Page 64 of Hellbent

He caught sight of her and found his feet in a hurry, fumbling at the lock.

“Hi, hello, welcome,” he said. “Wow.”

She floated inside. “Wow yourself.”

She glanced at his workstation, where two monitors ran stock-price tickers, an endless stream of industry. A financial titan like him would have so, so many enemies, which meant so, so many convenient investigative trails.

“You’re renting the house on Black Mangrove Street,” he told her.

She leaned close. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

He was sweating. She had that effect on men.

“Why are you in my backyard? I mean—don’t get me wrong—I’m delighted, but…” He lost the thread of the sentence.

She had that effect, too.

She slid the candy cane out of her mouth. “It’s more private,” she said, shaping her lips around the word, making it something dirty.

He blinked several times rapidly. His own meaty lips twitched. He scratched at a shoulder. “Okay. Um. That’s nice. Private’s nice.”

A billion-dollar hedge-funder reduced to a teenager at a school mixer.

She placed a hand on his cheek, which was sticky with sweat. A breath shuddered out of him. He closed his eyes. She moved her hand up to his hair, grabbed his thinning curls, and tugged back his head.

He gave a little groan of pleasure.

Then she rammed the sharpened candy cane into his jugular.

The first gush painted the monitors. Arterial spurts were always mesmerizing. He went down fast, hand clamped to his neck, legs cycling on the cool tile floor. Then they stopped cycling.

She stared down at him. Dead people looked so common.

She removed her flask, poured hydrofluoric acid into the wound, the familiar scent rising as it ate through flesh. That would take care of any DNA from her saliva. She crossed to the kitchen sink, dropped the candy cane down the disposal, and ran it, pouring in a dose of hydrofluoric acid for good measure.

She picked up the cordless phone, called 911, wiped the buttons clean with a wet dish rag, and set it on the counter. The coroner would reach a precise time of death eventually, but why not help him out?

She walked out the open back door, hopped the white picket fence, and jogged along the rear of the clubhouse, breathing in the fresh-cut grass of the golf course. She’d miss it, being here, being normal. Her vacation had come to an end, but she had another “gift to herself” in mind.

Catching Orphan X and making him feel every ounce of pain that she lived with day and night.

She crawled through the window back into the toilet stall, walked out of the bathroom, turned left into the crowded gym, and mounted the StairMaster.

Beneath her shirt her ruined skin itched and burned, but she blocked out the pain. She’d keep at it for two hours, time enough for the cops to arrive and find Mr. Super PAC back-floating in a pool of his own blood.

So many residents could say precisely where the fetching divorcée had been since the moment she stepped out of her rented house this morning.

The gym was mirrored from wall to wall, and in the countless reflections, she could see every eye on her.

After all, Candy could work a StairMaster.

29

End-Stopped

As they barreled along the freeway, Joey reached into the backseat to retrieve the laptop that Evan had taken from the headquarters in Portland. She fired it up, then flexed her fingers like a gymnast about to tackle the uneven bars.

Evan glanced over from the driver’s seat. “Careful you don’t trip an autoerase—”