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She was shivering. She wanted to crawl under a bush, huddle like a hurt animal. The sky seemed so empty. Weirdly threatening.
She hadn’t gotten the number of the cabbie. She should have gotten his card. She could go back inside, ask for a car service, but that would require mental organization, social skills, and a certain measure of calm that she simply did not possess. The other option was to sit down on an ornamental rock and wait for forty minutes.
She glanced up at the fourth floor. Miriam stood in the window of one of the rooms, staring down. Talking into a cell phone.
About Lily, no doubt. Probably telling her supervisor about the incident, painting Lily as the hysterical hag of the situation. Lily quashed the thought. It sounded grandiose, paranoid.The whole world is looking at me, plotting against me, out to destroy me.
She was not giving in to that. Not even if it were true.
Miriam stared down, still talking. The reflection on the double-paned glass window obscured her expression, but Lily fancied she could feel the hostility radiating out of the woman, even at this distance. She got up, strolled along the grounds. She felt so exposed, under that blank sky. Like a raptor might swoop down, claws out to grab and rend.
They killed her, Lil. Right in front of me. They beat her to death. They told me you’d be next…
A wave of faintness came over her. She had to grab a tree branch to keep steady, at the remote possibility that Howard actually…no.
She couldn’t go down that road, even in the privacy of her own head. That way lay madness, and there weren’t enough funds for both of them to be mentally ill. But damn it, she’d wondered for years what the hell had broken Howard. Why would a normal, successful, relatively happy person suddenly fall to pieces? From one day to the next?
One wouldn’t, she thought. Not without a precipitating cause. And witnessing this Magda’s brutal murder…that would do it.
But her longing for a logical explanation was a trap, too. She was wise to all traps now. Suspicious of everything. Even her own mental processes.
The grounds merged into forest at the end of the neatly mowed lawn. Shivery prickles on the back of her neck urged her to run, hide. Go to ground. Stupid impulse. She didn’t do nature, and besides, nobody was after her. The world didn’t pay much attention to her, and she liked it that way. She flew under the radar. Almost no one knew what she did for a living, and by necessity, her referrals were extremely discreet. She worked too many hours to know many people, other than Nina. And a few disgruntled men from her occasional forays into dating.
She glanced up. Miriam was still there, still talking on the phone.
It embarrassed her, to stand out here, like a dog put out for piddling on the rug, while that awful woman glared down. She was out of this place. Right now. On foot. How far off base could she go? She had on sneakers. She couldn’t get lost if she stayed parallel to the road and kept the sound of traffic in her ears. A walk in the woods to clear her mind, just the thing. Unless some fanged predator ate her, of course, but she didn’t think bears or cougars or wild boars lurked in the woods of New York. Plus, she’d save ten bucks of cab fare, and avoid the embarrassment of not being able to tip the cab driver. And the money could then be put towards tonight’s dinner. A happy bonus.
Lily pushed through the hedge, and plunged into the forest.
CHAPTER3
“Come get her, Cal. Comefast.” The nurse Miriam, who was not, in fact a nurse, nor was her name Miriam, whispered fiercely into her cell as she slipped into an unused patient room.
“Did King say what to do with her?” Cal asked, sounding bored.
“I haven’t spoken to him yet, but when I do, I certainly don’t want to have to tell him that we’ve lost track of her!” she hissed. “That would suck for you, too, Cal. I’ll give you more instructions in a few minutes! For now, just step on it! Get your ass back here!”
Click.Cal hung up on her. Bastard. She’d never liked him much.
Calm down, Zoe. Focus, Zoe.She used her name, like King did in her personalized programming sequences, trying to recreate his voice in her head repeating the commands. It helped the message go deeper.
The situation was still containable—barely. Howard had surprised her, finally blurting out his piece. The audio of the bug in his room ran continually through a word recognition bot, and had signalled her, but a dangerously long time had passed between when the key words “Magda Ranieri” had prompted the app on her phone and when she’d gotten back to that room. Minutes had passed. Howard had spilled his guts completely.
That bad, bad boy. They would have to scramble to clean this up.
She didn’t understand why King had not simply ordered her to kill Howard years ago, but he had his reasons. And of course, he’d wanted to maintain his power over Howard to the end. Howard had to understand who was boss. It was appropriate that he submit, that he behave, and obey, to the moment of his death. And that he be punished for this transgression. That was something she could well understand.
In fact, she understood it so well, her guts churned with apprehension. King would be so angry. She needed for this assignment to go well. Her last assignment had been compromised by her lack of emotional self-control. She’d been working on that problem, putting in the hard time with DeepWeave XIII, the latest of King’s brilliant programming sequences. Four hours a day; two before work, two before bed. The same time she spent working out.
Please, let him not be angry.It wasn’t her fault. It took time to scurry down corridors, slap open doors. But King did not accept excuses.
Zoe stared out the window as she pulled up a number on her phone. Howard’s daughter stood outside by the entrance to the rose garden, her long, curly red hair flying in the breeze. As Zoe watched, she looked straight up at Zoe, with disconcerting directness.
Zoe suppressed the urge to step back, away from the window. She had this situation under control. No one could intimidate her.
So the Parr woman had opted not to make an immediate complaint about Miriam the nurse’s shocking rudeness. A stroke of luck, in terms of timing, since after today, this place would never see Zoe’s face again. She was grateful this hadn’t happened when she was off shift. But that was due to her own careful planning and scheduling. Howard’s daughter was regular in her visits. The first Tuesday of the month, never weekends, no other visitors. After taking into account this dull regularity, King had decided that Zoe could handle the long-term surveillance job without backup. And until this moment, Zoe had been convinced that this job was make-work, inflicted to punish her with boredom. But she never complained. Not even when forced to do the disgusting, mind-numbing personal services nurses performed for their patients. Cheerfully, with professional perfection. For fuckingyears.
Anything, to make him forgive her. Approve of her again.
