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Pad, pad, pad. She tried to pretend her knees weren’t knocking and her bowels churning. The food she’d eaten was threatening to make a surprise reappearance. Not good. Stress urping was not dignified.
She willed her spasming stomach to calm down, focusing on the squeaking athletic shoes of the pony-tailed ninja bitch. The corridor was long, and hardly lit at all. Light filtered in from each end. It looked like the corridor in an old apartment building, or hotel.
They stopped, and she was shoved into a doorway, into a large room, also white and windowless. A table against the far wall. A single chair, sitting under a horribly bright light. An interrogation room.
Two men. One was on his feet, the young one who had helped kidnap her from the Rosaline Creek.
The other was an older man, one she’d never seen before. Even when he was seated, she could tell he was tall and well built. He was handsome, his perfectly styled hair discreetly graying at the temples. He had the patrician good looks of a powerful politician—or rather, an aging A-list actor who played powerful politicians. Real politicians didn’t have time for this much grooming. This guy had gotten himself ironed a couple of times. His tan was too smooth, his jaw too taut. He smiled, activating deep, charming dimples. His teeth were unnaturally white.
“Ah, Lily. Finally you’ve joined us.” His smile was jovial. “Please, sit down.” He gestured towards the chair in the middle of the bleak room with the air of a kindly host seating her on a cozy sofa. “Hobart, are you ready with the videos? You look pale, my dear. Melanie, get Lily another coffee.” He turned to her, brow creased in concern. “This time two sugars, I think. I know you don’t take sugar, but indulge me—you look like your blood pressure is a little low. After all. You’ve been unconscious for close to three days. Sleeping beauty!”
Melanie shoved her down into the chair. “Indulge you?” Lily repeated. “Don’t play bullshit games with me, you psychopath—ow!”
Her voice choked into a squeak as the woman he’d called Melanie twisted her arm up with a jerk that pulled her onto her feet, every nerve in the twisted arm screaming with agony—
“Melanie, that will do,” the guy said, in a tone of mild reproof.
Lily’s butt reconnected hard with the chair. She wheezed with pain, feeling her shoulder. Surprised it was still attached at all.
“Melanie? The coffee?” the man reminded her.
The ferocious glow in Melanie’s blank eyes damped down, like someone had thrown the off-switch of a machine. She trotted to the corner, where a large coffee carafe sat. Crazed assassin, morphing instantly into perky waitress. It was chilling to watch.
“You have to excuse Melanie,” the man said. “She’s passionately loyal to me. All of my people are. They can’t help themselves.”
“Melanie?” she croaked. “And Hobart. So those are their names.”
The man waved his hand dismissively. “In a manner of speaking. Their names are not registered on any official document. Their names are whatever is convenient to me. Their defining identity is that they…are…mine.” His toothy smile spread wide, beaming.
Lily stared at the man. New depths of dismay yawned inside her.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “This is worse than I thought. You are totally batshit, aren’t you? All of you guys are.”
Hobart lunged for her this time. She fell off the chair in her effort to scramble out of range.
“Back.” King’s command stopped the younger man as if he were a voice activated robot. “Really,” he chided his minions. “Don’t take what Lily says so personally. She’s been under terrible stress. And she is soon to be under a great deal more. A little empathy, people.”
That speech went down Lily’s craw like strychnine laced Kool-Aid. She struggled up to her feet, and sat carefully in the chair. Melanie handed her another cup. Lily sipped. Nauseatingly sweet. It made her cough.
It burst out, uncontrollable. “What did you mean by that? About that stress that I’m supposed to be under?” She hated herself for the weakness that prompted her to ask. More so when King chuckled.
“Hobart, are you filming this with the handheld as well as the fixed video camera?” he asked, silkily. “I don’t want to miss an instant.”
The guy leaped to obey, and Lily took note of the two videocameras, mounted on tripods which watched her from diagonal corners of the room. Hobart himself held a third in his hand.
He began to circle her, constantly moving. It made her dizzy, the camera’s eye constantly swirling around her, Hobart’s blank gaze above.
“As to that,” King said. “Well, you see. I’ve gambled a great deal of money and manpower on the hope that Bruno Ranieri actually does give a damn about you.” His smiled widened, dimples deepening. “So, Lily. Think long and hard before you answer. Does he care?”
* * *
Weird,how such a boring, neutral suburban house with a well-trimmed yard and manicured hedges could somehow still be so ugly.
Bruno stared at the front of the house of Giuseppina Ranieri, his maternal grandmother. It was risky, and rude, to come at her with no advance phone warning, but he’d decided that it was riskier to call first. Give her time to organize herself, and stonewall him just for spite. Grandma Pina was one of the most dislikeable people he’d ever met. Outside of the maniacs trying to kill him. One thing about psycho killers—they put the garden variety assholes starkly into perspective.
“So? Shall we come along? Hold your hand? Is she that scary?”
It was Sean, jibing at him, but the jibes had lost their edge. The guy was just trying to rile him up, rev his engine so he could move.
