Desmond, it seemed, knew her better than she realized. At least, he was a lot less surprised than Bonnie expected him to be when he opened his door at one AM and found her shepherding the Kirbys inside.
The doorbell had roused him from bed. He’d thrown on a flimsy summertime robe that did nothing to conceal the stark contrast between his sculpted torso and his shrunken legs. He rolled his chair backward and let the family file into the living room while Bonnie locked the door behind them.
“I didn’t see your Jeep outside,” he said. They were the first words out of his mouth.
“I parked in the alley behind the house.”
He nodded, and she saw how much he’d learned from that brief exchange—that she was on the run, the family was hiding out, and somebody dangerous was after them.
“I hate to do this to you, Des, but we got a whole thing going on here, and these guys really need a place to crash.”
“There’s a guest room down the hall, on the right.” He waved in that general direction.
Alan and Cynthia filed past, but A.J. stopped, staring with frank curiosity at the man in the wheelchair.
Desmond smiled. “Hey, little man.”
“What happened to your legs?” the boy asked.
His parents winced, but Des was unfazed. “They went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Bummer, huh?”
The boy nodded gravely.
Cynthia took the boy’s hand. “Come along, A.J.”
“Sorry about that.” Alan said. “He just—he’s not old enough to know ...”
Des shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. Make yourselves at home.”
“I’ll be with you in a sec,” Bonnie added as the trio tramped down the hall. She peeled off her poncho and turned to face him. “Des, I know this is a lot to ask, especially after the way we left things.”
“Forget it. I shouldn’t have been playing shrink. Although if I were, I’d say that trying to save a family is a highly symbolic act. What kind of trouble are they in?”
“Someone’s out to kill the daddy. Maybe waste the whole crew.”
“What kind of someone?”
“A sadist. A pro.”
“Way to sugarcoat it.”
“He’s good, Des. I mean, he’s bad, but he’s really good at being bad. Hey, speaking of the bad guy, how’s your Spanish?”
“Awesome. Why?”
“I lifted this thing he wrote. A poem, I guess.” She dug it out of her pocket and unfolded the damp page. “Care to translate?”
He frowned at the close lines of script and recited slowly.
Farewell my dearest, my kiss of death, my grave.
When the moon rises, I will remember your lips,
A night-blooming flower with poison perfume.
The chill of your touch, the carrion cold ...
He looked up. “And more of the same. Creepy. Like a love poem to a corpse. But I guess that fits this guy, huh?”
“Oh yeah. Fits like a glove. No pun intended.”
“Why is that a pun?”
“Never mind.”
“Anyway, it goes on for a while. A whole lot of death imagery. And something about samsara.”
“I told you, no hablo espanol.”
“Samsara isn’t Spanish. It’s Sanskrit. It means the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. You know, reincarnation and all that.”
“Maybe he thinks he was Julius Caesar in a previous life.”
“Actually, I don’t think he wrote the poem. It looks like a woman’s handwriting. And there’s a line calling the loved one a compañero de viaje—fellow traveler. Compañero is the masculine form. Whoever wrote this was addressing a man.”
“Huh. Well, he told me he had a girlfriend.”
“They must’ve made a beautiful couple.”
“Yeah. Like Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein.” She retrieved the poem and stuck it back in her pocket.
He looked her over. “You need some tea.”
“I just had coffee.”
“Not the same thing.”
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“There’s always time for tea.”
He wheeled himself into the kitchen. She followed with a shrug. Tea. She would have preferred a Jack and Coke, but getting liquored up probably wasn’t the best idea right now.
She watched while he filled the teakettle and set it on the stove. As he rummaged in a box of tea bags, he asked, “So what happened to you tonight?”
“Lots of stuff, none of it good.”
“What’d you do after you left my place?”
“Took a bath.”
“Doesn’t sound too stressful.”
“Wanna bet?”
He selected valerian and draped the teabag over a porcelain mug. “This bad guy of yours—any chance he’ll track your clients here?”
She didn’t give him a direct answer. “The only way he could trace them to this location is through my phone. He’s got it, and you’re in my contact list, but so are a bunch of other people. He shouldn’t have any way of narrowing down the search to just you.”
