Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  God, she was an idiot. With the memory of the shot, the final moments on top of the Stratosphere came back to her now. Benton cradling Rosalind. Rosalind clinging to him, sobbing on his shoulder.

  There could be no Imogen and Benton, she understood. Even if he wanted it—even if—how could she take him from a woman who had suffered that? Rosalind deserved him.

  Even if.

  Every time he looked at her, Imogen knew, he would have to see the woman who could have spared Rosalind suffering if she’d been just a little bit smarter. Just a little better.

  The answer had been in front of her the whole time and she hadn’t seen it. The whole time. It had been so easy, just like with Sam at the hospice, and she’d failed. She hadn’t understood.

  “The place was mined,” Bugsy told her, like a mind reader. “The room where he was keeping Rosalind at the Garden. If we had gotten there earlier, it would have gone up, taking a lot of lives with it.”

  Imogen shook her head for him to stop. She stared at the little blue flowers on the thin hospital blanket.

  “It’s true, boss.”

  She pinned Bugsy with her eyes. “Stop,” she croaked at him. “No lies.”

  She spent the rest of the afternoon sitting up in the bed staring at the wall in front of her. Bugsy read her the cards that came with all her flowers. Irwin and Kathleen Bright, Lex and Elgin (the small ones), the director of the FBI, Clive Ross from Florida, the Boston Police Department, the Greenways with a drawing by Billy, Julia and Little Ugly, even J.D. Nothing from Benton.

  The next day, she could speak.

  The day after that, with a bandage on her throat, she was discharged. She walked to the door of the room Benton and Rosalind were sharing. Standing outside, she could hear their laughter. Rosalind’s laughter. Her son, Jason, had flown in from Costa Rica and was sleeping on the floor of the room, Bugsy had told Imogen. Like one big family.

  She stood and looked through the glass panel in the window. She watched for five minutes. None of them turned toward her. They really were a family. There was no place for her there.

  She walked away.

  Chicken! a voice in her head said, but this time she ignored it and kept walking.

  CHAPTER 91

  Irwin and Kathleen Bright’s house

  Kauai, Hawaii, two weeks later

  Imogen sat with her arms around her knees on the sand and stared at the reflection of the half-moon on the ocean. It was her last night in Hawaii. Her plane ticket had her routed through Chicago, where she planned to spend a few days with Irwin and Kathleen Bright. After that, she had no idea what she was doing.

  She knew what she wasn’t doing, though. She was not going back to the FBI.

  Irwin had managed to keep her phone number on the island a secret, but Elgin had used him as a conduit for his messages. For his bribes. Every day the ante went up. Her own office. Her own title. A promotion above Lex. She knew Elgin was actually serious when he offered her an expensive desk chair. And permission to bring her fish to work.

  Like she’d ever subject Rex to that.

  That morning Irwin had called with Elgin’s biggest bait yet—a raise. But not even an extra five cents an hour (seven and a half during overtime, he made Irwin stress) was enough to make her take her old job back. There were better ways to earn a living than by dealing with death.

  Her mind kept playing over the decision, but she knew it was not because she wasn’t sure. It was because there were other decisions she should be rethinking. Harder decisions.

  Behind her, in the house, the phone started ringing. It was nearly midnight, which meant that was Irwin calling to wish her sweet dreams. He and Kathleen had been acting like overprotective parents since she had finished the Loverboy case. While she chastised them and made fun of them, she had to admit she sort of liked it. Sort of liked having someone taking care of her.

  She walked slowly to the house, but by the time she reached the porch the ringing had stopped. It was an incredibly still, peaceful night. In the far distance she heard the rumble of traffic, the whine of one moped, then another. Someone must be having a party. Closer by, the rustle of the leaves of a hibiscus plant.

  A hand banging on her front door pierced the stillness.

  Knock, knock.

  She tensed, then relaxed as she remembered. Jackie, the Brights’ caretaker, was supposed to stop by that night to get the keys from her before her early flight.

  “Jackie? I’m around the back.”

  No answer. Again, knock, knock.

  Imogen’s instincts flamed to life. Her mouth filled with licorice.

  “Who’s there?” she called, the words of the joke out of her mouth before she realized it.

