She shook her head.
He studied her. “I have a hundred and eighty bucks on me in cash,” he said. “Bet you spent five times that amount on those shoes alone. If you want money, you should be cruising the casinos on the Indian reservations. Not slumming in roadhouses with losers like me.”
She stared back, defiant. She was no junkie in search of a quick fix. She glowed with health. And with a face and body like that, she could bilk men out of all their money without having to resort to knock-out drugs. So what the fuck? If she hadn’t picked him for money, she’d picked him for some other reason. Two things came to mind.
Neither of them were good.
He leaned on her again and gave Hypothesis Number One a spin.
“My father sent you, ney?” he asked in Ukrainian.
Her eyelids fluttered, but he saw no comprehension. He had a lifetime of practice reading fleeting expressions of stone-faced people. A family survival skill. He got nothing from her. Not a twinge, not a flash, not a flicker. He swatted her face, made his voice even harsher. “Talk, you stupid whore,” he snarled in the same language. “My father? My uncle? Tell me, or I’ll rip your tongue right out of your head!”
She spat at him, but that was payback for the slap.
He could be wrong, had been often, but he had to call it. She didn’t understand Ukrainian. She wasn’t sent by his family. So much for Hypothesis One. Sending a beautiful woman to fuck his brains out was hardly Oleg Arbatov’s style, anyhow. The way the old man hated his firstborn, he’d be more likely to send six big guys with blackjacks.
He jerked ohundred anher fallen purse. Makeup, wallet, two blister packs of tiny pills, distinguished only by colored dots on the foil. A phone, some sleek design he didn’t recognize. He flipped through the wallet. A driver’s license made out to Naomi Hillier of Bellingham, Washington. Credit cars, department store cards in the same name. A wad of cash. He leafed through it. Eight thousand, hoo-hah. The wallet had none of the detritus of a normal life. No parking tickets, receipts, scribbled numbers, drycleaning pickup slips. No manila envelope full of pictures of the cheating husband and the slut sister going at it doggy style, either.
He brandished the spray bottle in her face. She bucked like a bronco. Maybe the stuff was lethal. But Jesus, why? Granted, he tended to piss people off just by existing, but if someone was that mad at him, one would think he’d have half a clue. Time for Hypothesis Two.
He lifted himself slowly off her. “Listen, Naomi,” he said. “You move one millimeter in any direction I don’t order you to move, and you get a faceful of whatever the fuck is in this bottle. Got that?”
She nodded.
Pulling clothes on was tricky, one handed. He didn’t bother with his T-shirt, since it would require a split second of being blind, which was one split second too long. He pulled on his jeans, shrugged the jacket over his naked torso, shoved the shirt into his pocket. Slid his feet into his boots without bothering to lace them. “On your feet.”
She struggled awkwardly to her feet. “Where are we going?”
“The police,” he said.
She started to laugh. “Because I’m not playing nice? Aw! I’m sure they’ll feel sorry for you, after you tell them how you spent your night.”
He twisted her bound hands up behind her. “Shut up and move.”
“I’ll tell them I was raped. Why do you think I wanted it rough, you stupid fuck? I got one of your condoms out of the trash and put some of your spunk into myself. I have you cold, asshole.”
Here it was. The money question. “I’m not taking you to the Sandy cops. I’m taking you to downtown Portland. To the Justice Center. We’re going to talk to Detective Petrie.”
It was subtle, but he caught the zing of tension. The eyelid flutter, her pupils contracting. All he needed to know. Son of a
bitch.
Hypothesis Two won, ding, ding, ding. This was about Bruno and his schizo girlfriend. Hit men jumping out of cars, dead bodies strewn on the streets of North Portland. Big trouble, and idiot that he was, he’d stuck his nose right into it. No, worse. He’d stuck his dick into it. Repeatedly.
He grabbed the girl by the throat and pushed her onto the bed, pulling his knife out of his pocket. He snapped it open, twirled it.
Her eyes fixed on the flashing blade, frozen wide.
