Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  Amanda.

  He felt depression crash down through his brain. He leaned against the wall of the shop and watched all his losses replay in his head like a sad movie.

  If he had been faster than Blake. If he had taken the shot in the parking lot at the Limelight.

  That had been his problem all his life. He couldn’t let go of guilt. His regrets clung to him forever and gathered into a stony shell.

  He hadn’t been fast enough to see her. The paramedics were already shutting the ambulance door when he streaked up to the curb. Their faces told the story. Ashen and tight. Fighting time, fighting death, and losing both fights. She wasn’t expected to survive the ride to the hospital.

  He found himself angry at Amanda for being there. It was brilliant, tracking Blake via the doughnut shops. The little things always brought down the smartest criminals, even if it was something simple like a sweet tooth for Krispy Kremes. Stride wished he had thought of that himself, and he half wondered if that had been the point of leaving the receipt behind from Reno. A taunt. A clue. To see if they’d pick up on it. Why didn’t you call for backup, Amanda? ‘It was such a basic lesson, all die way back to the academy. Never march into a high-risk situation alone, never be a hero.

  But Stride knew why. She knew Blake was smart, that he would have spotted them long before they saw him coming. Anyone who had survived the extremists in Afghanistan could smell out a trap set by the local police. They had only one chance, one visit to the shop, to grab him. She didn’t want to blow their best shot, so she did it on her own.

  There was the other part, too-the chance to rub it in the faces of the cops trying to force her out. To prove who she was and what she could do. Ego. He couldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but he blamed her anyway.

  “You could have called me, Amanda,” he whispered aloud. But Blake knows you, he could hear her saying right back at him.

  The door to the shop opened, and two uniformed cops walked out They didn’t see Stride on their left. They stopped outside and lit cigarettes, and the aroma of the smoke wafted to him and filled his lungs with a longing more intense than he had felt in a year. He looked at his hands, which were trembling. The craving was a need, as if his soul were bone dry and nothing on earth could fill it up again except a cigarette. He could taste it on his lips, inhale it into his chest.

  “Can you spare one?” he asked.

  He didn’t recognize them, and they didn’t recognize him. The taller cop, about Stride’s height, with black hair and a mustache, nodded and shook a cigarette out of his pack. Stride took it and bent down to catch a flame from the man’s lighter.

  “Thanks.”

  The first drag was paradise. Like angels singing. He couldn’t believe he had gone a year without this.

  “You know her?” the cop asked, cocking his head toward the shop.

  Stride nodded. He pursed his lips and blew out a cloud of smoke. God would forgive him, even if Serena didn’t. He needed this.

  “Tough break, but at least it gets the freak off the force, huh?” the cop added.

  Stride heard a roaring in his head. He watched the man grin. He looked at the cigarette in his hand, and suddenly it was something ugly and foreign. A sick, hacking cough waited deep in his lungs, ready to spew out and leave him breathless. He dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot.

  “Shit, man, those are expensive,” the cop said.

  Stride grabbed the man’s shirt and threw him so hard his feet left the ground. The cop slammed backward into the wall of the shop, his head and shoulders colliding with the stucco. Dazed, he shook his head and crumpled to his knees. Stride squeezed his fingers into a fist and was ready to send it like a pile driver into the man’s face. He reached down to grab him again, but the other cop sprang between them.

  “Back off, back off!” he shouted at Stride. “Are you crazy?”

  He pushed Stride square in the chest, but Stride didn’t move. His feet were rooted to the ground. The cop hesitated, and Stride knew he was wondering if he should pull his gun.

  “Listen!” the cop told him. “He’s got a big mouth. He can be an asshole. Okay? It was a stupid thing to say.”

  Stride walked away. He was about to cross the street, but there was a crowd of gawkers on the other side. He reversed himself and walked to the corner of the block. There was a vacant lot there, and parked on the gravel was a truck with backlit photos of stunning women on its panels. It was the kind of truck that did nothing but drive up and down the Strip, advertising escort service phone numbers for tourists. Escorts who looked nothing like the women in the photographs.

