back of the van.
Rogers slowly followed. She turned around, kissed him again, and started to undress. Rogers looked around at the cluttered interior of the van and then stared over at her as her clothes hit the dirty floor. He eyed something on a shelf, pulled out the cloth tarp, and laid it down.
“How gentlemanly of you,” said Davis with a smirk. She crawled over to him.
He looked down at her. He had seen her naked twice now. But this was different. Her body was…beautiful. Even the dragon on the triceps was arousing him.
Davis pushed her breasts into him as she reached up and slipped off his jacket. When she started to undo the buttons on his shirt he stopped her.
She looked uncertain. “You don’t want to?”
He was thinking, No, I don’t want you to see the scars.
“Better this way,” he said.
They lay down on the tarp, he above her.
He started breathing more quickly. And his brain seemed to be misfiring.
She said, “Um, you can keep your clothes on, but you do have to unzip your pants.”
She helped him with this, and then he settled down on top of her. But his brain was still misfiring.
In frustration he gripped the edge of a shelf built into the van’s wall so hard it broke off and a heavy tool toppled down and almost hit them.
“Shit, what was that?” exclaimed Davis, who half sat up.
“It’s…it’s nothing.” He slowly settled her back down.
“Paul, everything okay?”
His heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst. He couldn’t remember how to do this.
I can’t even remember how to make love to a woman. How pathetic is that?
“Paul,” she said again, squirming under him.
He felt a strong impulse to grab her neck and break it. Desperate, he racked his brains and suddenly hit on it.
Davis and Quentin in the bedroom. He rolled over and brought her up on top of him, settling his hands around her taut waist. He was careful to grip her very gently.
She smiled down at him. “How’d you know I like it this way?”
“Lucky guess,” he muttered.
Ten minutes later it was over.
Because he had failed and grown soft.
She lay down next to him.
“That was great.”
“Don’t bullshit.”
“It was great for me. I’m sorry it wasn’t for you.”
“It was great for me, even if…” He looked away from her.
“I liked the way you were holding me. You’re so strong, but you were so gentle. I like that. I liked that a lot.”
He looked at her searchingly. “Really?”
She kissed him on the lips. “Yeah, really.”
She nestled closer to him and put her bare leg over him.
A minute passed and he heard her soft snores.
Then he closed his eyes and joined her.
Chapter
40
ROGERS SLOWLY BLINKED himself awake.
Next to him, Davis slept on.
He rubbed the back of his head and tried to make sense of what had happened between them.
But he couldn’t. He had always imagined that he had left humanity behind when they had changed him. And he had thought having sex with a woman impossible.
Before he’d viciously killed a man in a bar fight and gone to prison for ten years, he had killed others. Only he’d never been caught. He had no fear. But he also had nothing else that would inhibit him from taking another’s life.
He had read of serial killers who were missing something critical in their frontal lobes. It was the significant difference that made one normal or made one a monster. Just a piece of DNA lacking or forming the wrong sequence. Or a lobe not quite as developed as it should be. You went from mainstream to Jeffrey Dahmer.
And that’s what they did to me. I was born right and they made me wrong.
But ten years in prison had given Rogers something he thought he would never have. An opportunity to be away from anyone he might have otherwise killed. A buffer of bars and guards. It had given him time to think, to regain a measure of control.
He turned on his side and studied the sleeping Davis.
What had surprised him, when he finally thought about it, was that he had no impulse to harm her. But he had to remind himself that he had killed the couple in the alley only when they tried to kill him. And Donohue the gun dealer would still be alive if he’d just stayed in his truck eating his Mickey D’s.
And I let the boy live.
He rubbed his eyes and wondered whether what was apparently happening to him was a good thing or not. After five minutes he had no conclusive answer.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly eight o’clock. The sun was shining brightly. Davis was still sound asleep next to him.
He once more marveled at her beauty. And then he looked down at his hands. Scars. He lifted his shirt. More scars. He touched the incision on his head. The biggest scar of all.
The analogy was obvious, Rogers thought: Beauty and the Beast.
He climbed back into the driver’s seat and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.
For so long as he could remember he had looked just like this.
Not his features. That was obvious enough.
No, it was the look in his eyes.
Haunted. Crippled. Hungry for something I’ll probably never get.
“Paul?”
He turned to see Davis rise and start dressing.
“Yeah?”
“I need to get home.”
“Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
She climbed into the passenger seat. As he started the van she reached over and kissed him on the cheek.
“What was that for?”
“Do I have to have a reason?”
“I guess not.”
“We need to do this again. Really soon.”
“You think that’s smart?”
“I don’t care if it’s smart. It’s what I want.”
She gave him directions to the destination. He didn’t know if it would be the rental on the beach or the fortress where the owner had taken a dive into expensive cobblestones.
It turned out to be the fortress.
As they neared the destination, Rogers began to panic a bit. What if Jericho was here? What if, despite all the years, she recognized him?
When Davis directed him to the front gates he said, “Damn, after what you said about the problems with your parents, I wasn’t expecting something like this.”
“It is a little much. But I hit the jackpot. The people who adopted me are really, really rich.”
He stared at her, dumbstruck. Ballard had adopted her? So he’d killed her father? “So you live with them here?”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought you said you were on your own? That you didn’t have anybody?”
