AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She squeezed his arm. "Anytime you feel lucky."
He sighed and shook his head, pulling away as he opened his car door. "Not today."
She thought he'd walk toward the prison entrance without another word, but he circled around to her window, dropped to his heels and folded his arms on the sill.
"If we'd gotten together a couple months ago, there'd have been time for me to add you to the guest list," he said thoughtfully. "They did say I could bring a date. Though not in those exact words."
She didn't rise to the bait, twisting her fingers into the collar of his shirt as a warning, and to touch him. "You don't have to do this. Nothing says you have to watch him die."
"I know. But I need to know he's dead. I need..." He put his forehead down against the side of the car. She laid her hand over the back of his skull and kissed the top of it.
"It's okay. Even totally-not-okay situations like this can be okay, once you get through them. It's just the getting through."
"Yeah. I don't want to feel anything. But I'm afraid I'm going to feel too much, and it's going to spill over onto you. Don't let me use this against you," he added, vehemently.
"Let me worry about me."
"Doesn't work that way, does it? You're worrying about me, and I'm not worth it."
She lifted his face to meet her gaze. "Yes, you goddamn, fucking are," she said softly. "When you're not being a total asshole."
He offered her a ghost of a smile. "Which is most the time."
"Even so. It may be a small window, but during those five minutes a day, you are very much worth it."
He clasped her wrist and kissed her palm, holding his face against it for a brief second. "When I kissed you before, your hand was trembling. I liked that. It made me feel like a far better person than I am."
He rose and let her go. "See you in a while."
Now that she had more information, it wasn't difficult to find news articles on his father. Marius had changed his last name, or perhaps he'd used his mother's, not an uncommon decision for the offspring of a well-publicized death row inmate. Donald Eric Larabee had been caught within a day of murdering Sally Montrose, a convenience store clerk he kidnapped and tortured for two days in a storage facility before strangling and stabbing her to death.
A little more digging turned up a reference to him in a book on Florida serial killers. Because of Larabee's boast Marius had mentioned, the author, Mel Wilham, had used Larabee as a dramatic footnote to hint at how many serial killers were perhaps first-time murderers caught before they could "actualize" themselves.
Her lip curled at the corporate buzzword. She'd bought and downloaded the book, and made herself read the chapter based on the interview Wilham had done with Larabee. One key and chilling paragraph held her, turning the cold knot in her stomach into jagged rock.
"Yeah, I had a kid. He never had the stomach for it. Made him watch when I practiced on stray cats, their kittens, the occasional dog, but the little shit couldn't even get it up for that. Preferred me to beat him rather than cause a squeak out of something else."
The book had been published about a decade ago, after Marius's cruelty charge. She wanted a marker in that sealed juvie file, because this confirmed Marius had done nothing to any of those animals. He'd been found burying them, that was all. Had that been his father's mandate, or had Marius done it himself, expressing the remorse his father never would?
She wished she could go in there and administer the injection herself. Or set aside the ridiculous notion of humane execution and just use a baseball bat with nails driven through it. She noticed Wilham had added that Larabee's son had disappeared off the grid years before and could not be located to contribute to the work. Larabee's wife was living with her sister in Arizona somewhere and had likewise refused any comment.
So at the time of the book's publication, "the shadow" was alive. The detached way Marius referred to her, as if he'd never had the experience of a mother, even though she was living in the same house, was as disturbing as the rest. Not only did he have no o
bvious emotional connection to her, his mother hadn't expended any apparent effort toward creating one.
There was a picture of Larabee. He had Marius's beautiful eyes, his strong jaw and good looks. She hated that for Marius. How often did he look in the mirror and see this monster?
She closed her laptop. The driver of the Hummer had emerged not too long ago and departed. He looked like some drug dealer's right hand guy, all decked out in gangster wear. He'd made kissy noises at her as he got into the vehicle. She'd given him a steely gaze and her middle finger, been called a cunt, and he'd peeled off. She'd moved her car next to Marius's, but had preferred to stay here, in his vehicle. Smoothing her hand over the head rest and his seat back, she thought of his body pressed there.
She had a reputation as a practical and unsentimental Mistress, but that didn't mean her heart couldn't bleed. She thought about what he'd said. Don't let me use this against you. He was self-aware enough to know that he might twist any sympathy or pity against her in a vulnerable moment. She had more faith in him than that. And in herself. The more she knew, the less opportunities she was giving him to take those shots. The less opportunities he had, the less he would try, and who he really was, really wanted to be, would start to come through. She had faith in it, because she was already seeing evidence of it. Those five minutes a day were expanding.
The armor beneath the skin. She smiled, thinking of his firm flesh. That tattoo really was more appropriate than he realized.
Leaning her head back against the seat, she closed her eyes. She'd take a short power nap, because she had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
She woke a few minutes before he emerged, as if some second sense had warned her it was time. As he moved across the parking lot and drew close enough for her to see his face, she could feel it almost before he reached her. A miasma around him, so potent it was like an impenetrable fog, or a sucking mud that would pull in everyone who got too close.
"Well then. We have our work cut out for us, don't we?" she mused. "Get to it, girlfriend."
