Nine white vehicles sat in the parking lot.
Six sedans.
Two SUVs.
One van.
None of them occupied, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching.
I brought a knife. A six-inch switchblade I found in a pawnshop in Reno a few days earlier, and I used the knife to puncture two tires on each of these vehicles. I stuck to the shadows as I darted around the parking lot, careful to avoid the cameras on the corner of the building and the valets who occasionally ran into the lot to fetch a car or park a new one.
When finished, I went to my Jeep and slouched low in the seat. Earlier, I parked two cars over from Signorelli’s black BMW Z3 Roadster convertible.
Stella and Signorelli emerged from the back door of the club twenty minutes later. She had changed into jeans and a long-sleeve red top. She still wore the gloves, though, and she held his hand.
At his car, she pleaded for the keys, and he finally obliged. She climbed behind the wheel of the little two-seater with a laugh. He got in beside her, and the engine roared to life.
Leo Signorelli leaned over then. In the silhouette of the parking lot lights, I watched as he leaned into her and she into him, her arms going up around his neck as she allowed him to kiss her. They remained that way for a long time, and I wanted to jump from the Jeep, yank open his door, pull him out, and beat him senseless. I wanted to hit him until the blood on my knuckles matched the bloody pulp of his ruined face. I wanted to hear him cry and whimper and plead until he was reduced to nothing more than a large child curled up on the ground in convulsive shivers.
I did none of those things.
I sat perfectly still and could only watch until she finally pulled away from him and settled back in behind the wheel.
Stella gunned the engine of the BMW several times before turning on the lights, dropping into reverse, and spinning the tires as she shifted into first and raced from the parking lot. Gravel rained through the air, pinging off all the nearby cars.
I started the Jeep and followed behind them, making the left onto I-118 with my headlights off, remaining a few car lengths behind. No streetlights lined the highway, the desert darkness here so complete it might as well have been black tar.
On the empty highway, she must have floored the little sports car, because they shot far ahead of me. I nearly lost them, their taillights nothing more than tiny, red pinpricks. My Jeep coughed and sputtered but didn’t relent. Ten minutes later, when I-118 narrowed and became Wildes Road, Stella was forced to slow, and I reduced the gap. When pavement gave way to dirt, I risked getting too close and held back. A quarter mile later, she turned left off the dirt road onto what could only be described as a path—there were two ruts where past tires had rolled, but grass and weeds owned the space between them, and branches from the nearby trees slapped at the sides of my Jeep. Because the BMW had a lower profile, it avoided the branches, but I feared her car might get stuck in the dirt. More than once, I saw the undercarriage rub against the ground.
I didn’t expect water.
Not out here.
There it was, though, this large body of water I would later learn was called Harmon Reservoir. Had it been daylight, I would have noticed the small feeder canals jutting out around the edges, but they were lost to the dark and encroaching night.
Stella pulled up to the water’s edge, shut off the lights, and shut off the motor.
I stopped at the mouth of the trail, hidden in the woods just beyond the clearing. I wasn’t sure when I picked up my switchblade again, but the knife was in my hand. I pressed the button that released the blade, then closed it. Pressed the button again, closed it, the motion somehow soothing as I watched Stella step out of the car.
The little moonlight caught her, and even now her beauty was intoxicating, an irresistible pull. I so wanted to go to her, wrap my arms around her, kiss her as Leo had. Know the warmth of her breath on my neck, the touch of those slender fingers and arms around me.
Stella rounded the car to the passenger door and opened it.
Leo Signorelli slumped over and tumbled out, landing in a mound at her feet.
She saw me then, my Jeep at the mouth of the trail, not hidden as well as I thought.
As his body hit the ground, she looked not at this man, but at the trees where I parked, her eyes narrowing as she attempted to see past my windshield. She took several steps toward my Jeep before I got out.
“Jack? Is that you?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out, I could only move toward her, my legs threatening to drop out from under me.
“What are you doing here?”
As I neared, as Leo Signorelli came into view, I saw his face. The skin around his mouth was black, charred. The side of his face, too. Half his hair was gone, his ear. My breath caught as I remembered Raymond Visconti, the mark that appeared on him with Stella’s touch in the basement.
Stella’s kiss.
