He stared down at her trembling lips, at the lush press of her breasts against his chest in the low cut tank top. “Oh, I think maybe fucking you hard for about six hours would take the edge off.”
She recoiled so violently, she broke his grip and stumbled back. “You pig! I’m not the only one who lobs grenades. Get out. Go!”
She shoved the door open, shooed Mikey in. She tried to slam the door in Davy’s face, but he blocked it with his foot. “Wait,” he said.
“For what? To get insulted again?” She kicked at his boot with the tip of her high-tops. “Get your enormous foot out of my house and get lost. Permanently. Asshole.” Her voice shook with anger.
He leaned on the door and forced it open slowly against her weight. “Margot, don’t. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She made a helpless, frustrated sound as he stepped into her house. He caught her in two steps, pulling her tight against his body, and pressed his lips against her neck. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Then stop acting scary!” she yelled. “Let go of me!”
His arms tightened, involuntarily. “Forgive me first.”
“Yeah, and what liberties does that entitle you to? Besides, you wouldn’t forgive me when I apologized.”
“Yours wasn’t a real apology. It was bullshit. But I’ll forgive you if you forgive me,” he offered.
“Oh. So we’re back to economic exchanges. I give you this, you give me that. Stop muscling me around, you big…stupid…ape!”
“Margot. Please. I’m bending over backwards here. If you—”
“No, you’re bending me over frontwards, you oversexed moron. Stop it this instant.” She batted at his arms, still locked around her. “OK, fine! I forgive you! Now let go of me! Now! I mean it, buddy.”
He let his arms drop. He was irrationally afraid to let go, as if she would vanish into the dark if he dared to relax his grip. He flipped on the hall overhead light to chase the menacing shadows away.
He felt the change instantly. His photographic memory had stamped every detail of the place into his brain. Something was missing.
The flower fairy calendar. The nail it had hung on stuck out of the scarred wall, empty. He looked into her bedroom. The light spilling in from the hall revealed that her bedding was gone. Nothing was on the floor but her crumpled waitress uniform. He strode into the room and yanked open her closet. Empty. He pulled open her drawer. Nothing.
The rage that had just started to simmer down bubbled back up again. He turned to face her. “Going somewhere?”
Her face tightened miserably. “Davy—”
“Nice of you to say goodbye.” The words felt bitter in his mouth.
She hugged her chest. “We’ve known each other for twenty-four hours,” she said. “You’re acting like you’ve got a say in my life.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t have any say. Believe me, I know that.”
It was just like with Fleur, he realized, sickened. He’d fallen into the same fucking trap. Fleur had been dead set on destroying herself. Nothing could stop her from it. Certainly not him.
Fury was giving way to misery, a feeling so huge and dark, it horrified him. He’d built a fortress inside himself to guard against this feeling, and Margot Vetter blew it full of holes without even trying.
It was dragging him down. The awful futility of trying to save someone when there was no saving them. No point. No hope.
Stuck in three feet of snow, tires spinning while Dad roared useless instructions and Mom got paler and paler as the life drained out of her.
Oh, no. Not this. Not now. Please, not now.
His small, white hands clutching the wheel, stretching his foot out desperately to reach the clutch.
Blood all over the seat, the floor, the gearshift. Blood everywhere.
Oh, Christ, make it stop. It had been years, and now was not the time for it to start up again. He pressed his hands against his eyes until they hurt, red and black alternately pulsing in his inner vision, and deliberately replacing the stress flashback with emptiness.
Calm, blank, zero. The blinding white emptiness of the North Pole, the frigid black emptiness of outer space. Codes, numbers, logic.
Slowly, it eased down, and he started breathing again. His heart was still tripping over itself, his face damp and cold.
He let his hands drop, but he couldn’t bear to open his eyes for a long moment. He felt exhausted. And ashamed. The woman had enough problems of her own. It wasn’t fair to burden her with his demons, too.
