First Class Killing (39 page)

I listened to the stream flowing nearby and tried to calm down. My heart was barely keeping up with me. I had left Stewart tied up on his floor, then gone out to my car and pointed it toward this place. On the way, I had called and checked on various quarters. Bo and Tristan and Monica were fine. They were playing Trivial Pursuit, guns at the ready. When I told Tristan where I was going, all he said was to be careful. If Stewart had kept his word and not called her back, Angel would be looking for me at the Ritz-Carlton, but we both knew there was no guarantee that Angel had believed him.

I went back to the window, took a deep breath, and rammed my elbow through the glass. It wasn’t easy. I had to hit it a few times. Fortunately, the window cracked before my elbow did. I pushed the glass into the house. It fell onto an un-Angel-like yellow quilt that was lying neatly over a single bed below the window. I reached in, found the lock, unhitched it, and scrambled through, careful to crawl around the glass on the bed.

No one was around, but still, I winced when I put my feet to the floor and heard the floorboards creak. Using my flashlight, I found my way to the bedroom door and out into a hallway. With one hand glued to the wall and the other holding the flashlight on the floor in front of me, I made my way to the den.

I probably could have turned on a light but felt more comfortable down on my hands and knees with the flashlight. Every piece of furniture had a rug underneath it. I found one that looked as if it had been moved recently. It had a minor speed bump in it. The chair that sat on it was heavy, but once I got the right leverage, it tipped right over. I grabbed a corner of the rug, flung it completely out of the way, and found what I was looking for. Cut into one of the wide planks of the floor was a small, neatly milled, rectangular trapdoor. I stared at it, breathing hard. I hadn’t realized how winded I was. I mopped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, but it didn’t do any good. I was damp again immediately.

The opening was the width of my shoulders. It had two half-moon crescents carved out of the sides so you could put your fingers in and lift it out. I got down on my knees and tried to pry it out, but it was heavy and wedged tightly into its opening. I got up and framed the opening with one foot on either side. I wormed my fingers in, gave it a quick tug straight up, and it came out.

The hole it covered was about six inches deep and lined with metal. Inside were stacks and stacks of jewel cases. I pulled up the first stack and flipped through it. Using my flashlight, I saw the codes that labeled them. There were about forty per disc. Each code representeda man, each man a life. He had a wife or kids or a girlfriend. A career to be lost. A reputation to be tarnished. Maybe Angel would say that’s what they deserved. Any man who had made the choice to cheat on his loved ones deserved to have that choice used against him. I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure all that out. All I knew was that one of them was Jamie’s, and Angel shouldn’t have them. I reached down to take them away from her, and the fireplace roared to life.

It was like a grenade going off in the dark room, and I couldn’t keep from turning to look at it. When I did, I knew she was behind me. I felt her there. I dropped the boxes and reached for the gun, but it was too late. As I turned back, her arms were already on the way around, driven toward my head, it seemed, by the accelerating force of her guttural scream. I dropped to my knees with both hands to the floor. A vicious tear opened in the space above my head. I could tell by the sound that she was swinging a fireplace poker, an iron sword that was flying toward me again from her backhand side, this time with lower trajectory and better aim. I tried to flatten and roll away, but she caught my elbow with the downward hack, and the gun went flying. The pain from my elbow shot straight up my arm, across both shoulders, and down to my stomach, where it lurched around and threatened to blow straight up the back of my throat. Jesus, it hurt. I cradled it to my side. My body wanted to wrap itself around the injured limb, but she was coming, moving through the field of furniture with the poker over her head.

I scrambled into the nearest cover, a crawl space between the couch and the coffee table. She hacked off the corner of the glass tabletop. It was a clean break and a deafening pop right next to my ear. Her second try was a direct, shattering blow to the heart of the thick glass plane. I turned away. Shards flew. Large sections of glass dropped like heavy rocks straight to the floor. I kept moving. She kept coming, tripping around the furniture, chopping and hacking at me, strangling on her screams. I pulled pillows and cushions from the couch to cover my head as I went. Anything I could put my good hand on—ashtray, statue, magazine, potted plant—I tossed back at her, trying to slow her down. Something finally did. The poker tangled in the table’s low legs. I grabbed for it, wrapping my good hand around the tip, the only part I could get to, but she had all the leverage and ripped it away, nearly taking the skin off my palm in the process. I crawled over the field of broken glass and skirted around the end of the couch.

