“Lily. I have bad news.” His voice was unusually stiff.
Bad news?
What strength she had drained promptly out of her legs and left her wobbling on the stairs. What could be worse about Howard’s condition other than . . .
Her belly lurched with dread. “What bad news?”
“I’m so sorry to tell you this,” the doctor said. “But after you left this afternoon, I’m afraid Howard, ah . . . well, he took his own life.”
“Took his own . . .” Her voice trailed off. “He
what?
”
“I’m afraid so.”
Afraid so?
Afraid of what? What the fuck did this guy have to be afraid of? She was the one who’d lived in fear for eighteen goddamn years.
Her mind picked at the guy’s stupid word choice so she didn’t have to process what he’d actually said. What it meant for her.
Ah, God. For so long now, the whole purpose of her existence had been to stop Howard from doing this. And he’d done it anyway. After all these years. All the nets she’d held out. They hadn’t been enough to catch him. All pointless. All her frantic effort. Flailing like an idiot. Oh, God.
Stark’s voice droned on. She couldn’t make out his words. She was seeing all the times she’d found Howard on the floor and sat with him there for hours, waiting for him to wake up. Feeling his pulse, holding a mirror in front of his nose, trying to judge if this was a normal opiate binge that he would sleep off, or one of the deadly biggies, before she called the ambulance, again, and wasted the EMTs’ valuable time, to say nothing of her meager household budget.
The man’s whole fucking life, one long goddamn suicide attempt.
And he’d pulled it off. That selfish
bastard.
She wanted to scream, explode, shoot things, smash things. Her chest burned, her throat was imploding. She felt stupid. Made a fool of once again. Just another little joke of Fate at Lily Parr’s expense. Hah, hah.
Dr. Stark’s voice came back into focus. “. . . what arrangements need to be made, so you should contact our administrative—”
“How?” she cut in.
“Uh . . . uh, what? You mean, how should you contact our administrative—”
“No, I mean, how did he do it? Was it pills? Where the fuck did he get pills in that place? What the fuck was I paying you guys for? Wasn’t he locked up? Wasn’t he guarded, watched all the time? Wasn’t that the deal we made? I pay, you guys watch? Exactly what part of that arrangement was unclear to you?”
Stark hesitated, clearing his throat nervously for several seconds. “Ah, well, no. It wasn’t pills. Believe me, Lily, I’m mortified about this. We’re all so shocked . . . We just can’t imagine how he found it. He got a piece of broken glass someplace, evidently. I can’t imagine where, or from what. He never went out, and you were his only visitor. He was constantly supervised. I’m so sorry, Lily, but he opened the artery in his wrist with the glass shard. It was probably over in a couple of minutes.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
That cut off Stark’s monologue, startling him into a nervous stammer. “Ah . . . ah, ex-excuse me?”
“I said, that’s bullshit,” she repeated. “Howard would never cut himself. Not in a million years. He was terrified of blood. Blood made him pass out. Howard liked pills. He would never slit his wrist.”
“Ah” Dr. Stark’s voice strengthened. “Well, I’m sorry to say it, Lily, but he did. He most unquestionably did. I saw him myself.”
Then someone else killed him.
She almost blurted it out, but stopped herself. Howard’s words echoed in her head.
They’re listening, Lil. They’re always listening.
The world retreated. She felt the jostle of people forcing their way past her on the stairs, but they seemed very far away, and the real Lily was deep within, locked in a place of breathless, gelid stillness.
If I tell you, they’ll know. They’ll come for you. They’ll kill both of us.
She clawed her way back. Forced lungs to breathe, legs to climb. She tried to tune in to what Stark was saying, but there was so much noise. Her ears buzzed. So loud. She stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Autopilot guided her toward Nina’s apartment.
“Who was the last one to see him?” she blurted, cutting off the senseless babble from the phone.
Stark made a huffy sound. He did not like to be interrupted. “As I said, the nurse on duty, Miriam Vargas, was the one who found him.”
The cold inside her deepened, spread. “I want to talk to her,” Lily said. “Now. I’ll come right back up. I’ll take the next train.”
“No,” Stark snapped. “You can’t speak to her now. She was shocked. She couldn’t stop crying. She’s been sedated.”
“Oh, really? That poor, sweet baby. You’re breaking my heart.”
Stark sucked in air audibly. “Ms. Parr,” he said, his voice tight and prissy with disapproval. “I know this is shocking news for you, and very painful. It’s impossible to accept all at once. You might need help processing it, and no one could blame you, believe me. If you like, I can give you the number of someone you can call—”
“She’ll have stopped crying by tomorrow, right?” She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. “Will the drugs have worn off by then?”
