Killer Move

Remembered feeling sick, remembered the sense of horrified awe at what he’d done.

Remembered the erection, too.

He heard Katy crying behind him, here on Lido. He’d heard her on that beach in Mexico, too, the morning after his life changed. Poor dead Katy, who’d looked a little like Lynn did. Katy, who he’d known since they were five years old. Katy, who if things had turned out differently could have been by his side in a totally different kind of life.

“I loved you,” the voice behind him said.

“I know that now.”

Warner knew whose fault his life was. But who do you blame, when you’re the one? Who do you take it out on? You can’t punish yourself—at least any more than you already do by turning your life into an endless dark carnival. So you hurt others. Not always intentionally, either. Sometimes you just lash out. Things get out of control. You watch your hands act. Verbal warnings turn into violence, beatings turn into a bloodied mess.

And your dick gets hard.

Gradually, the sound of crying faded out. Not as if she’d stopped—Katy would never stop crying now—but as if something had slowly dragged her away.

Half an hour after that there was a tap on his shoulder. At first he thought it was Katy come back again, but then he realized the tap had hurt. Physically, in the real world.

He looked up and saw someone standing over him, a silhouette blown into soft-edged white by the sun.

“I’ve come to help,” it said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Forty minutes later we were back on the mainland. When I started taking my surroundings in properly again, I saw we were heading south on the Tamiami Trail, a chunk of anonymous urban sprawl twenty minutes from downtown. Office supplies, perfunctory restaurants, copy shops, places to get your exhaust fixed, and the single-story DeSoto Square Mall. The woman was driving with negligent skill, as if this were a video game she’d played every day of her life. She appeared to be looking out for something.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Here.”

She swerved off the highway into the parking lot of a Burger King—and drove straight toward a space on the far side, decelerating only at the last minute. She snapped off the engine and rubbed her face in her hands. She rubbed hard, as if her face had done her wrong. I stared out through the windshield at a brick wall.

When she was finished rubbing, she yanked open the glove compartment and pulled out some cigarettes. She took one and tossed the pack into my lap.

“I don’t.”

“You didn’t. If you haven’t started again yet, then you’re a stronger man than I thought.”

I looked at her, nonplussed.

“You haven’t noticed?” She lit up, blew out the first lungful of smoke. “God, you’re slow. Not even the table of women at Krank’s last night? I forgot to cancel them. Of course that was when you were supposed to be there with your wife. The big reconciliation drink, destined to go badly wrong. And yet you wind up taking yourself there anyway. Funny, huh.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Jane Doe, to you.”

“What’s happening? What is going on?”

“Well, that’s the question right there. Everything was laid out. Lines were drawn, walls put in place to stop it spilling too wide. The walls have not held, and this has got way the fuck out of hand.”

There was a word fighting for attention in my head, but to get at it I had to fight past a double image of Cassandra’s upturned face. My mind hadn’t caught up with the implications of what I’d seen in her apartment, and insisted on presenting her to me as she’d been in the night—cute, happy to be drinking wine and hanging out and talking about computers or whatever it was we’d been discussing when my brain had taken that snapshot. Then— bam—the other image dropped down like a lead curtain.

A door. Dark. A bed full of blood.

I got the word out in the end. “Modified.”

“Yep,” the woman said, rolling down her window to let out the smoke. “You have been.”

“By who?”

“Me. Among others.”

“The e-mail? The photo book?”

“Both, with a little help. I was also Melania Gilkyson for a couple of phone calls.”

“That was you?”

She cocked her head, and altered her voice slightly. “ ‘I don’t work for him twenty-four-seven, you know.’ ”

“But why?”

She didn’t answer, just stared with a flat kind of unhappiness across the lot.

“Why have you done this to me?”

“Because it’s my job.”

“Where’s Stephanie? Have you done anything to her? If you have . . .”

“No.” The woman shook her head, a concise back-and-forth movement, as if economy of motion ran deep in her bones. “That’s not on me. I have no clue where your wife is. That is one of many things that have gone badly off-script in the last forty-eight hours.”

“Were you at my house?”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“No. Why?”

“I called, trying to track down Stephanie. A woman picked up the phone. She said the word ‘Modified.’ ”

The woman rubbed her forehead with her fingertips and looked pained. “Not me. Christ.”

“But you have been to my house. Right?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because when I asked, you didn’t deny it. You just asked when I was talking about.”

“Shit. I must be tired,” she said. “Yes. I was there Wednesday morning, to put the pictures on your laptop.”

“You took those?”

“Not me. Someone I know.”

“How did you get in?”

“I have keys.”

“Why?”

“Why what? There’s a lot of whys here. You need to be specific.”

“Why plant the pictures?”

“Why do you think?”

“To make my wife believe I’d been spying on Karren.”

“Duh.”

“Did someone pay you to do this?”

“Maybe you’re not as dumb as everyone thinks, hey.”

“Who? Why would anyone do that to me?”

“I’m not at liberty to—”

Suddenly, and without warning, I lost it. I’ve never raised my hand to a woman in my life, but I wanted to pull this one’s throat out, break her nose, do anything and everything that would hurt forever. I needed to be sure, absolutely sure, that this woman didn’t know where Stephanie was and hadn’t hurt her in any way. I snapped around in my seat and lunged toward the woman’s neck.