When Darkness Falls(49)

Devon glided closer, keeping in the shadows, telling himself he only wanted to see how focused they were on one another. Maybe he could get his jacket and bag and leave without being noticed. The least he could do for Haley, given everything else, was to keep his promise and stay somewhere other than with Lydia.

The bed stood in the center of the room, lengthwise to the window so Devon had a side view. Eric lay on his back. Lydia was on her knees between Eric’s spread legs, her mouth at his inner thigh. He lay completely still, hands pressed flat against the bed. With her right hand Lydia caressed herself.

Devon stepped closer and watched Lydia’s fingers move, first lightly and then in a stronger, faster rhythm. He should not be here. It was an intrusion on Lydia and Eric, it was a betrayal of Haley, but still he watched. When Eric climaxed, Lydia lifted her head as if to watch. She reached up and snapped his neck with one hand. Devon heard the sickening crack and saw Eric’s head go limp.

“I’m sure she’ll get rid of him,” Haley had said, and Devon’s first stunned thought was that yes, she certainly had.

Devon stumbled back, almost falling into the in-ground pool. He righted himself by throwing his weight forward. When he looked through the window again, Lydia stood by the bed, gazing down at Eric and smiling. Devon had seen that satisfied look on her face before.

Lydia standing over him. Candles flickering. Her mouth all over his body. Biting the inside of his thighs, the inside of his wrists, his neck. He remembered feeling faint, too many drinks, too much of something, and then nothing. Did he lose consciousness or only the memory? But it was the same room, and he’d lain where Eric lay now, and Lydia had stood over him. Smiling, she’d stood over him, but doing what?

The world swayed around him.

“Darling, you should have told me you liked to watch.” Lydia stood at the gate. She wore a short emerald-colored robe that she hadn’t tied tightly. It left her breasts bare almost to the nipples. A warm breeze blew her hair around her face. She was next to Devon in an instant. Her body exuded the scents of blood, honeysuckle, and cologne. “We could have arranged something much sooner.”

Devon felt heat coming off her body in waves. He stepped back. “You killed him.”

Lydia shrugged and turned toward the back door. “But in the most painless way.”

Devon should have called the police. He had his phone in his front pocket. Instead, he followed her into the house. “Is this what you do with all of them? The people you pick up?”

“Some of them. I don’t end it the same way, of course. I vary it for the entertainment value. Others I let go before it gets too far. If I really have grown fond of them. But that hasn’t happened lately.”

Eric’s body still lay on the bed in the spare bedroom. Other than his head being at an odd angle, he looked as if he were sleeping. Bruises trailed along his neck and arms and chest, scratches down his sides and legs. Already the blood looked brown rather than red, though it might appear that way from the lights outside the house seeping in through the window.

Devon licked his lips and shifted his gaze back to Lydia. The odors of recent death ought to nauseate him but didn’t. “How can you keep killing people? Doesn’t anyone come looking for them?”

“They’re like Eric. Drifters. Lost. No one will report them missing. They’ll be found without I.D.’s, if they’re found at all, and no one will claim the bodies.”

Lydia pulled the bedspread, which was bunched at the foot of the bed, off and dropped it on the floor.

“So, I’m guessing you haven’t come back because you believe me,” she said. “Have you decided to go home with Haley?”

“No.”

“She’s going home, though?” Lydia untucked each corner of the bed, freeing the fitted sheet. There was a plastic liner underneath.

“Tomorrow.”

“Good. Better than I thought.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Devon said.

“Please. I’m not telling you. You might decide to report me to someone.”

Lydia folded the sheets over Eric’s body and tied the corners together to draw his body into a giant white sack.

“What if I do?”

“By the time the police get here I’ll have taken care of this—” Lydia gestured toward the bag in the center of the bed “—and I’ll say I haven’t seen Eric since yesterday, he took off when you got here, ranting and raving like a lunatic about wanting me for yourself. You scared Eric off, and when I still wouldn’t have you, you fabricated this ridiculous story about me killing him. As if I could kill a man with my bare hands. And even your wife got disgusted with you and flew home.”

“There’d be some investigation,” Devon said.

“The L.A. police are busy, darling. You’ve got to be in mortal danger or dead before they show up.”

His heart thumped in his chest. “Eric is dead.”

“According to you. A down-on-your-luck musician with a history of psychiatric problems and a failing marriage who’s obsessed with me. If they think anyone’s a murderer, it’ll be you. Do you have my car keys?”

“In the kitchen.” Devon answered automatically, still not quite believing what he’d seen, what was still in front of him.

“Fine.” She slung the bag over her shoulder and carried it from the room with no visible effort. “I suppose getting you to open the trunk for me is out of the question.”