sitting at my desk for hours.”
“I’ve seen the police report. She said she was attacked at ten o’clock.”
Shit. He’d assumed it had happened earlier.
“Right, we’re going to talk about all that where-were-you stuff a little l
ater,” Mick murmured, as if he knew the answer to that one was complicated. “I’ve pulled some strings. Your bail’s going to be set within the hour. It’ll be a hundred thousand or so.”
“If they give me my wallet, I can do that right now.”
“Good. I’ll take you home—”
“Only to get clothes.” He never wanted to see the duplex again, much less stay there. “I’m going to a hotel.”
“Don’t blame you. And if you find you need some privacy from the media, you can stay with me in Greenwich.”
“I just need to talk to Devina.” He needed to find out not only who had busted her up, but who the hell she’d been sleeping with. He had a lot of friends…a man like him with money like his? He had friends all over the fucking place.
“Let’s get you out of here first, okay? And then we’ll talk about next steps.”
“I didn’t do it, Mick.”
“Do you think I would be dressed up like this on Sunday morning if I thought otherwise? For God’s sake, man, I could be cozied up with the Times right now.”
“At least that’s a priority I can respect.”
And Mick was true to his word: Thanks to a quick hundred grand taken off his debit card, Vin was out of the police station and getting into his buddy’s Mercedes by ten thirty a.m.
Getting released was hardly cause for celebration, though. As they went over to the Commodore, Vin’s head was an utter mess, spinning out of control as he tried to find some kind of inner logic to the whole thing.
“Vin, buddy, you’re going to listen to me because I’m not only your frat brother, so you can trust me, but I’m also your lawyer. Do not go to the hospital. Do not talk to Devina. If she calls or reaches out to you, do not interact with her.” The Mercedes eased to a halt in front of the Commodore. “Do you have an alibi for where you were between ten and twelve last night?”
Staring out the windshield, Vin remembered exactly where he had been…and what he’d been doing. The decision was clear. “Not that I can give the police. No.”
“But you were with someone?”
“Yes.” Vin opened the door. “I won’t be involving her—”
“Her?”
“You can reach me on my cell phone.”
“Wait, who is this ‘her’?”
“None of your business.”
Mick braced his forearm on the steering wheel and leaned across the seat. “If you want to save your ass, you may have to reconsider that.”
“I didn’t hurt Devina. And I have no idea why she would want to frame me for this shit.”
“You don’t? She know about this ‘her’ of yours?”
Vin shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. Call me.”
“Don’t go to that hospital, Vin. Promise me.”
“Not where I’m headed next.” He shut the door and strode over to the Commodore’s entrance. “Trust me.”
CHAPTER
26
The St. Francis Hospital complex was laid out with all the logic of an ant farm. Reflecting an iterative architectural philosophy, like so many medical centers of its kind, the buildings that covered its acreage were a hodgepodge of styles, and they were positioned where they could be squeezed in, like round pegs shoved into square holes. On the campus, you had a little bit of everything from Gothic brick, to institutional steel and glass, to sprawling be-columned stone, with the only commonality being that everything was cramped.
Jim parked his truck in a lot next to a fifteen-floor high-rise, and figured this big daddy was a good bet to start with, as it was where he’d been admitted as an inpatient from the emergency room. Cutting through the rows of cars, he crossed the lane and went under the porte cochere, entering the building through a set of retracting glass doors.
At the information desk, he said, “I’m looking for Devina Avale.”
The hundred-and-twelve-year-old blue-hair manning the station smiled up at him so warmly, he felt like an asshole for reducing her to nothing but her age.
“Let me find her room for you.”
As her twiglike fingers did a hunt and a peck over the keyboard, he thought of how much faster his own had been back at his apartment. He’d figured the name Devina was unusual enough in the modeling trade that if he Googled it on his laptop, he’d find Vin’s girlfriend—and what do you know, it wasn’t tough. Although she went by her first name in her professional trade, she and Vin had been photographed together at a fund-raiser for the Caldwell Courier Journal about six months ago, and there it was, Avale.
“She’s in twelve fifty-three.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a little bow.
“You are so welcome. Just go up on those elevators by the gift shop.”
He nodded and strode over to the lifts. There were a bunch of people waiting in a group, all of whom were tracking the little number displays over the three doors, and he joined the fray.