“Forget about it,” he said dully. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
Her eyes were very big. “It’s OK,” she said cautiously. “I—”
“Don’t.” The word came out of him with a savage force that made her flinch. He put his hands up. “Please. I don’t want to hear it. I’m gone. I won’t bother you again. Good luck with…with whatever.”
She was crying again, and it was his fault, but he had no comfort left to give. He walked past her without looking at her.
He saw it gleaming in the porch light as soon as he jerked the door open. It swung back and forth off the bottom of the clanking wind chimes. The golden snake pendant. Not his business, not his problem, but it was just too unexpectedly weird not to comment upon. He turned back.
“Did you put that snake thing out there on your wind chimes?”
Margot lunged at the door with a gasp. She stopped short, clutching the door frame for support. Her face went dead white.
Faris’s blood buzzed with killing euphoria, and a good thing, too, because Pantani’s dead weight was hard to handle. It took all Faris’s considerable strength to heave, wrestle and fold the corpse into the smallish freezer. It was doable, though. Every bone in the man’s body was shattered, which rendered him uniquely flexible, despite his bulk.
The trailing smear of blood that led to the freezer was seeded with hairs and carpet fibers from McCloud’s house. The whiskey bottle and shot glasses with McCloud’s prints on them were the perfect final touch.
Faris felt much better now. All the pent-up frustrations of the past months had gone into this. The frozen pizzas, ice cream bars, steaks and plastic baggies of various recreational drugs were all melting together into a soggy mess across the bloody kitchen floor.
His cell phone vibrated. Marcus. Faris peeled a hand out of the bloody plastic glove, his heart speeding. If Marcus knew what he was up to, he would be furious. No matter how careful Faris was, Marcus preferred to pilot his brother’s kills personally. “Yes?” he responded.
“I have a new job for you,” his brother said.
Tears of relief welled into Faris’s eyes. Marcus wasn’t calling to punish him this time. At least not yet. “I’m ready,” he said.
“Driscoll’s out of the picture now. Priscilla’s got a new lab director. He’s arriving in Seattle tonight. Are you paying attention?”
“Yes, yes,” Faris assured him. “Tell me. I’ll repeat it back to you.”
“Good,” Marcus murmured. “Very good, Faris.”
Marcus explained what he needed. Faris recorded every word, just as he’d learned to do in the memory exercises they’d conducted when he was a little kid. Marcus had taught Faris how to expand his memory capacity. Marcus had used electric shocks when Faris was forgetful back in the old days, but Faris didn’t need shocks to remember things now. He repeated every detail back to Marcus when he finished.
“You have to come home immediately,” Marcus said afterwards. “We have to step up the pace. Priscilla is leaving this week, and she’s anxious to see you back on your choke chain.”
“Bitch,” Faris muttered. “Why you won’t let me just—”
“Because my plan is much more profitable.” Marcus’s voice was stern. “My plan is to destroy her and make hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Think bigger, Faris. You’re too focused.”
Faris looked down at the blood-soaked rubber glov
e. He giggled. “I suppose. But I would love to make her bleed.”
“Have you been making unauthorized kills for your own enjoyment, Faris?” Marcus’s voice turned suspicious.
Faris shrank into his bulky plastic raincoat. Marcus always knew. Sometimes Faris lay awake at night wondering if Marcus was a mind reader. All knowing. Like Santa Claus. Making his list and checking it twice, and Faris was always the naughty one. Always punished.
He dragged in a breath and held it inside himself to keep from whimpering, an old trick from when he was little. “I’m being careful.”
“Careful’s not good enugh,” Marcus said. “I’ve been putting together this plan for years. Remember all the time and money that has gone into it when you go off on your selfish tangents.”
Faris’s killing euphoria drained away at the rebuke in Marcus’s voice. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a tiny little boy voice.
“So you should be. Speaking of sorry, have you made any progress with the Callahan woman?”
“I’m monitoring her,” Faris said hastily. “I have a plan.”