“Leave the interviews to the professionals.” Stark’s voice was crisp. “There will be a police investigation. The last thing Miriam needs is for distraught family members to descend upon her and—”
“To be honest, Dr. Stark, I really don’t care what Miriam needs.”
“It doesn’t sound like you cared what Howard needed, either!”
Lily stopped dead, jaw sagging. “Excuse me?” she said. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Ms. Vargas gave me a full report of what transpired between you and she and Howard this afternoon, Ms. Parr—”
“Well, then, she lied!” This conversation was a lost cause, but so was her self-control. “She was the one who agitated him, not me! And Howard would never have cut himself!”
“Ms. Parr?”
The new voice called to her, from outside the babble of the doctor’s scolding voice coming through her cell. Lily looked around to see where it was coming from.
A man in a gray hoodie, standing above her on Nina’s stoop. Young, dark-haired, good-looking. Smiling a blank sort of smile. He was familiar. The kind of familiar when you don’t really know a person, but you see him regularly, like the guy who sold her bananas from the fruit cart on the corner. She knew him, but from
where . . .?
It exploded in her mind, jolting alarm through her rattled system. The cab driver from the Shaversham Point train station. What in the hell was he . . . oh. Oh, God. Oh,
shit.
And this was Nina’s apartment. Not even her own place. So how did they . . . how could they . . . her mind couldn’t even embrace it.
How had he known where she was?
She looked at the cell phone in her hand, heard the tinny warbling still coming from it. Dr. Stark was continuing his rant, but she no longer heard him. She had bigger problems now. Much bigger.
Her heart thudded. Her eyes locked with his and stuck there.
He took a step toward her. “Can I have a word with you, please?”
The scrape of a door sliding open behind her. It was a big SUV, humming on the curb. It all came together. The prickles on her neck, Howard’s garbled confession, his impossible suicide.
And now, this guy with the blank, empty smile advancing on her from above, and the open SUV yawning behind—
Fuck this.
She flashed the guy her most blinding bimbo bombshell smile. “Oh, my God! You’re the cabbie, right? The guy from Shaversham Point?” Her voice sounded high and thin and stupid. “Look, I’m, like, so sorry about standing you up for that cab ride, but things got really crazy for me today! But I do owe you that fare, and a tip, so let me just get that for ya right now, ’kay?” She beamed, reached in her purse—
Whipped out the Mace can.
Squirt.
Sucker punched.
The man reeled back, clawing at his eyes. She twirled to meet the other guy, heaving her computer bag in an arc into his face. He whipped his arm up to block it. She used that split second to zap a front kick to his crotch. He stumbled back with a grunt of outrage.
She recognized the other guy as his leg snapped up and his boot heel cracked agonizingly against her wrist. The Mace can flew, bounced, rolled. She scrambled back into a cluster of garbage cans. Kicked one into his path. He bounded over it, blade glinting, slashing down—
Thud.
She ran backward into a parked car, did a flying flip-’n’roll over the hood, and hit the street at a dead run. She darted between cars, heedless of braying horns, squealing brakes. Guy Number Two was another cabbie from Shaversham Point. Normal reality had ripped open, releasing demons from hell.
Busy street
. She needed an avenue block, a subway stop. Witnesses. She groped for her phone. Gone.
Her legs pumped, past the Indian restaurant, the sushi bar, the Laundromat, the clothing boutique, the florist. No one in those places could defend her against knife-wielding demons while she called 911 and waited for the cops to sort it out. She’d be meat. So would they.
She peeked over her shoulder and
shit,
he was gaining. Subway stairs. She flew down the steps, praying that it was a turnstile one, not the revolving cage with no fare booth. It had turnstiles, thank God, but the fare booth was closed, just an automated machine. No one to see her plight, call the cops. A train pulled in, squealing. She leaped the turnstile like a jackrabbit, sped toward the train on the tracks, its doors agape.
Ping,
the doors were closing. She dove for it.
Crunch,
the closing doors stuck on her shoulders and gnawed at her, burping and hiccupping in their efforts to close around her body. Pinned. She could only twist her head and watch death pounding down the stairs, straight toward her. The door lurched open. She tumbled inside, ambled like a crab on the floor to the middle of the car. Her legs shook too much to get up. He was going to make it inside, too.
Whoosh,
the doors slid closed in his face.
Thunk,
her attacker slammed into the train. He tried to pry his fingers into the rubberized closure, scrabbling. The train took off, smoothly gaining speed.
The guy jogged alongside, shouting something unintelligible. He bared his teeth, mouthed something vicious, grabbed at his crotch.
