She’d been tired tonight. Worried. And not happy to see me. Irritation had filled those round blue eyes of hers. But there had been more. Compassion, concern. And then shame. The shame scraped at him as he knew he’d put it there.
But most of all, he’d seen the bone-weariness that weighed so heavily on her slender shoulders. He’d been watching her closely enough over the last seven months to know it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse.
The call had pulled her from sleep. The mental picture was a distracting one. She’d forgone her usual neat French braid, instead pulling her blond hair into a ponytail so severely tight that he’d gotten a headache just looking at it. When she wasn’t working, she let her hair fall loosely around her shoulders and he had a vague recollection of how it felt between his fingers.
He swallowed hard. He had a vague recollection about a lot of things, none of which he had any business thinking about right now.
How many times in the last seven months had he almost knocked on her door? Too many. He’d about given up waiting for her to come to him. And then tonight, here she was. She’d felt it, whatever it was between them. He’d seen it in her eyes. So he’d wait a little bit longer.
How much longer? How much longer before you either fish or cut bait?
“So?” said a voice behind him.
David whipped around and Micah Barlow jumped backward, his eyes focused on the pike pole David clutched in his hand. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Barlow,” he gritted between clenched teeth, then made himself relax. “What do you need?”
Micah’s gaze flicked from the pole to the gate the uniformed guard had just pulled closed behind Olivia’s car, then back to his face. “She really doesn’t like you. Why?”
David felt his face heat. “That’s none of your business.”
Micah frowned. “Yeah, it kind of is. But we’ll deal with that later. For now, I want you to walk me through exactly what happened tonight, from the minute you got here until the minute you walked out of the building with that damn jelly ball in your hand.”
Annoyance spurted and with it the desire to tell Micah to stay the hell away from Olivia Sutherland. But it’s not my business either. Not yet anyway. If he had his way, that would change, very soon. For now, he’d do his job.
“It wasn’t a jelly ball,” he said. “The ball was solid glass. It was just covered in gel.”
“That’s a start. So take me through it, step by step.”
Monday, September 20, 2:00 a.m.
He flipped on the tube and sat back in his easy chair, nursing the beer he allowed himself after snagging a new “client.” Tonight he’d earned the whole six-pack, but he never allowed himself more than one. Drunk men made stupid mistakes. He should know. The stupid mistakes of drunk men accounted for a good portion of his business.
Remote in hand, he viewed the DVD he’d burned, smiling as smoke filled the screen. Every word the quartet had spoken was discernible. Some parts were louder than others, but the audio was crisp because his equipment was top-of-the-line. Skimping on equipment was bad economy in the long run.
And I plan for the long run. He looked around his small apartment. It was stark, utilitarian. But eventually his bank accounts would plump enough for him to buy an island villa staffed with discreet servants. He already knew which villa he’d choose. It was currently owned by a wealthy politician with a very nasty proclivity toward underage youths. The politician actually believed he’d be free when he’d finished depositing his blackmail payments into an offshore account in small, monthly installments.
His marks always believed they’d be free. That I’ll be satisfied and go away. But he never went away. He just quietly raised the price, and his marks always paid.
Because he chose his marks wisely, just as he’d done tonight. These four had parents who’d be willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep their darlings from going to prison. And prison was exactly where they’d go. They’d been very naughty, setting a bad fire. Two people were dead. Of course the guard belonged to him, but he was quite willing to give the College Four the credit. They’d walked away from a screaming teen, left her to die. The cops would have no trouble believing they’d shoot a guard, too.
Eyes on his TV screen, he watched, wincing when the burly Albert smacked the whiny Joel with his club. Ouch. He bet Joel had a hell of a headache right now.
He wondered if they’d started to turn on each other yet. They would, eventually, when the reality of what they’d done permeated the shock. There was art in the timing of his initial contact. He wanted to let them stew long enough to be terrified of capture, but not so long that they did anything stupid. Like confess. Especially Joel the Whiny.
Of course if he became too big a liability, Joel could be taken care of.
He rewound back to the point where Eric the Brain gave Albert the Muscle the order to smack Joel upside the head. There was a coolness to Eric, a willingness to do what was necessary that could become quite an asset.
Because I’ve been thinking. His investments had taken a beating in the stock market collapse. At the rate he was going, he’d hit forty before he rebuilt his portfolio enough to support the lifestyle he’d been planning. He didn’t plan to wait anywhere near that long. He wanted to be young enough to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
For a long time he’d been thinking of hiring on. Expanding. But who to trust?
He’d been in the business long enough to know that a man was only as trustworthy as the length of rope tied around his neck. This was equally true for women. Hell, especially for women. The rope had to be kept short, the knot too strong to slither from. He watched Albert and Eric carry the unconscious Joel away, Mary trailing behind. Arson, murder… It made for a damn tight knot and a very short length of rope.
He lifted his beer bottle in a toast. “To my new employees. May you make me lots of money.” He ejected the DVD from the player and slid it into a paper jacket. Through the beauty of streaming video, Eric the Brain would soon know his dick was in a sling.
He smacked a kiss on the disk. “All of you,” he murmured, “are mine.”
Monday, September 20, 2:15 a.m.
Eric opened his living room window and let the breeze cool his overheated skin. It would be dawn soon. But he doubted the morning light would produce any new options. He stared at the fire he’d lit in his fireplace. The dancing flames sickened him.
Mocked him. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
Twenty-four hours ago everything had been golden. He’d been poised to do something great. Something that would evoke conversation. For once he was going to make a difference, like Joel was always doing. I was going to change people’s lives.
He laughed bitterly. That he had done. His life, the lives of the others… They’d never be the same.
What had she been doing there? He gritted his teeth. Stop asking. The answer was the same as it was the first hundred times he’d asked. Wrong place, wrong time.
What the hell was I thinking? I shouldn’t have listened to Joel. I shouldn’t have cared about his damn wetlands. He’s going to talk. He’ll ruin everything.
He’s going to ruin my life. I never should have let him leave.
But he had. They’d all showered, washing the scent of the fire from their skin as best they could. Then the others had left. Maintain your normal routine, he’d told them. Go home. Act naturally. Go to class today like nothing happened. So they’d gone and now his apartment was empty, silent save the crackling of the flames.
He’d started the fire in the fireplace to mask the smell they’d brought back from the condo. Now he could say the odor of stale smoke was from his fireplace, should anyone notice or think to ask.