The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “Shut up.”

  Under his showy bravado, I could see the sweaty little social outcast he must have always been, lumbering down the soccer field with his bright red frizzy locks and his hairless, pillowy body under an extra-large jersey made for boys twice his age. A rejection magnet is what he was, and he was so afraid I would walk out the door and leave him there with his hard-on I could almost smell the desperation coming off him. I hated him. How could I let him touch me?

  “One minute and counting.”

  I reached up to push a strand of hair out of my face and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over his dresser. I still couldn’t get used to my blond hair. It made me feel like a stranger to myself. I remembered how my mother used to push the hair out of my eyes so she could “see my pretty face.” What would she think of me now? I hadn’t done anything yet, and I could already feel the abscess forming on my soul.

  It wasn’t worth it. I knew that. It was dangerous. It could change me. It could change the way I thought about sex or how I could be with a man I wanted to be with or how I thought about myself. It could launch a chain of events that couldn’t be stopped and could never be reversed. It could … it was … it wasn’t worth it.

  But it was time.

  I looked at Stewart looking at me. “Do you have condoms?”

  He took in a quiet breath and licked his lips as he reached over to show me the box. He had not come into this unprepared.

  “Pop out that round,” he said, nodding at the gun I forgot I even had, “and I’ll turn it off.”

  I dropped my hands and pointed the gun at the floor. “Turn it off.”

  “Clear the chamber first, and you’d better hurry up.”

  I did. The round dropped to the carpet at my feet.

  He reached out for the gun. “Let me have it.”

  “Fuck you, Stewart. You keep the clip, and I keep the gun, and that’s the only way this works.”

  He thought about that. Then he reached over and picked up a remote control next to his bed. I turned around to look at the screen. He’d stopped the clock with twelve seconds remaining.

  I went over to my backpack and dropped the Glock in. When I walked back and stood in front of him, I thought he would faint. He couldn’t get his pants off fast enough. I pulled my sweater over my head and started to unbutton my jeans.

  He stopped me. “I get an hour. Not a minute less.” I watched him put his hands on me. The sweat glistened around the edges of his palms. I watched him move them over me. I let him touch me wherever he wanted.

  “No kissing,” I said. “Don’t touch my face.”

  “Your face,” he said, moving me closer, “is not what I’m interested in.”

  The large muscles of my back and shoulders, the muscles of resistance, had twisted into a massive knot of dull, aching pain. When I tried to swivel the tension out of my neck, it cracked and popped. But where it hurt most was in my gut. All the terrible thoughts in my head and all the memories of what Stewart had done—of what I had let him do—had slipped down into the boiling, spitting, churning pit of my stomach and hurt so much I was doubled over with my forehead on the steering wheel.

  I was still in the parking lot of Stewart’s building. I had dressed as quickly as I could, pulled each article of clothing on with the clear conviction that I would burn it before wearing it again. They all smelled of him, and of me with him, and I wanted nothing more than to find a shower somewhere and wash myself clean. But what I understood, what was making my stomach hurt so much, was knowing that I couldn’t get clean with soap and water.

  Jamie’s CD was on the seat next to me. I’d watched Stewart burn the loathsome file onto it. I’d watched as he’d gone through and deleted the same file from several directories. There was no guarantee that he didn’t have copies stashed somewhere, but I had done everything I could think of to erase at least his copies of Jamie’s bad deed. I had done more than I thought I ever could, and I still hadn’t gotten to Angel’s copy.

