The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  He looked down at his chest and thought about what he’d found in that jar.

  Ever since he had started on the drugs, there had been few moments of clarity for him and that was the point. Now, however, a thought occurred to him that was so crystal clear, he was momentarily unfamiliar with the cognitive anomaly.

  Not it.

  This was not fucking it. He still had no solid memory of exactly how he had found himself in this condition, remote-controlled by a third party he’d never met, lost in the familiar streets of Caldwell, chasing after echoes of what was inside himself in the shadows. But he knew exactly what to do about it.

  Bending into his thighs, he jumped from the ground, his body propelled up the face of the wall sure as if he had been spring-loaded and set free. Gripping onto the top lip, he swung his legs over as if he were a trained stuntman, and the loose fall on the other side was longer than he would have guessed.

  Jesus, he must have jumped up twenty-five feet or more.

  Mr. F landed on the far side without breaking any bones in his feet or stressing his knees. And as he started to run again, he had endless reserve.

  For a moment, he debated pulling a Forrest Gump and just going west on an endless trail of asphalt.

  But he didn’t do that. He headed down for the river, to the bridges. To where he belonged.

  He knew exactly what he had to do.

  * * *

  When the man in leather leaned down toward Jo, she assumed he was going to take a bite of the Slim Jim she was chewing her way through. So as he tilted his head, she went to move the jerky up. But that was not where things went.

  His lips found hers without any hesitation on his part—and holy crap, she accepted the kiss without any hesitation on hers. FFS, she should pull back. Push him away. Get out of here now.

  She did none of those things.

  But she did move. She likewise tilted her head, slightly to the left… so that the kiss became more complete. And as his mouth moved against her own, her senses became hyper-aware, although not to the hard counter under her seat, or the musty smells of the cast-aside kitchen, or the sounds of more sirens passing them by.

  No, she was all about the velvet brush of an intimate part of him against an intimate part of her. And also about the size of his shoulders, so big that she couldn’t see past the heft of him. And then there was that cologne that he maintained wasn’t a cologne, and the fact that she knew he was fully aroused. Just by this kiss.

  When his tongue licked its way into her, she readily gave him what he wanted—because she wanted it, too, to the point where she had to try to keep a greedy moan from rising up her throat.

  Yes, that kind of thing needed to stay put. Letting him know how much she was into this was a mistake—

  The moan got out.

  And as the begging sound was released into his mouth, she expected him to grab her, push her back, and tear off her jeans.

  And what do you know. She’d let him—

  The man pulled back abruptly. His pupils had dilated, the black center eating up all of whatever color there was in the irises, and there was a hard, starving cast to his features.

  Now, he was breathing heavily.

  “I like the taste of you better than anything,” he said with a growl. “And now I have to go.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “It’s not important. You have my number.”

  Actually, she didn’t. When he’d recited the digits, she hadn’t paid attention.

  As a sense of thresholding came back, Jo wondered what the hell it was about her life right now that she seemed to keep returning to this precipice theme. Everything felt like it was on the verge of something else.

  “Yes,” she lied, “I do.”

  With a nod, as if he were leaving things as he wanted them, the man strode out of the trashed kitchen. When the door into the alley closed behind him, Jo gripped the lip of the stainless steel counter and lowered her head. She needed to make herself stay here for long enough so that it was impossible for her to go after him and find him. So that he was lost to her forever. Never to cross paths again.

  It was never healthy to want someone so badly that you forgot they were a stranger.

  Especially if they were armed like that. And clearly used to evading the police.

  Plus, hello, hypnotist. Which opened up the possibility of things that… in spite of all of her blogging about the paranormal… she couldn’t believe she was even considering.

  As the sirens died down again, she wondered if the police had caught whoever it was they were looking for or whether her never-to-be lover had put another whammy on some badges.

  Lifting her eyes, she looked around. The kitchen’s messy layout was an inconclusive set of tea leaves to read her future in. But other things percolated, and she thought about that gang member.

  And what he’d said he’d seen here.

  For all the unreliability of her memory lately, there was no need to get out her phone and reread any article or blog post to refresh her recollection of the story. Here in this kitchen, when that kid had been running from the police, he had encountered something that shouldn’t have existed outside of the Halloween season—and in spite of his tough street life, he had been horrified by it enough to be incapable of speaking of anything else. Not that the authorities had cared. They’d been intent only on punishing him for the crimes he had committed. None of the felonies had stuck, however. Two had been not-guiltys and one had been tossed out on appeal.

  So he’d been free to preach to anyone who would listen about what he swore he’d witnessed here with his own two eyes.

  She wished she could contact him now. Not possible. He’d been found dead in an apartment ten blocks from here about three months ago. Suicide? Maybe. Gangbanger life catching up to him? Very likely.

  Eliminated because he was a problem that had become too noisy? Also a possibility.

  She and Bill had been trying to reach him when his body had been found.

  Jo turned her head and stared at the door to the outside. The ache at her temples and across her forehead was back and getting worse by the moment. She had plenty of Motrin at home, however, and the sirens were silent. The man in leather had been gone for a while. And the police were most likely not looking for her. Anymore.

