Out of Control (9 page)

A reluctant smile curved her soft mouth. “You're slick, McCloud.”

“Call me—”

“Yeah, OK. Davy. But tonight's not good. I've got a lot to deal with. As you well know.” She locked the door and marched down the steps, head high, back straight. Her moment of weakness was definitively over.

He tried again as she deposited Mikey in the passenger's seat of her car. “I should drive you to work. Your hands are shaking.” He cupped the slender hand that held her car keys. “You want a ride?”

Her hand vibrated in his grip, but she didn't pull it away. “No, thanks. I need to be mobile right after my shift. I've got gym classes to teach afterwards. And, uh…Davy? One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

She hesitated for a second, then launched herself at him, grabbed him around the waist and hugged him, tightly. Almost angrily.

He practically jerked away, he was so startled. She just hung on harder. He came to his senses and grabbed her back just in time, as her grip was loosening. His heart thundered in his chest, his breath had gone ragged. Every part of him that touched her tingled and burned.

She lifted her face from where it was pressed against his shirt. “Thanks, Davy,” she whispered. “For everything.”

“For what?” he demanded. “You won't tell me anything. You won't trust me. You won't let me do a goddamn thing to help you.”

She shook her head, and rubbed her cheek against his shirt. “You're sweet,” she said. “You came when I called you. You gave me a hug when I needed one. You're sweet. A good guy.”

“Nah. Not that good.” He cut off her reply with his mouth.

Her face was wet with tears, her skin exquisitely fine-grained and soft. Her lips were full and sweet and salty, trembling under his.

She opened to him, drinking him in like she was starving. That knocked the lid off, and what he'd thought was just sexual hunger got swept away by something bigger and hotter, something that welled up from deep inside him like a fountain of molten lava.

The kiss went crazy. Her arms went up around his neck. He pushed her back against the car, nudging his thigh between hers as he plundered the tender secrets of her mouth. So sweet and moist and hot.

She pushed at his chest, murmuring soft protest. He finally registered it, and wrestled his trembling muscles back under control.

He stumbled away from her, panting. Didn't even want to imagine the look that must be on his face.

Margot wiped her mouth, her eyes glowing, pupils dilated. Her lips were red, puffy and soft. “That's all.” Her voice was wispy and quavering. “That's it. No more. Please don't torture me.”

“What do you mean, torture you? Can I call you?” he pleaded.

Her face tightened. She got into her car, started up the engine, and mopped her eyes with her sleeve before giving him a little wave and a tight, fake smile. She pulled away, her car belching black smoke.

He stared after her for several minutes, his brain wiped clean.

Then he walked around to her back porch. The overgrown bushes shielded him from the neighbors' line of sight. His legs shook, his heart still raced. He had a pick gun in his tool stash in the truck, but the flimsy lock on the back door could be negotiated without it. He had to know more before he could help, he told himself as he eased the lock open with his bank card and let himself into the kitchen. He counted the money in her freezer stash, leafed through the envelopes on the counter. Utility bills, past due notices. None in her name, not that he knew her real name. The place must be a sublet.

He scanned every drawer, every scrap of paper, every scribbled grocery list. He sifted carefully through her trash. No clues.

It didn't take long to go through the place. Margot evidently wasn't the type who accumulated stuff. A roll of posters leaning against the wall proved to be Art Nouveau images and classic art photographs. A calendar of flower fairies hung in the hall, incongruously cheerful against the cracked, stained wall. This month was a rose fairy, with a flower petal skirt. Nothing was written on it, no appointments, no phone numbers. The books on the shelf were from the local library. Romance novels, popular bestsellers, inspirational essays, a manual on web site design, books on art history, one on photography. So she was into art.

He tried to justify the intensity of his interest as he sorted through the stuff on her desk, but after years of self-observation, he couldn't fool himself. The first step towards self-control was self-knowledge. Well and good. But when it came to Margot, self-knowledge evaporated. As a consequence, self-control was likewise fucked. He was violating her privacy because he couldn't help himself. A sobering realization. Didn't make him stop, though. The joke was on him.

One sketchbook, with just a few pages used. Doodles, cartoons. Mikey sleeping. Mikey sprawled on his back. Quick, powerful pencil sketches of people. A guy catching a frisbee, a homeless man on a park bench. His eyes lingered over them, fascinated. She had a gift.

The basket on her dresser yielded one item of interest, a heavy gold pendant cast in the shape of a coiled snake. It looked old and valuable, but it was ugly as hell. He couldn't imagine her wearing it, but he'd never claimed to understand women's taste in jewelry.

He turned it over in his hand, wondering how it had escaped the burglary. Maybe she'd been wearing it that day.