  A wave of dead air came over me, then a disorienting pressure in my face. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was Stewart’s face floating over me and my own looking back at me in his mirror. I saw Robin Sevitch’s battered head and Harvey’s eyes when he’d said, “Shame on you.” I saw Jamie shattered, and I saw Tristan betrayed, and I started to think there wasn’t anything I had done so far that was right. Then I saw Angel. I heard her laughing at me. I squeezed my eyes shut and ground my teeth until my ears rang. I waited for the pressure to ease. When it did, I reached into my glove box and pulled out the extra clip Bo had pressed on me. I took the gun from my bag and popped it in. I knew exactly what I had to do. Seldom in my life had I been as clear about anything.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Stewart had the stereo cranked up again, so when I hoisted the nearby bag of potting soil through his front window, he didn’t hear. He didn’t hear me when I climbed through or came down the hall to find him lounging at his desk. Just the sight of him, bloated and satisfied, set off a storming rage inside, some for what he had done, a lot for what I had done, and all of it directed at him.

  The first thing I needed was to make the music stop. I switched the gun to my left hand, reached over with the other, and tried to push the shelf unit over, the one with the stereo, the CDs, and the statues of comic book characters. It was heavy, so I had to slip my knee in for more leverage. I rocked it until I could feel it poised on the brink. A group of statues from one of the higher shelves slipped off and took headers straight into the hardwood floor. I pushed, and the music stopped. In its place was the sound of very expensive electronic equipment crashing about with magnificent force. It went on for a while.

  Stewart bolted from his chair and ran for his life. He ended up in the corner with palms pressed against the sides of his head. By the time the last of the CDs had skated across the floor, he had his hands lifted to the heavens as if to plead for intervention. I raised the gun and pointed it at him. He wasn’t getting any.

  As I lined him up in my sight, I didn’t feel anything. He could have been a paper target. He might have sensed that, because he stood frozen, staring at me in the silence, which was resounding after my cacophonous entrance.

  “I had another clip, Stewart. Why don’t you come back and sit down?”

  “You won’t kill me.”

  I walked toward him, stepping around the pieces of equipment but directly on top of as many CD cases as I could. Some of them had sprung open, which left their discs vulnerable to the bottom of my boot. I liked the way they crunched underfoot.

  I put the barrel against his right temple. “Look into my eyes, Stewart.”

  He looked into mine, and I bored into his with every ounce of fury and hatred I could summon. He looked for a long time. I knew what he was staring at. It was ugly. I could feel it. Finally, he moved back to his chair and sat.

  “Put your hands on the armrests.”

  He did. But the armrests were too short, which meant he had to pull his elbows in close to his mushy body, which pushed his shoulders up around his ears.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded in a small voice. “It was her idea. Please, don’t hurt me.”

  I didn’t want him looking at me. I never wanted his eyes on me again. I turned the chair so he faced away, found his keys, and opened his desk drawer. I pulled out the clip he’d taken and stuck it in my pocket.

  “What was her idea?”

  “She told me you would do anything to get the video of your brother back. She told me what she wanted, and she said I would get a bonus.”

  “If what?”

  “If I could get you to have sex with me.”

  I looked around at the equipment on the floor. “Did you make a video?”

  “She said she didn’t need one.”

  This was where I was supposed to fly into a rage, but I was already beyond rage. “Pull up the index of Angel’s archive. Use one hand.”

  He had a hard time keeping his hand steady
enough to maneuver, but eventually, he got to what I wanted to see. He clicked on the file, and a list came up. It looked like a directory list. Politicians—federal, state, and local. Law enforcement—federal, state, and local. Lawyers—civil and criminal. Judges and district attorneys. Media, sports, education, financial—brokers, investment bankers. He clicked on the file labeled “Lawyers,” and a list of names fell out. Next to each name was a code.

  “What are the codes?”

  “It’s how the videos are filed. There are no names on the files. Just the codes.” Like the ones I had seen on the Margolies video. “You have to have the key to know who everyone is.”

  “Send the index to this address.” I read out Felix’s e-mail address to him, and he set it up and sent it.

  “What kind of files did you make for Angel?”

  “W-w-w-hat do you…”

  “What format?”

  “CD-Rom.”

  “Tell me where Angel keeps her copies.”

  He paused just long enough for a moment of calculation. “I don’t know.”