  It was one more shell game in a city of con artists.

  Stride sat down on the truck’s bumper. He wished to hell he hadn’t thrown away the cigarette. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Serena, who answered immediately.

  “Amanda’s been shot,” he told her.

  “No.”

  He filled her in on the details. They were canvassing the surrounding blocks, looking for witnesses, hunting for Blake.

  “Is she-I mean, what’s the outlook?” Serena asked.

  “Not good.”

  “I’m sorry, Jonny.” She added, “Don’t blame yourself. There isn’t anything you could have done.“

  “I know.”

  “Shit, I wish I was there. This is driving me crazy.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  He hung up. He tried to slough off his feeling of despair. When he pushed himself off the truck, he saw someone jog around the corner. It was Cordy. He was breathless. The detective spotted him and shouted.

  “Stride! I’ve been looking for you.”

  Stride thought about the hatred that Cordy had shown toward Amanda, and he felt his rage building inside him again. His jaw was clenched so tight he wasn’t sure he could speak.

  “What?” Stride hissed.

  Cordy stopped short. He could read Stride’s emotions. His mouth was pulled into a thin line, and he seemed genuinely remorseful. “Hey, I know, I know. I’m sorry, man, okay? Sorry about a lot of things. Makes me feel like shit, it does. She bleeds blue like the rest of us.”

  Stride nodded. He took a deep breath. “What is it?”

  “We got a 911 call. Some hooker over near Harris Avenue. You know, the shithole hood near HQ? She says she saw our guy taking another of the street girls into an apartment building.”

  Stride frowned. “A hooker? Blake? That doesn’t sound right”

  “Maybe he figures he needs a hostage.”

  “Is she sure?”

  Cordy nodded. “Yeah, yeah, swears up and down it’s the guy. Says she’s seen the sketch all over town”’

  “Did we get an address? An apartment number?”

  “Not the number, but we got the building, yeah.” He rattled off the address. “Takes balls, huh? Guy’s been holed up so close to us we could have pissed out the window and drowned him.”

  “How long ago did she see them?”

  “Five minutes, maybe ten.“

  Stride began to understand what Amanda felt. The desire to go it alone. To take Blake on mano a mano, just the two of them, where he could exact revenge for Amanda and all the others who had died. The cop in the parking lot at the Limelight. Peter Hale. Tierney Dargon. MJ Lane. Alice Ford. Stride could see Blake’s face and the arrogant smile as their eyes met. He wanted to drive over to the apartment building and storm inside, riding a wave of fury and adrenaline.

  Fifteen years ago, he might have made that mistake. Like Amanda did.

  “I’ll call Sawhill,” Stride said quietly. “We need to get him over here.”

  Cordy nodded. “Uh-huh. We should get a cordon around the scene.”

  “Right. Let’s get squad cars two blocks from the apartment building on every major intersection. But no lights, no sirens. Silent running, okay? And let’s keep diem off the actual street. We don’t want anyone in that building seeing a cop anywhere.”

  “
We’ll need to move fast. We don’t know how long he’s going to stay put.”

  “Exactly. Let’s establish a base down on Harris in ten minutes, and we can meet Sawhill there to map out our plan.”

  “Shouldn’t we do some recon?” Cordy asked.

  Stride thought about it. “Yeah, see if we can get one of the undercover cops from vice. Someone already dressed like a hooker. We’ll have her do a walk-by on the building and then stake out a place where she can keep an eye on the front. Nothing too close. If Blake is eyeing the street, we don’t want him spooked.”

  Cordy already had his phone in his hand as he took off.

  Stride retreated toward the doughnut shop and found his Bronco. He wanted to be on the scene as the cordon took shape at Harris. If Blake was in for the night, if he thought he was safe, then maybe they could take him quickly, with a minimum of violence.

