Dorian stretches his legs out, one into the aisle of the plane, and slouches far down into his seat. I stare out the window beside me into the blackness of the night sky forty thousand feet in the air over Washington State.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” he says, resting his head against the seat and crossing his hands over his stomach, “but you’re really beginning to disappoint me.”
I want to laugh at the seriousness in his voice.
“I was warned,” he goes on, “that working with you wouldn’t be easy. Like you were some kind of Sweeny Todd two-point-o.”—I laugh softly to myself, anyway—“But truthfully, I’m finding you to be more wishy-washy than anything.”
“Well, I could always offer you a seat in my chair, if you’d like,” I say with a grin.
“Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, asshole.” He readjusts his position, pulling his foot from the aisle. “But I am going to request a reassignment after I help you with this.”
“You won’t need to,” I say, staring at the back of the seat in front of me. “Victor assured me that the Seattle job would be our last one working together.”
His head falls to the side to face me.
“Really?”
I nod.
“Hm,” he says sharply. “Wonder why he hasn’t said anything to me about it yet.”
“I don’t know.” I glance over at him briefly. “Perhaps the Seattle job wasn’t over when you thought it was.”
He shrugs and looks at the seat in front of him.
“I guess that would explain why we’re going back,” he says.
Yes, that might make sense if Victor was the one who sent us back to Seattle, but this time it’s personal. Izabel was right—I need a job of my own to take off the edge. Like a drug addict needing a fix, I suppose. I never claimed to be any better than one.
I have a very special date with Kelly Bennings. For me and for Izabel.
Dorian glances over again.
“No offense, of course,” he says. “I’m just used to working with people more like myself. You know what I mean?”
I nod, still not looking at him.
“I know perfectly well what you mean,” I say. “And I need to be free of you as much as you need to be free of me.”
Dorian laughs under his breath.
“But I don’t see there being many more like you waiting to take my place when I’m gone,” he says with an air of comical disbelief.
“No, there won’t be. Because men like me prefer to work alone.”
“It’s a lonely fucking world out there, Gustavsson.” He closes his eyes. “I think if I were anything like you, I’d probably go crazy by myself, doing that demented shit that you do.”
In a big way, Dorian is right. My life is a lonely one. And if I had my way with things, Seraphina never would’ve betrayed me years ago. She never would’ve killed those three innocent women. She never would’ve ran and left me to live in solitude without her. But more than anything, if I had my way, she wouldn’t be sick and none of it would’ve ever happened to begin with and we’d still be together. I wouldn’t have to be alone.
But it all goes to show that we’re all probably better off on our own, anyway. Attachments make us weak and vulnerable. They fuck with our emotions. And I don’t like my emotions fucked with.
Dorian and I are in Seattle before six the next morning. We get a rental car and find a hotel where we spend some of the day going over location information on Kelly Bennings and the client who hired us to take out Paul Fortright. According to the files there is a connection between Bennings and the client, Ross Emerson, who claimed that Fortright molested his daughter. All the information I need is right here in my jacket pocket. The rest is—and was—gut instinct and I’ve yet to be wrong about a person’s guilt—except, of course, when a victim pretends to be guilty, which was a first for me and completely threw me off. But instinct can be a deadly weapon when one knows how to utilize it. I mastered mine when I was a boy. Because if I didn’t, I never would’ve escaped my masters and I would’ve died a slave.
By nightfall, Dorian and I are waiting in the car parked in the front of Kelly Benning’s current place of employment—a liquor store. Two hours later, after following her to a gas station, a fast food restaurant and finally to and from none other than the client, Ross Emerson’s apartment, we have her stuffed in the trunk after she finally makes her way home and parks in the driveway.
Now, we’re back in the same warehouse we used to interrogate her the first time, and she’s just as defiant as she was then.
With my handkerchief, I wipe her spit from my face and then shove the handkerchief in her mouth.
“Mnnmmmnn!” Her stifled screams are most certainly filled with curses and threats. “Dmmnmmm-Mnnnmmooo!” The whites of her bugged-out eyes are in plain view. She thrashes against the wooden chair, causing it to jerk back and forth scraping against the concrete.
I really wish I had my chair to strap her to—makes things so much easier.
Dorian remains off to one side of the room, gun hidden away in the back of his pants, a look of impatience and discomfort on his pretty-boy face as he stands with his back against the steel wall.
Collapsing my hand around the back of an empty chair in a corner, I lift the legs from the floor and walk with it back over to Bennings, setting it down in front of her. Just like the last time. She glares at me through pale blue eyes framed by unkempt dishwater-brown hair. Her shouts and threats continue to come out as muffled nonsense, indecipherable yet completely obvious at the same time.
I cross one leg over the other and cock my head to one side. Then I glance down at the dirty gauze around her hand tied to the arm of the chair and I smile faintly, recalling what I felt when I drove Izabel’s knife through it—complete and utter satisfaction.
I pull my own knife from the inside of my coat. Bennings’ eyes lock on the blade and she stops screaming.
Leaning forward, I place the edge of the knife against the bare skin of her shoulder and drag it down the length of her arm without cutting her. I had stripped her before I tied her to the chair, and she sits in nothing but her miss-matched panties and bra, her bony legs shaking against the wood, her ribs clearly visible—she’s about ninety pounds of wicked bitch. Pale skin that isn’t beautiful, but sickly. Dark circles blemish the area underneath her eyes. I wonder what her drug of choice is, but don’t care enough to ask and resolve to believe it must be heroin.
But does Kelly Bennings really deserve to die?
Still practically in her face, I say calmly, “If you spit on me again, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
She nods furiously with tears in her eyes.
Hesitating only a moment, I reach up with my latex glove-covered hand and remove the spit-soaked handkerchief from her throat—shoved back far enough that she couldn’t have spit it out on her own—and drop it on the floor beside my feet.
“What the fuck do you want from me?!”
I tilt my head to one side.
“And lower your voice,” I tell her, “because you’re beginning to give me a headache.”
Her eyebrows draw inward and she looks at me as if to say What the fuck do I care? but won’t dare say it aloud. At least not yet. This one is bold and almost entirely fearless—it’s just a matter of time before that mouth of hers gets her into more trouble.
“You set up that hit against your boyfriend, Paul Fortright, with Ross Emerson,” I say, leaning back in my chair again.