  I spun him around so I could see his face. He was pale, his skin was clammy and damp, and his jaw was trembling. But he was lying, and I wasn’t leaving without the information I needed. I had nowhere else to get it.

  “Get out of the chair.”

  “What?”

  “Kneel on the floor, and put your hands on the back of your head.” I wasn’t sure who was talking. It sounded like me. The words were coming out of my mouth.

  “Why?” I thought he’d been panicky before, but now I saw the true state of Stewart’s desperation. As he lowered himself, his entire body vibrated. The frizzy ends of his hair sparkled with perspiration. “Why do you want me to get down on the floor?”

  “I’m not getting played by you again. I’d rather have you dead.”

  “At the cabin.” The words squeaked out. “They’re at her place in New Hampshire in a… in a hole under the floor.”

  “What room?”

  “In front of the fireplace. It’s under the rug.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where are your copies?”

  “I don’t have copies.”

  “You’re full of shit. There is no way you didn’t keep copies for yourself.”

  “She told me she’d have me buried alive if she ever found out I’d taken anything from her. She knows people… people who are in those archives. They’re bad. She knows people like that. I believed her.”

  “I’m sure you believed her, Stewart. You just didn’t think she’d ever catch you, because you’re so god-damned smart. How would she ever know that you kept your own copies to get off on because you can’t get a date to save your life, and you have to force yourself on a girl to ever get any?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did. You knew exactly what you were doing, and you enjoyed it.” I nudged him with the gun. He squeezed his shoulders together and punched his head forward and away from contact with the barrel.

  “I kept electronic files. No hard copies. I didn’t want her to ever find anything. My copies are all on the C drive. There aren’t any more. Please.” His head was still forward, his neck distended. He started to cry. “Please don’t kill me.”

  I made him wait a few more seconds before relieving the pressure.

  “Move over to the CPU very slowly, and take out the hard drive.”

  He slipped over, barely raising his head, and went to work. He had become impressively docile, which was why I let him stand up when he was finished and hand the drive to me.

  “Get me the other one, too.”

  He put his hands lightly on his hips and shifted his weight, which gave him a slightly less-docile profile. “I don’t have another one.”

  “You have a D drive. I saw it in your directory when I was here with you last time.”

  “All my personal stuff is on the D drive—my taxes and my address book and my—”

  I raised the gun and smashed the butt down on his keyboard. The tray it was on sheared off its mooring under the desk with a loud crack. Everything tumbled to the ground. Then I shoved one of his monitors over the edge of the desk. It teetered and finally crashed down onto the pile.

  “Okay. Okay. Stop!” His arms flailed at nothing. “I’m doing it. Stop it.”

  He fell to his knees next to the CPU and made all the appropriate disconnections. He handed me the second drive, but when he tried to wobble to his feet, I reached down with the barrel of the Glock and tapped his shoulder.

  “Stay down, and put your hands behind your head.”

  His raised his arms slowly. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders started pistoning in time with his loud sobs. “I did everything you wanted. Please, don’t kill me. I’m sorry for what I did. Please.”

  I stared at him kneeling in the ruins of his audio equipment, gasping for breath. I hadn’t come intending to hurt him. I certainly hadn’t planned on killing him. But my focus began to drift as I stared at him trembling and begging on his knees and thought back to the way he’d enjoyed taking his pleasure from me when none had been offered. It didn’t help that Stewart scared for his life and Stewart having sex released approximately the same odor. Smelling him again made me think about the way he’d hovered over me, searching my face for reactions I had refused to give him. He had gotten off on the dominance. Now he was completely vulnerable to me, and I thought of all the things I could do to pay him back, right up to and including putting a bullet in his brain, and I wondered if I could do it.

  I put my finger on the trigger and lifted the gun to his head to see … just to see what that might feel like.

  “Don’t.” More whimpering. “Please, don’t. You lied to me. You said we would fuck and then you walked out.”

