J. Robb - Fantasy in Death

“So tell me why you have to go, which is not your default statement when it comes to events like this.”

She blew out a breath as the pizza landed in front of them. “Because I meant it when I said Nadine was whacked. She’s got herself all wound up, wrapped up, twisted up about the book thing. How maybe it sucks and all that. Lack of confidence isn’t what you call her default setting either.”

“She put a lot into it, and it’s, for her, a new area.”

“I get it.” Eve shrugged with another sip of beer. “So I’ve got to at least show my face, do the moral support deal. Which is one of the annoyances of friendships.”

“There’s my girl.”

She laughed, picked up a slice, then took a bite. Closed her eyes. She could see herself, with absolute clarity, taking that first long-ago bite by the window while New York and all its possibilities rushed, pushed, and bitched along on the other side of the glass.

She opened them, smiled into the eyes of her friend, her lover, her partner. “It’s still damn good pizza.”

He’d been right, she thought as they walked outside again. The hour had cleared her head, settled her mood, geared her up for the next steps and stages.

“I want to go by U-Play before we head uptown.”

“It would be closed by this time,” he said, as his fingers linked with hers. “I can certainly get you in if you’re after a bit of B &E.”

“Nobody’s breaking and entering. I don’t want to go in anyway.”

“Then?”

“I figure it’s closed, sure, but I wonder if it’s empty.”

He indulged her, wound his way through traffic and farther downtown. The summer light lengthened the day, spun it out and gilded it. The heat of the day had given way, just a little, just enough, to a few fitful breezes.

Both tourists and those who made their home in the city took advantage, filling street and sidewalk with a throng of bare legs, bare arms. She watched a woman, blond hair flying, race along, long tanned legs scissoring with pretty feet balanced on towering needle heels.

“How do they do that?” She pointed to the blond as she watched her lope along. “How do women, or the occasional talented tranny or cross-dresser-walk on streets like this in those heels, much less run like a gazelle across… whatever gazelles run across.”

“I imagine it’s the result of considerable practice, perhaps even for the gazelle.”

“And if they didn’t? If women, trannies, and cross-dressers everywhere revolted and said, screw this, we’re not wearing these ankle-breaking stilts anymore-and they didn’t-wouldn’t the sadists who design those bastards have to throw in the towel?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, your women, trannies, and cross-dressers will never revolt. Many of them actually appear to like the style and the lift.”

“You just like them because they make the ass jiggle.”

“Absolutely guilty.”

“Men still rule the world. I don’t get it.”

“No comment as any would be misconstrued. Well, you were right about this.” He eased onto the edge of the warehouse lot. “Closed, no doubt, but not empty.”

She studied the faint glow of light against the glass, imagined the way the sun would slant through the windows this late in the day. The shadows cast, the glare tossed back at certain angles. Yes, they’d want the artificial light. For comfort, she thought, and for practicality.

Just as she imagined they’d want to be together, the three of them, in that space. For comfort, and maybe for practicality.

“Are you seriously imagining them in there discussing how they’d managed murder and what steps to take next?”

“Maybe.” She tilted her head, studied him. “You don’t like it because you like them, and because you see something of yourself in all four of them. Just a little piece here and there. Because of that, because you’d never kill a friend, never kill an innocent or kill simply because killing was expedient, you don’t like the idea one of them did.”

“That may be true, all of it true enough. But you and I have both killed, Eve, and once you have you know taking a life isn’t a game. Only the mad think otherwise. Do you believe one of them is mad?”

“No. I think they’re all very sane. I’m not looking for a mad scientist or a geek gone psycho. This is something else.” She watched as a shadow passed behind one of the windows. “Whoever did it may regret it now, may feel it’s all a terrible mistake, a nightmare that won’t let go. I may crack the killer open like an egg with that guilt and horror when we get that far.”

She watched those windows, the lights and shadows, for another moment in silence.

“Or, and we both know this, too, sometimes the taking of a life hardens you, it… calcifies your conscience. He deserved it, I only did what I had to do. Or worse yet, it excites. It opens a door in you that was so secret, so small, so tightly locked no one, even you, knew it was there. And there’s a kind of joy in that. Look what I did! Look at the power I have.”

It could still make her sick, deep in the belly, if she let it.

“That’s the type who can never go back,” she said quietly, but her eyes were hard, almost fierce. “Who have to do it again because sooner or later, the power demands it. Some of the shrinks will claim that’s a kind of madness, that compulsion to feel that power and excitement again. But it’s not. It’s greed, that’s all.”

She shifted to him. “I know this. I felt that power, even the excitement, when I killed my father.”

“You can’t toss self-defense in with murder. You can’t equate murder with a child fighting for her life against a monster.”

“It wasn’t murder, but it was killing. It was ending a life. It was blood on my hands.”

He took the hand she held out, shook his head, pressed his lips to the palm.

“Roarke, I know the power of that, the sick excitement. I know the horrible, tearing guilt, and even the hardening of the heart, the soul, because I felt all of that over time. All of it. I know, even though what I did wasn’t murder, what the murdering can and does feel. It helps me find them. It’s a tool.”

She touched his cheek, understanding that the memories, the idea of what she’d been through until the night when she’d been eight, hurt him as much as they hurt her. Maybe more now, she realized. Maybe more.

“I was twenty-three the next time I took a life,” she continued. “Fifteen years between. Feeney and I went after a suspect. He’d beaten two people to death, in front of witnesses, left DNA and trace all over the scene. Slam dunk, just have to find him. We followed a lead to this dive. Sex club where his girlfriend worked. We figured we’d shake her down a little, see if she knew where he was. Well, where he was happened to be the sex club. Idiot girlfriend screams for him to run, and runs with him. He’s mowing people down right and left, and those who aren’t mowed are stampeding. We chased him all the way up to the roof, and now he’s got a ten-inch blade against the idiot girlfriend’s throat, who is now singing another tune.

“It’s summer.” She could still feel it, smell it, see it. “Hot as a fuck in hell. Sweat’s pouring down his face. Hers, too. He’s screaming at us how he’ll slice her open if we come any closer. And now there’s blood trickling down with her sweat where he’s given her a jab to show he means it. He’s using her as a shield, and Feeney doesn’t have the angle for a stun stream.”

“But you do,” Roarke murmured.

“Yeah, I do. Barely, but I’ve got it. And we’re trying to talk him down, and it’s not going to happen. He gives her a second jab. Feeney keeps talking, talking, pulling the guy’s attention to him, and gives me the go signal.”