Half a smile forms on her face. “Oh, I think it will. But we have time for that later. First I want to show you something.”
Alex collects the AED from the floor. She brought it in from the Hyundai. It’s the size of a laptop computer, in a rugged plastic clamshell case, bright yellow with a red and white medical cross on it. Alex places the device on the bed, opens it up.
“Originally, I was going to do something creative to you with plastic explosives. But I’m going to use this instead. It’s an automatic external defibrillator. Just like on all those TV doctor shows. I put the pads on your chest like this-”
Alex places one high up to the right of his sternum, and one low down on his left side.
“-and press this big red button, and it delivers a nice thousand-volt shock across your heart, resetting its normal electrical rhythm. But if I stick the pads here-”
She removes the protective backings, exposing the adhesive, and places both pads on the left side of his heart.
“-then it will induce a fatal arrhythmia, or stop the heart altogether, or fry your organs. Or it might just hurt like hell. I’ve never done this before, so it’s all theory.”
Alex fingers the button, stroking it sensually while Alan’s eyes get wide.
“What do you want?” Alan finally asks.
“Tell me about your first time. With Jack.”
“You want to know about the first time we had sex?”
Alex nods.
“That’s sick.”
“I’m a psychopath, remember? If you don’t want to talk about it, we can play press the button instead.”
She gives the AED a soft caress. Alan’s mouth becomes a tight, thin line.
“It was in a bar. In the men’s bathroom.”
“How many dates?”
“Second date.”
“Second date? Jack moves pretty fast. So what made her drag you into the bathroom? Were you kissing first? Having some chicken wings, feeling each other up under the table?”
“We were standing at the bar, drinking beer, and she dared me to go into the bathroom with her.”
Alex unbuttons her uniform shirt. The bra underneath is black, lacy, tight. True to male form, Alan stares at her tits.
“What did she do to you in the bathroom, Alan?”
“We kissed, then she put my hands up her shirt.”
“Like this?”
Alex brings her hand up her stomach, fingers going up under the underwire of the bra. Alan still looks ner vous, but the initial repulsion on his face is replaced by fascination, perhaps even interest. Her other hand unbuttons her pants and unzips the fly, letting the pants fall around her ankles.
“Keep going, Alan. What happened next?”
“We got into a stall. She…she put her hand on me.”
Alex steps out of the slacks and sits on the bed next to him. She traces a lazy finger down Alan’s chest, slipping it under the waistband of his underwear. It’s too early for the tadalafil to be working, but it doesn’t look like Alan needed it after all.
“Jack sounds aggressive. You like aggressive women, don’t you Alan?”
“What are you doing?”
Alex pumps her hand up and down.
“What happened next, Alan?”
“We had…we had sex.”
Alan closes his eyes, and Alex feels his hips rise. She leans toward his ear and whispers, “Would you like to have sex with me, Alan?”
He shakes his head.
“You can keep your eyes closed, pretend I’m Jack.”
Alan softly answers, “No. You’re a killer.”
She grips him hard, digging her nails in. Alan yelps, his face contorting with pain and fear.
“Good,” Alex breathes. “Sex is so much more fun when it isn’t consensual.”
She slaps him across the face, then grabs the duct tape to make a gag.
Things are about to get loud.
CHAPTER 33
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE to get donuts?
My watch read a quarter to twelve. Phin had been gone for over an hour. I’m naturally paranoid, something my chosen profession compounds, so I was conjuring up scenarios to explain why he was so late, like being grabbed by Alex, or hit by a bus, or caught by the Feds, or killed by Milwaukee cops, or the most frightening of alclass="underline" ditching me because he thought the sex was a mistake.
I tried the walkie-talkie, but he either wasn’t answering or he had it turned off. I counted and recounted the cash left in my purse, and calculated he either took twenty dollars or a thousand and twenty dollars-I couldn’t remember how much I’d taken from the bank, and couldn’t find the withdrawal slip.
While waiting I spent a good half an hour wondering about Alex, and how we were going to find her. I wound up coming to the obvious conclusion: We couldn’t. Not unless she let us, or she made a mistake, and she hadn’t done either yet.
So I spent the next half an hour wondering if I should put on makeup or not. Just because I’d gone to bed with Phin didn’t mean our relationship had really changed, and the last few times I’d seen him I hadn’t worried if I was wearing makeup. Putting on makeup now would mean I cared about how I looked, which meant his opinion of me mattered, which meant our relationship actually had changed. I didn’t know if I wanted to acknowledge that, or if he wanted to acknowledge that, or how he would act if I acknowledged it and he didn’t, and vice versa.
Basically, I just shouldn’t have sex. But it was too late for that, so I was stuck dwelling on it.
“If he wasn’t here, would I wear makeup?” I asked myself honestly.
Maybe. Maybe today would be a makeup day.
Which was a dishonest answer.
So I didn’t put on makeup, and stopped obsessing over it, and went back to obsessing over where the hell he was.
My ringing cell phone dragged me back into reality.
“Hello? Jacqueline?”
My mother. Mom had met Phin, and I think she liked him. But that didn’t mean I needed to blab to her that I slept with him.
“I slept with Phin,” I told her.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said in a way that sounded like she was so happy for me, “but I’ve got a real big problem right now.”
I remembered Mom’s Alaskan cruise.
“Flight delayed? Or is it TSA? Mom, you didn’t try to bring your brass knuckles on the flight, did you? I told you not to buy those.”
“I didn’t bring the brass knuckles. I’m already on the ship. And I just saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Your father.”
I remembered Dad’s Alaskan cruise, and the astronomically high improbability that they’d both be on the same boat.
Fate’s a funny bitch.
“Are you sure it’s him?” I asked, knowing it was. “It’s been forty years.”
“I’ll remember that deceitful face until a thousand years after I die. He’s still got that smarmy, cocksure look, and that dishonest little smile. But he’s lost the little Hitler mustache. I distinctly remember the little Hitler mustache.”
“He never had a Hitler mustache. You’re projecting.”
“You were too young to remember it, and how he used to goose-step around the house, planning to invade France.”
I sighed. “Look, Mom, you’re both adults. This will give you a chance to work things out.”
“Work things out? Never! He left us, for no good reason.”
“He had a good reason,” I said, “but you made me promise never to mention him again.”
“And I insist you keep that promise. I don’t want to hear about the lies he told you. The fact that you even want to have a relationship with that horrible man makes me think I should have named you Ilsa.”
“He’s actually a nice guy, Mom. You’d like him.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Mom!”
“I’ll wait until he’s near one of the railings and I’ll push him overboard. Hopefully the sharks will get him before he drowns.”