Her closet and drawers were closer to empty than any woman's that he'd ever met. A small, discreet vibrator was tucked under a stack of panties in her underwear drawer. He stared at it, his face going hot.

Oh, Christ, later for that. He was still half-hard from that crazy kiss. It would trash his focus completely to picture her using the thing.

He crouched down next to the pallet where she slept. A quilt folded over three times like a burrito, a sheet folded in half and tucked around it. She'd left it rumpled, the hollow of her head in the pillow.

Anger jarred him, at the thought of her lying on the floor, lonely and scared, while a sadistic stalker lurked outside. She should be in a steel-reinforced concrete fortress. Protected by barbed wire, broken glass, infrared motion detectors, submachine guns.

And himself.

Whoa. Concentrate. He pressed his hand against the pallet. He'd slept in harder places himself, but he'd gotten spoiled in the last few years. If he got lucky with her, he would stage their trysts at his place, in his big, comfortable king-sized bed. Not that it mattered for the sex. A bare floor was fine. Up against the wall, in the shower, in the tub.

Still, he liked the idea of watching her stretch and smile at him, rosy and tousled and relaxed in his bed before he mounted her, sliding his cock slowly into her hot, moist body while she clutched him.

He thought of her flushed cheeks, her fascinated eyes. She liked to be touched. Margot would be red-hot for a man she trusted.

His hyper-trained eye suddenly noticed the crack next to the baseboard. He hooked his fingernails under the floorboard and pried.

Sure enough, it came loose, revealing a shallow cavity. A small spiral notebook was nestled in the space, a felt-tip pen stuck between the pages. He pulled it out and flipped through it, too fast to read.

Her handwriting was small, but bold and graceful. Every instinct in him screamed to read the thing. It was the only source of information he'd found in the place. He wanted to so badly, his hand shook, but he just stared at the diary, paralyzed by a startling realization.

He wanted her to trust him.

He wanted to know all her secrets, but he wanted her trust even more. She was the type that would never forgive a guy for reading her diary behind her back. He tucked the journal back into the place where he'd found it and dropped the board carefully back into place.

He got up and backed away, feeling cornered and confused. As if he deserved her trust, after picking her lock and prowling through her house. Hypocritical, waffling idiot. He'd gone through her utility bills and rifled her underwear drawer, and he balked at her diary?

Nothing he did today made any sense.

F
aris slowly sipped his second cup of bad coffee at the lunch counter, making it last so he would not be forced to drink a third, and watched Margaret as she charged out of the kitchen with a load of chicken-fried steak and meat loaf. So beautiful, even when her eyes were shadowed, her lovely face pale and drawn. Each day that she worked there, he put on a new disguise and braved the wretched food in order to feast his eyes on her at close range.

“Margot,” the beefy man behind the cash register said, as she spun around the end of the lunch counter. “C'mere. Gotta talk to you.”

“Hold on, Joe,” she said briskly. “Let me just deliver these—”

“I found somebody to replace you,” he broke in. “You can work out the next half hour of your shift, and then you're outta here.”

Margaret stopped in her tracks. Unfortunately, the tray poised on her shoulder, borne forward by a surge of centrifugal force, did not.

Plates and food flew, crashed, splatted. Glasses, dinner rolls, dripping gravy and green beans fanning out on the floor.

“Changed my mind,” Joe Pantani said in the silence that followed. “Don't work out your shift. Clean up that goddamn mess and get out.”

“Clean it up yourself, you sadistic jerk.” Margaret's voice shook.

Faris wanted to cheer.

“I'm tired of your problems, and it doesn't look like you're getting them under control. I'll cut you a check for the days you worked this week and mail it to you.” Joe's voice was heavy with self-righteousness. “Minus the cost of that food and those broken dishes.”

“This wasn't my fault,” she said fiercely. “None of it was.”

“Take responsibility when your life goes down the toilet, hon,” Joe said. “Ask yourself, why is this happening to me?”

“Screw you, Pantani. I'm not your hon, and you can spare me the sermon.” Margaret whipped off her apron and sponged gravy off her legs with it. Everyone was staring, forks in midair, eyes wide with horrified fascination. She spun around, arms flung out. “Step right up, ladies and gents,” she announced. “Check out the latest sideshow attraction! Woman Whose Life Is Going Down the Toilet.”

Faris hid his appreciative smile behind his coffee cup as many guilty eyes dropped all at once. A murmur started. Forks began to clink.

“Hey, lady, was that our lunch?” A table of elderly men in suspenders and bow ties were staring at her with accusing eyes.

She jerked her chin in Joe's direction. “Take it up with him.”

Faris forced himself to finish his coffee after she marched out, despite the feverish excitement bubbling inside him.

