Rebecca Cantrell
The Chemistry of Death
For my husband, my son,
and my readers
PROLOGUE
Ziggy smiled when the woman’s designer shoes slipped on the train ties. Those shoes were at home in the expensive club where he’d picked her up, but they were worse than useless down here in the subway tunnels.
He caught her ice-cold arm. He’d made sure she’d forgotten her coat when they left the club, and he knew he must feel warm to her, warm and safe. She would trust him. She let him steady her for a heartbeat before pulling away.
“Watch the third rail.” He pointed to the raised metal track that ran along the inside rail. “It’s dangerous.”
“I want to go back.” Her lower lip quivered, and she tucked it between even, white teeth. The drug was already affecting her. He’d given her a high dose because she hated the tunnels more than any other woman he’d brought down here.
“Put on more lipstick.” He held his breath, wondering if the drug had kicked in enough for her to comply. “You’ll feel better when you look better.”
She fumbled in her expensive purse and pulled out a hand mirror. She angled the mirror to catch the faint light. Her movements were clumsy but practiced.
Without looking, she pulled a shiny black tube from her purse. He knew the lipstick’s color even before she opened it.
Christian Dior 999. Classic red.
She pulled off the cap and twisted the base. He breathed in the lipstick’s heady perfume. The scent took him back to other lipsticks, other women, and how his mother had forced him to wear dresses and Christian Dior 999 lipstick when he was a little boy to punish him. He remembered how he had looked in the mirror in her high heels and long skirts, how the lipstick smelled on his own lips, the soapy taste of it.
He took a deep breath to ground himself back in this moment, this tunnel, this woman. He was in charge here.
With a trembling hand, she slid the lipstick across her full lips. He wanted to touch the gleaming redness, and he clenched the slippery lining of his pockets to keep his hands from reaching for her. These lips weren’t for kissing.
She dropped the case back inside her purse and straightened her slim shoulders. Her breasts pushed against the thin fabric of her dress. The sharp tang of vodka from her cosmopolitan obliterated the last traces of the lipstick’s delicate fragrance.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
Wide eyes stared back into his. “What’s wrong with your v-voice?”
“Nothing.” He dropped his voice back to its normal register, the one he used everywhere but here. Only in the dark tunnels under New York could he let the other voice go. But not yet.
She pulled her arm out of his grip. He let her. The drug would ensure her compliance. Even without it, she was too afraid of the dark to venture far.
She was so miserable. It was good of him to help her. He wished that someone would help him. He needed someone to be a friend to him like he was to her.
“It’s easy to get turned around down here.” He pointed to his right. “The platform is that way.”
That way was a dead end, but he doubted that she’d remember where he pointed anyway. The alcohol and his drug slowed her thinking. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if she might see something to show her what to do. She’d find no breadcrumbs in this deserted tunnel.
He rumpled his hair with one hand and smiled, showing his dimples. Women always relaxed at his boyish grin. “Come along with me?”
“Is it far?” She sounded like a little girl. Tremulous, uncertain, and trusting.
“Not far.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into his warmth. He stroked her cold arm, knowing how she would welcome the heat.
Together, they walked along the tracks. Her high heels clacked against the wooden train ties, but his dress shoes were silent. Nobody down here to notice either way, not at this time of night.
They were alone, but then, everyone was always alone. He never felt lonely down here. Aboveground he went to the crowded clubs and worked in a busy office. Surrounded by people, but always alone.
He would have been even more alone had anyone recognized his nature. He should have been cast out, a bad seed. He’d have cast himself out, but he lacked the nerve. So he helped others to do what he could not.
Her scream interrupted his thoughts. A rat stood on the tracks, not giving ground. Its black eyes glinted in the overhead light, and its sharp nose rose to sniff the air. It didn’t budge at the noise.
“It’s New York,” he said. “Rats everywhere.”
Humans had done that. They’d built a perverted world that was perfect for rats, better for rats than for men.
She stood rigid with one slender hand clamped across her red lips.
He bent and picked up a stone, but the rat melted into the shadows before he threw it. The rat feared him. In a lot of ways, rats were smarter than people.
They set off down the track. He put his arm around her shoulders again. Her movements were unsteady, her motor coordination compromised. He kept her upright and moving deeper into the tunnels.
“Your last boyfriend never took you on this kind of adventure, I bet.” He worked to use his regular voice. “He didn’t plan much, did he?”
She shook her head. “Slade was busy.”
He cupped her elbow. The skin was surprisingly rough. “You make time for important things. Important people.”
“I wasn’t important to him.” She lurched to a stop and looked up at him. Her pupils had dilated so much he could barely tell what color her eyes were. Maybe blue? “Not ever.”
“Why do you think that’s true?” He tucked a strand of long, blond hair behind her ear. She’d begun to look messy. That he could not abide.
“Because I wasn’t worth anything to him.” She saw herself clearly, probably for the first time. Friends and family always tried to talk a person through these moments, teach them lies to give them hope. But these dark moments had a bitter truth to them that was more potent than a thousand moments of false hope.
“Surely you’re worth something to others?” He squeezed her against his side. She was so tiny, barely larger than a child.
“To you, maybe?” Her voice quivered.
“It’s too soon for that.” He loosened his hold on her, but kept her close. “Plenty of other people love you. Your family. Your mother. Your father.”
Her face sagged. Her mother had died when she was a teenager, and her father had disowned her when she left their small religious town to seek her fortune in New York. He’d overheard her life story in the club where he’d picked her.
“Just Slade. And I drove him away.”
She might have driven him away, but it was Slade who had changed the locks on their shared apartment and left her neatly packed bags with the doorman. She came home from work to the doorman’s smirking face and a locked apartment door. So she’d dropped the suitcases in her office, changed, and gone out clubbing.
Ziggy had met her at his third club. She clearly needed someone and was willing to trade sex for a moment’s connection. Ziggy had taken over.
“There are more people in the world than Slade,” he said.
“Not for me.” She looked down at the buckles on her ruined red shoes. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Did Slade say anything was wrong with you?”
“We’d still be together if he didn’t see something wrong with me. See some giant flaw.”
“What did he see?” Ziggy put his hand on the small of her back and guided her forward, faster now. He had a train to catch.