Jack Daniels Six Pack (172 page)

“I know it’s none of my business,” he said, “but I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The pregnancy test.” He turned around, his face serious. “You want to tell me what’s up?”

CHAPTER 34

A
LEX CLIMBS OFF THE BED.
Naked. Satisfied. Bloody.

The blood isn’t hers.

Jack’s husband held up pretty well. The erection pills probably helped, but twice in an hour was more than Lance ever managed.

“Not bad, loverboy. If you enjoyed yourself, don’t say anything.”

Alan stays quiet. The duct tape gag has a lot to do with it, but it makes Alex feel good just the same.

In the shower, she lathers up and plans her next few moves. Alex is good at planning. Thinking things through. Anticipating problems. It’s one of the reasons she’s been such a successful killer, caught just one time in a career lasting well over two de cades. Being careful doesn’t just happen. It requires deliberation. One must consider every possible contingency, and then predict probable outcomes.

Though genetically she’s a predator—something she got from Father—she can also thank him for her plotting capabilities. Growing up in a house hold ruled by fear and abuse can turn the most innocent child into a cold, calculating machine. Alex never learned how to play chess, but guesses she’d be good at it.

She playfully swishes a toe through the blood-streaked suds swirling down the drain, and decides to find some time in her busy schedule today to paint her toenails. She likes how the red looks.

The hair dryer is even worse than the one at the Old Stone Inn—
Alex bets her hair is growing faster than it’s drying. She gives up after a few minutes, putting it into a ponytail while still damp. Makeup is a chore. She’s going out in public, so that means caking on the thick scar cover. The product comes with a tiny spatula, and it goes on like flesh-colored Spackle. Alex fusses with her bangs, letting them hang down over the bad half of her face, and then chooses to walk away before she starts to get angry again.

Back into the bedroom, naked. No real room for any serious exercise. But then, she probably got enough exercise in the last hour. She dresses in the cop uniform again, pleased that Alan is watching her. He’s gone from looking scared to looking devastated. Like a kicked dog.

“I’ll be back soon, dear. Don’t wait up for me.”

He doesn’t answer. She spends ten minutes online, giving Alan’s credit card a little workout. She remembers his e-mail address from his Web site, but she does have to give him a few gentle slaps to get him to spill his preferred Internet password. It gives her tremendous plea sure to hear his password is
Jacqueline.
What a sap.

When she’s finished with the computer, she sits on the bed and opens up the defibrillator, pretending to press a few buttons.

“I’ve activated the automatic motion sensor. So if you struggle, or try to scream, it will give you a nasty jolt. Plus, it will make me really angry. Trust me, I’m much easier to get along with when you’re on my good side.”

She runs a finger along his forehead, wipes the blood off on a pillowcase, and leaves the hotel room, making sure to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

It’s a bright day, bright and painfully sunny, a sharp contrast to the cool wind chilling her scalp. Alex stands in the parking lot, pretending to search her pockets for her keys but actually getting the lay of the land. No one loitering. No parked cars with tinted windows or with the engines running. She knows that the authorities have by now found the Hyundai’s own er, dead in the ditch, and are looking for his car and his murderer.

She heads on to the car, climbs in, and drives twice around the parking lot. No tails.

Using the onboard GPS, she searches department stores in the area, and heads for the closest. She finds the superglue, the floss, the half-inch screw eyes, the inkjet printer and specialty paper, the socket set, the road flares, and the five-gallon gas canister easily enough, but has to walk up and down several aisles before finding the outlet timer. In the cosmetics department, she chooses a fire engine red nail polish. Standing in the checkout line, Alex notes that people are avoiding looking in her direction. She’s used to that—people tend to be repulsed by deformities, and after one glance they turn away. But in this case, people aren’t even giving her that first look.

It’s the uniform. People naturally distrust cops. In a weird way, it’s almost like being invisible. Alex watches a mother in line ahead of her, repeating over and over that she isn’t going to buy her son the toy he’s clutching and whining about. It reminds Alex of Samantha, the stripper with the little girl from yesterday, and Alex digs out her cell.

“Sammy? It’s Gracie.”