The slaughtered dog had been a message, to pique her curiosity, so she would start to wonder about him, long for him, dream of him. Last night, he'd tried to show her the difference between McCloud's unclean lust and his own holy adoration with his blood offering. But she hadn't understood. She wasn't ready. He'd been disappointed but not surprised when she had panicked and called McCloud.

No matter, he'd been ready with Plan B; to plunder McCloud's house for the items he needed. Pantani had given him a brilliant idea.

Faris left money on the counter and walked up to the register. He blinked at Joe through the thick, distorting lenses of his glasses. “You should apologize to that waitress.” He used the voice that went with his meek public demeanor. “You were unfair to her.”

Joe Pantani's eyes went wide. He stopped twirling his gold hoop earring and crossed his meaty arms across his thick chest. “Oh, yeah? No shit. Thanks for sharin' your opinion, pal.”

Faris stared into the man's eyes. He saw it already with his acute other vision; the mask of imminent death superimposed upon Joe's fleshy features. The grinning skull beneath coming eerily into focus.

“You just lost a regular customer, as well as your best waitress,” Faris said.
To say nothing of your worthless life.

Joe let out an explosive bray of laughter. “You're breaking my heart. How 'bout you get lost before I bust out cryin'?”

Faris turned his back, and walked out of the restaurant to his car. Margaret was still there, hunched over her purse, her hand pressed against her mouth. Trying not to cry. Brave angel. He ached for her. He wanted to swoop down like a bird of prey, and snatch her away from all this confusion. But the fear and pain was her initiation. The cleansing fire that would burn away her resistance to her new life with him.

He switched on the monitor of the tracking device he had planted in her car as she pulled away, and moved to follow at a discreet distance as he booted up his laptop and wireless modem. He pulled up behind Joe Pantani's red Camaro as he tapped his way deftly into the database of the DMV, using the backdoor that Marcus had bought for him. He plugged in the license plate number, took note of the man's home address. Then he scrolled down to peek at the traffic violations.

Joe had a weakness for speeding. Tsk, tsk. Bad boy. But the temptations of the world were over for him.

Joe Pantani had made his choice. He was just a walking corpse.

 

It wasn't my fault. None of it was.
Whine whine whine.

She wanted to smack herself. Her biggest talent since babyhood was being mouthy, and now even the snappy comeback program no longer ran on her hard drive. Not that it mattered. It was silly to get huffy over a disposable job when she had real problems to worry about.

Big, hairy ones, with long yellow fangs.

She parked on the street outside the house, and Davy's wild, incendiary dawn kiss flooded her mind, filling it so completely there was no room left over for Snakey or Joe or anything. Just Davy McCloud's warm, ardent mouth moving over hers, the rumbling vibration of his deep voice resonating through her. His lithe, strong body insinuating itself against her tender bits, making everything go tingly and soft.

And she had to stop this nonsense. She got out of the car, slammed shut the door, gritted her teeth. Now was not the time.

She stared up the steps, bracing herself to face the blood. She wished she had a personality that could steal and cheat without suffering. She could hotwire a car and speed away, eluding the cops with her super-duper commando skills. A cross between a female Rambo and the new Charlie's Angels. Kicking villains' butts. Rapelling down skyscrapers. Sewing up her own wounds in the wilderness.

But she didn't have those skills. She was a born wuss. She liked hot baths, silk shirts, chocolate truffles. She knew all about design theory, twentieth-century art and architecture, web site tools. She could design and sketch like a pro, she was a pretty good saleswoman and she cooked a mean pasta carbonara. But she'd been playing hooky that day in school when they taught you how to hotwire cars and evade road blocks. If only she'd studied self-defense, but no, she'd gone the vanity route; aerobics, spinning, ballroom dancing. Her tango skills wouldn't help much when it came down to going mano a mano with Snakey.

There was a complex mind-set and science to being an outlaw, and she sucked at it, big-time. She couldn't lie well, for one thing. Running away from unpaid rent and bills made her queasy. She even felt bad about not having time to take back her library books.

But who knew what she might be driven to before the end?

Yikes. Better not get near that thought. She'd start screaming.

She tried to convince herself that Snakey's antics weren't connected with the horror in San Francisco. She'd hoped so hard that her fake identity, the hitchhiking, and her zigzagging flight had covered her tracks, that it was just bad luck to have drawn the disaster card twice. But the horrific strangeness of what had happened eight months ago had the same spooky quality as slaughtered dogs, buckets of blood.

What baffled her was why Snakey was bothering to play this game of cat and mouse with her at all. She was such a pitifully easy mark. She didn't even exist, officially. He could grab her anytime, chop her up into mincemeat and no one on earth would ever look for her.