  Because she couldn’t hear a helicopter overhead.

  Shifting herself off the countertop, she picked her way over to the exit, stepping around big dry wall buckets that—

  With a groan, she stopped and weaved on her feet. The sense that memories were trying to break through some barrier in her brain dogged her, but she was used to this. The hot flash that heated her body from the inside out was likewise utterly familiar. What was new… was the despair that swamped her mood.

  As she stepped out into the alley, and hesitated so she could double-check to make sure the police weren’t rolling up on her, she was acutely aware that there was no one waiting at her apartment for her. Nobody to call and connect to. Not a soul who she could unburden herself to.

  She had a story to tell about the night, about the man in leather, about how she was feeling, but there was no real audience for it. Even if she put it on her blog under the guise—or maybe it was more like “clickbait”—of him being otherworldly, she was just shouting into a crowd that was mostly focused on themselves. And Bill was her only friend, but they weren’t close/close, and besides, he was dealing with Lydia and the pregnancy they’d lost.

  Jo’s life was nothing but an echo chamber, hollow and dark.

  And that reality was the companion that followed her home like a stalker.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was all so deliciously familiar.

  As Mr. F crossed over the packed earth under the massive highway bridge by the river, he took the first easy breath since he had come to on the concrete floor of that building behind the outlet mall, clothed in shit that wasn’t his own, his body stiff and sore, especially inside his a
ss. He’d been confused and in bad shape, but he’d had too many other things to worry about over his health and well-being.

  First and foremost being a compulsion to go out to that house in the ’burbs.

  After which, he’d come to, standing in front of the thing.

  None of that had made any sense, but this sure as shit did.

  “Rickie,” he murmured. “What up.”

  The man in rags sitting on the cardboard pallet waved a gnarled hand at him. “Where you been?”

  “Nowhere.”

  When that was as far as it went, Mr. F was reminded of how much he liked the social rules here in Junkieland, as they called it. Nobody asked for more than you were willing to give. Part of it was respect. More of it was that everyone under the bridge was in an abusive relationship with their addiction, and wrestling with that monkey on your back took your interest in other people’s shit way down your list of things to do.

  His eyes went over to where he had always crashed. The junkie who had taken over his sleeping bag and was currently lost to a nod was a guy he recognized. The man was also wearing Mr. F’s parka, the rust-colored one with the broken zipper in front, and unless you really knew the difference between their faces, it would have been easy to mistake one of them for the other. Then again, they were brothers, though they came from different backgrounds. Interchangeable they were, their lack of proper nutrition, sleep, and healthcare stamping their features and body types with the mark of kinship. And if that guy died? Of untreated hep C or an overdose? There would be a replacement on that pallet of filthy nylon and fake feathers.

  Forcing his brain to turn over, Mr. F tried to replay what had happened to him the previous night, how things had gone so wrong. He had a hazy memory of being approached by someone he didn’t know. They’d seemed to be looking for him specifically, and he’d wondered if it wasn’t his family finally catching up to him.

  And then he’d woken up on that concrete floor in a daze, hours lost to God only knows what.

  Walking across to his space, he had to duck down as the wedge of ground rose up to meet the underside of the highway.

  The junkie in Mr. F’s spot stirred and blinked a lot. “That you, Greg? I was just looking after your shit, you know.”

  “I’m going to need it back sometime. But you can stay put now.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep it safe.”

  “Yeah.” Mr. F looked around. “So you see Chops tonight?”

  “He was here a hour ago. You looking to buy? I got some I can sell you. It’s good shit.”

  Mr. F put his hand into the pocket of the coat he did not own. “I got fifty.”

  “I can only give you half of what I got ’cuz I’ma need some soon.”

  “It’s cool.”

  As the man sat up, a whiff of body odor rose up to join the smell of urine and feces and earth. Dirty fingers rummaged through the pocket of Mr. F’s own coat, and then a single Baggie the size of a sugar packet was produced.

  Mr. F leaned down, aware of a curling anticipation in his gut and a buzzing in his head.

  The man recoiled. “Dude. You stink.”

  Fuck you, Mr. F thought.

  Their hands were quick, the transfer of cash and H fast as a blink, and with that, there was nothing else to be said. No thank-yous or goodbyes or see-you-laters. The junkie lay back down to enjoy what was left of his float on a sleeping bag that was not his own, and Mr. F walked off.

  He’d gone about a hundred yards before he realized that he didn’t have his gear. He needed a spoon, a lighter, and a couple of drops of liquid. Rage rose up at the impediment to his high, but he calmed himself down quick. With his new, super-sharp eyes, he located a used syringe and a bent-up spoon by a turned-over drum that functioned as a communal table. Then he found a discarded Bic by someone’s grocery cart of clothes and personal effects. The last piece came together as he walked up on a bottle of Poland Spring that had an inch of mud-colored liquid in it.

