Ashes to Ashes

that morning shaving his upper lip.

“Aren't you hot in that jacket?” he asked.

Angie said nothing. She was sweating like a horse, but the sleeves of her sweater were too short and didn't cover all the scars on her arms. The jacket was a necessity. If she got any money out of Kate, she was going to buy herself some clothes. Maybe something brand new and not from the Goodwill or a thrift shop.

“I'm Toni's husband—and handyman,” Urskine said. He narrowed his eyes. “I'm guessing you're Angie.”

Angie just stared at him.

“I won't tell anyone,” Urskine said in a confidential tone. “Your secret's safe with me.”

It seemed like he was making fun of her somehow. Angie decided she didn't like him, handsome or not. There was something about the eyes behind the expensive designer glasses that bothered her. Like he was looking down at her, like she was a bug or something. She wondered idly if he had ever paid a woman for sex. His wife seemed like the kind of woman who thought sex was dirty. Saving women from having to do it was Toni Urskine's mission in life.

“We're all very concerned about this case,” he went on, looking serious. “The first victim—Lila White—was a resident here for a while. Toni took it hard. She loves this place. Loves the women. Works like a trooper for the cause.”

Angie crossed her arms. “And what do you do?”

Again with the flashing smile, the nervous chuckle. “I'm an engineer at Honeywell. Currently on leave so I can help fix this place up before winter—and finally finish my master's thesis.”

He laughed like that was some kind of big joke. He didn't ask Angie what she did, even though not all of the women in this place were hookers. He was looking at her stomach, at the navel ring and tattoos revealed as her too-small sweater crept up. She cocked a hip, flashing a little more skin, and wondered if he was thinking he might want her.

He glanced back up at her. “So, they've got a good chance of catching this guy, thanks to you,” he said as a half-statement, half-question. “You actually saw him.”

“No one's supposed to know that,” Angie said bluntly. “I'm not supposed to talk about it.”

End of conversation. She ignored the closing niceties, backed away from him, then headed up the stairs. She felt Greggory Urskine's eyes on her as she went.

“Uh, good night, then,” he called as she disappeared into the darkness of the second story.

She went to the room she shared with a woman whose ex-boyfriend had held her down and cut all her hair off with a hunting knife because she refused to give him her AFDC check so he could buy crack. The woman's kids were in foster care now. The boyfriend had skipped to Wisconsin. The woman had been through drug rehab and come out of it with a need to confess. Therapy did that to some people. Angie had been too smart to let it happen to her.

Don't tell your secrets, Angel. They're all that make you special.

Special. She wanted to be special. She wanted not to be alone. It didn't matter that there were other people in this house. None of them were here with her. She didn't belong. She'd been dropped here like an unwanted puppy. Fucking cops. They wanted things from her, but they didn't want to give her anything back. They didn't give a shit about her. They didn't care about what she might want from them.

At least Kate was halfway honest, Angie thought as she paced the room. But she couldn't forget that Kate was still one of them. It was Kate Conlan's job to try to wedge open her defenses so the cops and the county attorney could get what they wanted. And that would be the end of it. She wasn't really a friend. Angie could count the only friends she'd ever had on one hand and have fingers left over.

She wanted one tonight. She wanted not to be stuck in this house. She wanted to belong somewhere.

She thought of the woman burning in the park, thought of where that woman had belonged, and wondered fancifully what would happen if she just took that woman's place. She would be a rich man's daughter. She would have a father and a home and money.

She'd had a father once: She had the scars to prove it. She'd had a home: She could still smell the sour grease in the kitchen, could still remember the big, dark closets with the doors that locked from the outside. She'd never had money.

She went to bed with her clothes on and waited until the house was quiet and her roommate was snoring. Then she slipped out from under the covers and out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house through the back door.

The night was windy. Clouds rolled across the sky so fast, it looked almost like time-lapse photography. The streets were empty except for the occasional car rolling down one of the big cross streets going north and south. Angie headed west, jittery, skittish. The feeling that she was being watched constantly scratched at the back of her neck, but when she looked over her shoulder, there was no one.

The Zone was chasing her like a shadow. If she kept walking, if she had a purpose, focused on a goal, maybe it wouldn't catch her.

The houses along the way were dark. Tree limbs rattled in the wind. When she came to the lake, it was as black and shiny as an oil slick. She stuck to the dark side of the street and walked north. People in this neighborhood would call the cops if they saw someone out walking this late at night.

She recognized the house from the news reports—like something from England with a big iron fence around it. She turned and climbed the hill to the back side of the property, the big trees giving her cover. Hedges blocked the view of the house three seasons of the year, but their leaves were gone now, and she could look through the tangle of fine branches.

A light was on inside the house, in a room with fancy glass-paned doors that let out onto a patio. Angie stood at the fence, careful not to touch it, and gazed into Peter Bondurant's backyard. She looked past the swimming pool and the stone benches and the wrought iron tables and chairs that hadn't yet been taken into storage for the winter. She looked at the amber glow in the window and the figure of a man sitting at a desk, and wondered if he felt as alone as she did. She wondered if his money gave him comfort now.

PETER ROSE FROM the desk and moved around his office, restless, tense. He couldn't sleep, refused to take the pills his doctor had prescribed and had delivered to the house. The nightmare was alive in his mind: the orange brilliance of the flames, the smell. When he closed his eyes he could see it, feel the heat of it. He could see Jillian's face: the shock, the shame, the heartbreak. He could see her face floating free, the base of her throat ragged and bloody. If his mind was filled with images like these when he was awake, what would he see if he went to sleep?

Going to the French doors, he stared out at the night, black and cold, and imagined he felt eyes staring back. Jillian. He thought he could feel her presence. The weight of it pressed against his chest as if she had wrapped her arms around him. Even after death she wanted to touch him, cling to him; desperate for love, the meaning of it for her skewed and warped.

A strange, dark arousal flickered deep inside him, followed by disgust and shame and guilt. He turned away from the window with an animal roar and flung himself at his desk, sweeping everything from the tidy surface. Pens, Rolodex, paperweights, files, appointment book. The telephone jingled a protest. The lamp hit the floor, the bulb bursting with an explosive pop!, casting the room into darkness.

The final bright flash of light remained in Peter's eyes, twin flares of orange that moved as he moved. Flames he couldn't escape. Emotion was a rock in his throat, lodged there, hard and jagged. He felt a pressure within his eyeballs, as if they might burst, and he wondered wildly if he might not still see the flames anyway.

A harsh, dry choking sound rasped from him as he stumbled in the dark to a floor lamp, tripping over the things he'd knocked from the desk. Calmer in the light, he began to pick up the mess. He put the things back one at a time, aligning them precisely. This was what he had to do: Put his life back together with seamless precision, smooth the tears in the surface and go on, just as he had when Sophie had taken Jillian and left him all those years ago.

He picked up the appointment book last and found it opened to Friday. Jillian: dinner, written in his own precise hand. It sounded so innocent, so simple. But nothing was ever simple or innocent with Jillie. No matter how hard she tried.

The phone rang, startling him from the dark memories.

“Peter Bondurant,” he said as if this were normal business hours. In the back of his mind he was trying to