Out of Control Read online

  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.

  Chapter

  7

  Faris 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.

  The needle struck true, snake-quick, accompanied by a shockwave of Faris’s vital energy. Then the second needle, slightly lower. Then the third. The man went rigid, and then crumpled to the floor.

  Faris knelt next to him, concentrated his qi one last time, and stabbed his two fingers into the trauma point over the man’s liver.

  He plucked the needles out and tucked them back into his wristband, and peeked beneath the man’s eyelids. Perfect. He was the best of the Order of the Snake. None of the other trainees had acquired Faris’s intuitive understanding of death strikes, and with each kill, his precision increased. He leaned over the counter and rifled through the receipts until he found the one that documented Margaret’s sale. He took it, along with the carbon, tucking them into his pocket, and waited until the man’s eyelids fluttered open. “Huh? Whah?” the man said.

  “You blacked out.” Faris made his voice solicitous. “When you reached up for the guitar. Can I get you something? Or call someone?”

  “Nah.” The pawnbroker looked dazed. “I’ll be OK, I guess. Fuckin’ weird.”

  “It happens,” Faris soothed. “Probably it’s nothing. You should see your physician, though. You might have low blood pressure. You should have a candy bar, or a cup of coffee, maybe.”

  The man allowed Faris to help him into a sitting position. “Thanks, man. Sorry if I freaked you out. Man, I feel like shit.”

  “No problem at all,” Faris assured him. “Really, I wouldn’t mind running you over to the emergency room.”

  “Hell, no.” The man winced, rubbing the heel of his hand over one of the spots that Faris had struck with the needles. “I stay away from those places. You still want that guitar?”

  “Oh, no, thank you. Don’t trouble yourself,” Faris said. “I’ll just take the pendant.” He pulled six hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and laid them on the counter, glad that he had thought to paint the transparent layer of liquid latex over his fingertips today.

  The man struggled up onto his knees, and then thudded heavily back onto his hind end. “Gotta do up a receipt for you,” he muttered.

  “Never mind the receipt,” Faris said. “I don’t need one. Stay where you are for a few minutes. Head down, between your knees.”

  The man’s bleared, confused eyes flickered up to Faris’s. He looked lost. “Thanks,” he said
. “Maybe I will.”

  “Maybe you should close up shop for a while,” Faris suggested. “Go lie down someplace.”

  “Yeah,” the man replied dully. “That might be good.”

  The pawnbroker did not deserve Faris’s respect, but death had claimed him, and Faris found himself lingering by the door, gazing down at the soon-to-be-dead man with a feeling almost like tenderness.

  “Goodbye,” Faris said gently. “Take care.”

  He stepped out into the sunshine. The process was irreversible. The man’s kidneys and liver would begin to shut down soon. Within twelve hours, he would die. Painfully, bleeding from every orifice.

  The door tinkled gently as he closed it behind him. He dropped the pendant into his pocket. All that was left was to eliminate that animal that Margaret kept as a pet, after which it would be time to turn his attention to Joseph Pantini. Ah, the things a man did for love.

  The random thought struck him as funny. He sauntered down the sidewalk towards his car, whistling and smiling at everyone he passed.

  Chapter

  8

  “Animal blood? You’re sure about that?” Davy said.

  “Yeah,” Monique said. “I haven’t distinguished which animal yet. That’ll take more tests, and I was too swamped today.”

  “Huh. Interesting,” Davy said slowly. “How much do I owe—”

  “Don’t even,” Monique scoffed. “It was no biggie. Want to catch me up with what you’ve been doing lately over dinner?”

  Davy hesitated. “Uh, actually…”

  “Say no more.” Monique’s voice was regretful, but good-natured. “Can’t blame a woman for trying.”

  “Thanks for rushing this for me,” Davy said. “You’re really—”

  “A pal. I know. Have fun tonight, whatever you’re doing. Bye.”

  Davy clicked the cell phone off and eased into his parking place behind the dojo, thinking about Monique with a combination of affection and regret. She was an ex-client of his, a technician at a crime lab, whose philandering husband had absconded with his mistress and all their assets, leaving her with two little kids, a rented apartment and fifty thousand dollars in debt. Davy had tracked the selfish asshole down and made him pay through the nose. One of the few times that detective work had given him pure, unadulterated satisfaction.