James Conway - In Cold Blonde

How pathetic, Alice thought. How could I have been in love with such a pussy? “Don’t beg, Adam. Concentrate. Look at me. I need you to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Me. Alice. Alice Waterman.”

Adam’s mind was glue. Alice Waterman? Who the fuck was Alice Waterman? And then he remembered. It was Blake’s eighteenth birthday and they wanted to have a little fun. They’d gotten a bottle of Rohypnol, the date rape drug, from Blake’s older brother. Colin had noticed how that loser Alice Waterman was always following Adam around like a puppy dog. She wasn’t very pretty but she did have decent tits and word was, she put out. So they came up with this stupid plan to get her drugged up, and play around with her a little bit. But it had gotten out of hand. Way out of hand.

The woman in front of him was a beautiful blonde. Alice was a mousey brunette. He looked at her trying to remember Alice’s face. Nothing.

“Do you remember the bus trip we took together senior year? The field trip to the Getty center?”

It’s amazing how an incident can mean so much to one person and nothing to the other. Alice fell in love with Adam on that two-hour trip. He had absolutely no memory of it. But he was staring at a woman with a gun leveled at his head so he said, “Yes, of course.”

She smiled, sadly. “No, you don’t.”

He deflated. “No, I don’t.”

“We sat next to each other. We talked. You were very nice to me. You told me you were an only child, that you always wanted a brother.”

He remembered their conversation in the bar earlier. “And that’s why you said you always wanted a sister.”

She nodded.

Adam was starting to get his bearings now, his brain finally kicking into gear. He had to talk his way out of this or she was going to shoot him. And a successful agent is nothing if not a great salesman. “Look, Alice, I am so sorry for what happened in high school. I never meant to hurt you. But you can’t deny that something happened between us tonight, something wonderful.”

“It did,” she said. “I felt it, too.”

A ray of hope lit a corner of Colin’s brain. “So that’s all that matters. Us. You and me. Fuck Colin Wood. I’m glad he’s dead. I won’t tell anyone you killed him, I swear. Put down the gun, let’s talk and try to figure this out.”

“Ever wish you had a time machine, Adam?”

“What?”

“A time machine, like in the movies. I do. And I always go back to the same moment in time. I’m sitting on the quad that day in high school when you came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to a party. I saw Colin and Blake behind you, these evil grins on their faces. Deep down I knew it was too good to be true. But I was such a sap, and so in love with you I ignored all the warning bells and said yes. That’s my destination, Adam, that moment my lips formed the word yes. If I’d only said no, you wouldn’t have drugged me. You wouldn’t have raped me. I wouldn’t have spent all those years locked up in that hell hole.”

“I want to take that time travel trip with you,” Adam said. “Because if I could, I never would have let Blake talk me into asking you in the first place.”

“It was all Blake’s idea?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Then something occurred to Adam. “Is he, I mean, have you killed him, too?”

“No, not yet. He’s on my To Do list for tomorrow.”

My To Do list for tomorrow. She said it as matter of fact as saying she needed to pick up a gallon of milk. This woman is absolutely nuts, Adam realized. And if he didn’t get that gun away from her, he was dead. “Tell you what, this is all Blake’s fault anyway, right? I mean he talked me into asking you over that night. So, let me help you kill Blake. Let me prove to you how much I care about you.”

Interesting idea, Alice thought. She cocked her head, weighing Adam’s commitment. “You would do that for me? Help me kill Blake?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Commit murder?”

He was willing to say whatever he had to. “Yes.”

Alice was starting to enjoy this. He was like a puppet on a string. Ask a question that he thinks only has one answer and watch him perform. “Do you love me, Adam?”

Just the slightest hesitation before he said, “Yes.”

“Are you willing to spend eternity with me?”

“Yes. Eternity.”

“Good. But you go first.” She pulled the trigger.

The Colt Vest Pocket .25 made a delicate POP and sent a 6.4mm bullet at 815 feet per second into Adam’s left eye. The POP of the gun was not much louder than a champagne cork being popped, a sound that would certainly go unnoticed in the plush hallways of the Bel Air Regent Hotel. But because the 45 grain bullet had a soft tissue route into Adam’s brain, it inflicted maximum damage as it shredded the septum pellucidum, corpus callosum and a good part of the cerebrum.

Alice watched Adam’s lifeless body crumble to the ground. Poor Adam, she couldn’t blame him for lying to save his life, but she did wish he’d gone out with a little more dignity.

Tears fell as she looked at the lips that had kissed her, the arms that had held her and the hands that had caressed her. Tonight was a night she would cherish for the rest of her life. Right up until the moment she’d had to kill the only man she ever loved.

“Tell me about your marriage.”

“I’ve told you. We were just kids, still in college; it was a bad idea and when we both realized it, we split up. End of story.”

Ryan and Syd were eating dinner at Tony Roma’s. They’d both ordered the baby back ribs and were sharing sides of coleslaw and the corn fritter casserole. Ryan nursed a Michelob, iced tea for Syd. She didn’t drink. She’d told Ryan it was because she just never had a taste for it; he knew nothing about her drug-addicted days and she wasn’t ready to tell him yet, if ever.

And even though Syd had a suitcase full of secrets she kept from Ryan, she felt entitled to know everything about him. “Were you in love with her?”

“I guess. Or thought I was.” He’d been crazy in love with Anne, corny-greeting-card kind of love. And the memory of her dumping him still hurt. But Ryan wasn’t about to tell Syd that. Not because he was necessarily hiding something from her, he’d just never verbalized it to anyone. The closest he came was a drunken night with his ex-stepmom, Liz. Liz never liked Anne, told Ryan she was a mercenary, gold-digging bitch, and he was better off without her. Ryan tried to embrace that anger and it kept him going for a little while, but deep down there was still an open sore on his heart.

“And how did you feel when you broke up?”

Ryan put down his rib, looked at Syd. “What’s with all the questions about Anne, sweetie? Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“Isn’t every girlfriend jealous of the ex-wife?”

“I guess so. But trust me, you have nothing to worry about.” Ryan went back to work on his ribs, a not so subtle signal that she should change the subject. Because the truth was, Syd had a lot to worry about. The time Ryan spent with Anne at Musso and Frank had left him wanting more. The idea of starting a foundation with her, or spending time with her every day excited him. Deep down he felt their earlier relationship was unfinished. He’d invested a lot of hopes and dreams in that marriage and when she ended it so abruptly, he was left at sea. He not only lost his wife, but his life’s plan. He wasn’t supposed to be a cop forever; he was going to be a lawyer. And as much as he loved being a cop, he often wondered what would have happened if he’d found a way to go to law school. And now with the lottery money, he might be able to find out.