There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(4)

Once my umbrella is open, I’m nothing but a tall, dark stalk beneath its black canopy.

I pretend to hustle along the sidewalk, head down, lost in thought, until Danvers and I brush shoulders.

“Carl,” I say in mock surprise. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Cole,” Danvers replies, a little nervous. He’s wondering if I read his article—if I’m here to harangue him.

“Is that the Siren office?” I say, as if I didn’t know.

“That’s right,” he says, stiff and wary.

“My studio’s right over there.” I gesture in the direction of Fulton, where as Danvers well knows, the rent is triple what the Siren probably pays.

“Is it?” Danvers says vaguely, looking the other way toward Balboa where he takes the streetcar back to his condo.

The rain is falling harder now, plastering his thinning hair against his skull, bringing out the rat-like quality of his protuberant nose and underbite.

“Share my umbrella,” I say as if I only just noticed him getting soaked.

I reorient the canopy so it covers us both.

“Thanks,” Danvers says grudgingly.

And then, because it’s human nature to seek conciliation, to give a favor for a favor, Danvers says, “No hard feelings about the showcase I hope. It was stiff competition.”

“I’m not one for grudges,” I reply.

He squints at me through his foggy glasses. I’m sure he’s wondering if I saw the review. Perhaps even wishing that he hadn’t written it, because at the end of the day, Carl Danvers has a desperate need to be liked. It was my public mockery that first spurred his rage against me. At any time, I could have disarmed him with a compliment. If I could bring myself to lie.

There’s nothing I admire in Danvers.

In fact, I’ve never admired anyone.

“I think you’ll find my current project much more absorbing,” I tell Danvers. And then, as if I just thought of it, “Would you like to see it? It’s still in progress, but it would get us out of the rain. I’ve got tea as well.”

Danvers is suspicious at this sudden offering of an olive branch. He studies my face, which I’ve carefully arranged to appear casual and almost distracted—as if I’m pulled back to my studio, inviting him along as an afterthought.

I see the greedy gleam in his eye. His distrust of me—sensible and warranted—battles with this undreamt-of offer: a view of my work in progress, which I never share with anyone. Just to see inside my studio, to be able to gossip about it and maybe describe it in an article, is a temptation Danvers can’t resist.

“I could come for a minute,” he says gruffly.

“This way, then.” I turn sharply to cross the road.

The rain thunders down, sluicing through the gutters, carrying trash and fallen leaves. I hardly have to watch for passing cars. The sidewalks are empty.

I cut through the route I’ve walked several times. The route with no ATMs or traffic cameras. Devoid of sidewalk restaurants or nosy homeless camped in tents.

If we were to encounter anyone along our way, I would cut this excursion short on the spot.

But no one intervenes. That sense of rightness settles over me—the one and only time I feel a connection to anything like fate or destiny. The moment when everything aligns in favor of the kill.

I let Danvers in through the back door. The lights are low. Our footsteps echo in the cavernous space. Danvers cranes his neck, trying to peer through the gloom, not noticing as he begins to traverse an expanse of thin plastic tarp.

I take the garrote from my pocket. Silently, I unspool the wire.

“I’d like to see your machinery,” he says, with ill-concealed eagerness. “Is it true you do all the manufacturing yourself?”

He’d love to catch me lying.

I’m closing the space between us, descending on Danvers like a hawk from the sky. He doesn’t hear my footsteps. He doesn’t feel my breath on his shoulder. He doesn’t notice my shadow engulfing his.

I wrap the wire around his neck and pull it taut, cutting off his breath like I snipped it short with a pair of shears.

His panic is instant.

He scrabbles at his throat, trying to grip the wire, but the razor-fine metal has already sunk into the soft flesh of his neck. He begins to thrash and buck. I take him down to the ground, pressing my knee into his back, pulling crossways on the wire in a rowing motion.

Danvers’s glasses have fallen off his face. They lay a few feet to the side, like a pair of blank eyes staring up at me.

Danvers himself is facedown, so I can’t see his expression.

It wouldn’t bother me to look into his face. I’ve done it before. I’ve watched the fear, the anguish, the suffering, all eventually sinking into dull resignation and then the utter blankness of death. Life over, snuffed out by the endless emptiness of the universe. Back from whence it came into nothingness, like a spark from a campfire disappearing into the night.

I could taunt him while I kill him.

I don’t do it. What would be the point? In a moment he’ll be gone forever. This is for me, not for him.

His struggles grow weaker, the bursts of effort further apart, like a flopping, dying fish.

My pressure on his throat is as relentless as ever.

I feel no sympathy. No guilt. Those are emotions I’ve never experienced.