Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  “Touching,” Art said. “I do believe he cares.”

  Polly avoided watching what Jennifer was doing to Jack. His breathing grew heavier. She turned hot with embarrassment.

  “Ferrito made our lives hell,” Art said. “Emilio expected Jen and me to make sure he never got out of the compound alive. We killed him. Or we thought we had. But the bastard didn’t die, and we suffered for that.”

  Nasty had it right, he’d had it right all along. His only missing link was the identity of these two.

  “We were in the circus,” Jennifer said. “Till Emilio saw just how talented we really are. Cripes, I nearly had a flamin’ cow when Gavin made that crack about knife throwing, Jacko. Art and me can throw knives. Boy, can we throw knives. And we can shoot. And get in and out of anywhere. We’re bloody indispensable, we are, but Ferrito spoiled our record. Now he’s going to go back for his own funeral.”

  Holding Polly’s destroyed clothes aloft, Art pulled the phone from beneath the bed and thrust it on top of the mattress. “Jack abducted you. We rescued you. Come and get you. Make the call.”

  “He’ll guess something’s wrong. He’ll know you’d have taken me to him if it wasn’t.”

  “Why, thank you, Polly, love.” Art dropped her clothing in her lap. “We’re grateful to Polly, aren’t we, sis? She’s right, y’know. So here’s what we’ll do. You say Jack brought you here because he couldn’t take you home to Mary—but we wouldn’t go along. Tell him you’re afraid to go anywhere without him.”

  Jack panted loudly and groaned.

  “Kill me,” Polly told Art. “Kill me now or kill me later. So what? Kill me if I do what you want, kill me if I don’t do what you want. Right, Jennie?”

  Jennifer said, “Smack the mouthy bitch.”

  Art obliged, snapping Polly’s head around with the fist that held the gun. He hit so hard she fell forward onto her raised knees and closed her eyes. She tasted blood.

  “Make the call,” Art said tightly.

  “I’ll never make your call. And if you make it, I’ll scream so he’ll bring the police with him.”

  Art dealt her another blow, this one to the other side of her head.

  “Leave her alone.” Jack’s voice was strangled.

  “Oh, a gentleman,” Jennifer said. “A gentleman with a little, tiny prick. Look, children. Look at Jack’s tiny prick. He wouldn’t look at me when we did it because I’m too big, and too bloody ugly. Now it’s Jack’s turn to be laughed at.”

  Polly longed to lie down, longed for the voices to stop, for the horror to be over. She longed to know Nasty would be okay and that he’d be there for Bobby. Then she could let go. Then it wouldn’t matter.

  “Dial the number for her, Art.”

  Dredging up her strength, Polly lifted her head and swept the phone from the bed onto the floor. She pushed it as hard as she could and laughed when the receiver flew off and cracked as it hit a wall.

  “Don’t!” Jennifer yelled as Art leveled the gun at Polly’s eyes. “That’s what she wants. She wants you to kill her. I’ve got one or two things I want first.”

  Art kept on staring at Polly. “We had it in the bag,” he said. “You know that, Jen. If Ferrito hadn’t gotten the hots for this bitch, we’d be home free.” Insane hatred threaded every word. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Jennifer’s mouth pulled down at the comers. “Of all the rotten luck. They almost ruined everything for us. We can’t go back. We’ve got to go on.”

  “I say we kill these two and run,” Art said.

  His sister laughed a dreadful sound. “Like hell. How long d’you think it would take Emilio to catch us. No way, Art. We’re going to win it all. Get Ferrito here. I want him to watch first.”

  Nasty pounded a fist into the opposite palm. Dressed in black, with a black stocking cap, he paced in front of the silent phalanx of police vehicles and men. They’d assembled at the end of the cul-de-sac where the Loders lived.

  The threat of winter edged the night wind. From time to time a dark shape moved but made no sound. The army of the law had moved into position without lights, and after the nearest neighbors had been evacuated to a safer distance. These people huddled in a group on State Street, where a crowd had begun to gather behind the police cordon.

  A police radio van stood to one side. Outside the back doors, a man waited for the signal that an outgoing call was being made from the Loder house to Nasty’s cell phone.

