Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(13)

The guy jogged alongside, shouting something unintelligible. He bared his teeth, mouthed something vicious, grabbed at his crotch.

Lily huddled on the floor, breath rasping in and out. There was almost no one in the subway car. A teenage girl with earbuds, rocking out to her iPod, eyes shut. A homeless man, fast asleep and taking up a row of seats. An exhausted middle-aged woman, looking carefully away, wanting only to get home from work and put her butt into a chair.

Something warm and wet on her hand. Blood, dripping from a slash on her forearm. Heavy drops pattered onto the floor.

Wow. He’d cut her outside of Nina’s apartment. She hadn’t even noticed, she’d been so frantic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then pulled off her hoodie, wadded up the cloth of her sleeve, and applied direct pressure. She was chilly without the sweatshirt. Tremors racked her. She couldn’t tell if it was shock or cold. Both, probably.

Outside Nina’s apartment. How in the hell had they known she wasn’t going straight home? She’d made her evening plans with Nina via cell phone, during the train ride. They were spying on her phone?

Or worse, they were spying on Nina’s phone. That unleashed an even deeper, nastier thrill of dread. The killers knew all about her. They knew about her best friend. They probably knew everyone in the world she might call on for help. God knows, it was a short list, at this point.

She couldn’t even call Nina, make sure she was OK. Any contact would put her friend in more danger. The blood on the floor made her think of Howard’s shard of glass, and the anger and shock were sucked into the deeper, wider well of agonizing sadness.

When she came to her senses, she was huddled up, gasping for air. Rocking, like an autistic child. Like Howard before a suicidal pill binge. So this was why he did it. This was how it had felt to him.

She didn’t know which direction the train was going. People got on and off, stepping around her. She wanted to get up, but her muscles wouldn’t move. Fear had frozen her stiff.

She used to scold Howard for that obsessive rocking. It had infuriated her. It came across as so childish, so self-indulgent.

But he’d never been able to stop, once he’d started.

Now she knew why. Oh, Dad. Finally, she got it.





4


Portland, Oregon

Six weeks later





I have important things to do. You are not one of them.

The nonverbal message vibing off the hard-ass brunette’s haughtily turned back was impossible for Bruno to misinterpret. But perverse, self-flagellating idiot that he was, it went straight to his dick.

She’d walked into Tony’s Diner at 3:45 A.M., and he’d swear to God, he’d felt her coming before she even turned the corner and moved into the light uder the awning outside. He was primed for her, after the last two nights of torture and titillation.

Fate had been kind. After hours of anticipation, finally the follicles on his skin tightened, lifting hairs on end in a breezy, ticklish rush of animal awareness. The bells over the doors jingled. Ta-da.

His hair follicles weren’t all that lifted and tightened. Good thing he wore an apron over his jeans. When the chick with the black pageboy sashayed into Tony’s Diner, no matter how blitzed from lack of sleep he was, his glands promptly pumped a substance into his body that made him want to break into an oldtime movie dance number. An incredible rush. A tingling sense of infinite possibility combined with a mega-boner. A huge, awestruck “wow” from the depths of his being.

She’d chosen a table today, rather than the counter. Each seating option offered different viewpoints, with varying advantages and disadvantages. He hadn’t yet settled on his favorite. The back view was nice for legs, ass, the graceful nipped-in curve of her back, the nape of her slender, soft-looking neck, and he could do a lot of easy, blatant ogling while hustling around behind her back. When she took a table, he got more frontal scoping action but had to resort to old tricks from adolescence, developed before he’d discovered the ease and simplicity of mirrored sunglasses. Take it in, in one sweeping glance, and then pore over the gathered data in the privacy of his own dirty mind. He could never gulp enough of this girl in a single glance, though. He wanted to sit down across from her. Fix her with an unblinking, predatory stare.

Not that she’d notice, of course. She probably wouldn’t even look up. Her powers of concentration were world-class.

He kept trying to pin down what it was about her that got to him. It was a thorny problem, requiring detailed, up-close research and analysis, he decided, preferably conducted in bed. Maybe the sharp, up-tilted angles of cheekbone and eyebrows, maybe the big, mysterious green-gold eyes, set at an exotic slant, accentuated with bold eyeliner, heavy with mascara. She wore cat-eye glasses with fake gems in the corners that should’ve made her look grotesque, but they didn’t. They looked quirky, sassy, playful. They threw her beauty into sharp relief. She could wear anything and look great. Anything or nothing. Mmm.

And that mouth. She’d painted it a bright scarlet that was supposed to make her look super tough, but it didn’t work. The fullness of the upper lip made her look vulnerable, almost childlike. And the severe jet black hair, all wrong for her luminous skin.

The look was Salvation Army sexpot. Shabby black stretch lace shirt, showcasing an enticing nipple hard-on. Frayed denim miniskirt, a little too tight for a luscious ass. Tiny bulge of snowy pale muffin top coming out the low-slung waistband where her shirt rode up that made him want to grab and squeeze. Scuffed red f*ck-me peep toes with outrageous heels. Shapely legs in black stockings with so many rips and runs it had to be on purpose. He was usually good at decoding what girls said with their clothes, but he couldn’t read this chick. She dressed like she wanted attention, and yet she stared into that netbook like her life depended on it, black-tipped fingers tapping in a ceaseless buzz. Eyes frozen wide. Glasses reflecting the screen’s blue glow.