Remote (7 page)

When they’d started out, she and Jack had made a deal: she took one kind of risk, he took another.  She was the bait, but Jack was the trap—and snapping shut on prey took its own toll over time.  No matter sharp Jack made himself, no matter how hard, he was still made of flesh and not steel.  He didn’t enjoy what he did any more than Nikki enjoyed giving a stranger a blowjob in the back seat of a minivan. 

But sooner or later, what Jack did would destroy him.

Nikki had seen the street swallow a lot of people.  Violence, prison, addiction and disease were the Four Horsemen of Self-Destruction when you were in the life, and they had no problem teaming up to take a victim down.  The first two were always waiting in the shadows for Jack, but the one he fought every time he opened that damn case and laid out his tools was worse than any of them.  Nikki didn’t even know what to call it; what kind of name do you give the force that’s slowly eroding your humanity itself?  Obsession?  Insanity?  Oblivion? 

The Patron would have called it art.

Nikki knew that her fate would come down to two very simple possible outcomes: she would survive, or she wouldn’t.  But Jack . . .

Jack was dying by inches.  And he knew it. 

And as much as she hated to admit it, as much as it pissed her off to define herself by comparison with another person, she knew that one of the reasons—maybe the biggest reason—she did what she did was because of that.  Because what Jack had lost—what he was still losing, every day—seemed to make her own sacrifices small and meaningless in comparison. 

Nikki hadn’t met many truly good people in her life.  She still couldn’t believe that the one she had the highest regard for was one who’d dedicated his life to torture.

Not that she was any stranger to the pain and pleasure scene; that went hand-in-leather-gloved-hand with hooking.  Nikki had known a lot of dominatrixes, and while they generally seemed to enjoy what they did more than the average streetwalker, they still maintained a professional distance.  Most of them kept it strictly pain-for-pay, with the only sexual component in the customer’s mind.  They were really no different from any other sex-trade worker, just a little more specialized. 

She’d wondered, more than once, if she could do what they did.  Inflict pain on someone helpless, even if they were paying for it.  She’d always shied away from it, not out of squeamishness but because she thought she might like it a little too much, maybe even lose control.  When Jack had forbidden her to participate in his part of their arrangement, she hadn’t argued. 

But at least once, she had watched.

Where they were now, what they were about to start, was different from anything else they’d done.  Nikki had her doubts while they were going after the sociopaths on the Stalking Ground that called themselves the Pack, but that hadn’t been about the rightness of their actions; it had been because she was worried Jack was going to self-destruct—either before he caught the monster that slaughtered his family, or immediately afterward.

She should have known better.  Jack might not be made of steel, but what he was made of was hard and very, very cold.  It was as if his pain had reached some critical threshold and collapsed in on itself, becoming a black hole of emotion so dark it didn’t have a name.  Nikki lived on the event horizon of that black hole, caught in its pull but resisting the call of its destruction.  For now, anyway.

Remote wasn’t like the others they’d chased and caught.  He targeted people he honestly believed should die—corrupt politicians, rapists, arsonists, wife-beaters.  Nikki didn’t feel sorry for any of them. 

She found herself thinking of one of the Pack’s members, the one that called himself Road Rage.  He’d stalked and executed bad drivers, and gotten the local newspaper to publish his list of rules for polite driving in return for a promise to stop killing.  Accidents and traffic-related violence had dropped by a significant percentage.

Road Rage had been out-of-his-mind batshit crazy, but he’d still had a positive effect.  Maybe Remote was right; maybe it was all about the numbers.  Maybe the sacrifice of one innocent person was worth the lives of a dozen others.  After all, wasn’t that exactly what Jack was already doing to himself?

Nikki didn’t know.  And she didn’t know if she could go through with what Jack was asking her to do this time, either.

A man sat down on the barstool next to her.  Fortyish, gray in his hair, jacket but no tie.  She sized him up coolly, professionally.  Not a drunk, not a sleaze, not a married guy looking for a quick hook-up—all evaluations she made without giving them much conscious thought.  She’d been good at what she did before she met Jack, and these days her radar was much, much sharper.