  Why the girl? Stride thought. He knew there were killers who wanted sex after a murder, but he didn’t think that fit Blake’s profile. Maybe Cordy was right and Blake wanted a hostage. Whatever the truth was, it complicated their assault. It would slow them down, deciding how to proceed with a third party in the room. Maybe that was what Blake was counting on.

  FORTY-ONE

  Normally, Serena loved the silence of their town home, because it was a respite from the noise of the city. That was one thing about Las Vegas -you couldn’t escape the din of people and machines. At home, she and Jonny sometimes turned off the stereo and sat in the darkness to relish a few moments of quiet.

  Tonight the silence felt like a threat. It got under her skin.

  When she put down the phone, she thought about Amanda. She had heard the pain in Jonny’s voice. She had never really known Amanda, not well, but she of all people knew the effect that Jonny had on women. How they fell in love with his caring, his humanity. How he in turn wanted to wrap his big arms around them and be a protector. Some women hated that. Most wanted to get lost in it. She knew that Jonny and Amanda had taken no time at all to bond as partners and that Jonny felt her loss as keenly as if it had been herself or Maggie under the gun. It made her a little jealous.

  Serena went to the front door. She opened it and went outside onto the porch. Her senses were on high alert, and fear pricked along the nerves in her back. She listened carefully, and she spied every detail around her home. Nothing was moving. The overhead garage light shone down on her Mustang convertible in the driveway. The maze of streets through the gated complex was empty, except for the tall silhouettes of palm trees. No strange cars. No headlights. She studied the shadows on both corners of the house. It made her palms sweat to realize that she had left her gun inside, that she was a target here, unarmed. But she was alone.

  She returned inside and locked the dead bolt. She made sure the alarm was set. She thought about turning off the lights as she went upstairs but decided to leave them on. Let anyone who was out there think she was still awake. This time, she took her gun with her.

  She felt guilty being here, safe. Jonny was out on the street, chasing Blake, and she should be with him. She said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t let his emotions overrun him, that he wouldn’t be foolish like Amanda and try to take Blake on his own.

  Don’t die, Jonny. Don’t leave me. It was that simple.

  But nothing was simple.

  She passed the spare bedroom in which Clare was sleeping. She stopped there and listened. Her hand reached for the doorknob, and she turned it silently. To check on her, she told herself. To make sure she was okay. No, that was a lie. What she wanted to do was go in and sleep beside her. Touch her. Make her spill her secrets. Serena realized she was like Jonny, wanting to wrap her arms around Claire and protect her.

  She let go of the doorknob, and it clicked loudly. Serena winced. She continued quickly to her own bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  The ceiling fan moved the cool air around the room. Even so, she was overheated. Flushed. She laid her gun on the nightstand beside her bed and put her cell phone next to it. She took off her clothes and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed and take a brief shower. Her skin was still damp as she returned to the bedroom. She draped clothes for tomorrow over the back of a chair, in case she needed to get dressed quickly overnight, and then she stretched out naked on top of the blankets.

  Serena switched out the lamp on the nightstand. The room was dark. She lay on her back, her eyes open. The aloneness of the night felt oppressive.

  Tap tap tap.

  She froze, and it happened again, a scratching on the window glass. Tap tap tap.

  Serena practically leaped from the bed, her heart pounding. She scrambled for her gun and ran to the window, where she tore the curtains open. Dim light streamed in from the lamps hung outside. Where the glow reflected on the window, a white moth was beating against the glass, its wings quivering. After a few seconds, it rose up higher and flew away.

  Good, Serena, she thought Shoot a moth.

  She left the curtains open and went back to bed, where the beam of light from outside played across her body.

  As her heart slowed down, sleep began to catch up with her. She tried to stay awake, in case Jonny called again, but the harder she tried to keep her eyes open by staring at the ceiling fan, the more it hypnotized her until her eyes blinked shut.