  “What’s taking so long?” Nasty muttered to Dusty. “Maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe she isn’t even there. It didn’t have to be Jennifer Loder’s BMW. Whoever’s got Polly could have taken her somewhere else.”

  “Bullock saw a dark BMW at the end of Rose’s street. When Bullock got to the house, Roman found the note. Polly—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Polly had been there only minutes before. The note said she was going with me. A lie. And afterward, the car was gone. And I know the Loder woman drives a dark BMW. And there’s a dark BMW right in front of the goddamn house now!” He couldn’t stand the waiting. “They could be killing her while we speak. She could already be dead. The Loder woman, too, if she was a decoy with a gun in her back. I’ve got to go in.”

  Dusty grabbed his arm. “Keep your voice down.”

  The officer in charge approached. “Better cool it, sir,” he said to Nasty. “We wouldn’t want to alert them.”

  “I could be wrong. This may not have been an attempt to set me up. They may not try to call me.”

  “We’re going to fan men out around the property and close in.”

  These people didn’t know what they were dealing with. They didn’t know that the people inside that house dealt in death the way Tully’s dealt in coffee every day down in Kirkland. “Don’t do that,” Nasty said. “Let me go in alone.”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll walk into a bloodbath. You may kill whoever made the Loder woman lure Polly away in my name, but he won’t leave Polly alive.”

  “This is it, sir,” the man outside the van hissed. “Ringing now.”

  Nasty leapt into the van, tearing off his cap as he went. He donned the headset a radio operator silently handed him and sank down in front of a microphone. At his signal, the operator flipped a switch and pointed at him.

  “Yeah,” Nasty said.

  “Is this Nasty Ferrito?” A woman’s voice, but not Polly’s.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Jennie Loder. Y’know, Polly’s friend?” She didn’t sound threatened.

  “I remember you, Jennie.”

  “Polly’s here. I’ve got a bit of a problem on my hands.”

  Nasty took a deep breath. It didn’t calm him down. He let the appropriate second pass before saying, “Polly? There? Where?” He hoped he sounded suitably amazed.

  “At my place. I’ll give you the address.”

  He counted off another pause. “Polly’s… Where is your place? Here in Kirkland you mean?”

  “That’s right. Look, you don’t have anything to worry about. She’s sleeping now, but she’s okay.”

  Sleeping? Or dead? He had to do this just right. “How did she get to your place?” If he didn’t ask the questions, they’d get suspicious.

  “It’s a long story. Best you come on up here. I saved the day, I’m glad to say. No thanks to Jack Spinnel. Never would have guessed he was crazy enough to… Well, I’ve already called the police. They’re on their way. They’ll take care of Jack. You can’t swipe people and take them away just because you’ve got the hots for them.”

  The radio operator looked at Nasty. No distress call had been sent by Jennifer Loder to the police. The detective, who was also listening in, looked at Nasty and gestured for him to wind up the conversation.

  “Thank you, Jennie,” he said. “I’ll be right there. Give me the address.” He wrote it down.

  “You’re leaving now?” Jennifer Loder asked.

  “I’ll be there
in about ten minutes.” Less than a minute would be closer to the truth, giving him at least a chance at a surprise attack.

  “Good on you.” Jennifer cleared her throat. “We’ll be waiting. Don’t waste any time.”

  Nasty sat back. He squinted at the lit panel in front of him. “Time. It’s time. You won’t get away this time.”

  “We’d better get on with it, Mr. Ferrito.”

  He took off the headset. “What? Oh, yeah. Ready.” On the street again, he replaced his cap. “Dusty. I want you behind me. Okay with you?”

  “Mr. Ferrito, sir—”

  “I know,” Nasty told the policeman. “This isn’t the way you’re comfortable doing things. Please bear with me. I know what these people are. We trained in the same kinds of jungles.” He’d almost died in their particular jungle, on a night when a husky voice had whispered “It’s time. Checkout time.” And a flare of light had blossomed the instant before a bullet smashed his ankle.

  “You okay?” Dusty asked sounding desperate.

  “Great. Have your men fan out, Officer, but please tell them not to move in until you get a signal from me.”

  The officer adjusted the gun at his hip. “We want you in a vest.”