The teapot began to whistle. Des ignored it. “But ...”
“But he’s been ahead of me all along. It’s got me kinda rattled. I’m starting to think he can beat me, no matter what I do.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Bonnie Parker I know.”
“I’ll get over it. Just keep them alive, Des. They got mixed up in something complicated and stupid, but they don’t deserve to die for it.”
He filled the mug with hot water. “I’ll look after them. Somebody’s got to, and the hubby doesn’t seem quite up to the job. He strikes me as more of a beta male.”
“Yeah. And the wife’s an alpha bitch. I don’t know what they see in each other.”
“The heart has its reasons.”
“Whoa, that’s what she said to me. Different context—which she had to explain.” Bonnie sipped her tea and wished it could soothe her. “Sometimes I think I should’ve stayed in high school. Then I might not be the least educated person in every room.”
“This thing’s really got you doubting yourself, huh?”
She said nothing. They lingered in silence. Then slowly he reached out and clasped her hand.
She’d lied when she told Dan Maguire she had no friends. She had one.
She had Des.
***
Bonnie caught up with the Kirbys in the guest bedroom, where Cynthia was bedding down the kid, and Alan was pacing like an inmate scheduled to walk the Green Mile.
She spent some time examining the attached bath. The sight of the tub triggered a twinge of nausea in the pit of her belly, but she powered through it.
“Okay,” she said, emerging. “This could work.”
Alan stopped pacing and looked at her. “As what?”
“A panic room.”
“Picnic room,” A.J. said sleepily from under a hill of blankets.
Cynthia was skeptical. “A lavatory is a far cry from a panic room.”
“You make do with what’s at hand. The bathroom has no windows. The walls are tiled; the floor is a concrete slab. Door is oak, solid-core. Lock’s in good shape. If you hide in there, it’ll buy you time. You brought in your cell phone, right?”
Alan nodded. “I always have it with me. It’s the one I called you from, to set up our meeting.”
“If there’s trouble, hustle your loved ones into the bathroom and call nine-one-one. Police response time around here is maybe four minutes on a busy night. Two minutes if nothing else is going down, and usually nothing is. I know you don’t want the authorities involved, but if it gets to that point, the boys in blue will be the least of your concerns.”
“Right, right.” Alan glanced past her into the bathroom, and she knew he was imagining himself and his wife and child huddled inside as a killer prowled the house.
“It’s not gonna come to that,” she said. “I’m just preparing for every contingency. It’s what I do.”
“What about, you know, weapons?”
“There are kitchen knives, maybe a couple hammers, and the toaster oven makes a nice blunt instrument.”
“You know what I mean—firearms.”
“There aren’t any, and you don’t need any. You’d just end up shooting yourself or someone you care about. Or me, most likely.”
“I have a hard time believing your friend doesn’t keep a spare piece in the house.”
“Spare piece? Who are you, Bugsy Malone? When you got guns lying around, it just gives the bad guy more opportunities to get hold of one.”
“Okay, okay. And your friend—he doesn’t have a problem with us being here?”
“He’s cool about it. He sort of rolls with the punches. Well, maybe rolls is a poor choice of words.”
“How much does he know about your, uh ...?”
“My special services? I’ve never discussed it with him. I don’t know what he’s guessed.”
Cynthia watched her closely. “So you really are a killer?”
“That’s my stock in trade.”
“And you’re all right with that?”
She shrugged. “I’ve always believed it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”
“Then your private investigator business is just a cover?”
“It’s for real. I do regular PI work most of the time. I kinda stumbled into this other thing.”
“Just like that?” Cynthia didn’t sound judgmental. She seemed honestly curious.
“Yeah, pretty much. I’m one cold bitch, huh?”
“I don’t know what you are,” Cynthia said quietly.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll give it some thought. Seems like someone pinned a sign to my butt that says ‘Analyze Me.’ Everybody wants to get in on the head-shrinking action tonight.”
“You really think you can kill this man Pascal?”
“Or die trying.” She frowned. “You know, usually that’s just an expression.”
“I suppose there’s no hope of reasoning with him.”