  Dreams floated in. Bad dreams. The kind where she was chased, where footsteps pounded behind her and she ran from someone invisible. She was out in the desert at night, and she could hear rattlesnakes and hawk wings and the snuffling of javelinas-and someone’s breathing in the darkness near her, measured and loud.

  Something awakened her. She didn’t know what. When she glanced at the clock, she saw that an hour had passed while she was sleeping. Had she heard something? A click. Footsteps. Was it real? She glanced around the bedroom and saw a ghost, a shadow by the closed door. As she squinted and looked harder, the shadow moved. Someone was in her room.

  Serena felt paralyzed and exposed, naked in the glow from outside. She started to reach for her gun again. “Who’s there?”

  From the darkness, she heard Claire’s voice. “It’s only me, Serena.” Claire stepped farther into the room, where the light found her, and she was naked, too.

  She came and lay next to Serena on the bed without being asked. They were both on their backs, staring at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep,” Claire said. “Did you hear something before?”

  “I assumed it was you in the hallway.”

  “No, something else.”

  They waited and listened. Serena knew every groan and creak in the beams of her home, but there was nothing out of place.

  “It’s my imagination,” Claire said.

  “Try to sleep.”

  Serena turned on her side, away from Claire. She could see the time glowing on the clock. Almost two in the morning. She wondered where Jonny was and when he would be coming home to her. She wanted to close her eyes, but she was awake now, keenly aware of Claire behind her. She could hear her breathing softly; she was awake, too. A fragile silence hung between them. Waiting for the next move.

  Claire shifted onto her side, too. Without an invitation, she slid her body across the bed and spooned against Serena’s back, molding her skin against her. She didn’t say anything. Serena felt Claire’s breaths in short puffs on her neck, and her blond hair tickled Serena’s ear. Claire’s nipples were erect. Serena could feel them on her back. Her skin was smooth everywhere it touched her.

  “Is this allright?” Claire murmured.

  “Yes.”

  Claire’s arm came around Serena’s body and rested lightly on her stomach. “You feel good.”

  “So do you.”

  Claire’s lips brushed her neck, kissing her. It was tender and erotic. They lay there like that for several minutes, connected, not moving or talking. Serena could feel warmth, love, and desire emanating from the woman behind her.

  “I’ve never felt anything like this,” Claire told
her.

  “It’s nice,” Serena said, closing her eyes at her lame reply. Claire was telling her she loved her. She didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  “You have a beautiful body. So strong. I can feel how strong you are.”

  Serena didn’t feel strong at all.

  Claire’s fingers came alive and began gently brushing Serena’s stomach. She was testing, waiting to see if Serena would stop her.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t know what I want” Not saying yes. Not saying no.

  “I think you do,” Claire said.

  Her hand seemed to fly, and when it came down again, it cupped Serena’s breast. Serena tensed, and Claire stopped.

  “Too fast?”

  ‘Too everything.”

  “I can go.”

  Serena felt the heat of Claire’s hand over her breast “No, don’t go”

  Claire’s hand began to move downward. Serena realized she was holding her breath.

  “Relax,” Claire said. “Let it happen to you.”

  Claire found her way between Serena’s legs. “Do you like this?”

  Serena heard herself sigh with pleasure.

  There was only one thing to do next, to let Claire inside, where she would find her wet and wanting. To open her legs and let Claire bring her to climax with a few quick circular caresses. That was all it would take. That was how close she was.

  She felt Claire’s middle finger explore and could hear the rumble of satisfaction in Claire’s throat as she discovered her arousal, her folds supple and damp.

  Serena bit her lip and cried out.

  Then she was blinded as the bedroom light went on.

  FORTY-TWO

  The black van rumbled down the street, slowly, as if the driver were looking for something in the adjacent buildings, but its headlights were off. Flaking paint on the side of the van read MEADOWS CLOTHING AND CASINO SUPPLY, although several of the letters were missing. It drifted to a stop across the street from Blake’s twostory apartment complex and waited there with its engine running.