Warren Murphy - Created, The Destroyer

He could hear Chiun chiding. Swift—accurate, accurate, accurate. The mark. Remo carefully knocked out the butcher, then slid into the front seat. He checked the driver slumped to the corner of the wheel. Blood was coming from his mouth. He'd never come to.

He looked to homburg. Maybe his stroke had been off. He felt the man's head, running his finger tips over the temple. He could feel the separated bones, the oozing warm fluid running from the eyes. No luck, dammit, homburg was dead too.

He returned to the back seat where butcher was reaching for space. He grabbed an arm and waited a few moments. Then he twisted the arm behind butcher's back and lifted until the first sound of pain.

"Felton," Remo whispered into the cauliflower ear with the tuft of hair growing from it "Felton. Ever hear of him?"

"O-oh," butcher yelped.

Remo lifted the arm higher. "Yes, yes. Yes."

"Who is he?"

"I never seen him. He's Scotty's boss."

"Who's Scotty?"

"The guy you was talking with. Scottichio."

"With the homburg?"

"Yeah. Yeah. The hat."

"Did Felton tell him to come here?" Remo asked, jerking higher on the arm.

"Jeez. Please. Oooh. Yeah. That's what Scotty said. That Felton told him he was afraid somebody might be trying to bother his daughter. That's the girl you was with. We was supposed to watch out for her."

Up went the arm. "Now for your life. Maxwell."

"What?"

The arm went higher, the shoulder muscles and tendons began to rip. "Maxwell."

"Don't know him. Don't know him. Don't know him. Jeez."

Snap. The arm rose over the butcher's head and he slumped forward. Remo reached into his belt. The needle was bent The hell with it, Remo thought. He wasn't lying.

Remo looked at his watch. Forty minutes since he'd left the hotel room. He couldn't be far.

He climbed to the front seat, put his arms under homburg's shoulders and with a grunt lifted him over the seat to the rear. Then he did the same with the driver. Moving them was rougher than killing them. He lifted the keys from the ignition, then hopped out of the car. In the trunk of the car, which he noticed for the first time was a dark Cadillac, he found a tarpaulin. He removed it, shut the trunk and returned to the car. He threw it over the two corpses, then folded it back halfway for one more occupant. He pulled the butcher down onto the pile with his fat face sticking up. Then he killed him, covered all three with the tarpaulin and started the car.

He found he was on a side road and quickly discovered the road that led him back to town. He parked the car on a main thoroughfare. The police were lucky that night. None of them stopped him. Remo locked the car and pocketed the keys. Who knew what they would unlock?

CHAPTER THIRTY

"You bastard," Cynthia shouted as Remo opened the door. "You rotten, filthy, bastard."

Her girlish face was red with anger. Her normally scraggly hair showered around her head like a splintered wicker basket.

She stood, her hands jammed on her hips, beside the bed on which was strewn his steak, salad, and potatoes. Her lipstick blotched the mirror over the bureau. She had obviously written several messages, crossed them out as she thought of better ones, then decided to tell him off in person.

"You swine. You left me here and went out drinking."

Remo couldn't control himself. He suppressed a laugh which erupted in a broad grin.

The Briarcliff junior swung her right hand around, palm flat, aiming at Rerno's smiling face. Before Remo could stop, his own left hand was up to meet the blow and his right was headed toward her solar plexis straight, flat, his deadly fingertips closing on target.

"No," he yelled desperately, but even yanking back and lowering his thrust, he couldn't stop it. "No," he yelled again, as Cynthia lurched forward into his arms, her eyes rolling back, her mouth open.

She moved her lips as if trying to say something, then slumped to her knees. Remo grabbed under her arms and held on. He started to haul her to the bed, saw the mess there, and lowered her gently to the gray rug floor.

He had missed the ribs and the solar plexus. The blow had only knocked her wind out. Remo knelt down on the carpet and lowered his head to hers. He widened her lips with his thumbs, then slowly breathed into her mouth, while he pressed and released on her stomach.

Cynthia began to squirm. Remo lifted his head and stopped the artificial respiration. Damn his hands. Damn his reflexes.

"Darling, are you all right?" he asked softly. She opened her eyes, beautiful, blue, searching. She moved her lips again, then breathed deeply. She lifted her arms and enveloped Remo's shoulders. She tilted her head upwards and drew him toward her.

Remo kissed her hard, forcing her head back down to the rug. She found his right hand and rubbed it on her belly, moving it upward to her breasts. As Remo blew gently in her ear, she groaned. Then she whispered, "Darling, I want you to be the first."

Remo was the first. In a tangle of arms, tears and groans, Remo made his entry and exit on the rug.

"I never thought it would be like this," Cynthia said. Her blouse lay behind her head, her bra dangled from the bed and Remo lay on her skirt, cradling her young body in his arms.

"Yes, dear," Remo said. He kissed the running tears on her pink cheeks, first one side, then the other.

"It was terrible," she sobbed.

"There, there," Remo said.

"I never thought it would be like this. You took advantage of me." Cynthia sucked hi air over trembling lips on the verge of another tearful breakdown.

"I'm sorry, dear. I just love you so much," Remo said, keeping the timbre of his voice low and reassuring.

"All you ever wanted from me was sex."

"No. I want you. The whole metaphysical, cosmological you."

"Sex. That's all you wanted."

"No. I want to marry you."

"You'll have to," Cynthia said firmly, the flow of tears subsiding.

"I want to."

"Will I get pregnant?"

"Don't you know?" Remo asked incredulously. "I thought you knew so much about this sort of thing."

"No, I don't."

"But the talk at lunch."

"Everyone at school talks like that and now..." Her body trembled, the lower lip shook, her eyes closed, tears flowed, and Cynthia Felton, exponent of sex, pure, clean and basic, bawled: "I'm not a virgin anymore."

Until dawn, Remo kept telling her how he loved her. Until dawn, she kept demanding reassurance. Finally as the sun rose and the steak bones on the bed dried a lacquer brown and red, Remo said: "All right. I've had enough."

Cynthia blinked. "I've had it," Remo snarled. "This morning I am getting you an engagement ring. You will get dressed and we will go to New Jersey where I will ask your father for your hand. Tonight. Tonight."

Cynthia shook her head. The wicker basket hair bobbed like the rear springs on a Volkswagen. "No, I can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't have anything to wear." She lowered her head and stared at the rug.

"I thought you didn't care for clothes."

"Not around campus."

"We'll go to any store you like."

The philosophy major pondered a moment as though contemplating the verities of true love, the meaning of it all, then said: "Let's get the ring first."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"What do you mean, three thousand dollars?" It was Smith's voice, sharp and angry.

Remo rested the phone between his shoulder and chin, as he rubbed his hands for circulation in the cold telephone booth at Pennsylvania Station in New York.

"That's right, three grand. I need it for a ring. I'm in New York. We made a side trip. She insisted on Tiffany's."

"She insisted on Tiffany's?"

"Yes."

"Why does it have to be Tiffany's?"

"Because she wants it that way."