Lily huddled on the floor, breath rasping in and out. There was almost no one in the subway car. A teenage girl with earbuds, rocking out to her iPod, eyes shut. A homeless man, fast asleep and taking up a row of seats. An exhausted middle-aged woman, looking carefully away, wanting only to get home from work and put her butt into a chair.
Something warm and wet on her hand. Blood, dripping from a slash on her forearm. Heavy drops pattered onto the floor.
Wow. He’d cut her outside of Nina’s apartment. She hadn’t even noticed, she’d been so frantic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then pulled off her hoodie, wadded up the cloth of her sleeve, and applied direct pressure. She was chilly without the sweatshirt. Tremors racked her. She couldn’t tell if it was shock or cold. Both, probably.
Outside Nina’s apartment.
How in the hell had they known she wasn’t going straight home? She’d made her evening plans with Nina via cell phone, during the train ride. They were spying on her phone?
Or worse, they were spying on Nina’s phone. That unleashed an even deeper, nastier thrill of dread. The killers knew all about her. They knew about her best friend. They probably knew everyone in the world she might call on for help. God knows, it was a short list, at this point.
She couldn’t even call Nina, make sure she was OK. Any contact would put her friend in more danger. The blood on the floor made her think of Howard’s shard of glass, and the anger and shock were sucked into the deeper, wider well of agonizing sadness.
When she came to her senses, she was huddled up, gasping for air. Rocking, like an autistic child. Like Howard before a suicidal pill binge. So this was why he did it. This was how it had felt to him.
She didn’t know which direction the train was going. People got on and off, stepping around her. She wanted to get up, but her muscles wouldn’t move. Fear had frozen her stiff.
She used to scold Howard for that obsessive rocking. It had infuriated her. It came across as so childish, so self-indulgent.
But he’d never been able to stop, once he’d started.
Now she knew why. Oh, Dad. Finally, she got it.
4
Portland, Oregon
Six weeks later
I
have important things to do. You are not one of them.
The nonverbal message vibing off the hard-ass brunette’s haughtily turned back was impossible for Bruno to misinterpret. But perverse, self-flagellating idiot that he was, it went straight to his dick.
She’d walked into Tony’s Diner at 3:45
A.M.
, and he’d swear to God, he’d felt her coming before she even turned the corner and moved into the light uder the awning outside. He was primed for her, after the last two nights of torture and titillation.
Fate had been kind. After hours of anticipation, finally the follicles on his skin tightened, lifting hairs on end in a breezy, ticklish rush of animal awareness. The bells over the doors jingled. Ta-da.
His hair follicles weren’t all that lifted and tightened. Good thing he wore an apron over his jeans. When the chick with the black pageboy sashayed into Tony’s Diner, no matter how blitzed from lack of sleep he was, his glands promptly pumped a substance into his body that made him want to break into an oldtime movie dance number. An incredible rush. A tingling sense of infinite possibility combined with a mega-boner. A huge, awestruck “wow” from the depths of his being.
She’d chosen a table today, rather than the counter. Each seating option offered different viewpoints, with varying advantages and disadvantages. He hadn’t yet settled on his favorite. The back view was nice for legs, ass, the graceful nipped-in curve of her back, the nape of her slender, soft-looking neck, and he could do a lot of easy, blatant ogling while hustling around behind her back. When she took a table, he got more frontal scoping action but had to resort to old tricks from adolescence, developed before he’d discovered the ease and simplicity of mirrored sunglasses. Take it in, in one sweeping glance, and then pore over the gathered data in the privacy of his own dirty mind. He could never gulp enough of this girl in a single glance, though. He wanted to sit down across from her. Fix her with an unblinking, predatory stare.
Not that she’d notice, of course. She probably wouldn’t even look up. Her powers of concentration were world-class.
He kept trying to pin down what it was about her that got to him. It was a thorny problem, requiring detailed, up-close research and analysis, he decided, preferably conducted in bed. Maybe the sharp, up-tilted angles of cheekbone and eyebrows, maybe the big, mysterious green-gold eyes, set at an exotic slant, accentuated with bold eyeliner, heavy with mascara. She wore cat-eye glasses with fake gems in the corners that should’ve made her look grotesque, but they didn’t. They looked quirky, sassy, playful. They threw her beauty into sharp relief. She could wear anything and look great. Anything or nothing. Mmm.
And that mouth. She’d painted it a bright scarlet that was supposed to make her look super tough, but it didn’t work. The fullness of the upper lip made her look vulnerable, almost childlike. And the severe jet black hair, all wrong for her luminous skin.
