It was later than he had expected, but Sherlock pulled his old Mercedes to a stop at the top of the circular driveway in front of Diana Hughes’s home. For a few moments, he sat there, gripping the steering wheel and thinking. It was after two in the morning. He liked seeing Diana, but he didn’t want to be there.
Before he could leave, the light beside the front door popped on. Diana hadn’t expected him, but her alarm had a motion sensor to let her know when someone reached the top of her driveway. It would have been annoying had more traffic stopped to turn around at her place, but her neighborhood had ample places to turn around. Someone moved behind the frosted glass of the front door.
Then she opened it. Even without makeup, even wearing just one of his old, long T-shirts, even without wanting to be, she was gorgeous. Sherlock had never loved anyone in his life. He cared about his parents, and he had told a girl in high school that he loved her, but that had been to get beneath her dress on prom night. His feelings for Diana were different. He wanted her happy, and she wanted him happy, too.
That was why he hated this moment.
As he opened his door and stepped out, the pistol in his pocket felt heavy. Scott Gibson had given it to him earlier for this occasion. Tonight, it would do a job, and then it would disappear again.
Sherlock trudged up the steps to the front door. Even from three feet away, he could smell Diana’s alluring scent, an intoxicating mix of lavender and various kitchen spices combined with just a hint of clean sweat. She smiled at him.
“Didn’t expect to see you tonight,” she said.
“Did I wake you up?”
She nodded and stepped forward to put her hands on his chest. The movement caused her shirt to rise and expose the creamy skin of her upper thighs. “Yeah, but you can make that up to me.”
She bit her lower lip. Sherlock didn’t stop himself. He put his arms around her and kissed her and felt her body press against his. Then he picked her up, kicked the front door shut, and carried her to the bedroom. There, they took off each other’s clothes and made love on her king-sized bed.
As he held her afterwards and felt her body heat against him, he closed his eyes.
“Christopher got away last night.”
She sighed and nodded. “I heard.”
“I hoped that we could capture him and persuade him to tell us where he had stashed his money.”
She put a hand flat on his chest and gave him a soft, warm smile. “If we’re together, we don’t need his money. I’ve got more money than we can spend. It’s yours.”
He nodded and looked at the ceiling. “I talked to him today, though, and convinced him that I could smuggle him out of the country if he paid me well enough. He spilled it all. He had four safety deposit boxes in banks in Clayton.”
Diana pulled away. He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at her.
“I checked them out,” he said. “There should have been ten million dollars in them, but every one was empty.”
Diana didn’t respond.
“So I talked to the bank manager,” he said. Sherlock paused. “He said you had come and emptied them years ago.”
Diana said nothing, but he could feel her hand on his side, tickling his ribs.
“Do you have the money?” he asked.
Again, she said nothing. So he rolled onto his side to see her face smiling at him. She pursed her lips and made a shushing sound as she cupped his cheek.
“We need that money,” he said. “I don’t care if you stole it. We need it.”
The moment the words left his lips, he felt something hot pierce his side. He drew in a sharp breath. In a flash, Diana had pushed him onto his back. She kept a hand on his cheek and shushed him again.
“Hush, sweetheart,” she said. “No more talking. I don’t want this to hurt more than it has to.”
Sherlock looked down and found the handle of a knife sticking into the left side of his chest. He tried to sit up, but Diana put her hands on his shoulders, keeping him rooted in the spot.
“Don’t move. I’ve put that knife into the intercostal space between your fourth and fifth ribs. If my aim was right—and I’m sure it was—the tip is now inside the left ventricle of your heart. If you move, it will only get worse.”
He felt something cold pass over him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “You’ve never carried a firearm into my home before, but tonight you did. It was for me, wasn’t it? If you wanted me to tell you where I put my ex-husband’s money, you could have asked.”
“I would have,” he said. “I didn’t get the chance.”
“That admission betrays a much bigger problem,” she said, reaching down to the knife she had plunged into him. “If you’re worried about this, you can calm down. I was an ER nurse for several years. The left ventricle will seal small puncture wounds as it contracts. It will only leak blood when it relaxes. I’ve seen people survive hours with wounds like this. You’ll be just fine until I sweep the blade to the left and open you up.”