  “Ben,” a male voice answered.

  Imogen could not move. It couldn’t be. He—

  “Ben who?” she asked silently pulling the back door closed.

  Cal dropped from the ceiling right in front of her. “Ben waiting a long time to kill you, Imogen.”

  Imogen’s fist came up and he caught it and twisted. Pain shot through her body like fire. “Miss me?” he asked, grabbing her other hand and holding them together by the wrists. He pulled her close to him. “Ah, Imogen, I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you. Boy oh boy, do you make me feel happy.”

  Imogen watched his face. In the moonlight he looked even younger, even more like a deranged boy. “What are you doing here?”

  “Gee, Imogen, I wonder. Either I came for a late, romantic dinner. Or I came to kill you.” He grinned at her. “Or, possibly, both.”

  She kept staring at him. She felt both terrified and calm. “I’m afraid I don’t have any food in the house.”

  He looked her up and down. “I’d say you’re wrong.”

  STAY CALM, her head screamed. “You—you are supposed to be dead.”

  His grin broadened. “No, silly. YOU are supposed to be dead. And now you will be. See?” He held up a huge knife.

  Calm calm calm calm. “But how did you—”

  “Survive?” He chortled. “You did not really think I’d throw myself off that building, did you? Ugh, too icky. After all that? I could have escaped a hundred times if I’d wanted to.”

  It was true, Imogen realized. “Whose body was that?”

  “Wrightly’s, of course. Nobody missed him, not even Rosalind. He started to get all suspicious of me, wouldn’t leave me alone. He claimed one day he thought I smelled like Rosalind’s perfume. He was a weirdo. So I got rid of him. I dressed up like a window washer and hooked him to the side of the Stratosphere until I needed him, using Benton’s rock-climbing gear. It looked really cool. Too bad you didn’t see. The way I did it, it really seemed like it was me falling when all the time I was holding on to the steel ladder on the side. Oh, I also had to put his body in one of those Western Linen Service outfits, like the one I was wearing. You know, you can go anywhere in any hotel in the city if you’re dressed like you’re in maintenance of some kind. The customer’s comfort is number one. Got to keep everything running smoothly. Yep, Vegas is a great town.”

  His eyes looked strange, hollow, and he kept licking his lips.

  A late romantic dinner, he’d said.

  Imogen swallowed hard. CALM! she repeated to herself. Keep him talking.

  Why? What the hell will that do?

  I DON’T KNOW JUST KEEP HIM TALKING.

  “How did you find me here?” she asked.

  “Professional secret. I bet you could figure it out if you put your mind to it. But you’d better hurry. Because I am here to put your mind to rest.” The knife came up and the point pierced her forehead. He leaned into it, adding pressure. “For good.”

  Imogen ordered herself to stop trembling. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, since I didn’t get to dismember Rosalind, I thought I might dismember you. I mean, if remembering means living in the past, then dismembering has to mean erasing the past, right? And I want to erase the past. I want a Fre
sh Start. Like the laundry detergent. And you’re going to give it to me.” The knife moved from her forehead, down to the tip of her nose. “I am thinking six main pieces. You know, head, two arms, two legs, torso, like in Hangman. But there are lots of smaller ones we have to get rid of before you die. Like, have you noticed that the hangman guy has no face?” He drew a circle with the knife around her lips, twice. “Or hands?”

  His eyes followed the point of the knife as he moved it down her throat and along her arm, as if fascinated by the occasional dot of blood it summoned to the surface of the skin. “Blood looks so cool in moonlight, doesn’t it?” he said. Imogen, assuming it was a rhetorical question, did not reply. “I think I’ll have to kill you outside. That way I can really see it good.”

  The point of the knife came to rest on the inside of Imogen’s right wrist. “This looks like a good starting place. We’ll cut this one off and let the blood leave a trail outside. Like Hansel and Gretel!” His eyes swiveled to Imogen’s fast. “Are you ready?”

  NOW! her mind screamed.

  “Yes,” she said. She jerked her wrists up and the knife skidded away. Instinctively, Cal went for it, leaning sideways, and instinctively she kicked him in the shin. For an instant his grip on her wrists loosened and she pulled her hands from him, swinging with both fists. She aimed for his nose but connected with something harder—chin? shoulder? She heard the crack of a bone, did not stop, flew to the back door.

