“What’s this?”
“A sandwich. I’m paying him twice his normal rate, but I’m still not paying the guy who’s going to be driving you home enough to deal with you if you’re hangry.” I smile, but I don’t reply. “Your car will be here in a couple of minutes, so I’m gonna take off.” He’s still for a second. He holds eye contact. Taking a last look, I guess. “It’s been…”
“Weird?” I offer helpfully.
“Yeah, weird about covers it.” With that, he picks up his rucksack and hoists it over his shoulder. He takes a few steps backwards, towards the path in the woods, still looking at me.
I speak suddenly, without thinking through what I’m saying. The words come out of my mouth before I have time. “I’m going to find you, you know that don’t you, Asshole? I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“I’m going to throw money at the problem. A lot of it.”
“You don’t have a thing to go on.”
Then he turns and starts heading down the path. Away from me. Out of my life.
“I know your name,Saint.”
I hate myself for saying it out loud. I know I swore I wouldn’t. He looks back over his shoulder. His eyes crease deeply, and his mouth slashes open into a broad flash of white. I realize with a jolt, it’s the first time I’ve seen him smiling like that. Smiling with his whole face. Smiling for real.
“You got nothing, boy.” He winks at me, changing his features, erasing every hint of seriousness that’s ever been written across them.
Like that, he makes me doubt every single thing I know about him.
Chapter 18
Demon
Asweirdasitwas to be kidnapped, being home is even weirder. My apartment feels strange. It’s light and vast, with large spaces dominated by glass and expanses of white. It feels different than usual. Lived in, and not by me. The guys Saint ‘handled’ at the safehouse were obviously spending time here. They brought gift baskets sent to me by friends/business partners/brown-noses into the apartment. They ate what they wanted, and they put the perishables in the fridge. If I’d known they were still roaming this plane, I’d be livid about it, but things being what they are, I’m grateful for the state of the place. If the cops were to drop in this second, it looks completely believable that I’ve been holed up here for over a week.
I take a long shower and slather a copious amount of the mask my dermatologist home makes and labels,In Case of Emergency Only, all over my face. Afterward, I wrap a towel around my waist and walk to my dressing room. I stop in my tracks in front of my long mirror. The frame is gold gilt. It’s so ornate and heavy, it took three men to hang it.
I must have seen my reflection in this mirror a thousand times. Maybe more. What I see now stops me dead. My hair’s wet, pushed back off my face. I’ve seen my skin look better. It’s a crisis for sure, but not a disaster. It’ll recover. It’s not the thing that gives me pause. What makes me stop moving is the trail of violet marks Saint sucked into me last night in the woods. I hardly felt them when he laid them into my skin, yet here they are. On my neck. On my chest. A cluster of them near my left collarbone. A trail of four, bitten into the V that leads to my groin. I push my towel down, to see if he left any others. I can’t tell if I’m relieved or disappointed when I only find one, hiding lower. I drop the towel to the floor and turn around, craning my neck to see the mauve smudges he made with the wooden spoon.
I feel hot when I see them. Agitated. I want to call out to him. “Asshole,” I want to say. “Asshole, come look at what you’ve done.” I want to see his face when he sees me like this. “What were you thinking?” I want to say. “Answer me, Saint, what were you thinking, leaving these marks on me?”
The urge to yell at him is strong. The urge to say his name is stronger and urgent. So strong, it makes me feel unsettled. I dress quickly, choosing a cream, structured top with a high, stiff funnel neck. I pair it with a pair of wide legged lounge pants and a soft leather obi belt that I knot in the waist.
I look in the mirror again. I like it. It’s subtle, but it’s giving Made a Lethal Virus My Bitch.
*
I find my phone on the console table at the entrance, plugged in to charge, and resting in the leather tray I bought for this very purpose. Saint must have been here. He must have come here yesterday when he came to town. I eye it closely. The screen is shining, immaculate. Not a smudge or a print to be seen. I wonder if he wiped it down before leaving it here.
Come to think of it, I wonder if he wiped my whole apartment down. Feels like something he’d do. I check the kitchen and the bathrooms, the trash cans are all empty, and when I lean my head to the side, I see that the countertops are gleaming. I sniff the air, inhaling the strong scent of detergent, and a very, very light hint of military man stank. My dick twitches.
Settle. The fuck. Down,I tell it firmly.
*
It’s mid-afternoon by the time the police show up. There’s a tall one and a short one. Both wear white shirts and cheap suits and seem a little shell shocked to find themselves in a building like mine. They break the news to me that my uncle is dead. Suicide, they say. He hung himself from the branch of a tree at the bottom of his garden. He used his own belt.
My heart flaps wildly in my chest from the second they arrive until at least twenty minutes after they leave. Still, I am perfection. A perfect balance of shock, denial and regret. Interviews with his household staff have indicated that he seemed stressed and not quite himself for the past few days. Guess having your only nephew kidnapped, and doing your damnedest to get him killed, will do that to you.
