James Patterson - Murder House

Anyway, if it was entirely risk-free, it wouldn’t be any fun.

Yet he feels a pang of doubt, even as he nods toward the petite blonde. Can he go through with it? He’s rusty; it’s been over a year. As much as he’s been romanticizing it since then, he now remembers how scared he was at the time. Exhilarated, yes, but scared, too.

On his nod, the blonde saunters up to him, wearing a black outfit that covers little more than a bikini would. Her belly is flat, with a piercing through her navel. She has the body of a twenty-year-old, the face of someone older, more seasoned, more worked over. Her heels make her two inches taller, but she’s a little thing.

“Hi, handsome. You want some company?”

“I want... all night,” he says, keeping his helmet on, the face shield down.

“I’m by the hour, hon.”

“I want... all night.” That’s Holden being smart. If she’s leaving for the night, nobody will expect her back in an hour. Nobody will think to look for her at least until tomorrow. Assuming anybody looks for her, period.

“The whole night? That’s two thousand.” She runs her hand over his arm, the leather of his jacket. “It’s worth it.”

“No,” he says. See, that’s Holden being smart again — make her think this is a real negotiation, that he actually plans on paying her something. “Five hundred.”

“Five hundred for this?” she says, running her hands over the outline of her body, moving to the music coming from the nightclub. “C’mon, lover, fifteen hundred. For a night you’ll never forget.”

He doesn’t know what a streetwalker makes in a night, but it can’t be anywhere near that. “A... thousand,” he says.

“Awww, baby. Hang on.” The girl walks back to her friends and says something. See, you were right — she’s telling them she’s done for the night, not to expect her back. Smart, Holden.

“Do I need a helmet?” she asks when she hops on the bike.

He turns back to her as she wraps her arms around his waist.

“No,” he says. “You’re safe with me.”

Holden and the blond hooker drive to a motel off Sunrise Highway. He rented the room two days ago, paying in cash and asking for a room in the back away from traffic. He parks within ten feet of the door and brings the girl inside. The room isn’t much to look at. The carpet is torn up, the wallpaper is peeling, the lighting is dim, and the mattress is about as thick as a slice of cheese. But it’s clean and it doesn’t smell. He’s seen worse. And he’s certain she has, too.

He sets his helmet on the small table where the television sits. He spots the Fun Bag in the corner, just where he left it. He looks in the mirror and fixes his hair.

“We need to take care of business first.”

He turns and gets his first look at her in normal lighting. She has a round face, her eyes set slightly too far apart, with a crooked smile that is probably supposed to be sexy. Her dirty-blond hair is teased up in some kind of bun on top of her head. She is very slender, and her skin is pale and freckly. Her breasts are small and her butt is tiny and round.

“Okay.” He has a thousand in cash. He peels it out and hands it to her. She stuffs it in her purse. Is that her idea of safekeeping? It must be. Though it’s not that safe. She’s in a room with a stranger, after all. It’s not safe at all. She’s not safe at all. But that’s an occupational hazard. Everything she does is full of risk. That must be hard, having to make a living by meeting strange men and—

Stop it. Stop thinking like that.

“I’m gonna freshen up,” she says, and then she spins on her heels and heads to the bathroom, her red purse slung over her shoulder.

He looks at himself in the mirror. Don’t start thinking about her life. Think about what you want. Think about what you’re going to do. Think about the handcuffs and the corkscrew and the torch. Don’t fuck this up. You’ve been waiting a year for this—

She returns looking a little more chipper, her eyes glassy.

She’s high. She took something in the bathroom.

He looks over her arms. No signs of needle marks. Cocaine, probably. That’s probably how she gets through this job, high as a kite.

Stop it. You don’t give a shit about her or how she copes with life.

You don’t care.

“So what’s your pleasure, guy?” Her tone is less flirtatious than it was on the street. More businesslike.

“My...?”

“What do you want me to do?” Her eyes bug out, like she’s impatient.

“I just... can we... can we just... talk?”

He’s trembling. She looks at his hands. She sees it, too.

“Okay, we can talk.” She sits down on the bed and looks up at him. “What do you wanna talk about?”

“I...” He swallows hard. What the hell is wrong with you? “What’s your name?”

She shrugs. “What do you want it to be?”

He shakes his head. “No... no.”

“Okay, my name’s Barbie.”

Her name isn’t Barbie. That’s her street name.

“Do you... wanna know... my name?”

“Sure, mister. Lots of guys don’t want to tell me their name. It’s your money.”

He stares at her, unsure of himself.

“Okay, what’s your name, guy?”

She’s so hardened. Deadened. Drugged out. She’ll spread her legs for him or suck him off, she’ll twist and turn her body however he asks, but she won’t really be here. This isn’t real.

It’s not supposed to be like this. Dede and Annie, they were real. He thought the one thing missing was that he didn’t know them first, didn’t get intimate with them, killed them almost at first sight. But that was better. That was better than this—

“Got anything to drink, mister?”

He shakes his head, unable to speak. He should’ve thought of that. He should’ve had a bottle of whiskey or something.

“Got any music?”

Shit . He shakes his head again. He feels everything slipping away, every turn a wrong one...

“I... can’t,” he whispers.

“Can’t what?”

Sweat has broken out on his forehead. His pulse is racing. He doesn’t feel right.

“I can’t... kill you,” he says. His eyes slowly rise to meet hers.

She studies him a moment, lips parted, fear beginning to spread across her face. He feels himself getting hard. He feels the energy suddenly fueling him.

And then her eyes grow big again, when she sees the look on his face.

There. There it is!

She bounces off the bed, rushing for the door.

Yes .

“No!” she cries as he grabs her arm. “No, please!”

He pins her up against the wall, bringing a hand over her mouth. She bites down on his hand, causing a glorious pain, but he pushes back hard, slamming her head against the wall with all the force he can summon. Her eyes roll back and she begins to slide down the wall, unconscious.

He lowers himself, sliding down with her. He drags her over near the bed and lays her out properly.

“Thank you, Barbie,” he whispers.

He handled this wrong, but she salvaged it for him, a last-minute save.

He learned something. He won’t make this mistake again.

He walks to the corner to get his Fun Bag.

SING SING Correctional Facility, thirty miles north of New York City on the east bank of the Hudson River, houses nearly two thousand inmates over fifty-five acres of property. Up the hill from the lower-level secured facilities is Cell Block A — “Maximum A” — one of the largest max-security cell blocks in the world, with over six hundred inmates packed into six-by-nine-foot cells. They are murderers and rapists and sex traffickers and mob bosses and major drug dealers, divided into fierce factions predominantly by race — the Bloods and the Crips, the Latin Kings and Trinitarios, the Aryan Brotherhood. If you belong to one of the gangs, they have your back — you’re protected — but even then you’re not really protected, because the sins of the individual are the sins of the gang, and retaliation in Cell Block A is as common as census counts four times a day. In the last eight days, Cell Block A has been on lockdown four times, as the Latin Kings and the Bloods have worked out their differences the only way they know how. Guns are uncommon; it’s by shanks and razors, anything that can be pried loose and sharpened into a weapon, that most of the injuries are inflicted.