“Gracie?” Samantha sounds groggy. It’s lunchtime, but dancers work late hours.

“We met yesterday at the bookstore. You offered to take me clothes shopping.”

“Oh, hi! Glad you called.”

Alex’s eyes flick to a woman, Caucasian, mid-fifties, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that she probably bought at this store. Short hair, brown with blond streaks. Gym shoes. Strangely, no purse. She’s beelining in this direction, face frantic, arms pumping.

“I’m free to night,” Alex says. “What’s your schedule look like?”

“I have off. I can call my neighbor, have her watch Melinda.”

The woman is a few steps away now, so close Alex can see the trickle of blood leaking from her nose.

“Officer!” the woman calls.

“That would be so cool,” Alex says into the phone. “You’ve got my number, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you. Awesome!”

“See you later.”

She hangs up just as the woman is tugging on her arm.

“He hit me and took my purse!” The woman’s voice is high-pitched, tinged with hysteria. Her cheeks glisten with tears.

“I’m off duty, ma’am.” Alex points at her cart with her chin. “You should call 911.”

“You have to help me! Please! There he is!”

Alex follows the woman’s finger in the direction of a teenager sporting gang colors, heading for the exit. He’s about forty yards away, young, moving fast. He’ll be out the door in a matter of seconds. A challenging target.

The holster on Alex’s hip has an unfamiliar snap holding the gun in place, and she loses half a second fumbling with it. But the draw is smooth, her aim is sure, and the kid flops to the ground minus his right knee.

There’s a moment of shocked silence, then pandemonium, people diving and ducking and screaming and shouting. Alex drinks in the reaction.

“I can’t see from here, but it doesn’t look like he has your purse.” Alex talks louder than normal; her ears are ringing, and so are everyone else’s. “But he probably has your cash and credit cards on him. I’m guessing he ditched your purse someplace in the store.”

The woman’s jaw is hanging open. Alex tips her cap, holsters her gun, and pushes her cart toward the exit.

The gangbanger is on the floor, clutching his knee, face wrenched with pain. Early teens, peach fuzz on his chin. His running days are over. And from the amount of blood on the floor, his walking days might be over as well. He sees Alex approach and fumbles for something in his loose-fitting jeans. Alex draws again, pointing the barrel at his groin.

“I blew off your kneecap from over a hundred feet away,” she says. “You want to see what kind of damage I can do this close to you?”

He shakes his head, his whole body twitching, and slowly raises his empty hands. Alex digs into his pocket, takes out a battered .22. She tucks it into her belt.

“Do yourself a favor, kid, and quit crime. You suck at it.”

She walks out of the store with a cop swagger and a cart full of merchandise she didn’t pay for.

CHAPTER 35

P
HIN AND I STARED AT EACH OTHER
for a little bit. I put on my cop face to keep my emotions hidden. But instead of Phin wearing his tough-guy face, he looked like the last kid picked for kickball.

“I’m not going to be around for long,” he said.

I folded my arms. “I’m not forcing you to help me, Phin. You can leave whenever you want to.”

“I meant being alive. I’m dying of cancer, Jack. I might not make it through winter.”

“Oh.” I was trying to be strong, not be an asshole. “Sorry.”

“It’s just—women carry pregnancy tests for two reasons. Because they think they’re pregnant…”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“…or because they want to get pregnant.”

“I don’t want to get pregnant. And you had no right to search my purse.”

“I wasn’t searching your purse. You told me to take money for donuts.”

“And you saw something wrapped in toilet paper and decided to take a look?”

“It wasn’t wrapped in toilet paper. It was sitting on top of your wallet.”

I wasn’t buying. I reached into my purse, pulled out the wad of toilet paper I’d used to wrap up the EPT, and waved it like a surrender flag.

“Are you saying this isn’t toilet paper?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, that’s toilet paper. But it wasn’t wrapped around anything.”

“Why else would I have toilet paper in my purse?”

Phin shrugged. “Emergencies? Afraid of being caught without it? How should I know? I’m not a chick, I don’t own a purse. I don’t know why you women keep half that stuff in there.”

“I only keep essentials in my purse.”