The look was Salvation Army sexpot. Shabby black stretch lace shirt, showcasing an enticing nipple hard-on. Frayed denim miniskirt, a little too tight for a luscious ass. Tiny bulge of snowy pale muffin top coming out the low-slung waistband where her shirt rode up that made him want to grab and squeeze. Scuffed red fuck-me peep toes with outrageous heels. Shapely legs in black stockings with so many rips and runs it had to be on purpose. He was usually good at decoding what girls said with their clothes, but he couldn’t read this chick. She dressed like she wanted attention, and yet she stared into that netbook like her life depended on it, black-tipped fingers tapping in a ceaseless buzz. Eyes frozen wide. Glasses reflecting the screen’s blue glow.
Denying Bruno’s very existence upon this earth by the massive force of her indifference, even while ordering food from him. Bad tipper, too. But the nipple hard-on made up for that sin, abundantly.
There was that other quality, too, that he barely knew how to articulate. An intangible glow you could only see if you weren’t looking at it. He’d grown sensitive to it hanging out with Kev. Who, mellow as he was, always carried a disquieting aura of danger about him. A sense of things about to happen. Good things, bad things. Big things.
But whatever big things were about to happen to the brunette, a romantic encounter with Bruno Ranieri was unlikely to be one of them. She’d been there every night for three nights, and she’d ignored him completely. Maybe he was an arrogant putz, but he was accustomed to getting attention from women. This girl could give a flying fuck.
Amazing that his glands were stirring at all, after covering the night shift for a month. Zia Rosa was AWOL, supervising the new McCloud kid’s first month of life. Bruno couldn’t remember which brother’s kid it was. He couldn’t keep any of Kev’s long lost McCloud brothers or their spawn straight, not for the life of him. Dirty blond hair, bright green eyes everywhere you looked. And they bred like rats, so the problem was just going to get worse with time.
He’d tried to hire more staff, but one guy that he’d hired a couple weeks ago just got a call from an ex-girlfriend in Costa Rica and off he went to follow his heart. Then Elsa ripped a tendon in her knee skateboarding. So here he was, swathed in an apron, eyes burning from lack of sleep. Flipping burgers, dipping fries, bussing tables, and baking pies. Just like old times. His current schedule involved a full day running his own outfit downtown, then an uneasy catnap, and working graveyard at the diner until dawn.
But hey, presto. Tonight’s outfit zinged him into perfect wakefulness. Those holes in her tights just made his palms sweat.
Maybe she played for the other team. He didn’t think so, though. He had lesbian friends, he knew the vibe. She didn’t have it.
One thing she did have was a sweet tooth. She’d been working steadily through the dessert menu, limited though it was with Zia gone. Bruno was a fine short-order cook, and a good pastry chef when he put his mind to it, but Zia was the true pastry goddess, and she was off in Seattle, making beef broth for whichever McCloud wife had just reproduced. To promote lactation, like Nonna in Brancaleone used to do.
Sure enough, the thought of lactation made his eyes fall to the pert, here-I-am! jut of the brunette’s nipples at the exact, fateful moment that her gaze darted up without warning. Yikes. Busted.
Oh, man. Eye contact. It was too much. Her gaze cut straight into his brain, like a hot knife through butter. He practically yelped.
Eye contact revealed fresh, fabulous details. Her eyes were hazel green, a hodgepodge of yellow and brown and green. She smiled, a hard, knock-you-back-on-your-ass smile. Not a comeon. A back-off smile.
She whipped the glasses off, laid them on the table. “Yes?”
He wanted to glance around himself for the man trap with the spikes. “Um, ah . . . what can I get for you?” What, was he
stammering?
Her chin rose. “What have you got?”
Highly inappropriate answers whirled through his mind, like a swarm of crazed bees. He bit down hard, forced himself to act professional. “The menu’s reduced right now, since Zia Rosa’s gone. Tonight, we’re down to rice pudding, banana cream pie, coconut cream pie, cheesecake, and brownie sundaes. But all of them are great.”
Her stare was unblinking. A gunslinger in a high-noon duel. “And this Zia Rosa has been gone for how long now?”
The question taxed his brain severely, since all his blood had pooled elsewhere. “Ah. Um, I don’t know. Five wee”
“That’s how old the desserts are? Or did she fill the freezer?”
He recoiled in outrage. “Hell, no! The desserts are made fresh, all the time!”
Those big eyes got even bigger. “Ooh, cut you to the quick, did I?” she murmured. “Made fresh by who?”
His chest puffed out. “By me.”
Her eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “No way.”