  “We don’t do vests,” Dusty said. “They slow you down. Now we gotta go.”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” the officer said very quietly. “But I didn’t tell you you could go in there.”

  Nasty left at once. Running, registering the protest in his ankle, he hugged scrubby bushes on two vacant lots to the right of the Loders’ house. He made his way rapidly to an unkempt hedge bordering the property.

  Dusty fell in behind him. “What d’you think?”

  “I don’t believe what I think,” he said moving again, skirting the hedge to come at the house from the back. He’d be expected to walk up to the front door and ask to be taken prisoner.

  “What’s that mean?” Dusty could still move out when he had to. “Tell me.”

  “I think I’ve heard Jennifer Loder’s voice before.”

  “Revelation. You know you’ve talked to her.”

  “Not here. Somewhere where she whispered. I think she was in Bogota. I think she was there when I got shot. She could be the one who told me they were waiting for me—right before I went into the open and whammo. Out to pasture, here I come.”

  “Nah.”

  “I kept getting snatches of something. In the past few weeks. Since I met Polly. In the bookshop it happened. And a couple of other times. It was her. Always her. I know it now. There’s a light in that corner room.”

  “One at the front, too,” Dusty said.

  They flattened against rough siding, bent low, and slipped rapidly to stand beneath the lit corner windows. Cautiously, Nasty straightened until his head cleared the level of the sill. There was a gap between the drapes.

  He edged forward. A narrow slice of the room inside had the quality of too few parts of a jigsaw. At first he couldn’t tell what went where. A bed. White light directed on the bed. He went a little closer. On the bed, a body swathed in a sheet, the sheet fastened with a belt at the bundle’s waist. He couldn’t see farther down than that.

  It could be Polly. He quelled the urge to raise the Sauer and blast his way in through the window. Around the shrouded head, a strip of something had been tied, rammed in the mouth, and tied. A gag. You didn’t gag a dead man—or woman.

  Movement.

  Into his view came the back of a man. Naked. He took another backward step. In front of him stood a diver.

  Nasty froze. Diver. Jennifer Loder in a wet suit. She held a gun. Nasty recognized a Glock 19 and didn’t envy the man who was feeling its cold barrel in a very sensitive spot.

  Jack Spinnel. The naked guy’s head was equally naked, almost more so as it shone with sweat.

  The Loder woman was in charge, and her attention was splintered. Nasty ducked and ran on to the corner, turned, and came to a door with a window. Inside was darkness. Without hesitation, he worked the lock. An easy number. At least the hinges were oiled. Dusty came in behind him and closed the door carefully. Lives had been lost over lesser mistakes than letting a breeze slam a door.

  The room they sought was only feet away. Voices came from inside. Jennifer Loder mocked and taunted Jack. Jack didn’t whimper, or beg—Nasty liked him for that. He did take foolish risks. Calling an enemy with a gun an ugly cow might be a fatal mistake.

  “You’re going to get yours, Jackie boy,” Jennifer said. “I was going to wait for Ferrito and let him watch the whole thing, but I think we’ll have a quickie little number before he rings the old bell.

  “Uncover pretty Polly’s eyes. Hurry up. That’s it. Carefully, does it. Okay, children, here goes. Jack gets to hump ugly Jennie with the lights on—and with an audience. If he can get the pathetic little bugger up. Oh, yeah! Look, violence turns him on.”

  Nasty knew the sounds he heard were of Jennifer getting out of the suit. “Wait here,” he whispered against Dusty’s ear. “I’m going in.” He might blow it, but he couldn’t wait for a better chance. Struggling out of the wet suit would impair her balance, and her concentration.

  “You always said you wanted to do it with the light on, Jack, but you didn’t really. You were glad you never had to look at me.”

  “You didn’t want me to look at you,” Jack said. “You know you’re ugly.”

  The man had a death wish.

  Beneath Nasty’s weight, the door burst inward and parted company with its hinges. It fell across the foot of the bed. He vaulted to his left and crouched, the Sauer braced.

  “Shit!” Jennifer Loder tried to tear the wet suit completely off with her feet. She still held the Glock. “You move and she dies.” The gun was aimed at the bed where he saw Polly’s eyes looking at him through a rent in the sheet.