  The don’t-give-a-shit about sanitation or sterilization was as familiar as the landscape of homelessness. He should have cared about the needle being dirty and what the hell was in the bottom of the plastic bottle. He should have cared about the purity of the drug. He should have cared about himself.

  But he didn’t. He was only focused on what was coming, the promise of sweet relief from the screaming fear and paranoia in his head all that mattered. Everything else that wasn’t as-good-as, as-safe-as, as-smart-as, was collateral damage. Background noise. Negotiable to the point of being unimportant.

  Even if those compromises were the shit that would bite him in the ass later.

  As with all junkies, however, he borrowed against the future, going into an existential debt that didn’t have a monthly payment obligation, but rather a balloon at the end of an unknown term that very few could meet. Which was why the repo’s happened with such frequency, all those corpses piling up, the OD count growing ever higher as people entered the funnel with that first, tantalizing taste, and then got stuck in the trap, only realizing they couldn’t get out when it was too late.

  The doorstep Mr. F chose was a familiar one and it felt right to sit his ass down on its hard transom and stretch his legs out. He took a minute to enjoy the view—and by that, he wasn’t even seeing the sleeping bags and the clusters of mumblers that were now a ways off. No, he was focused on the promise of no longer feeling anything bad.

  His hands shook with excitement as he put the brown nub in the belly of the dirty spoon, poured a little soup on it, and flicked the Bic under the basin. The resulting swill was quick to its birth, but the syringe’s draw wasn’t smooth, the dried, caked-on grit inside its belly making the plunger fight its retraction. He nearly spilled everything.

  But he prevailed over the obstacles.

  When the needle was all set, he turned to the crook of his arm, and realized, as he saw that he hadn’t taken his coat off first, that he was out of practice even though he’d done this just over twenty-four hours ago. Even though he’d done this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times in the last three years. Even though this wasn’t rocket science.

  The first rule of injection efficiency was that you got your sleeve rolled. You didn’t load the needle and then have this kind of delay. But it was an easy fix. Ha-ha. He put the syringe between his teeth and shoved his sleeve up—except that didn’t work. He had been scrawny before, his body mass eaten away by priorities that didn’t include food. Now, though, he had muscles that he hadn’t noticed and that meant shoving what covered his arm up wasn’t as easy a move as it used to be.

  Mr. F ripped the jacket off, popped a vein by pumping his fist a couple of times, and pushed the needle in.

  The plunger went down fine, not that it would have mattered if he’d had to put all his newfound strength into it.

  Mr. F exhaled in relief. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and opened his senses to what was going to come. He took a deep breath. And… another one.

  Repositioning himself, shuffling back further against the door, he crossed his ankles. Uncrossed them. Recrossed them.

  Anticipation curled in his chest and flushed his face. He couldn’t wait for the rush and the float, the buzz…

  When he opened his lids back up and righted his head, he looked around, his eyes bouncing over the bundles of human flesh that were off in the distance as well as the zombies that shuffled toward the bridge and away from it.

  The fury that jumped him up to his feet was so explosive, he turned and punched the door he’d been leaning against, his fist penetrating the panel, breaking through as if the dirty stainless steel was skin. When he yanked his hand out of the hole he made, the ragged metal ripped open his own flesh.

  The blood that welled and fell was black like oil and it glistened in the low light. As it dropped off his hand and landed on the dirt at his feet, it was not absorbed into the earth.

  It sat there and seemed to stare back at him.

  * * *

 
Jo walked fast and kept her head down. She might have been raised in a WASPy household in Philly, but she was more than good with the New York self-protection code where you didn’t meet people you didn’t know in the eye, and thus made it clear that you were not interested in any trouble.

  As she went along the street, she held her purse in front of herself and kept one hand in her windbreaker’s pocket with her nine against her palm. She was very aware of how many blocks were between her and her car. Not a smart move, but then the last thing she’d thought was going to happen was her doing an after-dark 5k that took her so far away from the damn thing.

  The sound of high-heeled shoes coming at her was a surprise, and it was for that reason only that she flipped her eyes forward for a split second.

  Well. Her chance of survival just went way up. If anyone saw that package, and had to choose between hitting it over the head and Jo? Easy choice. The gorgeous brunette was wearing some kind of fancy outfit with a brilliant pink ruffle around her tiny waist and ropes of necklaces bouncing on her perfect breasts. Her legs were as long as a city street and shapely as sculpture, and there was nothing apologetic or deflecting about her stride. She strutted like the model she had to be, and to hell with the risks associated with being a 120-pound female out alone after dark.

  Then again, maybe she was hiding a whole lot of metal under that skirt—and not of the chastity belt variety, but the point-and-shoot kind.

  As they closed in on each other, Jo risked a second glance, and decided that the strut was less model-like and more like ready-to-cut-a-bitch pissed.

  Jo dropped her stare as they passed, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking over her shoulder.

  Yup, the back was as good as the front, that long, mahogany-colored hair so thick, so bouncy, so healthy, it had to be a raft of extensions. Surely no one could have all those physical attributes going for them.