“You’ve got a wind-up plastic nun in there.”

“That’s Nunzilla. She shoots sparks out of her mouth.”

“That’s essential?”

“It was…a gift.”

Latham gave it to me, on our first-year anniversary.

“Look, I know you’re hurting. I know you miss him a lot. But if you’re trying to get pregnant to fill a void in your life, you should find a father who will be around for a while.”

I wasn’t sure what rankled more, Phin thinking I slept with him to get pregnant, or Phin thinking I needed a child to fill some void in my life.

“It’s not any of your business, but since you brought it up, I missed my last period and thought I might be pregnant, so I bought a pregnancy test when we were at the gas station last night. If you’d bothered to look closer, you’d see there was only one blue line, not two. I’m not pregnant, so this conversation is over.”

Phin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then cupped his elbow and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I believe you,” he said.

“Good. Because I’m telling the truth.”

“But if it’s negative, why did you save it?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. What was I supposed to tell him? That part of me wanted to be pregnant, so I could always have part of Latham with me? That maybe I did have a void that needed to be filled? That keeping a negative pregnancy test
was one more way I could punish myself, as a reminder of what never would be?

I wasn’t ready to tell him that. Especially when he was high on coke.

“If you think I slept with you because I wanted a sperm donor—”

He raised his palms. “I’m just trying to understand you a little better.”

“Why? Why the hell do you need to understand me?”

“Because…”

He gave me that look again and I knew that he was going to say the L word, and I did not need to deal with that right now.

“Never mind,” I interrupted. “We need to get to Gurnee and meet Harry. You want to drive, or rifle through my purse some more?”

He went from lovey-dovey to wounded, which I preferred.

“I’ll drive.”

I followed Phin out to the Bronco. The day was gray, overcast, and matched my mood. We got in the truck and didn’t say anything to each other for the first half hour of the drive. I finally got hungry and picked out one of the donuts he bought.

“Sprinkles,” I said, after swallowing a bite.

“Excuse me?”

“I like donuts with sprinkles.”

“Oh. Good to know. Anything you want to know about me?”

He sniffled, rubbed his nose. I resisted the temptation to ask which coke he preferred, Colombian or Panamanian. I also resisted asking him about criminal acts he’d committed in his past. I was curious how bad this bad boy really was, but I was also a cop and might feel compelled to act on the information. Sometimes ignorance makes things easier.

“Does it hurt?” I asked instead.

“The cancer?”

I nodded.

“Only some of the time.”

“When doesn’t it hurt?”

“When I’m asleep.”

“The pain is bad?”

He nodded, took one hand off the wheel to rub his elbow again. I reached out, touched his injury.

“Jesus, Phin! It feels like you have a beanbag in your elbow.”

“It’s pieces of cartilage. I’m supposed to keep it immobile.”

“You should have it in a sling. You don’t want permanent damage.”

“It won’t be permanent,” he said.

He didn’t say it with regret, or self-pity. He said it matter-of-factly, like he was talking about the weather.

I’d met some tough guys. Cops. Military. Bikers. Mobsters. Killers. With one sentence, Phin took the tough-guy crown. Which made me want to kiss him.

Jesus, this was messed up.

The phone rang. I cringed, thinking it was Alex, but it was Harry again.

“Where you at, sis?”

“We’re taking the Gurnee exit now.”

“I’m on the north side of the mall. Knock three times.”

“What about that deal you made?” I asked, referring to him selling out Phin to the Feds. I didn’t want to walk into a Feebie party.

“Not until we catch Alex. Trust me.”

Gurnee Mills was one of the largest malls in America, but the Crimebago was easy to find, even in the packed parking lot. Phin pulled up behind it, and I knocked three times like Harry instructed.

“Door’s open!” he called from inside.

Upon opening the door, I was greeted by a nasty smell. Not the normal nasty smell I associated with Harry. Something far worse.

“Jesus, Harry, it stinks in here.”

“I’m working on that.”

Harry was in a rumpled suit, stained with wet spots of various colors. He was holding a handful of those cardboard pine-scented car fresheners shaped like Christmas trees. But I wasn’t smelling pine. I was smelling zoo on a hot day.