“How did it go?” he asked, not even looking up.
“It was awful.”
That got his attention. He lifted his eyes. “What happened?”
“I think she died, Val.”
He gave her a small smile. “Silly Polly. She could be dead, or she might be in a coma. Don’t worry about it. If she ever wakes up, she’ll be brain damaged.”
“You… you did this on purpose?”
Val observed her dispassionately. “That was the whole point, Polly.”
Chapter 51
You sent me over to poison her?” Polly’s voice had a catch in it. Her brother had trained her to be his accomplice in many things. He’d taught her to fight in the most brutal way; she could bring down an opponent with a single, swift strike to an eye or throat. He’d used her as a carrier pigeon, delivering messages and packages. He’d used her as a spy. He’d used her as a… she didn’t want to say call girl, but that was surely Val’s idea, holding her out as a soft, warm lure when he needed to catch something slippery. But this was different. “You made me a murderer.”
“You aren’t, Polly. You delivered a package, that’s all. You’re as responsible for what’s inside as a helper monkey would be.”
“You tainted the drugs. She sniffed up the cocaine right away. You mixed something in that?”
Val nodded. “I didn’t have a choice. We had to do it for Max.”
“I don’t believe for one second Max wants to kill anyone.”
Val looked pensive, as if he were weighing the truth against a lie in his head. With the scar on his face, he always appeared severe. “Of course Max didn’t want that. But Max is mixed up with some terrible people, and if we don’t do what they say, they’ll hurt him. They could even kill him, Polly. I don’t want to risk that and I know you don’t, either.”
Polly stepped forward and threw herself on one of the double beds. “Why did they want to get rid of her?”
“I don’t know all of it,” Val said. “Except that she’s the heir to a huge fortune.”
“This was about money?”
Val went back to his computer, suddenly bored. “It’s always about money, isn’t it, Pretty Polly?”
“Won’t the police be suspicious when someone else inherits all this money?”
Val shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to us. We just do what we’re told.”
“There’s more I have to tell you,” Polly said. “There was a man at the apartment.”
“The houseboy?”
“No, it was the Black man… the one who you attacked last night.”
That caught Val’s attention. “No. He couldn’t be there.”
“Do you really think I’d make this up?” Polly asked. “Desmond Edgars was at the apartment.”
“Then you should have turned around and left!” Val leapt up, ready to strike her.
“He wasn’t there when I went in! Trinity answered the door and dragged me inside. She was desperate to get high, and I gave her the drugs. She laid out lines in front of me and started snorting it up. She told me to leave, so I did.” She took a deep breath. This was the part that involved some fancy footwork. If Val knew she’d made it down to the first floor before she was accosted, he’d beat the living daylights out of her for being so stupid. Why hadn’t she run away? She’d been frozen. Transfixed, even. “The man came out of the elevator when I was coming out of the apartment. He recognized me immediately. He said he knew me, that I was Tom Klepper’s girlfriend.”
“How could he possibly know that?”
“I have no idea!”
“Hmm.” Val would be coming back to this subject later, no doubt about that. He was like an eel in the water, subtle and invisible until he was ready to strike. “What happened then?”
“He said his sister knows Max.”
“And you believed him?”
“Why not?” She suddenly felt desperate. “It could be true.”
“It’s pathetic, how gullible you are, Polly. All someone has to do is tell you they know Max and you’re all over them.”
“No, I’m not.” She turned it over in her mind. Well, maybe it was a little bit true. “I miss him. I don’t understand why he can’t see me…”
“Max is trying to protect you, Polly. He can’t come home. You know that, and I know that. Mama won’t accept it, but we can’t do anything about that.”
She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. “The man, Desmond, told me Tom Klepper is dead. He said Tom was strangled. Is that true?”
Val held her eyes. “Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.” His voice was colder this time.
“How could you?”
“I was under orders, Polly.” He sat next to her on the bed. “I thought you didn’t like Tom? You said he was disgusting.”
She wiped her nose. “He was a big, stupid lump with twelve hands. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him dead.”
“Well, Pretty Polly, you don’t get to choose. Okay, back to that rich bitch Trinity. What happened next?”
“I talked to that man for a little while. I tried to leave, but he blocked my way. Then he dragged me back inside the apartment. He wanted to talk to Trinity about me. He wanted to know why I was there. When we went in… she was on the floor. We thought she was dead, but then her foot started moving. He called 911, and I ran. I got downstairs and went into the park. I had to throw away my coat because it would make it easier for him to recognize me. Another man tried to grab me, but I hit him in the throat like you taught me and kept running.”
If she’d been expecting a pat on the head for her quick thinking, she was sadly mistaken. Val’s eyes were intense as a cobra’s, only colder.
“That mad animal came to our house. Somehow, he got on Max’s trail, and now he’s on ours, too. He’s
