“Will you walk with me out on the wire…”
—Bruce Springsteen
Fahad entered a dark, high-priced hotel lounge with a U-shaped mahogany bar—packed two- to three-deep behind a row of leather-padded stools. Three dozen high circular dark-wood tables with matching quartets of chairs accommodated the overflow. Art deco lamps were everywhere, and the walls featured large framed photos of the great actors and actresses of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. The piped-in music was eclectic, ranging from the great jazz singers of those same decades—including Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald—to the great rock stars of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, artists such as Janis Joplin, CCR, the Stones, and the Boss.
Fahad squeezed in beside the tall, angularly slim woman seated at the bar. She had superlative bones and shoulder-length pale-blond hair. Her black, close-fitting Dior suit revealed a surprising amount of cleavage and thigh. Her slingback Jimmy Choo ebony pumps with five-inch heels completed the ensemble. He knew her name from her apartment building’s directory and her Facebook page—Adrienne Harmon—and he also knew her to be a highly successful attorney-at-law.
He’d followed her for the last three nights, and her pattern seemed predictable. After work, no matter how late, she stopped off at this bar, her neighborhood watering hole, Ye Alde Pub. She always ordered the same: Jameson neat with a pint of Guinness backup. She was not averse to drinking several of each, and one of the three nights that he’d tailed her, she’d taken a gentleman home.
Tonight, he planned on going back to her apartment with her himself.
Fahad knew how to handle women, and he also knew she would like the way he looked. His whole life women had compared him to Omar Sharif, and he cultivated the actor’s look assiduously. Shaving twice a day, he kept his five o’clock shadow to the barest minimum, and his mustache was always scrupulously trimmed. A high-priced haute-couture stylist cut his hair and darkened it to a deep ebony every other week. His wardrobe was always impeccably selected and meticulously maintained.
Since it was mandatory that he take Adrienne home, he was even more expensively attired than usual—an exquisitely tailored, black Armani suit, matching Gucci wingtips and a white silk Brooks Brothers shirt with a red Hermes tie. Holding the tie in place was a 4-carat diamond stickpin. He kept his left hand on the bar, so Adrienne could see that he wore no wedding ring but was sporting a platinum Rolex Submariner with emerald-cut, 3-carat diamonds.
Decades of close observation had taught him that women found the specter of great personal wealth—always implicit in ultraexpensive clothes and their costly bejeweled accoutrements—to be an all-but-irresistible aphrodisiac and that most women in bars were drawn to an attractive man with exorbitant riches like moths to a candle. He definitely had to draw this sensual moth into his licentious flame.
Springsteen was on the box, wailing “Born to Run.” In raw, guttural tones he sang about a man offering a woman a chance to escape New Jersey and move, presumably, to the Big Apple.
Won’t you walk with me out on the wire,
’Cause, baby, I’m just a scared and lonely rider.
Fahad assumed that walking with him on the high wire was a euphemism for the two of them going to bed. Well, he needed to be in the woman’s bed tonight.
“You ever feel like the guy in the song?” Fahad asked the woman. “Have you ever felt the urge to kick over the traces and run for the sun with someone you love and finally, forever, be … free?”
She turned to him, allowed him a quick perfunctory smile, then gave him a once-over. Pausing for a closer look, she gave him a twice-over. Blinking her eyes, she went for a brief, discreet … thrice-over. His incredible looks and awesome affluence were almost too much for her to absorb. Cranking her smile up all the way, she gave it every watt of candlepower at her disposal till the grin glittered and gleamed like all the lights on Broadway and all the stars in the heavenly firmament.
“With every second of my life,” she said softly, “with every fiber of my being.”
All the while her smile continued to scintillate, illuminating her eyes and crinkling the corners of her mouth. She was smiling at him with all her might, almost as if she were … sincere.
As if she … cared.
“You know,” Fahad said casually, “sometimes I think I’d like to give it all up, donate everything I have to ‘Save the Whales’ and start out all over again, stone broke but without a care in the world.”
“Having great wealth worries you?” Adrienne asked with an only slightly amused laugh.
“Always. I’ve never had the time to enjoy my money. It grinds away at me, like a heavy weight on the back of my neck, like a whetstone on my soul, and it weighs me down. My whole life has been nothing but work and worry. What’s the point of it all, if you never have time to enjoy the fruits of your labor?”
“Maybe you need a womanfriend who could loosen you up, show you the time of your life and help you rid yourself of some of that burdensome … loot.”
“Know of any volunteers?” Fahad asked, now giving her his widest smile, most of his thirty-two capped teeth, glinting like purest alabaster.
“What are friends for?” Adrienne said, putting a hand on his arm, turning to face him, leaning forward and gazing closely, intimately into his eyes.
Her smile was so infectious and so inviting that against his will he found himself liking her. In fact, he decided he would put some effort into this one. He’d make love to her that night like she’d never been made love to before. He would show her all the kingdoms of earth, the mountains of the moon and every kinky nether region in between, until the two of them had explored every infernal hellworld of her darkest, most diabolic desires.
He was determined to give her the fuck of her life, a fuck for the ages, a fuck that would rock the earth, stun the gods, till the stars themselves howled in shock and awe, till the galaxies screamed, and the angels on high trembled in envy, desire and disbelief.
Yes, Fahad al-Qadi would give her the hottest time of her hellacious young life—something special to remember him by…
Before he killed her.