  It didn’t feel real. It felt like TV or the movies. Bo had warned me that it was a light trigger, so I touched it gently, caressing it with my finger. In my mind, I felt the gun kick. I felt his blood and brains blow back on me. I breathed in the smell of cordite and felt it burn my nasal passages. But then the smoke cleared, and it was quiet, and all I felt was the big void that would open up in that room if he were dead and I was the one who had made him that way. If his soul departed, leaving me standing alone with a smoking gun in my hand, there would be too much space around me, probably forever.

  I dropped the C drive on the floor, the one with all the dirty movies, and stomped it hard. That felt so good, I stomped it again. And again. I stomped it until Jamie’s mistake was pulverized and my mistakes were demolished, until what I had done with Stewart was ground into powder and grit and tiny metal shards embedded in the hardwood floor. I kept stomping until I could barely raise my leg, while Stewart cowered next to me in a classic duck and cover. Then I dropped into the swivel chair to figure out what to do next.

  I reached down under the desk, grabbed a handful of the wires and cables, and gave them a vicious yank. All the electronic toys they were supplying jumped and flinched and popped and eventually went dark.

  “Put your hands behind your back”

  He did so promptly. I put the gun down, wrapped one of the cables around Stewart’s left wrist, and tied it off. As I tied his left hand to his right, I gave him his instructions.

  “I’m going to call Angel now. When she answers, I’m going to put the phone to your head and you’re going to give her a message from me.”

  “What about my D drive?”

  “I’m holding on to it. I don’t want you calling her back after I leave. That’s how you keep me from stomping it, too. Do you understand?”

  “What do you want me to tell her?”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Angel’s cabin was completely dark. I looked through the window, and it reminded me of looking through Monica’s apartment window. For a moment, I expected a face, maybe Angel’s face, looking ghoulish instead of gorgeous, to pop in front of me.

  I liste
ned to the stream flowing nearby and tried to calm down. My heart was barely keeping up with me. I had left Stewart tied up on his floor, then gone out to my car and pointed it toward this place. On the way, I had called and checked on various quarters. Bo and Tristan and Monica were fine. They were playing Trivial Pursuit, guns at the ready. When I told Tristan where I was going, all he said was to be careful. If Stewart had kept his word and not called her back, Angel would be looking for me at the Ritz-Carlton, but we both knew there was no guarantee that Angel had believed him.

  I went back to the window, took a deep breath, and rammed my elbow through the glass. It wasn’t easy. I had to hit it a few times. Fortunately, the window cracked before my elbow did. I pushed the glass into the house. It fell onto an un-Angel-like yellow quilt that was lying neatly over a single bed below the window. I reached in, found the lock, unhitched it, and scrambled through, careful to crawl around the glass on the bed.

  No one was around, but still, I winced when I put my feet to the floor and heard the floorboards creak. Using my flashlight, I found my way to the bedroom door and out into a hallway. With one hand glued to the wall and the other holding the flashlight on the floor in front of me, I made my way to the den.

  I probably could have turned on a light but felt more comfortable down on my hands and knees with the flashlight. Every piece of furniture had a rug underneath it. I found one that looked as if it had been moved recently. It had a minor speed bump in it. The chair that sat on it was heavy, but once I got the right leverage, it tipped right over. I grabbed a corner of the rug, flung it completely out of the way, and found what I was looking for. Cut into one of the wide planks of the floor was a small, neatly milled, rectangular trapdoor. I stared at it, breathing hard. I hadn’t realized how winded I was. I mopped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, but it didn’t do any good. I was damp again immediately.

  The opening was the width of my shoulders. It had two half-moon crescents carved out of the sides so you could put your fingers in and lift it out. I got down on my knees and tried to pry it out, but it was heavy and wedged tightly into its opening. I got up and framed the opening with one foot on either side. I wormed my fingers in, gave it a quick tug straight up, and it came out.