His hands come up, clutching at his neck, blood pouring between his fingers. He's making wet, gurgling sounds but no words. No more words.
I stand up. Watch him bleed out on the rocks, the ocean roaring below us.
It takes about ninety seconds. Longer than I expected. He fights it, clinging to life with the same pathetic desperation he clung to his fantasy about Diamond. But in the end, the outcome is inevitable.
When his eyes go glassy and his chest stops moving, I wipe my knife on his jacket and slide it back into its sheath.
One threat neutralized.
I search his body. His phone is password protected, but the cops can deal with that. Wallet with a California driver's license:Kyle Andrew Mercer, 29, Sacramento. The backpack contains duct tape, zip ties, a rag that smells like chloroform, and a Polaroid camera.
He didn't come here to talk.
I leave the body where it lies and head back to the house. I need to call this in, get ahead of the narrative. Self-defense is going to be a stretch, he never touched me, never got close to the house, but I have connections now. Sterling's connections. The kind that can make problems disappear.
Or I could just disappear the body myself.
I'm considering my options when I walk into the kitchen and find Diamond standing there.
She's wearing my shirt. Nothing else. Her hair is mussed from sleep, her eyes wide and dark in the dim light.
She's looking at my hands.
I look down. Blood. Kyle's blood, smeared across my knuckles, under my fingernails.
"Is he dead?" Her voice is steady. Calmer than I expected.
"Yes."
"Did he suffer?"
I hold her gaze. "A little."
She nods slowly. Processes. I watch her face for horror, for fear, for the moment she realizes she's been sleeping with a killer and runs.
It doesn't come.
"Good," she says.
Something shifts in my chest. I cross the room, stop in front of her.
"Diamond."
"I saw him on the cameras." She's still calm, eerily so. "I woke up when you left. I watched you go after him." A pause. "I watched you kill him."
She watched.
"And you're not running."
"No." She reaches out, takes my bloody hand in hers. "I'm not running."
"I just killed a man. Not in self-defense. Not because I had to.Because I wanted to.I wanted to make sure he never touched you."
"I know."
"That doesn't scare you?"
She looks up at me. Those blue eyes, so clear, so certain.
