Lethal

He broke his unbroken law and drove directly to his building. The tires smoked when he brought the car to a jarring halt. He bolted out, not even bothering to cut off the engine or close the door.

A cutting torch had been used to excise the lock on the exterior door, which stood ajar. Diego plunged through it into total darkness. He raced through the dank corridors and bolted down the staircases that he knew by feel.

When he reached the lower level and saw the door to his domain standing open, he drew up short. His breath made a horrible sawing noise, and that was the only sound in the entire building. He thought he might die from the pain in his chest. He almost hoped he would, so he wouldn’t have to know.

But he had to know.

He forced himself to walk to the lighted doorway and look into the room that had been his safe haven. Until tonight.

Isobel was lying on her back on the bed. She’d been stripped naked and obscenely positioned. Her face had been brutalized. Her limbs were bruised and bore scratches. There were bite marks, so deeply impressed that they’d broken through her golden skin. There was dried semen. And blood.

He’d been kept away all day so that The Bookkeeper’s facilitators could take their time terrorizing, torturing, and killing Isobel and, by doing so, teach Diego a hard lesson in blind obedience.

Only her beautiful, silky black hair had escaped the assault. When Diego knelt beside the bed, it was her hair he stroked, her hair that he crooned to, that he held against his face and cried into.

His knees had grown numb by the time he finally got to his feet. He rearranged Isobel’s body to restore her modesty. He gently unclasped her silver crucifix. He kissed her cut and swollen lips, their first kiss also being their last. Finally, he pulled a blanket over her.

He surveyed the room, taking account of everything in it, and deciding there was nothing there he cared to salvage, not even the expensive rug. He poured the goldfish into the toilet and flushed. It was a mercy killing. Better that than to boil to death.

He made a pile of his belongings in the center of the room, set a lighter to them, and waited to make certain that the fire would catch. When he turned his back on the room, flames were already licking at the covers on the bed, Isobel’s funeral bier.

Slowly, laboriously, he made his way up through the former factory to street level. He could already smell smoke, and reasoned that it wouldn’t take long for the blaze to eat the building whole.

The car was gone, of course. It didn’t matter. He struck off down the sidewalk, staying close to the buildings, keeping his right hand around the razor in his pants pocket, thinking that possibly The Bookkeeper wasn’t finished with him yet.

He for sure as hell wasn’t finished with The Bookkeeper.

Chapter 41

When Bonnell Wallace regained consciousness, he was lying face up on the floor of his bathroom. Someone was bending over him, shining a flashlight into his eye, which he held pried open with a gloved hand.

“Mr. Wallace, can you hear me?”

“Turn off that goddamn light.” It was driving splinters of pain through the top of Wallace’s skull from the inside. The EMT didn’t do as asked. Instead he pried open Wallace’s other eye and waved the flashlight an inch from his eyeball.

Wallace swatted at the hand wearing the blue glove. Or tried. He connected with nothing but air and realized that he was seeing double and that he had aimed for the wrong image.

“Mr. Wallace, lie still, please. You’ve got a concussion.”

“I’m all right. Did you catch him?”

“Who?”

“The bastard who did this to me.”

“The back door was standing open when we got here. Your assailant got away.”

Wallace was struggling to sit up while the pair of EMTs were trying to hold him down. “I need to talk to the cops.”

“They’re searching the property, Mr. Wallace.”

“Go get them.”

“You can talk with the officers later. They’ll want your statement. In the meantime, we’ll transport you to the ER and let them X-ray-”

“You’re not transporting me anywhere.” Wallace knocked aside the young man’s arm, and this time his aim was perfect. “Get off me. I’m all right. I’ve got to warn Tori. Bring me my phone. It’s on the bedroom chair.”

The two EMTs consulted each other with a look. One got up and disappeared through the doorway. Seconds later, he called back, “No phone on the chair.”

Wallace gave a low moan. “He took my phone. My phone has her number in it.”

“Whose number?”

“Jesus! Whose do you think? Tori’s.”

“Sir, please lie back and let us-”

He grabbed the young man by the front of his uniform shirt. “I told you, I’m fine. But if anything happens to Tori, I’m coming after you first, and I’ll make your life a living hell. So you had better get a cop in here now!”

Coburn had been trained to sleep as efficiently as he’d been trained to do everything else. He woke up after two hours, feeling revived if not completely rested.