'Claude was sickly, and naive. He had no friends but me. It was easy to cut him off from his few social contacts. A doctor with a shady past was enlisted to make him ill, with the aid of a criminal cook. And then I arranged for his parents to be removed from the picture. No one seemed to care what happened to him then. He was weak-willed, forgettable to look at. When I finally put him into a coma, no one noticed. But I, posing as Claude, have become quite a personage on the Internet. Everyone knows of Claude's generosity, his passionate love for collecting. Everyone loves him and courts him.'
'Brilliant,' she murmured.
'Claude's wish has come true. He is me. And I will live his life for him. Far better than he ever could have lived it himself.'
She was silent for so long that he turned and looked. Her eyes looked haunted. 'What?' he demanded. 'What is it?'
She swallowed several times before she answered, a sure sign that she was going to risk telling him the truth. 'When you tell me so many details, I'm afraid that you're planning…' Her voice trailed off.
'That I plan to kill you?' He was touched by her honesty. 'Every man needs someone with whom he can speak freely, no?'
'Of course,' she said automatically. 'But—is this wise? To risk this new identity, just to punish Connor McCloud for—'
'Do not question my wisdom ever again.'
He got up and began to pull on his clothing. Tamara reached for her blouse. 'No,' he said. 'Stay that way. I like to see you naked.'
The blouse dropped silently from her trembling hand.
He glanced at her computer. 'What were you doing, at this hour?'
'I was checking McCloud's car,' she said. 'I got a call from Marc. The McCloud brothers descended upon Billy Vega tonight like avenging angels. They snatched Cindy and left Vega in a bloody heap.'
He blinked. 'Ah. That changes things.'
'Yes. It also appears that McCloud has undermined what you were trying to accomplish with Barbara Riggs. She's rallied. To the point of smashing all the windows out of Vega's car with McCloud's cane.'
He began to laugh. 'You can't be serious.'
'I promise, I am. He's at the Riggs house now. The house vidcams showed him creeping up the stairs, to play with Erin.'
He stared out the window as he buttoned his shirt, letting his plans shift and flow into new patterns. Barbara and Cindy Riggs were doomed anyway, a few days more or less hardly mattered. But this news of Billy Vega's defeat gave him an amusing idea that could move the whole thing briskly forward. 'Call Georg, Tamara,' he said.
She rummaged on the devastated desk for her communicator, and pressed the button. 'Georg? The boss wants you in my office, please.' She clicked the line shut, and reached for her skirt.
'No,' he said silkily. 'Stay just as you are, please.'
Her constant smile faltered. It was faltering quite often lately.
When Georg walked into the office, she gasped, so startled that she forgot her nudity. Georg had shaved his head and brows, and plucked out his eyelashes. Blue veins traced across his smooth skull; his blue eyes were feverish in deep, bruised pits. He seemed a ghoul, a misbegotten thing that had crawled out of a sewer. The man who was no longer Novak nodded in approval. 'I see you have followed my instructions. Did you exfoliate?'
'Three times a day,' Georg said. 'Just as you said. I am ready.'
He embraced Georg, and kissed him on both cheeks. 'Excellent. You are a vicious, loyal hound, and tonight, you will taste fresh blood.'
After Novak explained what was expected of him later that night, Georg turned to Tamara. Scarred lips drew back from his ruined teeth as he looked her up and down. 'When I return, I will want sex,' he said.
The man who was no longer Novak shrugged. 'Obviously,' he said. 'You will be happy to oblige him, of course, Tamara?'
Tamara hesitated, longer than usual. He waited… ah, there it was. That bright smile, ever at the ready. 'Of course,' she said faintly.
He advanced upon her again once Georg departed. Tamara's smile was a challenge. She tried to hide behind it, but he knew how much she loathed being intimate with Georg. He knew that power and danger excited her, that she was testing her limits, that she was too intelligent not to sense how close she was to death. Layer upon layer of lies, and twisted motives. Her complexity aroused him.
He opened his clothing and availed himself of her body again. He wished to get past all of Tamara's layers, all the way to her tender, shrinking center before he added her to his legions of angels. She must be punished, for thinking she could hide her secrets behind a smile.
Punishment exalted. His angels knew this, and so would she. The Riggs family would learn it, the McCloud brothers would learn it.
Just as he had learned it. The day was always with him, frozen in his memory. The day that his father had strangled his mother. She had betrayed him. He had been five years old, too young to understand the nature of her betrayal, but not too young to understand empty eyes, slack limbs. He understood death. He understood punishment.
His father had not been a heartless man. He had wept, had cradled his dead wife's body in his arms and sobbed.
'Never betray me,' he had begged his small son. 'Never.'
'
Someone was clutching, clawing at his hands. Wild-eyed. Red hair, green eyes, gasping mouth wide open. Tamara. He realized, with a start of surprise, that his hands were clamped around her slender neck.
He let go of her, and got to his feet. These odd fugue states occurred when he was under stress. But after all, he had died only six hours ago. That was a stressful event.
Tamara lay curled and gasping on the floor, clutching her throat.
He fastened his trousers. 'Be ready for Georg when he returns,' he said as he left the room.
Chapter Twenty
Connor sat on the porch and watched the sunrise turn the clouds a rosy pink. He was so happy, it terrified him. Anything that made him feel so open and soft had to be suspect.
Morning advanced, people came out of their houses dressed for work, herding their kids into car seats. It was a normal working day for the rest of the world. None of them knew that the universe had just shifted on its axis. Erin, the most beautiful girl in the world, was his future bride. He could barely breathe, he was so switched on.
The door opened behind him. He leaped up and turned. His foolish smile slipped a notch when he found himself face-to-face with Barbara Riggs's suspicious glare. He thought about the squeaky bed, and made sure she wasn't holding any blunt objects that could be utilized to bash his head in.
She looked different today. Nicely dressed, hair styled, made up. She looked like the old Barbara he remembered from before the fall.
'Uh, good morning,' he ventured.
She gave him a curt nod. He wondered if he was supposed to make small talk. If so, too bad. He didn't have any to offer.
Finally she took pity on him and opened the door wider. 'There's fresh coffee in the kitchen. You may have some, if you'd like.'
Her tone implied that he didn't deserve a cup of fresh coffee, but he still forced himself to nod and smile. 'Thanks, I would.'
This, of course, meant following her into the kitchen, sitting down with a cup of coffee and confronting another screaming silence. All those years of deadly quiet meals with Eamon McCloud had not prepared him for the frigid quality of Barbara Riggs's silence.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. 'Uh, how's Cindy?' he asked.