She was loud and noisy and clumsy with rage, wild to get to me. Every frenzied whack came with a roar that started in her throat and ended with the sound of splintering wood or shattering glass or the thudding of objects raining down around me. My only hope was that all the flailing and swinging might be wearing her out.

I had to get to my feet. There was no shot on my hands and knees. My elbow was hot and throbbing and swollen massively, but it seemed to still work as a hinge. When I tried to straighten it, the pain was dizzying, but it responded. I crawled on my belly under a side table. She whacked the Stiffel lamp that was sitting on it, pulverizing the lightbulb and sending the shade flying across the room. The heavy base of the lamp crashed to the floor in front of me, then twitched as it reached the end of its electric cord. I reached out for it, grabbed hold, and tried to reel it in, but she had come around. When she saw what I was trying to do, she stepped on the cord. I barely pulled my hand back in time before the sharp end of the poker came down, spearing the hardwood floor. This time, when I grabbed the tip, I pulled it up and toward me, yanking it with my entire body. She didn’t let go. The side table, my shield, tipped back as her countertug yanked me out into the open.

Goddammit, she was strong.

I strangled that poker, knowing what would happen if I let go. I tried to climb the ladder, hand over hand, but she kicked at my head and tried to stomp me. When she hit my elbow, I screamed. She screamed back. I rolled over to protect the arm, still holding onto the poker, still connected to her. She stomped on my back, maybe a kidney, and a bright white light exploded behind my eyes. I couldn’t breathe, and it was the hardest thing I ever had to do to keep from closing my eyes and going to sleep.

She would kill me if I did. She would beat me with that poker until I looked the way Robin Sevitch had. I kept my eyes open…and saw my chance. The lamp. It was right there, the base of it staring me in the face. To grab it, I had to let go of the poker. I had to let go with one hand, grab the lamp, and swing it all at once, because she would use the chance to raise the weapon over her head, and bring it down hard enough to crack my skull open.

My brain was telling me to move, to move
fast
and
move now,
but my body wouldn’t respond. I felt drugged. She made the choice for me when she twisted the poker hard and jerked it away. I grabbed for the lamp. It rolled away. I lurched after it. The poker came down, hit the arm of a chair and then my shoulder. I couldn’t feel anything now. I couldn’t hear anything. All I could see was the brass lamp. She saw it, too, and tried to kick it away. I grabbed at it again and got it this time. I swung it at the most vulnerable part of her I could reach—her knees. Nothing ever felt so good as the sickening collision of brass against bone when I made contact. She teetered but didn’t fall. I got to my knees and swung again with more leverage. Her shriek punched through the cotton that filled my head, and I could hear again.

She dropped like a bag of stones and rolled over on her side, one hand resting lightly on her devastated knee. Just for good measure, I hit it again and heard it crack. When she saw me moving toward the poker, she made a disturbingly strong grab for it. I got to it first and pulled it away. She didn’t go after it.

I tried to get up, staggered against the couch, and didn’t make it. I tried again and this time my legs engaged, and I was upright, standing over her with the poker swinging from my good hand.

She was on her side with her upper body twisted facedown on the floor. Her hair had spilled across her face, so I couldn’t see whether her eyes were open. Even with one leg cracked and bent beneath her, she looked lethal. I wasn’t sure about getting so near, but I wanted to see if she was conscious. I inched close enough to nudge her damaged knee with my foot.

She jerked violently and let loose with a long, loud scream that was raw and disorganized but powerful enough to make me feel that this wasn’t over.

“Stop
pushing
at me, you wicked bitch. It’s not enough for you to break my goddamned knee?” She rolled over and stared up at me. “Now you’ve got to stand over me and poke at me like I’m some kind of a dead dog in a ditch.” She tried to leg-whip me with her good leg. I was slow, but she was slower and clearly in agony. I shuffled out of her range and left her lying on her back, face twisted and eyes squeezed tight. She tried to control the pain through her breathing—long, deep breaths sucked through her nose and exhaled steadily through her mouth.