“You have a beautiful face,” he said softly. “You want it to stay beautiful? Tell me what you want from Bruno Ranieri, bitch.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We both know that’s a fucking lie,” he hissed. “Where shall I start?” He caressed her cheek with the point of the blade. “How about an eyelid? That’s a toughie for the reconstructive surgeon to fix.” He traced patterns on the skin under her eye. Smiled evilly, like a guy who actually enjoyed torturing women. He knew guys like that. He’d seen what their smiles looked like when they were working on their victims.
It didn’t feel good on his own face.
He put his knife down, like the limp dick his father had always mocked him for being. He couldn’t convince her that he was capable of cutting her. He had no credibility. In some circles, he’d been told, this failure would be to his credit. Right now, it was fucking inconvenient.
He jabbed the spray bottle under her chin, but she didn’t react this time. “Let’s go,” he growled. “If I hear you inhale, I spray you.”
She stumbled beside him, stiff but unresisting. Into the cinder block stairwell. Out into the hotel parking lot, where dawn was threatening the horizon. She was shaking, hard, by the time he shoved her into the passenger seat of his Chevy and strapped her in.
He stopped, took a second to yank on his shirt, since it didn’t look like she was going to attack him. Those racking shudders did not look like an act. She’d forgotten that he existed. She was fucked up.
He cut off the bra knotted around her hands. Draped his jacket over her, tucking it under her chin. Thus thoroughly shoring up his persona as a real badass motherfucker. He blasted heat on her as they drove. He’d expected a shrill scolding, a string of inventive lies, or at least some slick, jive-ass rant. All he heard was teeth chattering.
He went back and forth in his head on what to do with Naomi about a thousand times as he drove. The more miles that went by, the worse she looked. And the more his options narrowed.
He hated sticking his neck out, getting squashed onto an examining glass under blazing light and powerful lenses. He’d rather lose a limb. But what the fuck else could he do right now? With her? He couldn’t just dump her by the side of the road somewhere. Particularly now with his genetic material inside her bodily orifices.
He clenched his jaw, grabbed his cell phone, dialed the number he’d found for Detective Sam Petrie the day before.
The guy picked up quickly, considering that it wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet. “Detective Sam Petrie here,” he said.
“Detective Petrie, my name is Alex Aaro,” he said. “I have with me a person of interest in your case, involving the three dead guys that turned up behind Tony’s Diner yesterday.”
“Ah.” Petrie paused expectantly. “And? Why is this person interesting?”
“She just tried to kill me,” he blurted.
Petrie made an encouraging sound. “Tell me more.”
“I will, but I’ve got to take this girl somewhere. Are you at the Justice Center now?”
“Ah, almost,” the guy replied. “Just have to park. Where are you?”
“About ten minutes away. Look, could you meet me right out front, or in the lobby? I don’t want to have to look for parking with her.”
“Ah . . .” Petrie hesitated, sensing the swiftly rising level of weirdness. “What’s wrong with this girl? Is she hurt?”
“Just get her some coffee, would you? Or a pastry.” Aaro stared at Naomi’s grayish face, her chattering teeth. “Something with lots of sugar.”
“Mr. Aaro, do you—”
Aaro cut the connection and thumbed off the phone. His jacket had slid off her again and hit the floor. She vibrated against the seat belt. Maybe she actually was a junkie, and she’d mixed her fix.
He picked uped, racing through red lights. God, how he wanted this to be over. He hoped Petrie would show up on time.
He jerked to a stop on SW Third, right outside the imposing main entrance of the Justice Center, figuring he’d unload the girl and leave her with Petrie while he re-parked. Please, God. He took her purse for Petrie’s benefit, but the phone he wanted to look at himself, so he tossed it into the front seat for future study.
He hustled her up the broad stairs of the entryway, through the bank of glass doors. She weaved and wobbled, dangerously unsteady.
He glanced wildly around the place, trying not to look as desperate and harried as he felt, scanning for someone whose body type fit the voice from the phone conversation. There. Tall guy, thirtyish, big jaw, tousled hair. Lots of stubble. He held a paper coffee cup, a white paper bag. Good man. He’d brought sugar. His eyes asked Aaro the question. Aaro’s feet answered it, forcefully steering Naomi’s body toward the other man. “Detective Petrie?” he asked.