“You’d have more luck reasoning with a shark. Look, dealing with scum like Pascal is my job. Why don’t you let me do it, okay?”
“I suppose we have no choice. But it seems there’ll always be more killing. It never ends. Even if you get Pascal, they’ll just send someone else, and it will start all over again.”
“Don’t think of it like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then try lying to yourself. Sometimes it’s all that gets me through the night.”
“You’re an unhappy person, Bonnie,” Cynthia said.
“Me? I’m Little Miss Sunshine. Okay, you guys hang out here. Stay safe. And don’t open the door for any Candygrams.”
She stepped into the hallway. Alan stopped her. “Bonnie. I just wanted you to know—I feel really stupid about the way I misled you.”
“Everybody is stupid sometimes. Just try being smart for the next few hours.”
“If we, uh, don’t hear from you, what should we do?”
“If I’m dead, you mean? Go straight to the nearest FBI field office and tell them everything. No bullshit about the G-Rocs. You’ll have to come clean and take your medicine.” She turned to go, then looked back. “Hey, what ever happened to Mariana Ortiz?”
“She died in prison. Of cancer.”
“Sorry.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“Not really. I can’t get too worked up about somebody I never knew.”
“Even if you know she was doing good?”
“A lot of people try to do good. It doesn’t make them immortal.”
Alan looked at her sadly. “Have you always been so angry at the world?”
“Not always. Just since I was fourteen.”
***
On the front porch she found Des in his chair, a shadow among shadows, watching the street. She didn’t have to ask what he was watching for.
“There’s no need to make yourself a target,” she said.
“I could say the same to you.”
“Yeah. Guess you could.”
She stood next to him. Rain drummed the roof in a hard, steady rhythm. Puddles glistened on the street. The trees shook, and the utility lines strung among the branches swayed ominously.
“You’re going after him, I take it,” Des said quietly. “A guy who’s a sadist and a pro. You’re heading off for some kind of showdown.”
“That’s the plan. This is between he and I ... him and me ... whatever.” She studied him. “You don’t seem too surprised.”
“I’m not entirely in the dark about what you do.”
“Yeah, I guess the thirty-eight in your air duct was kind of the giveaway.”
“I figured it out long before that.”
“And you never said anything?”
He shrugged. “None of my business.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
“Touché.”
“It’s not like I do it for fun, Des.”
“I know that.”
“Or even for money. I mean, the money’s part of it, but ...”
“It’s about justice for you.”
“I guess.”
“That’s what makes you different from that other Bonnie Parker, you know. She wasn’t in it for justice. She was in it for kicks.”
She nodded, hoping he was right.
There was no one else she could talk to like this. No other close friend or confidant. No family. No lover. Her death, she thought, would leave an awfully small hole in the world.
She wondered if it meant anything—her life, or anybody’s. If there was any purpose to it all. She’d never considered it. Questions like that were best left to the deep thinkers, people who read books. She’d never been much of a reader, unless Guns & Ammo counted.
“I lied to you about one thing, Des,” she said slowly.
“Just one?”
She smiled. “One thing tonight.” The smile faded. “You know how I said my folks getting killed didn’t faze me?”
“I had a feeling that might not be the whole truth.”
“Yeah. The whole truth—well, I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”
“Why not? You got upset that your parents had died. What’s so terrible about that?”
“I didn’t get upset. I got even.”
“Oh.”
“I was just a kid. But I tracked down the bastards that did it. Three of them, in Pennsylvania.”
“How could you possibly find them?”
“It’s a whole long story, and it doesn’t matter now. I’ve always been good at finding things out. It took me half a year, but I learned who’d done it and I located them. And I made sure they wouldn’t make any more orphans.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. But I grew up fast.”
“Too fast.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, I made things right. And now I need to make things right again.”
“You don’t have to go after him. We can call the police. Or grab the Kirby clan and go on the run till this thing blows over.”
“I’m not running, and it won’t blow over. And the police can’t get involved.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ll take care of this guy.”
“Or he’ll take care of you.”
“Right. That’s how the game is played. It’s what I signed up for.”
“There’s a fine line between courage and craziness, you know.”
She found a smile for him. “Oh hell, Des. I crossed that line a long time ago.”