“Yeah,” Brenda says carefully. “We know a Simon. Thank you for the information, Mrs. Ortiz. Please call me back if he wakes up again.”

“When he wakes up again.” She can’t help the snap.

“Of course. When he wakes up again.”

“Who is Simon?” She blurts the question quickly, before the woman can hang up.

“At the moment?” the woman’s voice is wry, her response quick and unpolluted. “Our new suspect.”

“But how does he—” Lily stops her question midstream. It is too late, the background noise gone. When she glances down at the phone, the “Call Ended” screen blinks up at her.

Simon. It was Simon. So Simon is real. And Deanna may be innocent after all. She locks the cell phone and lowers her head to her knees. Replays the conversation for a second, then a third time. Hopes fervently that she did the right thing by calling the detective.

CHAPTER 84

Present

I SEE A light come on beneath the crack of the door, and step back. The asshole himself opens the door and stands before me. From the darkness behind him, I hear her mumble his name and see a pile of blankets move on the right edge of the room. Good. We’ll make a threesome. So much fun.

“Hey…” Surprise in his greeting. He is not happy to see me. I can see it in the dart of his eyes, his hand’s nervous play on the knob.

“Hey.” I smile and it’s a good thing I’ve had four years of smiling at clients because I am damn good at it. He has never seen a Jess Reilly smile from me before and he hesitates, caught off guard. I lift a hand to my mouth, the index finger pointed up, the universal shh sign, and giggle softly. Come here I mouth, stepping back, against the opposite wall, the plastic bag in my hand bumping against the plaster with a seductive swoosh. I crook my finger and the idiot follows, pulling the door behind him. I sway a little sideways as if I am drunk, and drop the bag on the floor.

Shh…, I shush and giggle, though he has said nothing and this is too easy, his hands coming out and supporting me, his body close enough that, if my breasts were knives, he’d be impaled with one step forward.

“I thought you were—” I cut off his sentence with my mouth, pushing my pelvis forward and grabbing the back of his head, pulling him to me, his mouth stiff then softer on mine, his hands settling on my hips and his hair is spiky and unwashed and his mouth tastes like pot and kissing this prick is absolutely worth it as I stop the passage of his hands up my shirt and grab his wrists, wrapping a giant zip tie around them, threading one end into the other and yanking hard. The handcuffing is done without a break in our mouths, his attention captured while his freedom is taken. Then I break the kiss and kill any mood by pulling the gun from the small of my back. I drag back the slide, pop a bullet into the chamber, and level the barrel at his forehead. SimonTheAsshole freezes still, the dim hallway light bright enough for him to understand the situation. He tries to lift his hands in surrender and struggles, the tight grip of the tie making the act awkward and—from the grimace on his face—painful. Oh, Simon… The poor boy has no idea what is ahead.

I hold the gun with my right hand and grab a piece of duct tape, yanking it off my jeans and slapping it over his eyes. Another piece for his mouth.

He flails in the sudden blindness, his cuffed hands reaching for me, and his shoulder hits the wall with a loud thud. That’s bad. Any minute Chelsea will be opening that door. I put the gun at his temple and lean forward, close enough to smell his scent. “Be still and go where I push you, or I will pull the trigger. Nod slowly if you understand.” He nods and I kick at the cracked-open door, shoving him in and turning right, holding the gun out and steady at the bed where I had heard Chelsea’s voice.

Before, she was under the covers, a shadow moving in the background. Now, she is propped up on her air mattress, an Iron Maiden T-shirt on, an irritated look on her face when we crash into the room and I level the gun at her. To her credit, she doesn’t react, doesn’t scream, she just sits there, her eyebrows raised, and glances from the gun to me, to Simon—who trips over a recliner and falls—to the gun. “You look like you know how to use that.”

“I do. And I’d really love to smear your brains across that cheap comforter, so please. Make my fucking day and try something.”

“You know you tried to kill me already. It didn’t work.” She adjusts the neck of the T-shirt as if we are sitting in Starbucks, waiting on our Frappuccino order to be called.

“Second time’s the charm.”

“What are you doing here, Deanna?” She sounds tired, like this midnight meeting is inconvenient but not life threatening, and I want to shoot off a body part just so she shows me some respect. “I thought you were in jail.”

“I was. Move to the end of the bed and kneel on the ground before me.”

She is too sluggish, and I am half-giddy with bloodlust, half-irritated by her attitude, and half-anxious for answers, so I decide to screw plans and shoot some respect into this bitch. I grab the closest pillow, shove it down on her thigh to muffle the sound, and pull the trigger.

“Here is the plan, Chelsea.” I nod toward the floor. “Kneel.” She kneels. “Good girl.” I listen to Simon moan something unintelligible, and smile. “I’m going to give you some zip ties, and you are going to tie your ankles together, and then your wrists. You are going to do it tightly or else I am going to shoot off whatever appendage is being lazy.”

“Are you going to miss again?” Her voice sounds hard but I see the shake in her eyes. She’s lucky I missed, that the pillow hid the quick movement of her skinny leg and the air mattress got the bullet instead of her. It was almost better it worked out that way. The mattress deflated, she got motivated, and I finally have some freaking respect without having to worry about her bleeding to death before I am done. I smile and pull out a handful of ties from my pocket.

She looks down at them, then up at me, her blue eyes studying me as if she could see her future in them. “The faster you move, Chelsea, the quicker I’ll be gone. Answer all of my questions and I’ll leave you two unhurt.” It was a lie but I smile as if it were true and added the one word that makes everyone calm. “Promise.”

She rolls onto her butt, her bare feet before her, and I can see the hot pink of her underwear. Her toes are painted dark purple, a shade that is seriously going to clash with the yellow ties she picks up. I stare at her toes and try to remember the last time I painted mine. Thursday? It feels like five months ago. “Tighter.” She glares up at me, pulling on the end of the tie, her skin squishing out a little around the plastic tie. I smile. For a skinny girl, she has fat ankles, and that makes me happy. “Now your wrists.”

“I’m not coordinated enough to do my wrists.”

“Make the loop really big, slide your wrists in, then use your mouth to tighten it.”

She sighs like it is an enormous task. For a woman who is still alive, she’s extremely ungrateful. I step right as she works, putting Simon fully in my vision, the skinny druggie on his back, his hands tied before him, with apparently no plans for escape or heroism. I think of him, in my apartment, his face triumphant and cocky, and my world turns a little redder, my control shifts into a lower gear, my plans take on a more fluid state. I glance back to Chelsea, her mouth on the end of the tie, her lip curling at me as she bites down on the end and tightens the plastic around her wrists. “Stop.” I pause her movement before it’s too late. “Face your palms in the same direction. Not palm to palm, one palm on the back of the other one’s hand.” She hesitates, then flips over one hand, putting her wrists in a position that is pretty much useless. She looks up at me and I nod in approval. She replaces her mouth on the tie and tugs on it, cinching her wrists together. “More,” I prod and smile when she complies. Power. I sometimes wonder if it is that, more than the blood, that I crave.