“Surprised to see me, weren’t you, doll?” She had to stop for a few breaths. “Old Sluggo, he’s not much of a liar.”

I stared down at her. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I couldn’t get close to her. The gun.
Turn on the light, and find the gun.
But then I started to feel sick.

“You should see yourself, sugar.” She let her head roll from side to side as if she were enjoying the feel of a feather pillow beneath her. She could barely talk, but she could still smile. “The way you’re looking at me.”

The poker felt slick in my hand. I looked down and saw the blood running down my arm and dripping into a pool at my feet. I didn’t know where I was bleeding from or why. I could feel myself getting lighter, as if I were pumped full of helium, ready to take off. My face burned. The room began to spiral. I thought I might just let go and flow with it. It would be easier than fighting it to stand up. I felt so hot.

“You want to kill me. I know you do.”

Her voice was hypnotic, the only thing that made sense. The sound of it, the tone and the texture were familiar. The way she said certain words. She had been the center of my world, the first thing I’d thought of in the morning and the last before I closed my eyes to sleep. Now her voice was the only thing I recognized, the only thing to hold on to as I started to disappear.

“You’d better kill me, too, because I swear to almighty God, after you pass out, you will pass from this world, because I will take that poker from you and run it straight through your heart. Then I’ll sit down and smoke a cigarette over your body.”

I backed away from her. I felt as if I were backing up a mountain. Why was it so hot? I had to sit down. Couldn’t sit down. She was coming. Why was I so…heavy? She’d rolled over and started to pull herself across the floor on her belly. A sick, twisted cry pushed out every time she moved. She was looking up at me, saying something. She was reaching toward me…she had it. She had the poker in her hand. Had I left it…it was supposed to be…it had been in my hand.

I staggered back and fell into the couch. I sank into…glass. There was glass on the couch. Huge, heavy chunks of it. It was under my feet. It was under her. I heard her moving over it. Everything was slowing down.

I had to get up. She couldn’t walk. If I could get up, all I had to do was get far enough away from her and…and what? Lie down and wait for someone to find me and save me? My feet wouldn’t move. She was in front of me now, using a chair to pull herself up. I heard the effort. I saw the way her body shook, every muscle engaged, every shred of her will lasered in on getting in position to kill me. I knew she would do it.

When she was up, she was towering again, her head swimming high above me. She tried to set her feet but could barely stay upright. She held the chair with one hand and raised the poker with the other. She held it like a dagger, aimed at my chest.

“Wait.”

“For what, darlin’?”

“Kiss me.”

Her right hand, the one that held the poker, dropped slightly. I looked at her face.

“Kiss me once. Please, Angel.” Every word felt like a lead weight that I had to lift, one at a time, to form into a sentence. “You said…”
Breath.
“You said…you wanted to. I wanted it, too. Please.”

“Oh, baby. You’re telling me a lie now, aren’t you?”

“No. What difference…anyway?” I reached out to her. “I don’t want to die alone.”

It seemed like forever we stayed that way. My arm reaching out, Angel staring in. She took a long, deep breath and held it. As she breathed out, she tipped her head back and looked down at me with half-closed eyes. She let the tip of her tongue glide across her upper lip. Her face contorted with pain as she inched slowly toward me, shortening the grip on her poker so she could keep it aimed at my throat. But her eyes were wild, as if she were on fire, burning from the inside. She could love me or kill me. To her it was the same.

I thought I would smell her perfume as she came closer, but all I could smell was blood, hers and mine. When she was close enough, I lifted my damaged arm and reached behind her head to pull her closer. Her hair was stiff and brittle, not soft the way it looked. My arm began to quiver when I touched her hair. It shook up to my shoulder as I twisted my fingers in it and pulled it taut. Her head slammed back, presenting her throat to me. I flashed on the image of Robin and that pale stretch of undamaged skin, the only part of her that still looked like her. The difference was the artery. Angel’s was pumping as hard as it could, especially after I kicked her in the knee.