Ripped (4 page)

“All right, all right,” said one of the cops. “So, dark skinned then.”

“Like a gypsy?” said the other cop. “Sorry. Uh, Roma?”

“They like to be called travelers,” supplied the other cop.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t dark skinned. He was… tan.”

“All right,” said the first cop. “What about hair color?”

“It was, um, brown.”

“And his eyes?”

“Brown?” I said.

“You don’t remember?”

“You were stuck in this man’s car for over an hour,” said the other cop. “You got a good look at him.”

“I did,” I said. “It’s only that I was… scared.” And distracted by his body and thinking about kissing him. I called up the image of him in front of me, almost ready to kiss me. I had looked into his eyes then. I knew the color. So, why was I
lying
to the cops about it?

Didn’t I want this guy to get caught? He was a murderer. And he had taken me away at gunpoint. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I felt as if I needed to give myself a strong talking to, so that I understood the depth of what I was dealing with here.

“How about we try this a different way?” said the cop. “Maybe if we eliminate colors. So tell us, were his eyes green?”

* * *

Cade

Once I got my car parked again, I turned on my cell phone. I usually kept it turned off during a job, because I didn’t want to be interrupted. There were a few missed calls from my contact, the guy who’d set up the hit on Prince Larbi.

Damn it. I knew that things had gone a little south today, but I hoped that I’d contained the situation.

Oh, who the hell was I kidding? My little stunt with Shell had jeopardized everything. It would have been one thing if I’d just left her at the Target like I’d wanted to in the first place. But the fact that I’d doubled back and given her a ride home and told her stuff about my mother and…

What the fuck was wrong with me?

It was as if I’d forgotten everything I needed to do a job properly. I had put the entire mission in danger, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what my damage was.

Like that last moment in the car with her?

What the fuck was that?

Did I actually think I could kiss her? What then? Would I ask her out for a coffee or a drink at the local pub? We could have a beer and laugh over the time where I jammed a gun into her skull and threatened to put so many bullet holes in her that her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.

Yeah, that was going to happen.

It wasn’t like there was anything all that special about her, anyway. She was pretty, sure, but I could go out and find a pretty girl to take home if I wanted. I did, when the urge got so intense that I couldn’t deal with it otherwise. I could charm a girl with my money and my accent and sparkling wit. But she could never know what I was. Because the minute that any woman figured that out, she was utterly disgusted by me. As she should be. I was a predator. I was a wolf amongst the sheep. A monster that hit behind a smile. No one could know how much I enjoyed what I did, how much the power of killing sent thrills through me.

I did my best to tame that urge, to keep it from getting out of control.

I knew that my urges were deviant and that there was no place for them in polite society. I had done my best to compartmentalize them and to use them in the best way I knew how. But giving in to them at all had a price. That price was companionship. No matter how many women I seduced, I would always be alone.

I knew that. I accepted that. It was the cost of doing business.

It was only that Shell
knew
. She had seen what I was, and she had still looked at me with interest in her eyes, even attraction. I could have sworn she wanted me to kiss her.

But that was stupid, and I knew it.

I dialed my contact on my phone. It rang several times before he picked up.

“Ripper.”

“Mr. Blue,” I said. We always spoke in code names. That way if I was ever captured or arrested, I couldn’t name the people who’d put me up to what I did. It was a matter of national security, supposedly. When I started taking these government jobs, I thought it would ease my conscience a bit. If what I was doing was for the good of the nation, then it couldn’t be so bad, could it? But the truth was, the government jobs were often more ruthless than the underworld ones. I was left with no illusions. There were more bad people on earth than I had ever imagined.

I was one of them, but at least I knew that I was bad.

I was fairly sure the others lied to themselves, told themselves that whatever they did was okay.

That hypocrisy was worse, in my book.

“Finally hearing back from you.”

“Yeah, well, I ran into some trouble getting clear after completing our little arrangement this afternoon. It’s only now that I’m able to call you back.”

“That trouble has a name, and she’s run to every major news network in the country. Starling Birch. A member of the prince’s harem who found the body. She’s shining a big spotlight on this.”

“Look, I’m sorry about all of it, but I didn’t anticipate—”

“It’s not your fault. These things happen. But we’re not pleased about Ms. Birch’s yammering mouth. We’d like it quieted before she exposes everything. The people involved in the ‘little arrangement’ involving Prince Larbi can’t afford to be uncovered. Would completing this assignment be something you’d be interested in?”

Holy shit. He wanted me to kill Shell’s sister. Well, I wouldn’t do that. Not because she was related to Shell or anything. I would never interact with Shell again. But because it was against my code. “Sorry, Mr. Blue. You know I don’t take jobs like that. I was pretty clear when we spoke before. I only kill other killers.”

“Prince Larbi—”

“Killer by proxy,” I said. “He funded murderers. He knew what he was doing.”

Mr. Blue was quiet for a minute. “One of the others on your team, then? They must not all have your… limitations.”

“No way, that makes
me
responsible by proxy,” I said. “If another guy on the team sets up something like that on his own, fine. But I’m not going to be party to it.”

He sighed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to get me in touch with—”

“No,” I said.

“Thank you for your time, Ripper.”

“Yeah.” I hung up.

