Brian Freeman - Stripped

“I know it’s hard to believe. But a mother in Texas hired a hit man over her daughter’s cheerleading squad. People are capable of anything. So it would be helpful to know about any disputes, even ones that may seem trivial to you.”

Linda sat back in the chair. Her hands dropped to her sides. “This is too insane.”

“I know it seems that way. But if there’s anything-”

“That’s just it, there isn’t. We’re your average middle-class family. We keep to ourselves. We’re not in the public eye. My husband is an accountant, for heaven’s sake.”

“Has he dealt with any funny numbers lately? Or received any threats?”

“No, no. This isn’t the old days. It’s all public companies and SEC filings now. If a casino exec picks up a quarter from the floor, you can find it in a financial statement somewhere. Everything’s out in the open.”

“How about the personal side?” Serena asked. “Please don’t take this wrong. I have to ask. Are there any problems with drugs? Money?”

“Sorry, I don’t have a secret life. What you see is what you get. Same with my husband.”

“You two are happy? Have there been any sexual issues? Affairs? Things like that.”

Linda’s face screwed up. “Once a week on Friday night is enough for both of us. I hope you don’t need to know our favorite position.”

“I’m sorry,” Serena said. “I know this is intrusive.”

“I just don’t see how our sex life is going to help you find out who killed Peter.” Her voice rose sharply.

“I understand your impatience, but this is a very unusual hit-and-run. Most accidents like this involve someone local, often someone who was drinking. They’re scared, and they flee the scene. Usually, within a few days, a friend or family member turns them in, or the guilt overwhelms them and they come in voluntarily. There’s no motive. No intent. But what happened to Peter no longer feels like an accident.”

“I realize that, but I can’t help you,” Linda insisted. “We don’t have any skeletons in our closet. I’d tell you if we did.”

Serena watched her eyes. There was nothing furtive behind them. “Do you have any ties to Reno? Have you visited there recently?”

“Reno? Not in years. There are plenty of casinos around here if I want to drop a nickel in a slot. Why?”

“We think whoever did this was in Reno a few weeks ago. We found a receipt in the car. There may be a connection. Do you have friends or family there?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

Serena nodded. “If you think of something, or if anything unusual happens, I hope you’ll let me know.”

“Of course I will, but I really think you’re wrong about this. I just don’t see why anyone would deliberately hurt our family.”

“That’s what scares me,” Serena acknowledged.

“Why?”

“Because it means we may not find this person before he kills someone else.”

Stride and Serena made it home separately just before midnight on Sunday. He had been awake for almost twenty-four hours, but he was still too wired on caffeine simply to tumble into bed and sleep. The two of them barely turned on the lights before leaving again and taking Stride’s Bronco west into the hills. It had become a nighttime ritual for them. They followed Charleston until the houses ran out, before the road wound into Red Rock Canyon. He steered the Bronco off the paved road and climbed a rocky slope to the high ground. They turned around and parked, doors open, windows open, with the night air blowing through the truck and the expanse of the Las Vegas valley stretched out below them. The tracts of suburban homes inching up the street, eating more of the empty space week by week, were dark.

Even in July, when the daytime heat was ferocious, the night cooled in the hills, enough that the breeze sailing down over the peaks behind them made it bearable. Now, in the early fall, there was a hint of chill, like a Minnesota evening without the fragrant scent of pine. He could see literally the entire city, its myriad lights creeping out like vines in all four directions until they finally ran out in the darkness of the desert. Cutting through the middle was the fiery glow of the Strip, taller and brighter than anything else around it, a multicolored, bedazzling belt across the city’s fat belly.

From far away, without the sunlight, the valley sparkled. There was no orange rim of smog floating over the city like a smoke ring. The casinos were jewels.

Stride twisted his upper body and stared at Serena’s face in silhouette. He knew she felt him watching her. This was the time when it was just the two of them, peaceful, in love, free of the city. “You are way, way too beautiful,” he told her.

“If you want sex, you’re going to have to do better than that,” Serena replied, laughing.

“But that was my best line.”

He smiled and stroked her dark hair, in a way that told her he wanted her. He knew, when they got home, they would be too tired to do anything but sleep, and he very much wanted to make love to her.

She leaned across and kissed him. “Haven’t we proven it’s not safe for a man in his forties to do it in a truck? Last time, you almost threw your back out.”

“It was worth it.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she told him.

Serena pulled her T-shirt over her head. Her hair was mussed and sexy. She unhooked and wriggled out of her bra, then stretched her shoulders back. She reclined her seat and began peeling down her jeans. Her skin was firm, her breasts milky white like oyster shells in the pale light. He climbed over her and felt her fingers on his clothes.

He was back in his own seat a few minutes later, sweaty and sore. “Ow,” he said.

“Your back?”

“Back, arms, legs.”

“I told you so.”

Stride dangled his foot out of the truck and rubbed it against the loose dirt. He hoped that a scorpion wasn’t scuttling nearby, or that a rattlesnake wouldn’t choose that moment to slither from the rocks. Those were the real night creatures, doing what came naturally, unlike the human ones below them in the valley.

Serena lay next to him, bare and disheveled. She made no effort to repair her clothes. Her eyes were lost, focused into the hills. She touched her skin idly with her fingertips. “Think the novelty of this is ever going to wear off?”

“Us having sex?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope not.”

“I’m ready to go again,” she told him.

“You’re on your own.”

Serena gave him a mock sigh. “Did it ever wear off with Cindy?”

Stride smiled as a picture of his late wife flashed in his brain. “No. She was like you. She couldn’t get enough.”

“Oh yeah, I’m a sex fiend. I’m just glad vaginas aren’t like piercings.”

Stride looked at her. “What?”

“You know. Closing up from lack of use.”

He threw his head back and laughed, and Serena joined him. Her head fell against his shoulder, and he slipped an arm around her. They sat silently for a few more minutes, lulled by the wind.

The longer they sat, the more he felt her go away somewhere. That was how it usually happened. When they got close, and she felt safe with him, she took another step into her past and pulled another ghost from her closet.

It was a compliment, she told him. She had never done that with anyone else. Her secrets were like notes plugged up in bottles that she had long ago tossed into the sea. Now, one by one, they were drifting back to shore.

He knew only sketches of what she had gone through. Raw facts. She had told him what had happened to her as a teenager in clinical terms, like a doctor reciting from someone else’s file. Her mother used her as a whore to pay for drugs. She got pregnant, she had an abortion, she ran away. End of story. Only those kinds of stories never ended.