“I didn’t really know you back then. Now I do. A girl has to be careful.”
“I guess so.”
He couldn’t fathom why Ballard’s death seemed not to have made a dent in her. And he didn’t see one cop car or one bit of police tape. Weren’t they investigating the man’s murder? What the hell was going on?
The gates opened as they approached. A guard came out, and when he saw Davis he motioned for Rogers to drive through.
Rogers didn’t look at the security guards as he passed by, though he noted in his peripheral vision that they were scrutinizing him.
Davis directed him where to park. She opened the door.
“Can I pay you for taking me all this way?”
“I think you already paid me more than I deserved.”
She smiled. “That was a nice thing to say. You want to come in?”
The panic returned. “No. I better get back. But thanks.”
“Okay, I’ll see you at the Grunt, I’m sure.”
“You better let Mr. Quentin know you got home
safe.”
“Like he cares,” she scoffed. She leaned across the seat and placed a firm kiss on his mouth and then inserted her tongue into it.
Rogers had the impression that multiple eyes were watching this. Still her lips felt sweet and salty and seemed to perfectly mesh with his.
The next moment the car door closed and she disappeared inside.
That’s when Rogers heard the knock on the glass.
He turned to see one of the security team there.
“You got a minute, sir?” the man asked crisply, the expression on his face unreadable. He motioned for Rogers to get out of the van.
When Rogers looked around he saw five more men all carrying MP5s along with serious expressions. They had surrounded the van in the few seconds between the kiss and Davis going inside. That was impressive, he thought.
He wondered if what was going to come next would be equally so.
Rogers opened the door and stepped out.
Chapter
41
ROGERS FACED THE man who had requested his exit from the van.
“Can I see some ID?”
Rogers shook his head. “Not unless you’re cops.”
The man tapped his finger against the barrel of his MP5. “How did you end up with Ms. Davis?”
Rogers managed a smile as the men closed ranks around him. “I drove the lady home at the request of Josh Quentin. You can call him and check. He’ll vouch for me. The name is Paul.”
The man said, “Who are you?”
“I just told you. Paul.”
“Paul what?”
“I’m the bouncer at the Grunt. Mr. Quentin and Ms. Davis were there last night. Ms. Davis became…ill. Mr. Quentin had to leave and he asked me to drive her home. And I did. Safe and sound.”
“The Grunt closes at two. It’s a two-hour drive from there to here. It’s eight o’clock in the morning. What happened to the other four hours?”
“We didn’t leave right at two. She was still indisposed. We left around four. And we stopped for breakfast at the IHOP, at her request. We took our time. She seemed to be in no rush. And I’d worked all night. I was tired, so I wasn’t trying to break any land speed records.”
He pointed toward the door Davis had entered. “Just ask her if you don’t believe me.”
“What’s going on?”
They all turned to see Davis’s head poking out of what Rogers knew was her bedroom window.
The security man looked up. “Just checking to make sure everything is all right, Ms. Davis.”
“Everything is all right. He drove me home. I wasn’t feeling well. Okay? He works at the Grunt.”
“Yes ma’am. Thank you, that’s all we needed to know.”
The man turned back to Rogers. “Well, thank you for getting her home safely,” he said smoothly, his demeanor now friendly, though Rogers saw his finger flick toward the round selector of his MP, so his friendliness was purely for Davis’s benefit and the flick was for his benefit.
“You’re very welcome,” Rogers said. “I’ll be heading on now. I could use some sleep.”
Davis called down from the window, “Paul, you can crash here for a few hours. It’s probably not safe for you to drive right now.” She added with an impish smile, “You must be exhausted after our little detour.”
Rogers glanced at the security man and could read his expression clearly.
She slept with you?
Yeah, I can’t believe it either, thought Rogers.
“You know, Ms. Davis, that’s actually a good idea. Just a couch or something will be fine.”
“I’ll have them make up a room for you. We have enough of them. And you’ll be back in plenty of time for work.”
The room he was given was right next to hers on the third floor. As he closed the bedroom door behind him he wondered again how everyone here could appear so normal when the owner of the place had just died. He lay on the bed but did not close his eyes. Finally, his eyelids did flutter as the breeze from outside swept in and embraced him.
He had seen that as he had grown older, his stamina, while still Herculean by most standards, was not what it used to be.
He awoke with a jolt and immediately checked his watch. Four hours had passed. The sun was high overhead.
He heard movement in the room next door and then the shower started to run. He imagined Davis naked with the water streaming over her.
He looked out the window that faced the beach. From up here he could see over the walls, down to the sand.
And Rogers was hard pressed to not cry out at what he was seeing.
A team of security was leading the old man, who rode in the same cart, out onto the sand. The only difference was, Davis was not with him. He got out of the cart and was helped to a chair that was set up for him on the sand.
The bodyguards formed a ring around him, their faces pointed outward.
Rogers looked down at his hands.
Who the hell had he been holding?
Who the hell had he been talking to?
Who the fuck had he thrown out the window?
He didn’t hear the water stop next door.
Or hear a hair dryer start up.
He just sat in the chair and stared out the window at a man who should by all rights be dead.
He did hear the knock on the door a few minutes later.
He turned toward it as the door opened.