Sabrina. I looked across the table at her. She was completely at ease. It takes a particular kind of murderess to do what she’d done this afternoon and then to act as cool and as poised as she was right now. She knew that I recognized her. Apparently, she just didn’t give a damn. Perhaps she felt so sure I’d be dead within hours that I posed absolutely no threat in her eyes.
Every once in awhile, I’d catch her looking appraisingly at me, though. There was a hint of amusement in her gaze, and mockery, and if I read it right, a touch of scorn.
Calvin insisted on paying the check. We walked out into the street. The night was one of those pleasant New England summer nights, clear and cool, with the wind coming down the street from the north. Calvin stopped on the corner.
“Nick,” he asked, “would you mind taking Sabrina home? I’m heading the other way.”
I looked at his niece.
“Not if she doesn’t mind.”
Sabrina said politely, “I’d appreciate it, Mr. Carter.”
Calvin patted me on the arm. “Talk to you soon,” he said and moved off in that loping, gangly stride that belied his age.
I took Sabrina by the elbow, turning down Newbury Street toward the center of town.
We had walked half a dozen steps before she spoke up. “You seem to know where we’re going. Do you know where I live, Mr. Carter?”
“Beacon Hill.”
“And the street?”
“Louisburg Square.”
Even in the darkness I could see a faint smile on her lips.
“And, of course, you know the number.”
“Twenty-one and a half.”
She put her arm through mine. “You’re quite a man, Mr. Carter, aren’t you?”
“Nick,” I corrected her. “No, it’s just that when someone tries to kill me, I find out as much about him — or her — as I can.”
“Do people often try to kill you?” Still the touch of amusement in her voice.
“Often enough for me to have learned to be careful. And you? Do you often try to kill others?”
Sabrina ignored the question. “It must seem that way to you,” she said thoughtfully. “Looking at it from your point of view, I’m sure it would appear that I did try to kill you.”
“Is there another way of looking at it?”
Who the devil was she trying to con, I wondered. And how would she try to lie her way out of attempted murder?
“Did you ever think that I might have been the intended victim? After all, it was my camera that was tampered with.”
“Is that why you ran?”
“I ran because I can’t afford to be involved in any form of scandal,” she said. “Mr. Bradford will not stand for any publicity about him — or about anyone who works for him.”
“Bradford?”
“Alexander Bradford. I’m his executive secretary.”
Alexander Bradford. Another of the names that Calvin Woolfolk had given me.
“Tell me about him.”
Sabrina shook her head. “That would cost me my job. I shouldn’t even have mentioned that I work for him.”
“You do more than just type and take shorthand. Right?”
“Oh, definitely,” she said, the tone of her voice telling me that she was laughing at me now, and it was as if, in that instant, she’d finally made up her mind about me and decided to put me to the final test. She’d issued a challenge to me, daring me to play the game with her.
In the past I’ve played at the game with other women like Sabrina. They’re a special breed, set apart from most women. For one thing, a woman like her is completely amoral. She won’t conform to the rules of society. She won’t behave like other women. She has a compulsion to be different, to be noticed.
For another thing, she’s intensely feminine, alive with animal vitality. Damned few men, however, can trigger a response in her because she doesn’t think much of men. She despises them as weaklings.
But when she does meet one of the rare men who can turn her on, that’s when she begins to play the game. She’ll use every wile in her repertoire, first to get you interested in her, and then to get you involved with her. It’s a test of strength that can only end in the capitulation and destruction of one of you. Once you start the game, that’s the only way it can end.
We had reached the Public Gardens. We turned into the park without saying a word, the tension between us so high, it was almost palpable. Neither the Public Gardens nor the Boston Common are safe places to walk after dark. Like so many of the once-pleasant parks in cities all over our country, they’ve become hunting grounds for muggers and rapists.
“It’s supposed to be dangerous to walk through here at night,” Sabrina said with pure pleasure in her voice. A swift, cool breeze blew through the park and her flying hair struck me softly across the cheek like the fur of a sleek animal that touches you in the dark and is gone.
“There’s safety in numbers,” I said, lightly placing my hand on her arm as we rounded a corner.
“I often walk here alone at night,” Sabrina responded coolly. “I’m never afraid.”
All the same, she began leaning slightly against me as we walked. Her body was pressed next to mine, warm and savage beneath her clothes.
Overhead the foliage on the trees blocked out the moon and most of the light from the lamps so that we walked together in the dark. There was nothing for us to say. Silently we responded to each other in a way so primitive that speech would have spoiled it.
In the same silence we left the Gardens and walked along Charles Street, turning the corner and striding up the incline of Mount Vernon Street to Louisburg Square. Still without a word, Sabrina unlocked the door to the house and closed it behind us without turning on the lights.
In the dark she turned to me. Her arms came up around my neck. Along the entire length of her, from her neck through her torso to her waist, hips, pubic arch, thighs and legs, she pressed hotly against me.
Her fingernails dug into the nape of my neck, pulling my head down, forcing my mouth against hers. She pried my lips apart, her tongue wildly searching inside my mouth for an instant, and then, like a wild jungle cat, she clamped her teeth into my neck.
I gathered her hair into my hand and closed my fist, pulling her head away from me so I could see her face. Sabrina’s eyes were closed, but I felt that if she opened them, they would be green slits glowing in the dark.
My other hand reached out to catch the soft weave of her silken dress at the throat. In one savage wrench I ripped the material from neckline to waist.
She moaned softly, her throat a pale arch of soft flesh in the dim light that filtered through the windows.
“Oh, yes!”
Acting instinctively, knowing it was what she wanted, I slapped her across the face.
“You tried to kill me this afternoon, you bitch!”
“Yes.” Her breath was coming in gasps. “Yes, I did.” She tried to press her nude torso against me. I held her away.
“Why?”
She shook her head.
I ripped the dress from her completely. Now she was wearing only the smallest of bras and a tiny triangle of silk beneath her sheer pantyhose.
“Why did you try to kill me?”
In answer, her arms came up and her hands beat futilely at my face. I twisted her head savagely from side to side, still gripping her hair in my left hand.
“Why?” I pulled away her bra. A husky moan rose from her throat, a moan filled with pleasure.
“Make love to me!” It was a cry, beseeching and demanding, begging and imperative all at the same time. She fell to her knees, pressing her head into my groin, putting her arms around my waist.
“Damn it, why?”
I could feel her head moving from side to side in a silent ‘no’ that set my groin on fire. Quickly I stripped off my own clothes.
Beneath us the rug was thin, and beneath the thin rug the wooden floor was hard, but Sabrina was soft and full and took me into her quickly. She was my cushion, my toy, my plaything, my animal.