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

She hadn’t thought things could get any worse for Howard, but he’d never scared her like this. She needed distance, or she’d go crazy herself. She, unlike Howard, had no family members left who would sling themselves up into a strangling financial noose in order to lock her up someplace attractive and safe to be crazy. Nope, she’d be muttering-to-herself, eating-out-of-Dumpsters crazy. The mage did not appeal.

She was shivering. She wanted to crawl under a bush, huddle like a hurt animal. The sky seemed so empty. Weirdly threatening.

She hadn’t gotten the number of the cabbie. She should have gotten his card. She could go back inside, ask for a car service, but that would require mental organization, social skills, and a certain measure of calm that she simply did not possess. The other option was to sit down on an ornamental rock and wait for forty minutes.

She glanced up at the fourth floor. Miriam stood in the window of one of the rooms, staring down. Talking into a cell phone.

About Lily, no doubt. Probably telling her supervisor about the incident, painting Lily as the hysterical hag of the situation. Lily quashed the thought. It sounded grandiose, paranoid. The whole world is looking at me, plotting against me, out to destroy me.

She was not giving in to that. Not even if it were true.

Miriam stared down, still talking. The reflection on the doublepaned glass window obscured her expression, but Lily fancied she could feel the hostility radiating out of the woman, even at this distance. She got up, strolled along the grounds. She felt so exposed, under that blank sky. Like a raptor might swoop down, claws out to grab and rend.

They killed her, Lil. In front of me. They beat her to death. They told me you’d be next . . .

A wave of faintness came over her. She had to grab a tree branch to keep steady at the remote possibility that Howard actually . . . no.

She couldn’t go down that road, even in the privacy of her own head. That way lay madness. There weren’t enough funds for both of them to be bonkers. But damn it, she’d wondered for years what the hell had broken Howard. Why would a normal, successful, relatively happy person suddenly fall to pieces? From one day to the next?

One wouldn’t, she thought. Not without a precipitating cause. And witnessing this Magda’s brutal murder . . . that would do it.

But her longing for a logical explanation was a trap, too. She was wise to all traps now. Suspicious of everything. Even her own mental processes.

The grounds merged into forest at the end of the neatly mowed lawn. Shivery prickles on the back of her neck urged her to run, hide. Go to ground. Stupid impulse. She didn’t do nature, and besides, nobody was after her. The world didn’t pay much attention to her, and she liked it that way. She flew under the radar. Almost no one knew what she did for a living, and by necessity, her referrals were extremely discreet. She worked too many hours to know many people, other than Nina. And a few disgruntled men from her occasional forays into dating.

She glanced up. Miriam was still there, still talking on the phone.

It embarrassed her to stand out here, like a dog put out for piddling on the rug, while that awful woman glared down. She was out of this place. Right now. On foot. How far off base could she go? She had on sneakers. She couldn’t get lost if she stayed parallel to the road and kept the sound of traffic in her ears. A walk in the woods to clear her mind, just the thing. Unless some fanged predator ate her, of course, but she didn’t think bears or cougars or wild boars lurked in the woods of New York. Plus, she’d save ten bucks of cab fare and avoid the embarrassment of not being able to tip the cab driver. And the money could then be put toward tonight’s dinner. A happy bonus.

Lily pushed through the hedge and plunged into the forest.





3


“Come get her, Cal. Come fast.” The nurse Miriam, who was not, in fact, a nurse, nor was her name Miriam, whispered fiercely into her cell as she slipped into an unused patient room.

“Did King say what to do with her?” Cal asked, sounding bored.

“I haven’t spoken to him yet, but when I do, I certainly don’t want to have to tell him that we’ve lost track of her!” she hissed. “That would suck for you, too, Cal. I’ll give you more instructions in a few minutes! For now, just step on it! Get your ass back here!”

Click. Cal hung up on her. Bastard. She’d never liked him much.

Calm down, Zoe. Focus, Zoe. She used her name, like King did in her personalized programming sequences, trying to recreate his voice in her head repeating the commands. It helped the message go deeper.

The situation was still containable—barely. Howard had surprised her, finally blurting out his piece. The processing delay had been longer than she’d anticipated. The gulper had bleeped the data to her laptop, run it through the word-recognition bot, and subsequently beeped her, but a dangerously long time had passed between when Howard pronounced the key words, “Magda Ranieri,” and when Zoe had gotten the signal. Almost four f*cking minutes. Zoe could tell by the time she’d gotten to the room that Howard had spilled his guts completely.

That bad, bad boy. They would have to scramble to clean this up.

She didn’t understand why King had not simply ordered her to kill Howard years ago, but he had his reasons. And, of course, he’d wanted to maintain his power over Howard to the end. Howard had to understand who was boss. It was appropriate that he submit, that he behave and obey, to the moment of his death. And that he be punished for transgression. That was something she could well understand.