  She was out on the porch, running down the beach. The closest neighbors were a quarter of a mile away, and they might not even be there, but that did not matter. All that mattered was getting away, running as hard and fast and far as she could.

  Don’t stop! her mind screamed.

  It was dark and she nearly fell twice, tripping over rocks that hid in the shadowy indentations of the sand. Her heart was pounding and the wound on her neck began to throb. Over the sound of the blood pounding in her ears she heard his footfall.

  He was quicker than she was.

  Come on, Imogen.

  He was bigger than she was.

  Come on, come on, Imogen! You can do this—

  He was coming up on her fast. She sprinted forward, pushing herself as hard as she could go. Come on, come on—

  She tripped on a piece of driftwood and went flying facedown into the sand.

  “Ha, ha!” he panted behind her.

  COME ON!

  She scrambled up, skidded, got her feet under her. His hand closed around her ankle.

  She fell face-first into the sand again. His palm shoved the back of her head down into it, hard. She started to choke, spluttering sand.

  “That wasn’t nice, Imogen,” he said, settling himself on the small of her back. He weighed at least twice what she did. Her arms and legs flailed but he sat there, unmoved. “You look like some freaky fish, Gigi,” he said. “I can call you that, right? Gigi? That’s what the people closest to you call you.”

  She gagged on the sand in her mouth.

  “Good, I’m glad we agree on that. Well, here we are. I’d say it’s time to get started.” The knife came to rest against her neck. “If you don’t stop flopping around, Gigi, you’re going to get cut.”

  The metallic smell of the knife made Imogen gag again. She stopped moving.

  “You know, it is really nice here. Under the stars like this with you. I forgot how nice it was to be with you.” The knife traced a little heart shape on her cheek. “You’re really great, Gigi. Know how much I like you? I like you so much that I read the play that your name is from. The Shakespeare one? Cymbeline.” He slid the knife up and down against her neck, from her ear to her collarbone, as he spoke, and Imogen was sure he was watching the way the moonlight reflected in the blade. “Yep. I read Shakespeare for you. That’s a lot of liking. Anyway, you know how in the play there is that servant who has orders to kill the princess Imogen? But he only pretends to, and he takes back some souvenir from her body but really leaves her alive?”

  “That’s not exactly how the play goes,” Imogen said, spluttering sand.

  “Close enough. Anyway, I’m thinking, what if we did it that way?”

  Imogen’s head turned as far as she could toward him. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “I could just take something small from you, like, say, this”—the knifepoint bit into her pinkie, withdrew—“to send to Professor Kidd, sort of as a thank-you present for all her help. Pinkies have so many uses, particularly in an all-female prison ward. And then I could leave you alive. That way you could live happily ever after.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Hunting for me before I kill again.”

  “You are going to leave me alive?”

  “It would be so exciting, wouldn’t it? So dramatic? Me roaming the earth killing people. You roaming the earth after me. Who is the hunter and who is the prey? Ooh, it gives me chills. I just might do it. I think I could be persuaded to do it. If only—” His voice trailed off.

  Imogen coughed out more sand. She asked, “If only what?”

  “IF ONLY I WAS A FUCKING IDIOT!” Loverboy tipped his head back and laughed. “But I’m not. So I’m going to kill you. I just wanted to get your heart beating faster so there would be more blood. Now, which of the extra pieces do you want to eat first, Imogen? Your fingers or your ears? Because I really don’t want to have to deal with a lot of cleanup, so you’ll have to chip in and do your part.” He shoved her face hard into the sand and said, “What? What? You have to speak up. Did you say your ear?”

  The tiny ping registered somewhere deep in Imogen’s mind, like something from a dream. It couldn’t be, she told herself. She fought to keep breathing, unwilling to let herself believe as the point of the knife came to rest against her earlobe. This was it, she knew. It was over. She braced herself for the pain, for the feel of her own blood trickling down her cheek.