He bristled. “Way! Why would I lie?”
She propped her chin on her hand and gazed up. “To impress me?” she suggested. “To distinguish yourself from the anonymous, sweating, teeming masses?”
Bruno considered that. “I didn’t know I was competing with any anonymous teeming masses, sweaty or otherwise,” he said. “And I’ve never had to work that hard to impress girls.”
“Hmm.” The eyelashes swept down as she pondered her next jab. “So you prefer to hang out with girls who are easy to please?”
Her attitude was starting to piss him off. “And why would it be a bad thing to be easily pleased?”
The eyes opened, wide and innocent. “Did I say it was bad?”
He closed his mouth. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m lost in the maze of this conversation, and I can’t find my way out, so I’m bailing. But if I actually were going to try to impress a girl, the first clever ploy that would come to my mind would not be lies about pastry making.”
“I see,” she said. “Well, that really begs the question. What clever ploy would be the first one to come to your mind? I’d love to hear it.”
He thought about it, shook his head. “I don’t step into holes in the ground that big,” he said. “Certainly not at four in the morning after a long shift. I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” Her X-ray gaze bored into his head so intently he practically started to blush. “I just can’t see a guy like you making grandma food like rice pudding or banana cream pie. Brownie sundaes, maybe, but . . . no. Not unless you’re gay, of course. Are you gay?”
He let out a slow breath, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “I’m an excellent pastry chef. My pie crust is better than my Zia Rosa’s. Come on back to the kitchen. I’ll make a chocolate cream pie before your very eyes. I’ll feed a piece of it to you by hand. And by the time I’m done, you’re not going to be asking me if I’m gay anymore.”
She cleared her throat, gaze darting down. “Is that so.”
“It is,” he said. “On your feet. Come on back to the kitchen. I mean it. I’m dead serious. It’s pie time. And I am so ready for you.”
She chewed on one side of her soft red lower lip, peeking up at him. Her fabulous if somewhat gummy black eyelashes were at mysterious half-mast. “Um, no thanks. I’m sure you’re very good at it.”
Her provocative tone was gone. Her voice was quiet.
Bruno folded his arms over his chest, flipping the order pad nervously against his arm. She backed down, but too soon. He hadn’t worked his mad out yet. “What the hell did you mean by that, anyway?”
She blinked, innocently. “Mean by what?”
“A guy like me,” he repeated. “What kind of guy is that? What do you think you know about me? You have no clue who I am.”
It was like she’d taken off a mask. She looked completeldifferent. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. I made assumptions based on your looks, which is really shallow, and I hate it when guys do that to me. I don’t know anything about you. Except for what you tell me.”
Wow. He ran a flash analysis to decide what conversational road to travel next. Time to shift gears. A peace offering, maybe. “What do you want to know?” he asked, rashly. “I’ll tell you anything.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Her chin went back up. Her gaze raked over his body, assessing him. “For starters, tell me how you can make banana cream pie and chocolate brownies in industrial quantities and still look like that. And don’t tell me about the thirty hours a week in the gym, because I don’t want to hear it.”
So it was back to brittle flirting. Whatever. “OK, I won’t tell you that,” he said easily. “I’ve just got one of those metabolisms. I can eat anything, anytime, as much as I want, with extra whipped cream on it. I know girls hate that, but we all have our gifts.”
He headed for the dessert counter, where he proceeded to dish up a big bowl of rice pudding, dusting it with cinnamon. Then a huge, quivering slice of banana cream pie. He poured them both some coffee, buzzed and jittery though he already was. He needed something to do with his hands, if she was actually ready to acknowledge his existence.
Or he’d find himself panting. Wagging. Or worse, babbling.
He laid the desserts on the table. Her crooked smile faltered a little when he boldly slid into the seat facing her, the better to hide his hard-on. None of the other customers needed attention. Just as well. He would have ignored them if they had.
The silence stretched out taut as she sipped her coffee. Strong, fresh French roast, with a shot of real cream, no sugar. She liked it just the way he liked it.
Strange, to be sitting here quietly with a woman who turned him on so much and not be trying to show her how interesting or fascinating or unique or solvent he was. That’s what he would’ve done in the old days. He’d cooled down on that, after his recent notoriety following his adopted brother Kev’s mortal duel with the evil zombie masters, the gun battles, the bombs. Tony’s death. All that shit.
That whole crazy goatfuck had culminated in Bruno doing a perp walk along with Kev and Kev’s newly discovered biological brothers, in handcuffs in front of local news crews. They were found to be innocent of wrongdoing, but they’d had an uncomfortable time of it for a while.