“You haven’t even taken her yet?” Marcus’s voice took on that soft tone that made Faris’s bowels loosen. “Faris, you idiot. If we don’t get that mold before Priscilla leaves, you know what will happen. Failure.”
“Failure is unacceptable.” Faris’s voice was almost robotic.
“Get her tonight, either before or after you take care of Haight. I don’t care which, as long as you don’t let her wander away like a stray cat the way you did last time. Tonight. And bring her to me. Instantly.”
“Tonight,” Faris repeated obediently. “I won’t fail. I’ll get her.”
“If I don’t hear Callahan’s voice on your cell phone tonight, I will conclude that you’re not fit for this job. I’ve already mobilized LeRoy and Karel. They can handle Callahan, if you can’t. She’s very beautiful, isn’t she? They will be enthusiastic to do their part in convincing her to collaborate. Karel in particular, I’m sure. He’s a man of appetite, hmm?”
The thought of those filthy, hateful goons putting their hairy paws on his angel made him panic. “But you can’t! Karel and LeRoy are—”
“Do not contradict me,” Marcus said. “Get to work.”
The cell phone clicked shut. Faris gulped back a rush of bile in his throat. He rocked back and forth until he calmed down enough to register the taste in his mouth. Bitter, metallic. Blood and plastic.
His own bloody thumb, still encased in the plastic glove, was stuck into his mouth. He was sucking on it.
Chapter
12
Margot found herself flat on her butt. Her head spun in great, swooping curves like a nightmare amusement park ride. The golden disk swung lazily. Winking. Turning. Twirling in the breeze as the wind chimes clanked their hollow, horror flick theme song.
“…is it, Margot? Come on, breathe. What is it about the necklace?” Davy’s voice penetrated the blanket of roaring in her ears.
She reached out, grabbed his hand. His long, warm fingers closed tightly around hers. “I pawned that thing today.” Her voice came out in a wispy croak. “Before my gym classes. Sixty bucks. He robbed me, but I would have practically paid him to take it off me.” She tried to swallow. Her throat bumped and scratched. “It’s chasing me.”
Davy steadied her as she struggled to her feet. She reached out to stop its sickening, hypnotic swing, but Davy stopped her hand.
“It might have prints on it,” he said gently. “Let it be.”
She let her hand drop. Davy slid his arm around her waist, and she leaned into him gratefully.
“Why do you hate the necklace, Margot?”
“Long story,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I bet it is,” he said. “The time has come to tell it to me.”
Margot scanned the inky darkness that lay beyond the pool of light shed by the porch bulb. “He could be watching us.”
Davy pulled her inside and shut the door. “Let me get this straight. You pawned the necklace today. Your secret admirer bought it back, and attached it to your wind chimes. Right?”
She nodded. Her teeth had begun to chatter.
“So we’ve got a lead,” he said. “That’s good news. The pawnshop will be closed by now, though. We’ll have to go talk to the guy tomorrow.”
“I think I have his cell number,” Margot said. “He wrote it on the receipt while he was trying to flirt with me.” She fished in her jeans pocket and pulled out a crumpled sales slip. Bart Wilkes was scrawled on it, a cell phone number written beneath, heavily underlined.
Davy pulled out his own phone and dialed the number. Margot reached out for it. “He’s more liable to talk to me than to you.”
He handed her the phone without comment. She listened to it ring. Ten, twelve…eighteen times. “Not picking up,” she said.
“Let’s try the phone book. There can’t be too many guys named Bart Wilkes in greater Seattle.”
He was in the book, but the phone just rang. Margot scribbled down the Central District address listed in the phone book. “I’m going to his house,” she said. “I’ll hang out until he comes home. I can’t wait.”
Davy looked for a moment like he was about to argue, and then he nodded. “I’ll drive you.”
She was so dazed, it didn’t occur to her to argue. She picked up Mikey and headed out the door with a shuffling zombie gait.