He ordered a beer while trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed her.  When he did work up the nerve to glance her way, he looked like he might bolt.  A little gun-shy—she pegged him as recently divorced, not ready for a new relationship but lonely and horny.

“Hi,” she said.

“What?  Uh, hi.”  He blinked.  Poor guy had probably been out of the dating scene for years.

“Take it easy,” she said.  “You’re doing fine.”

“I am?  ‘Cause I gotta say, I feel like I’m about to burst into flames.”

She gave him a mock frown.

“Uh, geez, no, that isn’t some kind of cheesy pick-up line.  I meant flames as in shot down in, you know?  Not, you know, like I was trying to say you’re really hot—which, I mean, you are—but—no, no but—I—aw, crap.”

He ran down like a broken wind-up toy.  She grinned despite herself.  “You know what you did just now?”

“Convinced you I’m an idiot?”

“No.  You just got lucky, twice.”

He smiled back, tentatively. “How so?”

“First, because you haven’t set off my extremely fine-tuned bullshit detectors, which has saved you from a world of pain.  And second, because tonight I’m in the mood to drink with somebody, and it looks like you’re it.  If that’s all right with you?”

“Sure.  I’m Nick.”

She laughed.  “Well, isn’t that perfect.  I’m Nikki.  Pleased to meet you.”  She raised her drink.  “I think we should get the evening started with a toast, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay by me.  What are we drinking to?”

“To making the world a better place, Nick.  No matter what the cost.”

He raised his bottle of beer and clinked it against her glass.

***

Tanner figured he could have pretty much any woman he wanted.

He was a fairly attractive man in good physical shape, but looks were hardly the most important factor.  It was really all about placement. 

It was a well-known fact that women matured earlier.  That meant that for most of their lives, men were playing catch-up—the women their own age were always interested in guys a few years older.  And when you got to the age where you could start to date those younger women, you discovered they were just as shallow as you were—they wanted a bad boy with a nice body and a nicer car.

But then time started to work in the man’s favor.  Those that matured first peaked earlier, and once a woman hit her thirties her options started to shrink.  That guy on the motorcycle didn’t seem so attractive any more;  security became more important than thrills, and all those guys that had given up on dating and concentrated on their careers suddenly looked a whole lot tastier. 

Tanner had figured that out in his twenties, back when he was one of the bad boys.  He’d shifted strategies as he’d gotten older, and now he was sitting in the driver’s seat when it came to dating.  He could spot a likely candidate from a block away, could tell you where she shopped and which magazines she read.  He had a variety of approaches he’d refined depending on his target, from needy single moms to the career woman who drank a little too much.  He preferred the two-date method: one to set them up, the next to close the deal.  A woman that wouldn’t sleep with him on the second date never saw him again; one that would might last as long as a week.  After that, he lost interest.

It wasn’t about the sex, anyway.  It was about winning.

He got up to use the bathroom, grabbing his cellphone from his pants on the way.  He closed the door behind him and turned on the light.  Tonight’s successful conquest hadn’t followed his usual pattern; he’d actually been watching this one for a while, looking for an opening.  But then, she wasn’t exactly ordinary, was she?  No, she definitely was not.

Which meant she deserved
extra
attention.

She’d taken him back to her place, a not-so-subtle message that she was open to more than just a casual relationship.  She’d regret that later.

He searched the medicine cabinet and the bathroom drawers, quietly and efficiently.  He found several vials of prescription medication, and used his cellphone camera to take pictures of all of them, making sure the labels were clearly visible. 

He also found evidence of a recent male presence—shaving cream, deodorant--which didn’t surprise him at all. 

When he was done he put everything back where it belonged, turned off the light, and flushed the toilet.  Then he padded back to bed, stashing his phone back in his pocket before climbing underneath the covers.

***

Nikki lay on her back, breathing evenly, pretending to be asleep.

It had been a long time since she’d had a real conversation with anyone but Jack—and with Jack, it was nothing but shop talk.  Talking, drinking, even dancing with Nick had been . . . nice.