  The world in front of her exploded with bright light. For three seconds she lay stunned on the ground seeing—

  black and golden sand two clear sand crabs a piece of green sea glass the cross section of a driftwood twig a sand fly alighting a rainbow refracted

  —nothing. Then as the lag of the flash-bang grenade faded, Cal’s body dropped over her, thud. The point of his knife dug into her shoulder. She struggled to turn over, to wriggle away, but Cal’s arms closed around her, hugging him to her.

  “You are mine,” he repeated over and over, his teeth gnashing her ear. “You are my girlfriend, Imogen. You are mine only—”

  The sentence ended in another thud and a groan. His arms loosened and Imogen dragged herself from him. Without looking back, without asking what had happened, she started to run. Don’t stop, she told herself, keep going get away must get—

  “Imogen,” a voice panted to her left. “Imogen, stop. Imogen, please stop. It’s me. IMOGEN!”

  She turned her head and through her tears she saw a black hood being pushed down. Saw a set of night-vision goggles being thrown aside. Saw a face, a pair of shoulders, a pair of arms. She hesitated for a moment, not daring to let herself believe it. Then she threw herself into them and said, “Benton, thank God you are here.”

  CHAPTER 92

  Five hours later they sat on her terrace and watched the sun start to come up. The smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken still floated on the air. The SWAT operation had been a success. Cal, injured but alive, was on his way to Oahu by helicopter. Imogen was safe.

  Elgin and Lex had been trying to sort out the implications of the report that had landed on their desks the previous morning, which said the body that had fallen from the Stratosphere was not the body that had given Marielle Wycliffe her hickey, when Kathleen Bright called. She had just realized that Lex should send the envelope he had for Imogen to her house, she explained, rather than to the address in Hawaii she’d given his assistant, because Imogen was leaving the next day.

  Only Lex did not have an assistant anymore.

  Benton had already been in Hawaii for four days looking for
Imogen when he got J.D.’s call. By the time the SWAT team was assembled and flying out of Honolulu, Benton was on it.

  But all of that was over. The last of the operational team had gone. The KFC buckets were stacked in a corner. Imogen and Benton were alone.

  Now came the hard part. They faced each other across the tiny drinks table. They did not touch. They were both looking at their hands.

  Imogen exhaled a big breath. She said, “Before this gets difficult, I want you to know that I understand. You don’t have to feel bad. It is fine with me. We—we don’t even have to talk about it.”

  Benton glanced from his hands to her face. “Oh. Good. I thought we should. But since we don’t have to—” He shook his head, looking incredulous. “Imogen, I don’t even know what you are talking about. What do you understand? What don’t I have to feel bad about?” He put up a hand. “You know what? I don’t even care about that. I just want to know why you left. Why you walked out of my goddamned life without saying good-bye.”

  His fist hit the table, startling Imogen.

  “Are you angry?”

  He stared at her, aghast. “I don’t know what I am. Yes, I’m angry. But even more, I am hurt. I thought you—you wanted to be with me. Wanted to see if we could have something together. And instead, you just left.”

  “You had Rosalind. She needed you. And after what she suffered, she certainly deserved you.”

  “I am not a prize to be won at a carnival, Imogen.”

  “But I heard all of you together. I came to your room and I heard you laughing and saw all of you sitting together. Happy, like a family. You love her and she loves you and the three of you, with Jason, you are a family. A real family.” She paused. Said, with feeling, “I was afraid to get in the middle of that. To ruin it.”

  “Is that really what you were afraid of?”

  Imogen bit her lip.

  Benton nodded. “You are right. We were happy to be together. Ecstatic. Are you kidding? After what Rosalind had gone through, after what she had survived? The only other choice was to dwell on it. To make her think about how horrible it had been. Yes, we were happy. Plus, we had a lot to talk about. And do you know what our favorite topic was? The one we returned to all the time?” He stopped speaking until she looked at him. “We talked about you, Imogen. About how great it would be when we could all be together. When you and Rosalind could get to know each other. She talked about how holding your hand during those last minutes on the Stratosphere gave her so much comfort. Julia told stories that made you sound like you leaped buildings and ate bad guys for breakfast. Every day we asked when we could see you and they said the next day and we waited. We even wrote a knock-knock joke for when we came to your room. And then one day we asked if we could see you. And they said you’d left.”