Davy followed her a moment later with a plastic freezer bag he’d found in her kitchen. He detached the pendant, careful to touch only the chain, and dropped it into the bag. “Try not to handle this,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ll see if I can get somebody to run prints on it.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.” She dropped it into her purse with a shudder of disgust and followed him out to the truck.
The flat quality of the silence in the truck inhibited her. She fished around for a loose end, a thread that might lead her into the story, but every thread led to such a complicated tangle. There was no good starting place, no clear middle. And no end in sight.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
His tone gave her something to react against. “Don’t you give me that what-is-the-meaning-of-this-report-card-young-lady tone—”
“This is now officially my business,” he said. “If you don’t want me to go to the police, cooperate with me. Right now.”
His flinty glance underscored how serious he was. She slid her fingers into Mikey’s silky fur for comfort, and grabbed the first random thread that came to her head. “Nine months ago, I was seeing this guy, Craig Caruso,” she began. “He was a researcher in a biometrics firm.”
“Biometrics. Physical ID? Fingerprints, retina scans, that stuff?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was hired to revamp the Krell Biometrics web site, to make it more modern and edgy. That’s where I met him.”
“So that’s what you did for a living,” he said. “Web design.”
“I never told you that?”
“You never told me anything.” His voice was faintly accusing.
Margot stared down into her lap. “Oh. Well, anyhow. Things went relatively well for a while, and then they got strange.”
He made a noncommittal sound. “Strange how?”
“He got really tense and paranoid,” she said. “Started making noises about quitting his job. Said they were taking advantage of him, spying on him. He decided to break out on his own, rented a space and everything. Then one day I came home early from a conference and found another woman’s panties in my bed.” She rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her arms. “So off I go, to Craig’s new studio, to tell him what a worm he was, and he…” She blew out a sharp breath. “I found him hanging from the ceiling, dripping blood. Stuck full of needles.”
He glanced at her. “Whoa,” he said quietly. “That’s severe.”
“Mandi, his assistant, was lying on the floor, half naked. Maybe dead already. I took one step towards Craig, and then, pow. Nothing.”<
br />
He frowned. “What do you mean, nothing?”
She fought down the nausea in her belly. “Meaning that I woke up in a motel room, hours later. Stark naked.”
He made a sound like he’d been dashed with ice water.
“My head was pounding. I’d been drugged,” she went on dully. “I found my clothes on a chair. My purse was there, minus the gun—”
“What the hell were you doing with a gun?” he demanded.
She winced. “It was so stupid. Craig had given it to me. I hated the thing. I was planning to give it back to him when I dumped him, but…well, anyhow. I put my clothes on and stumbled out to ask the front desk who had booked that room. They had no record of anyone checking in. As far as they knew, the room was empty. Nobody had seen this guy. Nobody had written down a name, or given him a key. I was carried up there and stripped naked by a ghost.”
“Weird.” His voice was thoughtful.
Her laughter had a bitter, crazy edge. “Hah. It gets worse. I called Dougie, my receptionist. He was hysterical. He’d gotten worried after a few hours, so he went to Craig’s studio. He found the bodies, poor guy. They’d been shot, many times, at close range. He called the cops.”
“And?”
She stared at her hands, twisted into Mikey’s fur. “They asked him lots of pointed questions about my relationship with Craig. Asked about Craig’s infidelities. If I had a gun. If I was hot-tempered. Dougie’s a smart boy. He told me to watch out. That they thought I’d killed them.” She covered her face. “Me. As if I were capable of slaughtering two people. God. I cried for a week when I had to put my cat down.”
She waited for some kind of cue from him. None was forthcoming.
She took a deep breath and forged on. “So that’s it. I panicked. I ran. From the cops, from whoever framed me and took my clothes off me and put me in that room, from everyone. I stopped at a branch of my bank, wrote a check to cash, took out all my money. And that was the end of Mag Callahan. Maybe it was cowardly, but I was so scared.”
Out of Control Page 14
