Khan (Bowen Boys, #2)(37)

“And he wasn’t charged.”

Walker shook his head.

“His parents covered that murder up like they had the others. The women he had targeted and decided for whatever reason that they were what he wanted. Christ.” They were walking back to the Jeep when Khan suddenly stopped and looked around. “He’ll get her, won’t he? He’ll somehow get Monica and hurt her like he did the others.”

“You can’t think like that. We have protection on her twenty-four-seven. She’s not stupid and won’t let herself get in a predicament that will get her caught.” Walker bumped him with his shoulder. “You have to have faith in the fact that she has all her family around her right now and we won’t let anything happen to her.”

Khan hoped not, but he had a feeling that they were only living on borrowed time here. The man was insane, and insane people were hard to reason with and harder to capture. Caitlynne had told him that yesterday. When they got to the truck, they shifted and dressed.

“If I take you back in a shitty mood and me in a better one, then my ass is toast. I swear to you, Khan, we won’t let anything happen to her. And if it does, there won’t be an agent working for my wife that won’t be out there trying to bring her home. And we will.”

Khan hoped so. He would rather die than think about Monica being hurt

~~~

Tony had slept in his car for three nights in a row now, and he wanted a shower. He also wanted food that didn’t come to him in a bag. Twice yesterday he’d tried to get someone to fix him a meal, but they had told him to get away. He just wanted somewhere to rest and to eat.

And then there was the blood.

He’d woken yesterday with blood on his clothes again. His face was bruised as well, and he couldn’t remember how it had happened. He was sore too, his ribs and his fist like he’d been in a fight. His wallet was fuller, but not by much, and there were credit cards with someone else’s name on them. He knew that Jane Matte hadn’t given them to him and wondered if he should try to find her to give them back. But he was afraid.

Then there was the added fact that the nightmares were back. He needed to go and get his medication, the ones that helped him sleep and kept the horrible dreams away. They were in his apartment, but whenever he tried to remember where he had lived, his nose would bleed and he’d get sick. Not even his driver’s license was helpful. He couldn’t read the address. Just his name and that he lived in Virginia.

He looked at the house he’d noticed last night. He had a feeling that Monica was in it, and he was going to go in and ask her why she’d murdered his parents. Tony had been very proud of his reasonable conversation with himself just the other day. He’d figured out that she had been playing him all the time, and when he hadn’t been able to find her quickly enough, she’d killed his father and mother, and now he was an orphan.

Maybe at thirty, he wasn’t a real orphan and wouldn’t be going to one of those work prisons that his mother had always threatened him with. Every time he’d been bad, done one of the things that got him into “deep shit,” as she’d called it, she would tell him how he was going to end up killing her.

When the woman had come out to get her paper, he got out of the car. He had to wait another few minutes for the school bus to stop in front of her house and for the man to leave. It wasn’t the same as the one that had been in her hotel room, but he knew what kind of woman Monica was. Slut. Whore. Cunt. Names his mother had used to speak about some of the women she was on committees with. When the man got into his car, Tony made his move.

The stop sign was right in front of him, and when the man stopped at it, pausing just long enough, Tony shot him in the head. Scrambling over to the driver’s side, he’d had to lift his head off the horn and put the car in park. He also took the keys. The man wasn’t the same, but it didn’t matter now.

Moving toward the house, he looked at the keys in his hand and tried to find the one that would let him in the house that Monica was in. He had to try twice before he found the one he had wanted. The door opened quietly and he slipped inside.

The house was messy with kids’ toys and laundry baskets. She wasn’t in the first room he’d come to, nor the second. He found her in the kitchen washing the dishes and singing to the radio. He hated the extra noise and turned it off.

She turned toward him with a smile, and when she saw him, she opened her mouth to scream. He shoved the gun in her mouth. That shut her up.

“I want to know who that man was, Monica. You should know better than to try and see other people when you’ve said you were going to marry me.” The woman shook her head and cried. “You have to stop that. I hate crying. I hate it, hate it, hate it.”

He pulled the trigger when she made noises that made his head hurt. Someone had made noises like that before. All the time. He had done something to stop it. He had… Tony stepped over her body to sit at the table.

His nose was bleeding again, and he found a cloth and put it to his face. When that didn’t help, he went to the refrigerator and filled the towel with ice and held it on his nose. He laid his head on the table and tried to think calm words again. But they were gone.

All his words he’d had to remember were now words like “dead,” “blood,” “bullets,” and “Monica.” Before when he’d thought of his Monica, he had her in the calm words list. Now she was in a list that he didn’t like. But he’d done what he’d needed and made her pay. Getting up, he walked to her again and looked at her eyes.