She ran a finger down his face.
Along the scar.
And laughed.
“It won’t matter,” she said. “I’m still going to kick your ass.”
“Start kicking.”
She was about twenty-seven, five-feet-three with jet-black hair, the same color as his, in fact. It hung loose and she constantly tossed her head to get it out of her face.
Very sexy.
Her name was Martina.
She won the first game.
And the second.
Then Draven had to piss like crazy and headed to the men’s room while she racked ’em up.
A man wearing a leather vest with no shirt underneath walked into the restroom just before Draven did. The guy walked past three empty urinals and into the stall, then left the door halfway open and started pissing.
Draven could tell that the jerk was pissing all over the toilet seat.
When the guy came out, Draven looked inside and checked.
Sure enough, the seat was still down.
Covered with piss.
Nor had the guy flushed. Draven flashed back to a time last year when he had to crap like crazy and had to wipe someone else’s piss off the seat.
“Goddamn pig,” Draven muttered under his breath.
The man looked at him.
“You got a problem, buddy?”
Draven stared back at him. “Maybe I do.”
The biker paused, as if deciding.
Then he had a knife in his hands and said, “You little bitch.”
Draven punched, hard and fast, going for the nose and getting it. Blood splattered from the guy’s face. Then Draven hit him in the stomach, below the ribs, as hard as he could. The guy immediately doubled up and fell to the floor. Draven grabbed him by the hair and dragged him over to the toilet.
Then shoved his face in it.
And held him there while he struggled.
After a long time, Draven pulled the guy’s head out, let him catch his breath, and then shoved his face back in.
The asshole kicked, but it did no good.
“Now you wish you flushed.”
Draven kicked him in the balls, pulled his head out, and threw him on the floor.
Two minutes later, he was running down the street with three bikers chasing him.
Gunfire erupted.
The windshield of a car next to him exploded.
He zigzagged and ran even faster.
After he lost them, he circled back to the bar and hid behind a pickup truck across the street. When they returned, he memorized their faces. Then headed back to the hotel.
When he got there, he knocked on the door next to his.
A woman opened it.
Not exactly a prom queen, but not the opposite either. Her short punked-out blond hair reeked of pot. For some reason he liked her right away.
“You still open for business?” he asked.
She grabbed his shirt and pulled him inside.
“You look dangerous,” she said. “That gets me hot.”
7
DAY TWO-SEPTEMBER 6
TUESDAY MORNING
Teffinger got up early Tuesday morning, with Davica already in his thoughts. He threw on sweatpants and jogged out the front door well before the crack of dawn, letting his legs stretch and his lungs burn, while he flashed back to being in bed with her yesterday.
He could have taken her if he’d wanted.
She had him in bed for a reason and it wasn’t just to watch the DVD. They could have done that in the study. Or not done it at all.
“You definitely have some willpower,” he told himself. “Maybe too much.”
Even though September had just started, and Indian summer hadn’t yet begun, the mornings were already getting a chill.
Perfect for jogging.
He did three miles at a pretty good clip and then finished the workout with several sets of pushups and sit- ups in his front yard. Forty-five minutes later, he was at his desk downtown, the first person to work, trying to get organized while the coffee pot fired up.
He drank the entire pot and was just starting to make the second one when Sydney showed up.
“I checked the Internet to exhaustion last night,” she said. “Someone as rich as Davica Holland ought to be showing up all over the place. But Google acts like she doesn’t even exist.”
“That’s interesting.”
Sydney couldn’t wait for the pot to fill, so she pulled it out, stuck her cup under the coffee stream, and then switched back after it filled, never spilling a drop.
“Very impressive,” Teffinger said. “But can you do it behind your back?”
He then did it.
Behind his back.
Spilling coffee all over the place.
“Tell me again why I work with you?”
He smiled, mopping the counter with paper towels.
“Because you have to.”
She looked doubtful. “That couldn’t be enough. There must be more.”
Then Teffinger said something he didn’t expect.
“I might have to take myself off the Davica Holland case,” he said.
“Why?”
“I think I’m more interested in sleeping with her than finding out if she’s a murderer,” he said.
Sydney rolled her eyes.
“Even if you took yourself off, you still couldn’t sleep with her,” she said.
That was true.
“Such a dilemma,” he said.
“Here’s what you do,” she said. “A, don’t sleep with her. And B, put the little fellow back in his cage and then find out if she’s a murderer like the city’s paying you to do.”
“You’re right.”
“And C,” she added, “don’t always look so surprised when I’m right.”
He smiled, then put on a serious face: “What do you mean, ‘little fellow’?”
She sipped coffee.
“You’re not black, are you?”
