Covet

with her forever husband.

The perfect future was mapped out for them all.

Chapter 27

Vin walked through the door to the duplex, closed himself in, and felt like someone had kneed him in the gut. From the hall, he stared at the ruined living room, and could not believe what he was looking at.

As he walked into the space, all he could do was shake his head. The couches were overturned and the silk pillows were trampled and a number of statues had been knocked off their stands. The rug was ruined over by the bar, stained by liquor that had bled from broken bottles, and the walls were going to have to be repainted and repapered because it looked as if a couple of Bordeaux wines had been thrown at them.

Taking off his coat and tossing it on a ransacked sofa, he wandered around the once perfect space. It was amazing how all those priceless things had been turned into trash so quickly. Shit, add a layer of grime and some food garbage and you had a Dumpster.

Bending down, he picked up some shards that had broken loose from a Venetian mirror. The thing had been struck with something that vaguely resembled a human back, the center of the piece smashed in a long, torso-like column.

The fine spray of white powder all over it seemed to suggest that the police had gotten busy dusting for fingerprints.

Man, someone sure as hell had been thrown around the room.

Vin went over to the bar and put the jagged pieces of mirror next to some of the busted bottles. Then he resumed the search for exactly what the cops had no doubt been after.

No blood that he could see. But maybe they had already removed the things that had been marked by it.

Besides, bruises bled under the skin, so it wasn't as if a lack of the stuff here was necessarily going to help him.

While the CPD had been in the building, undoubtedly they'd questioned the lobby guard—except it wasn't like the guy could testify to Vin's not being in the apartment. After all, residents could take the elevators up from the parking…garage.

Vin went over to the phone and called down to the front desk. When a male voice answered, he didn't fuck around. “Gary, it's Vin—did you give the police access to the security tapes of the elevators and the stairwells in the building?”

There was absolutely no pause whatsoever. “Jesus, Mr. diPietro, why'd you do it—”

“I didn't. I swear. Did the CPD get those tapes?”

“Yeah, they got everything.”

Vin exhaled in relief. There was no way he could have gotten to the duplex without showing up in one of those recordings. In fact, what they were going to prove was that he'd left the building that morning and not returned until after midnight.

“And you were on camera,” the guard said.

Vin blinked. “What?”

“You came up in the garage elevator at ten o'clock. It's on the tape.”

“What?” That would have been impossible—at the time he'd been in the car, driving to the Woods with Marie-Terese. “Wait, you saw my face. You actually saw my face.”

“Yeah, clear as day. She came through the front doors and went up to the duplex, and then twenty minutes later you came in through the garage. You had on your black trench coat and you left like a half hour later, with your Boston Sox cap pulled low.”

“It wasn't me. It—”

“It was.”

“But…I didn't park my BMW in my spot—it was gone, and my other car was there. I didn't use my pass card to get through the gate. Explain—”

“You got a ride, then, and came in through the pedestrian door. I don't know. Look, I got to go. We're running a test of the fire alarm.”

The line went dead.

Vin hung up the receiver and stared at the phone, feeling like the whole fucking world had lost its damn mind. Then after a moment, he went over to the couch, arranged the cushions into some semblance of order, and all but fell on his ass.

As the alarm system in the building started to go off and strobe lights flashed from the fixtures out in the front hall, he felt like he was in the dream he'd had, the one where Devina fell upon him like something out of Night of the Living Dead.

Chess pieces were being arranged around him, blocking his moves, boxing him in.

You 're mine, Vin. And I always take what is mine.

As he heard those words in his head again, the sound of the alarm was the perfect accompaniment to the panic burning through his veins. Shit. What the hell did he do now?

From out of nowhere, Jim Heron's voice cut through Devina's: I'm here to save your soul.

Ignoring that summarily unhelpful cue, Vin got up and went to his study in search of something far more likely to chill him out. Over at the intact liquor bottles, he poured himself a bourbon, drank it, and then refilled the squat glass. The television had been left on, but was muted, and as he parked it behind his desk, his eyes latched onto the local news.

When a photograph appeared next to the anchor's blond head shortly thereafter, he could not say he was surprised. With the way things were going, it would take a dirty bomb set off in downtown Caldwell to get a rise out of him.

He reached for the remote.

“…Robert Belthower, thirty-six, was found early this evening in an alley not far from where Friday night's two victims were shot. He is now at St. Francis Hospital in critical condition. No suspects have been identified yet in the crime…”

It was the guy from the Iron Mask. The one who had come out of the bathroom with Marie-Terese.

Vin picked up the phone and dialed.

The call wasn't accepted until the fourth ring, and Jim's voice was tight, like he didn't want to answer: “Hey, my man.”

Still feel like saving my soul now? Vin wanted to taunt. “Have you seen the news?”

Long hesitation. “You mean about Devina?”

“Yeah. I didn't do that, though, I swear—last I saw her was when I broke up with her that afternoon and let her walk out of my place with the ring I bought her—you're welcome. But I'm more calling about the guy they found beaten in an alley downtown. He was with Marie-Terese last night. I saw him with her. Which would make it three men in twenty-four hours who've…Hello? Jim?” When there was an uh-huh, it was clear what the problem was. “Look, I didn't do that shit to Devina, although I know you won't believe me.” Another long silence. “Hello? Oh, for fuck's sake, do you honestly think I could hurt a woman?”

“I thought you were calling because of me.”

Now it was his turn to pause. “Why?”

Another long silence. “She said she told you. About us.”

“Us? What 'us'?”

“She said that was why you lost it and hit her.”

Vin tightened his hand on his glass. “Exactly what is there to tell about the two of you.” The soft curse coming across the line was in the universal language for sex-that-shouldn't-have-happened.

Vin's muscles around his shoulders and down into his arms went rigid. “Are you kidding me. Are you fucking