open.
There was a burst of laughter from the TV.
'Jesus and Mary,' Pete whispered, then raised his voice to a shout. 'Silkie, you okay? It's the police!'
With his other hand he dug out his cell phone, dialed without looking, identified himself.
'Do you want police, fire, or medical emergency?'
'Cops. Paramedics. I've got a dying man here.'
He began his sweep of the apartment while he was still on the phone.
'Please stay on the line, Detective,' the dispatcher said. 'Help is on the way.'
'I may need both hands,' Peter said, and dropped the cell phone back into his pocket.
He kicked open a door to what appeared to be the architect's study and workroom. Enough light coming in here to show him at a glance the room was empty.
'Silkie!'
The master bed- and sitting room was at the end of the hall. Double doors, one standing open. As he approached along one wall, Glock held high in both hands, he made out the shapes of furnishings because of a bathroom light shining beyond a four-poster bed draped with a gauzelike material.
Furniture was overturned in the sitting room. A fish tank had been shattered.
Pete edged around the foot of the Victorian bedstead and had a partial view of a seminude body face-down on the tiles. Black girl. There was broken glass from a mirror and a ribbon of blood.
'Silkie, answer me, what happened here?'
He was almost to the bathroom door when Silkie stirred, looked around blank-eyed, then tried to push herself up with both hands as she flooded with terror. Blood dripped from a long cut that started below her right eye and ran almost to the jawline.
'Is she gone?' Silkie gasped.
Peter read the shock in her widening eyes but was a split second late turning as Taja came off the bed, where she'd been lying amid a pile of pillows he hadn't paid enough attention to, and slashed at him with her stiletto.
He turned his wrist just enough so veins weren't severed but he lost his automatic. He backhanded her in the face with his other hand. Taja went down in a sprawl that she corrected almost instantly, cat-quick, and rushed him again with her knife ready to thrust, held close to her side. Her face looked as wooden as a ceremonial mask. She knew her business. He blocked an attempt she made to slash upward near his groin and across the femoral artery. She knew where he was most vulnerable and didn't try for the chest, where her blade could get hung up on the zipper of his leather jacket, or his throat, which was partially protected by a scarf. And Taja was in no hurry: she was between him and his only way out. Acrobatic in her moves, she feinted him in the direction she wanted him to go—which was back against the bed and into the mass of sheer drapery hanging there.
Pete heard Silkie scream but he was too busy to pay attention to her. The bed drapery clung to him like spiderweb as he struggled to free himself and avoid Taja. She slashed away methodically, the material beginning to glow red from his blood.
His gun fired. Deafening.
Taja flinched momentarily, then went into a crouch, turning away from Peter, finding Silkie. She was standing just inside the bathroom, Peter's Glock 9 in both hands.
'Bitch.' She fired again, range about eight feet. Taja jerked to one side, hesitated a second, glanced at Peter, who had fought his way out of the drapery. Then she sprang to the bedroom doors and vanished.
Pete slipped a hand inside his jacket where his side stung from a long caress of Taja's stiletto. A lot of blood on the hand when he looked at it. Holy Jesus. He looked at Silkie, who hadn't budged from the threshold of the bathroom nor lowered his gun. When he moved toward her she gave him a deeply suspicious look. She was nude to well below her navel. Blood dripped from her chin. She had beautifully modeled features even Echo might have envied. Pete coughed, waited sus-pensefully, but no blood had come up. He saw that the cut on Silkie's face could've been a lot worse, the flesh laid open. Part of it was just a scratch down across the cheekbone. A little deeper in the soft flesh near her mouth.
He had to pry his gun from Silkie's hands. His own hands were so bloody he nearly dropped the Glock.
He no longer considered going after Taja. Shock had him by the back of the neck. He heard sirens before a rising teakettle hiss in his ears shut out the sound. His face dripped perspiration, but his skin was turning cold. He had to lean against the jamb, his face a few inches from the tall girl's breasts. My God but they were something.
'What's your name?' he asked Silkie.
She had the hiccups. 'Ma-MacKENzie.'
'I'm Peter. Peter O'Neill. We're old friends, Silkie. We dated in New York. I came up here for a visit.
Can you remember that?'
'Y-yes. P-P-PETEr O'Neill. From New York.'
'And you don't know who attacked you. Never saw her before. Got that?'
He looked her in the eye, wondering if they had a chance in hell of selling it. She looked back at him with a slight twitch of her head.
'Why?'
'Because Valerie Angelus is dead and you came close and that,
