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“Nothing on the victim’s family connections?” Roarke asked her.
“The father’s dead. Beat some neighbor kid, got a stretch in the Tombs. Picked the wrong con to mess with inside, and ended up bleeding out in the showers, thanks to the shiv in his gut. The mother moved back to Tennessee where her family’s from. There’s nothing there.”
She puffed out her cheeks, blew out the breath. “I’ve run the partner, the partner’s wife, the vic’s wife, even the vic’s kids back, forth, sideways. There’s no buzz, no pop. The wife gets Houston’s share of the business, but essentially she already had it. This killing just wasn’t about Houston particularly. And nothing about the company, so far, brings up any questions. If there’s a connection, Dudley’s the most likely source. Even then . . .”
She shook her head.
“Even then?”
“It’s playing more and more like it was for the thrill. Just for the rush. And if that’s the way it is, he’s already looking for the next thrill.”
The scream ripped out of the shadows, high and wild. Behind it chased a gurgle of maniacal laughter. For a moment, Ava Crampton caught a glimpse of her reflection in a smoky mirror before the ghoul burst out of the false glass, claws dripping blood.
Her squeal was quick and unplanned, but her pivot toward her date, the urgent press of her body to his, was calculated.
She knew her job.
At thirty-three she’d clocked over twelve years’ experience as a licensed companion, and had worked her way steadily up the levels to the pinnacle.
She invested in herself, folding her profits back into her face, her body, her education, her style. She could speak conversationally in three languages, and was diligently working on a fourth. She kept her five foot six inch frame rigorously toned, was, in fact, an advanced yogini—the practice not only kept her centered but gave her a superb flexibility that pleased her clients.
She considered her mixed-race heritage a gift that had provided her with dusky skin (which she tended as rigorously as she did her body), cut-glass cheekbones, full lips, and crystalline blue eyes. She kept her hair long, curled, artfully tumbled in a caramel brown that set off that skin, those eyes.
Her investment paid off. She was one of the highest-rated LCs on the East Coast, routinely commanding a cool ten thousand an evening—double that for an overnight. She’d trained and tested and was licensed for a menu of extras and specialties to suit the varied whims of her clients.
Her date tonight was a first-timer, but had passed her strict and scrupulous screening. He was wealthy, healthy, and boasted a clean criminal record. He’d been married for twelve years, divorced for eight months. His young daughter attended an excellent private school.
He owned a brownstone in the city and a vacation home in Aruba.
Though his looks struck her as dead average, he’d grown a trendy goatee since his last ID shot, had grown out his hair. He’d also put on a few pounds, but she considered him still in good shape.
Trying on a new look with the little beard and longer hair, she thought, as men often did after a divorce.
She could feel his nerves. He’d confessed, charmingly she thought, that he’d never dated a professional before.
At his request, she’d met him at Coney Island—he’d provided a limo. Since he’d steered her almost immediately to the House of Horrors, she assumed he wanted the adrenaline rush, and a female who’d gasp and cling.
So she gasped, and she clung, and remembered to tremble when he worked up the nerve to kiss her.
“It all seems so real!”
“It’s a favorite of mine,” he whispered in her ear.
Something howled in the dark, and with it, on a rattle of chains, something shambled closer.
“It’s coming!”
“This way.” He tugged her along, keeping her close as overhead came the flutter of bat wings. The wind from them stirred her hair.
A holo-image of a monster wielding a bloodied ax leaped forward and she
felt the air from the strike shiver by her shoulder. He yanked her through a door that clanged shut behind them. On a yelp of surprise and disgust, she swiped at cobwebs. Caught up, she spun to try to escape them, and came face-to-face with a severed head on a spike.
Her scream, completely genuine, ripped out as she stumbled back. She managed a nervous laugh.
“God, who thinks of this stuff?”
She thought fleetingly that her last date had been a romp on silk sheets with a follow-up in an indoor wave pool. But no one knew better than Ava that it took all kinds.
