tied to a chair with a gun to her head.”
“Fitz,” Taylor started, but he interrupted her.
“No. It was my fault. I should have never left her alone.” He paused for a moment, then looked away. “Did they… Was she…”
Baldwin put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “No. She died quickly.”
That was enough to send Fitz over the edge. He started to cry, something Taylor had never seen him do. Tears of relief, frustration, pain, all coursing down the right side of his face. If the lost eye was crying, the tears were being soaked up by the bandage.
She swallowed hard and squeezed Fitz’s hand. He quieted, and she handed him a scratchy tissue. He swiped at his face angrily, sniffed a couple of times. She felt Baldwin moving around behind her, glanced over her shoulder at him. The naked hostility on his face startled her. He hated this as much as she did, but his reaction to Fitz’s story was visceral.
“Fitz, why don’t we stop now? You can tell me the rest later.”
“ No. I want to finish. You need everything I have if you’re going to catch him.” He coughed again, the leftover anesthesia clearing from his lungs. “He wasn’t there long. He used the name Troy. The other three were really deferential. They knocked Susie on the head and drugged me. The rest is sort of blurry, just bits and pieces really. I wasn’t awake when he took my eye, just came to with blood all over me and a wicked pain in my face. He told me what to say to you then I conked out again. Next thing I remember, they dumped me on the side of the road, doped to kingdom come. I don’t know how long it had been though. A couple of days? A week? I wandered around for a bit before the cops hauled me in.”
Baldwin cleared his throat. “From what we can tell, it was at least three days from your enucleation until you were found, but we don’t know when they took your eye exactly. Susie had been dead for a while.”
“How?”
“Fitz-”
“ How, goddamn it?”
Taylor swallowed, then answered him. “They cut her throat.”
Fitz blanched under his already pasty skin. “I thought so. I heard them do it, I think. I was hoping it was a bad dream.”
He pulled into himself then, and Taylor knew they needed to give him some space. She thought he might have started to doze, his mouth went slack. He looked like an old man, fragile, broken. Her heart felt shredded, and she was careful not to wake him as she got up.
She whispered, “We’ll be back soon, okay? We’re going to find him, Fitz. I swear to you. We’re going to find him, and take him out.”
They were quiet on the way back to the truck. Taylor was at a loss. This whole fucking situation was spinning out of control. She couldn’t erase the image of Fitz, his battered face, his broken heart, the loneliness engulfing him; she envisioned what he was seeing right now-the white hospital room, the sheets, the walls, all screaming at him. She didn’t know how to take on his guilt.
Losing Susie wasn’t his fault.
It was hers. All hers.
She stopped walking, the bile in her stomach rising to the surface. Baldwin pulled up short.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head, swallowing hard. Good God. She’d spent all this time waiting for the Pretender to make a move, letting him toy with her. Look where that had gotten her. She had to do something. She couldn’t sit back and wait to see what happened next.
Baldwin was hovering. The sun would set soon, flashes of gold and red were reflecting off the buildings around them. The sky would turn to fire, and the darkness would come again.
“I’m okay,” she managed.
“Let me take you home. You’ve had a long day.”
“No, I can’t. I need to go into work. I’m so far behind, I just need to try to…to get a handle on things. I’ll bring some stuff home and work on it, okay? You go on home. I won’t be long. We can eat. Try to eat.”
“Are you sure? I need to do some work myself. I can hang there, make some calls. You’re still on leave, they might kick you out.”
“No, really, it’s fine.”
“You need to be alone.”
He said it without malice, just a statement of fact.
She worked her face into a smile, met his eyes. Tried to erase the concern in them. “You know me too well. Yes. I need to get my head straight. Seeing him so hurt, it just about killed me.”
“Paperwork will help?”
“Mindless. I just need an hour or so. Okay?”
Baldwin swept her into his arms, pulled her tight to his chest. She shivered, he was so warm. Always so warm. So good, and so right.
“Okay, Taylor. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll drop you off?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
She wanted to take the comfort of his arms and bottle it. Instead she focused on the feeling of safety, the strength in his embrace knowledge that he would do anything for her. It would have to be enough. For now.
Because when she was finished with the Pretender, Baldwin might never look at her the same way again.
Fourteen
To: Troy14@ncr. tr. com From: crypto@ncr. zk. com Subject: Denver
Dear Troy, Long drive. Arriving shortly. Anticipate no delays. ZK
H e was tired from the drive. The thump of the tires on the road was driving him mad. He was too tall for the car. The little beat-up compact rental was a piece of plastic crap. He didn’t like to drive. It would have been faster and easier to fly, but he had to follow the instructions to the letter. He’d taken the fastest route- I-5 south toward L.A. then across to I-15 northeast. He drove through the night, then face-first into the sun. He’d lost two hours in Vegas-the victims’ house had been hard to find in the maze of sameness that was the Vegas suburbs. But he’d found and dispatched them with the thoroughness expected of him.
Kill ’em and leave ’em. Those were the rules. No playing with the bodies. He was sorry for that. After the couple in San Francisco, the reaction he’d had to the blood, he was curious what it would be like. They wouldn’t be moving, right? But they’d still be warm.
It would violate the rules.
Monotony. He turned on the radio for company. He liked the conservative talk shows the best-they got his blood boiling. He’d always dreamed of calling in to one of them and telling the bastards exactly what he’d like to do to them. How he’d take them apart, piece by piece. They had everything-money, drugs, women. That Limbaugh guy had just gotten married for something like the twentieth time. And that English prick Elton John played at the wedding. He always thought Elton John was a liberal-he was gay, after all, flaming, really. Apparently money made everyone mercenary. He knew it worked that way for him.
On he drove, his thoughts racing, the radio spewing.
The sun, sinking like heavy red blood in his rearview mirror, the moon rising heavy and full, an expectant sky, then stars, pinpricks in the ink-black night, peeking from their celestial beds. For hours his headlights mingled with the moonlight, illuminating the path, miles upon miles of empty, lonely road stretched before him. At last the moon bade him farewell. The trees hung low across the pass, the tunnels empty and forlorn.
He rolled across the Rocky Mountains as the sun clawed through the morning virga, the gigantic peaks powdered with snow, the air becoming crisp and sharp. There would be a storm tonight, the rains he’d left behind in San Francisco making their way to higher altitude. He needed to finish the job and move along so he didn’t get stuck