Seemed to be a race between the one all the way on the right and the one in the middle.
The center elevator won, and he piled in with the rest of the people, joining the scramble of reach arounds as he punched in his floor and then oriented himself facing the digital number readout above. Bing. Bing. Bing. Doors opened. People shuffled. Bing. Doors opened. More shuffling.
He got out on twelve and did not say anything to anyone at the nurses’ station. It had been easy to get this far, maybe too easy, and he wasn’t volunteering for any bottlenecks. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise him to find a CPD uni outside 1253…but there wasn’t. There also weren’t any family or friends milling around the closed door.
He knocked softly and leaned in. “Devina?”
“Jim?” came the quiet voice. “Hold on a minute.”
As he waited, he glanced up and down the corridor. A cleaning cart was parked in between Devina’s and the room next door, and an upright cupboard on wheels was coming down toward him—which given the smell of wax beans and hamburgers as it passed, meant it was lunch. Nurses were walking here, there, and everywhere, and down at the far end, a patient was taking baby steps in his johnny, his hand on his IV pole.
Looked like he was taking the thing out for a walk so it could pee on the doorjambs.
“Okay, come in.”
He stepped into a dim room that was exactly as his had been: beige, stark, and dominated by the hospital bed in the middle. Across the way, the curtain that was drawn against the daylight was moving ever so slightly, as if she had closed it—maybe so he couldn’t get a clearer picture of her face.
Which was a mess.
So much so, he paused for a moment. Her beautiful features were distorted by swelling on the cheeks, chin, and eyes; her lip was split open; and the purple bruising on her pale skin was like a stain on a wedding gown—ugly and tragic.
“It’s that bad, isn’t it,” she said, raising a shaking hand to shield herself.
“Jesus…Christ. Are you okay?”
“I will be, I think. They held me over because I have a concussion.” As she tugged up the thin blanket that covered her, Jim eagle-eyed her hands. No bruising on the knuckles.
Which meant she didn’t do this to herself and didn’t—or more likely couldn’t—fight back.
Staring at her, Jim felt his resolve shift around like it was trying to find level ground. What if…no, Vin couldn’t have done this.
Could he?
“I’m so sorry,” Jim murmured, sinking down onto the corner of the bed.
“I shouldn’t have told him about you and me….” She snapped a Kleenex out of a box and carefully dabbed under her eyes. “But my conscience was killing me and I…didn’t expect this. He broke off the engagement, too.”
Jim frowned, thinking last he’d heard, the plan had been for the guy to break up with her. “He asked you to marry him?”
“That’s why I had to tell him. He got down on one knee and asked me…and I said yes, but then I had to tell him what had happened.” Devina sat forward and gripped his forearm. “I’d stay awa
y from him. For your sake. He’s furious.”
Thinking back on the guy’s expression when he’d been talking about Devina’s blue dress smelling like another man’s cologne, it wasn’t hard to imagine that was true. But there were parts of this situation that just didn’t compute—although it was hard to think like that, looking at Devina’s face…and her arm.
Which had a series of bruises that formed the shape of a man’s hand.
“When are they letting you out of here?” he asked.
“Probably this afternoon. God, I hate that you’re seeing me like this.”
“I’m the last person you should worry about.”
There was a silence. “Can you believe where we ended up?” she said softly.
No. On so many levels. “You got family coming to pick you up?”
“They’re due here around one when I’m supposed to be discharged. They’re really concerned.”
“I can understand why.”
“The thing is, part of me wants to see him. I want to…talk this through. I just don’t know…. And before you judge, I’m aware of how bad that sounds. I should just walk away, put as much distance as I can between us. But I can’t let go that easily. I love him.”
The defeat in her was as hard to bear as the condition she was in, and Jim took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so damned sorry.”
She squeezed his palm. “You are such a good friend.”
There was a sharp knock and then a nurse came in. “How’re we doing?”
“I’d better go,” Jim said. As he got to his feet, he nodded to the nurse and refocused on Devina. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Can I have your number? Just in case…I don’t know…”
He gave her the digits, said another good-bye, and took off.
As he left the ward, he felt the way he had on many of his military missions: Conflicting information, incomprehensible actions, unpredictable choices…he’d seen it all before, with only the vocabulary of names and locations changing.
