There Is No Devil (Sinners Duet, #2)(44)

The more I open up, the more I realize how many other people share these experiences. My past was ugly, but not so unique that no one else can understand it. Instead of judgment, I find acceptance.

A few of my posts go viral; most don’t. I don’t pay attention to that. I care more about the growing conversation amongst our group of like-minded artists.

Opening up to Cole, seeing his calm acceptance of even my strangest statements, is helping me to trust other people. To believe that they could meet the real Mara and actually like her, flaws and all.

Some of my new friends live in San Francisco. We meet in person at shows. Some are already known to Cole.

Cole is different when he’s introducing me around. He turns on the full measure of his charm, which is not as boisterous and loud as Shaw’s but is extraordinarily effective nonetheless because of his sly wit and his intense focus upon the person with whom we’re speaking.

At a dinner at Betsy Voss’ house, Cole sets the whole table roaring with an anecdote from art school.

Afterward I say to him, “I’ve never seen you like that. You had the whole room eating out of your hand.”

Cole looks at me, pushing back his fall of dark hair with one hand.

“I only told that story for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You looked bored. Something inside me whispered, ‘Say something funny. Make her laugh.’ ”

This touches me in the strangest way.

Cole and I had just spent the whole day together and fucked in the car on the way to the party. The fact that he still felt compelled to entertain me is ridiculously flattering.

The Siren prints a photo of us climbing out of Cole’s car, Cole holding the door open for me, dark and moody-looking with his long black coat swept back by the wind, and me with my hair in a maelstrom, my sparkly mini dress glinting like a disco ball, my head thrown back in laughter as the gust tries to take me away.

The caption reads: The Crown Prince and Princess of the Art World.

Below that, a brief article talking about Cole’s half-built sculpture in Corona Heights Park, and my upcoming show. The photograph shows one of my paintings, not Cole’s work.

It’s Cole who shows me the magazine, our glossy image looking far too glamorous to be anyone I know.

I glance up at his face, wondering if it bothers him that they talked more about my show than his sculpture.

“I’m sure they’ll write about you again when the maze is finished,” I say.

Cole snorts. “I don’t give a shit about that.”

I find that hard to believe. Cole is competitive, with a well-developed sense of his own merit. I can’t imagine he enjoys being overshadowed.

He catches my look.

“Give me a little credit,” he scoffs. “Whatever else I may be, I was never a man who had to tear a woman down to shine bright beside her. If you’re not as good as me, then you’re no good at all. And when I saw you, Mara … I thought, this girl is really fucking good. I don’t want to hold you down, chop you down, diminish you in any way. I already know I found something special. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”





12





Cole





Shaw has killed again.

He might have done it out of anger at losing his bid for Corona Heights. But the body wasn’t found in a state of mutilated rage. She was posed like Flaming June, something that was hushed up in the papers but TruCrime managed to splash across its site in full-color photographs.

The cold calculation of the slaying disturbs me far more than Shaw’s usual lustful rage.

The girl is dark-haired, slim, beautiful. The close-up photographs show one pale hand with roughly-bitten fingernails. Two of those fingers missing entirely.

It’s the only mark of brutality on an otherwise pristine body. Not a single tear on her flowing orange gown. Her face lovely and unmarked, eyes closed with a gentleness that might be sleep.

Even more disquieting, Hawks doesn’t come calling in the aftermath of her death. Instead, I see his unmarked car trailing mine when I drive from the studio to Corona Heights. I see his tall, upright figure lingering on Clay Street.

He knows I see him. He wants me to know.

He isn’t following Shaw.

Shaw is allowed to roam free with a different beautiful blonde on his arm every night of the week, these girls never suspecting that they’re riding the cock of the Beast of the Bay, kissing the mouth that ripped chunks of flesh out of girls very like themselves.

Never guessing that Shaw’s real preference is, and always has been, exclusively brunettes.

Erin was the only redhead, something Hawks’ brain-dead profiler hasn’t seemed to have noticed.

Sometimes I think I could do any job better than the people employed to do it. The rest of the world is a morass of incompetence, everyone playing dress-up at their jobs. Are there any actual adults? Or just children that grew tall?

Mara can’t escape the news of the latest killing, which is whispered everywhere. I’d like to hide it from her, but I can’t.

Janice pulls up TruCrime on her computer, and a dozen artists gather around.

I watch from across the room. Mara lingers at the edge of the pack, desperately wanting to turn away, but forced to look at the images. Witnessing what Shaw has done.