Good, now that was out of the way. I could concentrate on what it was that I wanted to when I parked the car. I was across the street from Shell’s apartment building. I took out my binoculars and trained them on the windows. She lived in one of those rooms. Maybe I’d get lucky and get a look at her.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shell

“All right,” said the cop. “Maybe if you worked with a sketch artist?”

I shook my head. “I don’t…” I wasn’t even sure what kind of person I’d described to these guys. By the time they were done with me, I felt even less sure of what Ripper had even looked like. I remembered pieces of him—his lips, his eyelashes, his shoulders—but my overall picture of him was fuzzy.

And that was annoying, because he really had been pretty much the most attractive man I’d seen in real life, and I wanted to keep a mental image of him that I could call up at any time and admire.

He was bad news. I knew that. But I couldn’t help but fantasize that the almost-kiss in the car had actually transpired. That things had gone further between us, that I had felt his strong hands on my body. I thought about his fingers easing under my shirt, brushing the skin of my waist.

I shivered.

“…for your time.”

I shook myself. “What?”

“I was just thanking you for your time,” said the cop.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure.”

The walkie-talkie on the cop’s belt crackled. “Officer Sellers?”

He held up a finger and snatched it off his belt. “Sellers here.”

“You with the other Birch girl still?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, you might want to leave the room for a minute.”

Sellers gave me an apologetic look and shuffled out of my living room.

I furrowed my brow. What the hell?

The other cop looked confused too. He looked back and forth between me and the path his partner had taken. Then he followed his partner out of the room.

I tapped my foot against the floor, straining to hear something, but I couldn’t hear anything.

Abruptly, the cops both came back into the room. “Ms. Birch? We’ve got some bad news.”

“Bad news?” Could this day get worse?

“It’s your sister. She’s disappeared.”

“What?” I twisted my hands together. “What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”

“Well, she was scheduled to do a news interview at the top of the hour, and she didn’t show up. They checked with the Hassan family, specifically Prince Raakin, Larbi’s brother, who she’d been spending time with, and she wasn’t with him. No one knows where she is. Can you check to see if she’s tried to contact you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have my phone anymore. I left it at Prince Larbi’s place. She said she was going to bring it by tomorrow.”

“Well,” said Sellers, “if she does get in touch with you, please let us know.”

“But what happened to her? Is she in danger?”

“Let’s hope not,” said the other cop.

I thrust my hands into my hair. Starling was missing? Oh, God, this didn’t sound good.

* * *

Shell

My roommate Celia was standing at the kitchen island, eating a slice of leftover pizza. “I can’t believe you saw someone get killed.”

“I didn’t. He was dead when we got in there.”

Celia shook her head. “Still.” She and I never talked. We’d met via Craigslist. She’d had the apartment, and I’d moved in about six months ago. We weren’t friends or anything. She worked a lot. I stayed home, but I was busy most of the time. We mostly communicated by leaving notes for each other on a dry erase board that she’d affixed to the front of the refrigerator. Celia gestured. “You want a piece of pizza?”

That was huge. We didn’t share things like food. We had clearly labeled shelves in the refrigerator and cabinet, and we didn’t touch each other’s stuff.

“Are you sure?” I said. “Because that would be awesome.” I realized that I was starving.

“Help yourself,” she said.

I opened the refrigerator and got myself out a slice from the cardboard box on her shelf. I took a bite. Oh, whoa, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

There was a knock on the door.

“Is that the cops again?” said Celia.

“I hope not,” I said, heading for the door. “Unless they’re coming to tell me that they found Starling and everything’s okay.” But when I opened the door, it was not the cops standing there. Instead, it was Austin Landry, my ex-fiance and ex-best friend, who had broken off our engagement because he’d realized he was attracted to men.

“Sweetie,” he said, holding out his arms.

I let him hug me. Austin was always pretty touchy-feely, even we when were only friends and weren’t dating yet. Maybe that was a sign that I should have noticed. But I didn’t.

To be fair, Austin had none of the tell-tale signs. He didn’t speak with a lisp, and he didn’t like musical theater, and he didn’t have good taste in clothes.

Maybe that was why he was in so much denial about it himself. I don’t know.

No, I did know.

Austin had tried very hard not to be gay, because his family was through-and-through Southern Baptist, and they were not the least bit cool with it. Breaking up our engagement and coming out to them meant that they had basically disowned him. He was alone now, and I felt bad for him. He and I had intertwined lives before all this happened. And it was habit for us to lean on each other when something bad happened.

But it was also painful.

Because for Austin, ending our engagement was freeing. Now, he could really let himself go, be the gay man he’d repressed out of himself. He could go to bars and hit on guys and let loose. But for me… it was just awful. All I could think was that I’d been in love with a guy who was gay, and I hadn’t even noticed.

I wished he wasn’t here.

I didn’t like seeing him these days.

I tried to tell him that I needed space, but he didn’t seem to get how devastating the whole thing was for me.

I pulled back. “Austin, what are you doing here?”

“I tried to call you when I saw it on the news,” he said. “But it just kept going to voicemail.” He peered around me into the apartment.

I sighed. “You want to come in?”

He pushed past me and went to sit down on the couch, making himself at home. “I got worried, so I decided to track you down.”