The guy’s eyes flicked over Naomi, who was breathing with a strange, audible wheezing sound now. “Yeah, that’s me. Hey, looks like your friend there needs the emergency room.”
“She’s not my friend,” Aaro snapped. “She just tried to kill me.”
Suddenly, Naomi jerked, so violently she wrenched herself out of his grip. She vomited, a projectile fountain that rose into the air and spewed around in a nasty arc as she twisted, flailing her arms, her body jackknifing. The people nearby leaped back from the splatter with shouts of disgust. She thudded heavily to her knees, and then fell flat, her body twitching.
Aaro knelt next to her, placed his finger on her carotid artery. He saw Petrie in his peripheral vision, crouched on the other side. He felt an irregular flutter . . . and then nothing. For many long seconds. Dead.
The convulsions had snapped her spine.
Someone elbowed him roughly aside as people gathered around Naomi’s curled-up body. Someone was pumping on her chest. Others were shouting instructions, suggestions. One guy was calling for EMTs on his cell. A woman was crying, noisily.
Boom.
The sound jolted him. From outside. Shouts, screams. Alarms began to squeal, at every pitch, a crazy, cacophonous chorus.
Aaro staggered to his feet with the others and went to look out the door. He stared, barely surprised at what he saw, right outside, in the street. His Chevy. Windows blown out. Smoke pouring. Blown up.
A hand touched his shoulder. He turned, looked into Petrie’s bloodshot eyes.
“Is that your vehicle?” Petrie asked.
Aaro nodded. “Second time in six months,” he said, for no reason that he could fathom. Like it was any of Petrie’s goddamn business.
A short, fat guy who’d come to the door to gawk whistled appreciatively. “Oh, man. That’s gotta hurt. You must have an exciting life.”
Aaro let out a long sigh. “You have no idea,” he muttered.
“They are going to fuck you up the ass on the insurance now, you know that?” the short guy informed him, with unseemly relish.
“Yeah,” murmured Aaro, bleakly. “I do know that.”
“Let’s go have a talk while the EMT people come for your friend,” Petrie suggested.
“She’s not my friend,” he said again. “She just tried to kill me.”
s bloodshozed at him. “OK,” he said. “Let’s go discuss how this relates to my case, then. You might as well take this coffee.” He held out the paper cup. “You’re going to be here for a while.”
Bruno huddled in the brush, ears straining for the hum of the engine on the switchback. Sean McCloud hadn’t said much once they’d established radio communication. The guy was in his hiding place up the hill, in the zone, peering through his scope. Soon the purported bad guys would turn the hairpin and make the last pass to the bridge. And then, showtime.
Stay up there. Be good. Do as you’re told for once in your life.
Bruno punched the telepathic message toward the place where he’d left Lily, swathed in the smallest body armor that Sean had, which still swamped her, and a big camo poncho draped over it. He’d given Lily the Glock 19, with a full magazine and a chambered round, and strict instructions to hightail it up the mountain, and put distance between herself and the stunt that he and Sean were about to pull.
She was supposed to wait on the bluff. If they didn’t come collect her, well, that was a real shame. In that sad case, she kept her head down and called Sean’s brothers on Bruno’s encrypted, dedicated cell.
It comforted him, that she had on some Dragon Skin body armor.
Lily didn’t like being stashed. Too bad. She was the one who’d nixed the flame fougasse option. He’d liked that scenario, the finality of it. Watching the full vehicle rise up into the air and gracefully explode, ah. Take that, you fuckers. But no. Couldn’t be that simple.
The motor rumbled. He heard tires crunch. He gathered himself into a state of focused calm. He had a sense that Sean was in that state naturally. That part of his brain was permanently switched on, like Kev’s was. One of those weird McCloud things. Like being able to rig an ANFO bomb or a fougasse in fifteen minutes. Crazy shit.