Nice.  Nikki could hardly remember what the word meant.

She’d taken him home more out of gratitude than any desire for sex, and made it abundantly clear that all she could offer was tonight.  He’d hidden his disappointment with a joke, and she found that almost unbearably sweet.  It was like he came from another planet, a world without human predators and everyday horror, the kind of place where you could seriously consider falling in love or maybe even raising a family. 

Now she was wondering if she’d made a mistake.

Jack wasn’t here, of course.  She’d asked for a night to herself, and he’d given it to her without asking any questions.  He was probably laying groundwork, stocking up on certain supplies—

No.  She didn’t want to think about that.

She shouldn’t have brought him back here, should have insisted they go back to his place.  Why had she done that?

Because she hadn’t wanted to just play tourist in someone else’s mundane life.  She’d wanted to drag some of that life into her own, shed a little light on the shadows where she lived.

She smiled to herself in the dark.  She didn’t want a knight in shining armor; she’d settle for a guy with a flashlight.  

Ultimately, though, she was just trying to distract herself from what lay ahead.  Was she still strong enough to do what she had to?

Yes
, she thought. 
I am.  As long as there aren’t any nasty surprises along the way . . .

She heard the toilet flush.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

He left before dawn, without waking her.

He did leave her a note though, thanking her for an amazing night, and his phone number in case she changed her mind about getting together again.  Nikki smiled and stuck the note in a drawer, knowing she’d never call it.  It was nice to know, though—in fact, it was the most pleasant evening she’d spent in a long time. 

Then she got out her suitcase and started to pack.  She had twenty-four hours to get from Vancouver to Sacramento and meet Jack.

Playtime was over.  Time to go to work.

***

He left before dawn, without waking her.

The morning was foggy, gray light filtering down onto the damp Portland streets.  Tanner fantasized about what he could do with the information he’d gathered as he strolled along, enjoying the sense of isolation.  The information on the prescription labels would get him access to her records via the Medical Information Bureau, a business used by insurance companies to gather data on prospective clients—usually so they could deny them coverage based on a pre-existing condition.   He suspected she had such a condition, based on the fact that the medication had been labeled with two similar yet different names. 

Kim Gonzalez and Kimberly Gutierrez—he wondered if either was genuine.  She was definitely Latino, with her coal-black hair and dark eyes--might even be an illegal.  Threatening to get her medical coverage cancelled would be good, but the possibility of deportation would be even better; he could use that as a lever to get her to do all sorts of things.  The same sorts of things he’d already done to her, in fact.

But it was always better when they had no choice. 

***

Another town, another Stroll.  At least Sacramento didn’t have snow on the ground—though the November wind raking Nikki’s fishnet-clad legs was anything but warm. 

There were usually around fifty serial killers operating at any given moment in the US; the one currently terrorizing Sacramento targeted red-headed prostitutes, strangling them with a wire coat-hanger and dumping their bodies in the American River. 

Nikki wasn’t a redhead, but she had a large collection of wigs—right now she was wearing a pink one.  Nikki could see other working girls up and down the block, but not a single one with red hair.  She knew for a fact there was one two blocks over, and was just as sure she was a police decoy.

The obvious wig was the important part.  Jack figured the killer was smart enough to have his own wig—a red one, of course—and he’d simply make the next one wear it.  Nikki’s makeup made her look paler than usual, and she was wearing green contact lenses.

She and Jack were using their standard methodology, pared down for the situation: find out where their target hunted, figure out his preferences, profile him as best they could from whatever information they could gather.  They had no access to police records, but media reports often led them to friends or relatives of the victims. 

And when they had an idea of what the target liked and where he went to get it, they dressed Nikki up and put her out there as bait.  It wasn’t that different from what the police did, but Jack and Nikki had two major advantages: Nikki could—and would—do things no undercover police officer was capable of; and where police departments had to worry about politics, media perception and budgets, Jack and Nikki did not.  Once they started, they didn’t give up.