  Polly shook her head at him, shook it wildly from side to side. Without warning, Jack moved. He lowered his head and ran, roaring, into Jennifer.

  Nasty went for the Glock.

  Loud gurgling, choking sounds jerked his attention to Polly. She writhed rocked her head to one side, bucked up and down.

  She was choking. Her eyes turned repeatedly to her left. Nasty took a step toward her, and glanced to his right. Polly was warning him. He threw himself forward at the same second as Art Loder pulled his trigger. A silencer made sure his weapon produced only an almost innocent pop.

  “Jen!” Loder’s mouth fell open. His eyes strained wide open. “Jen!”

  Jennifer Loder had dropped to the floor. She lay on her face. She didn’t move.

  Art Loder let go of a wolflike howl. His teeth bared he lined up on Nasty.

  Dusty hadn’t lost his touch with his old Colt. A bloody mass blossomed over Loder’s shirt. His gun slipped slow motion, from his fingers. He buckled at the knees, and Nasty watched him die before he hit the ground.

  Nasty looked at Dusty and pulled his knife from his forearm to cut the sheet away from Polly’s head.

  She stopped him from taking the sheet all the way off. “Not dressed,” she croaked.

  Nasty sank to the bed and pulled her into his arms. He felt the approach of silent men. The police would be on their way.

  Grabbing up his pants, Jack Spinnel covered himself. Then he slid down the wall and sat, his head turned away, saying nothing.

  “It wasn’t a man,” Nasty said to Dusty. “In Bogota. She called to me. Jennifer Loder. And she shot me.”

  Dusty made his way between fallen bodies to sit at the foot of the bed. “You don’t know that. You can’t be sure, just because—”

  “I can be sure,” Nasty interrupted. “I thought I’d killed him. Her.”

  “You did. You knew you had. With the knife.”

  “No.” He pointed to Jennifer Loder, to shocking red scars sweeping in a wide arc around a shoulder blade. “I know my mark.”

  “Well, we finally finished the job.” Dusty put his hand on Nasty’s shoulder. It was over.

  Twe
nty-nine

  One each side of the bow, they leaned on the rail of the April. Early-morning mist floated inches above the water and curled up to all but obscure the dock.

  A gull cried through the echoing almost day, and its cry broke somewhere out there, broke and faded.

  “You ought to get some sleep,” Nasty said. He felt his separation from her.

  “So should you.”

  “I’m tough.”

  “So am I.”

  “You’re turning blue—and various other colors.”

  “Don’t be rude.”

  He chuckled and leaned out to peer into the clear water where it lapped at the boat’s hull. “I was only talking about the state of your bruises.” Backed by the veil of mist, the bowline reflected on the surface.

  The blanket of moisture wrapped them in a damp chamber where sound issued and fell away as if it had never been.

  “The doctor said you need to rest for a few days,” he told Polly.

  “He also said I ought to be concussed. People with concussion shouldn’t be allowed to sleep.”

  “He said you ought to be concussed, not that you were. You’ve been through hell, Polly. You need to give yourself a chance to get over what’s happened.”

  She was quiet.

  He looked at her. Coming to the April had been her idea. When the police had released them, she’d refused to go to her condominium, had declared that she’d only go there again to pack her things. And she’d said she would be looking for another place to live.

  When they’d come aboard, with Polly wearing a sweater one of the policemen had produced, Nasty had told her to take whatever she wanted from his cabin. An ancient camouflage T-shirt in shades of green, brown, and beige had been what she chose. It sagged at the neck, flapped around her slim upper arms, and fell below her knees. It didn’t do a thing for the purple marks on her face.

  “The shirt lends an air of mystery,” he told her.

  “I like it because it’s yours.”

  No snappy response came to mind.

  “I hate to be repetitious, but I’m still jumpy.”

  “It’s all over now. There’s no need to be jumpy.”

  “That’s why I am,” she said. She put one sneaker on the other and rested her chin on folded arms atop the rail. “It’s all over. I saw how you were last night. You did it all like… It was like going to the store is to me. You hold a gun the way I hold a purse. That was all natural to you. Most people’s minds would switch off. Yours gets clearer and clearer.”