“You stabbed me,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Sorry.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Please take me to the hospital. We’ll say we had an accident.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, exhaling. “That’s not going to happen. You don’t trust me. I love you, but I can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me.”
Sherlock licked his lips and said the only thing that came to mind.
“I love you, too.”
She smiled at him. Her eyes were almost teary.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you to say that, baby,” she said. “Love is one thing, though. Business is another. Tonight, you brought a gun into my home so you could threaten me and take money I earned. If you had just asked, I would have shared it with you. I would have shared my whole life with you. Everything I owned would have become ours. I would have given you the keys to the kingdom if you had just asked.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said, sliding off the bed and getting a silk robe to cover her still naked body. Sherlock slid to the side of the bed, hoping he could reach his clothes and cell phone. Diana clucked her tongue and shook her head. “The more you move, the more likely you’ll tear open the hole in your heart. That’s a bad idea.”
Sherlock took a deep breath and lay back.
“All right. What do I do?”
“Stay there,” she said, pulling the sheet over his legs. “Mr. Gibson will come for you.”
“Scott?” asked Sherlock. She nodded.
“He works for me now,” she said, walking into her closet. She came out a moment later carrying a belted gray dress on one hanger and a long green dress on another. “Which do you think I should wear?”
“The green one shows off your body,” said Sherlock. “I always liked that one on you.”
She held the dress to her chest and then tossed it on the bed before going back into her closet.
“Green it is,” she said. “And thank you. If I had known you had liked it, I would have worn it more often.”
Sherlock watched her slip her robe off. She noticed and winked at him before closing the door.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “All this time, I thought Christopher ran the business, but it was you.”
She stepped out of the closet and then walked to her dresser for undergarments. As long as he could keep her talking, he was alive. St. Louis had excellent hospitals just a few miles away. They’d have cardiac surgeons on staff twenty-four hours a day. If he could persuade her to take him there, he could survive.
“Yeah,” she said. “Christopher provided the seed capital, and he always thought he was in charge, but he couldn’t rub two thoughts together if he tried. I did the work. I ran the girls. I held them when they cried, I selected them from the foster care office, I introduced them to Randy and helped him turn them into assets we could use. Then I used those little friends of Christopher’s to launder our money. My ex-husband was disgusting. He deserved to die in prison.”
“I underestimated you,” he said. “I wish I had known you better.”
“Me, too,” she said, slipping a bra over her shoulders.
“So what now?” asked Sherlock. “You kill me and then run away with Christopher’s money?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You set up a terrific business deal with Mr. Mendoza. After some discussion, he’s agreed to continue the arrangement with me. I will become St. Louis’s largest distributor of cocaine and sundries. My financing was in order. Yours wasn’t. It was a real shame.”
She walked to the bed and picked up her dress.
“Is this formal enough to wear while meeting a new employee?” she asked. “I can’t look too flirty.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
She smiled at him, but instead of the usual affection he saw, he found anger.
“Flattery won’t help. You fucked up, baby. You can’t walk away from this.”
Her expression was flat as she walked to the bathroom to get ready. He slid to the right, ever mindful of the knife in his chest. It hurt, but he didn’t feel as if he were dying. Even still, he trusted Diana’s medical judgment. If he could get to a phone and call 911, he’d have a chance. If he couldn’t, he was dead.
When he reached the side of the bed, he heard a soft beep. Diana came from the bathroom wearing that green dress that hugged her body so well.
“Mr. Gibson’s here,” she said, crossing the room. She knelt beside him and looked into his eyes again. He saw affection and real love staring back. “Believe it or not, I love you. I’m sorry, but this is business.”
She reached for the knife. It was just a quick movement, but he gasped and felt the change come over him as the blade slit his heart open. She pulled the knife out. Sherlock’s skin felt hot as blood rushed out of him. He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. She kissed his lips and stroked his hair, staining her beautiful dress with his blood.
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
He tried to reach up and squeeze the life out of her throat, but he couldn’t get his fingers to work right.
“I’m here,” she whispered, batting his hands away as if he were a child. “Just listen to my voice and let yourself drift away.”
His vision grew white and then black. His eyes felt heavy, but he needed to say something before he died. She leaned close as he whispered.
“Go ahead, love,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
“You deserved him, bitch,” he said. “Christopher. You fucking deserved him.”
It filled him with joy to see the pain in her eyes as his closed for the last time.