Except for Davy. He might spare a thought or two for her.

Yeah, in her dreams. Give it up, already. Maybe Snakey wanted her to run just so he could have the fun of chasing her. Creepy thought. Not helpful. Best to squelch it and keep moving, too fast to let herself be scared. In the moment. Breathing in, breathing out. A shiver went up her spine. She turned in a slow circle, but didn't see anyone. She shook herself, ran up the porch steps and stopped at the top, stunned.

The porch was resplendent, the peeling walls and floor scrubbed with some strong, pine-smelling solvent. Davy had called the cleaning service after all. That overbearing, adorable sweetheart. Tears sprang to her eyes. And she would never even have a chance to thank him.

She stripped off the gravy-spotted waitress outfit, yanked on some jeans and a tank top, and rummaged in the kitchen for some plastic shopping bags. She raced through the house grabbing silverware, dishes, dog food, pet treats. Dish soap, sponges. Mikey's dishes and basket, a can opener. Toiletries, towels, hair dye, quilt, pillow, clothes. The flower fairy calendar that made her think of Mom. The posters to remind her that there was grace and beauty outside this stinking hellhole. Her sketchbook, her diary. Her one nice dress and shoes, the result of her imprudent celebration purchases, rated their own private bag. The snake pendant she stuck in her pocket, where it made an ugly lump in her snug jeans. She dumped the basket of combs, hairclips and her small stash of makeup into the last bag, and that was it. Her life, reduced to five plastic shopping bags. She was through with this place.

On to the pawnshop. She hurried to the car, looking furtively around. Maybe Snakey was watching right now. She should perform some brilliant evasive maneuver to stymie him.

Yeah. Like…what, for instance?

Screw it. She could only do as much as she could do.

 

Faris peered through the powerful field glasses and watched Margaret leave the Capitol Hill pawnshop ten minutes after she entered it. His eyes followed hungrily as she got back into her car. Her skimpy tank top showed a strip of skin around her midriff. It bothered him. When she was his, he would not allow her to wear trashy clothes.

Margaret pulled away. Faris waited for her car to turn the corner before he walked into the pawnshop. His eyes adjusted to the light that filtered through the cloudy window. A skinny guy in his forties sat behind a glass display case full of watches, jewelry, guns. The man grinned, showing all his gums. “Afternoon. What can I do for you?”

Faris smiled politely as he walked up to the counter. “I was curious to know what the young lady who just left had pawned.”

The man guffawed, showing large, yellowed teeth. “Don't blame ya. I told that babe I'd give her an extra twenty if she left me her phone number, but those uppity, high-tit bitches are all the same. Even when they're down on their luck, they look down their nose at a regular working guy.” The man registered Faris's frozen expression. His eyes widened. “Shit. You're not, like, her husband or something, are ya?”

Faris forced himself to smile. “Not yet.”

The guy's nervous laugh sounded like a dog barking. “Uh, yeah.”

Faris waited. “May I see what she pawned?” he repeated patiently.

The man reached behind himself and held up the snake pendant. He laid it on the glass case. “Eight hunnert bucks,” he said officiously.

The pawnbroker had probably given Margot little more than fifty.

“I'll give you five hundred,” Faris said.

The fellow looked put upon. “No way. This baby's pure gold. Antique, too. It's worth at least—at least—”

“Six, then,” Faris said, smiling inside at the feral pleasure that lit up the man's eyes. After all, he could afford to be benevolent. A final pleasure for the man before he died. He'd seen and handled the symbol of the secret Order of the Snake. There could be no witness to Margaret's sale, or Faris's purchase. Besides, this would be a nice warm-up for the rest of the day's strenuous activities.

“Before you make up the receipt, would you take down…” Faris turned, and pointed to a dusty, unstrung guitar that hung high on the wall. “That guitar. I'd like to take a look at it.”

The pawnbroker looked puzzled. “Sure, I guess, but I got a whole lot of better ones, if you wanna see some—”

“I'd like to look at that one, please,” Faris insisted.

The guy rolled bloodshot eyes, and unfolded himself reluctantly from his chair. His stringy body was lost in his flapping clothing, and his movements released a billowing reek of sweat and stale cigarettes.

He fished a claw-ended grabbing device from under the counter and took it over to the far wall. He reached up, fishing with the grabber for the twine looped around the tuning pegs.

Faris moved silently behind him, the first needle held lightly between his thumb and forefinger. Time and space dilated as his perceptions of the man's body intensified, the flows of blood and lymph and vital energy, muscle fibers, nerve bundles, and the exact…perfect spot in the side of his neck, between those two tendons…yes.