Page 28 of Hell Bent

The house was all lit up, its windows shining like gold bars, its pool a bright slab of turquoise. She glimpsed a few people gathered around the water. Men with careful hair dressed in untucked shirts and expensive jeans; long, liquid women who looked like they’d been poured from some expensive bottle, dressed in bikinis and scraps of silk that flowed around them as they walked. She could see a Gray in a slinky sequined dress beside them, her hair feathered, drawn by the quick thrill that came with cocaine or ketamine, the pulse of lust that always seemed to surround this house, whether twenty people were gathered or two hundred. Alex had only ever been to Eitan’s big parties, noisy, messy events fueled by throbbing bass that shook the hillside, half-naked bodies in the pool, crates of Israeli vodka. She and Hellie would trail after Len as he exclaimed, every single time, as if he’d never seen the place before, “This is it. This is what we need a piece of. Shit. It’s not like Eitan’s that smart. Right place, right time.”

But Eitan was smart. Smart enough not to trust Len with any real weight. Smart enough to know something wasn’t right about Alex.

She glanced at the partiers by the pool and wondered if she should have dressed more nicely, not because she was invited but as some kind of show of respect. Too late now.

“Hi, Tzvi,” she said to the bodyguard at the door. He wasn’t built like a bouncer. He was tall but wiry, and there were rumors he was former Mossad. Alex had only seen him in action once, when someone’s rowdy buddy had shot off a gun in the middle of a party. Tzvi had the gun out of his hands and the guy out the door while the sound of the bullet was still ricocheting off the hillside. Later she found out he’d broken the guy’s arm in two places.

Tzvi bobbed his chin at her and gestured for her to raise her arms. She endured the pat-down—swift and efficient, no titty grabs or slow squeezes like you got from some of Eitan’s staff—and followed the bodyguard into the house. Eitan’s place was all marble floors, chandeliers, high echoing ceilings. Things that had once meant wealth to Alex, luxury, a trove of treasures costly and desirable. But Yale had made her a snob. Now the gold, the recessed lighting, the veined marble just seemed showy and crass. They screamed new money.

Eitan was seated on a big white leather couch, R&B filtering through the enormous glass doors from outside.

“Alex!” he said warmly. “You take me by surprise. I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“Why wouldn’t I come?” she asked. Harmless, easy, a little rabbit not even worth catching.

He laughed. “True, true. I don’t think you want me to come get you. Hungry? Thirsty?”

Always. “Not really.”

“Alex,” he chided, like a doting grandmother. “It’s good to eat.”

Fuck it. The Alex she needed him to believe in had no reason to be nervous. She had nothing to hide. “Sure, thank you.”

“You are always polite. Not like Len. Alitza made pie.” He waved to another armed man, who disappeared into the kitchen.

“How is Alitza?” She was Eitan’s cook, and she’d never seemed to approve of any of what went on at his house.

Eitan shrugged. “Always she complains. I buy her … what is it? Disney Annual Pass. She goes every week now.”

The guard returned with a huge slice of cherry pie, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Through the glass door, Alex could see the glittery Gray in her slinky dress gyrating on the dance floor, hands raised over her head, her phantom body pressed against oblivious partiers.

Alex made herself take a bit of pie.

“Jesus,” she muttered, her mouth still full. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“I know,” said Eitan. “This is why I keep her.” For a while, Eitan watched her eat. When the silence was too much, Alex set the plate on the big glass coffee table, wiped her mouth.

“I thought you would be dead by now,” he said.

It wasn’t a bad bet.

“I thought you die of overdose,” he continued. “Or maybe you meet another bad boyfriend?”

That did sound convincing. “Yeah, I met someone. He’s nice. We’re going to move to the East Coast.”

“New York?”

“We’ll see.”

“Very expensive. Even Queens is expensive now. I never find the men who kill Ariel. I never even hear a whisper. A night like that doesn’t happen without talk. I listen. I ask everyone else to listen. Nothing.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Again Eitan shrugged. “Strange, you know? Because is not a clean crime. Is ugly. Amateur. People like this, they don’t cover their tracks.”

“I don’t know what happened that night,” Alex said. “If I did, I wouldn’t be protecting the people who killed my friends.”