The Way We Burn

by M. Leighton

  Finally, she sets her glass in the sink and then pads back out of the kitchen. She pauses. Listening to me, I wonder? After a few seconds, she moves on.

  I hear hushed movements coming from what I think is her room. A door clicks open then, a couple minutes later, snaps shut. The closet.

  A few minutes later, I hear the sound of water turn on. A thick gush, like water into the tub. A couple of more minutes and a pause before the shower spray patters against the curtain. Rattle rattle as it slides over the rail, and then I hear the change of the sound of the spray as it hits her body.

  I bolt up and run for her room, looking for her laptop, keeping an ear out for the shower. She left the door open, minx that she is, so I have to be extra careful. Luckily, I don’t have to look far. It’s sitting on the edge of her bed.

  Having memorized the passwords, I quickly access her site and begin browsing through everything I can find, which turns out to be a lot. Little of it makes sense at first glance. There are all sorts of seemingly random, unconnected items on the server she’s using. There are security systems she’s hacked to access cameras at different places throughout the city, there are bank records she’s hacked into to manipulate. There’s even traces of a criminal record that she’s created for herself, for what purpose I can’t imagine. This is bigger than what I expected. Much bigger.

  I take it all in, turning each piece over and over until I find what I think is the place it fits into most logically based on the other pieces. I form a rough conclusion, one I hope is off by a longshot. It appears that Simone is not only providing prostitution services for men with very peculiar tastes, but she’s also running a smaller endeavor on the side. Possibly concurrently.

  She’s catering to those who want to experience the thrill of killing a human being, but want to do it with minimal risk. It’s something I’ve heard of before. Sadly, there’s a sect of humans who have the desire to commit homicide, but they aren’t dumb enough to try it on their own. It’s those people who go to the dark web searching for a service that can cater to their…needs, someone who can create a controlled set of circumstances where they can kill, but with much less risk. Sort of like planning it out for weeks or months in advance, only not having to come anywhere near the victim to do it.

  It makes the job of law enforcement officials much more difficult, because there is no motive. There is no thread that leads from the victim to the killer. As long as there is no physical evidence, which is by far the hardest part of getting away with murder, the killer will likely never be found.

  It happens more than people think. The databases are full of unsolved cases because there’s just not enough to go on. Even when there is forensic evidence left behind, tying it to any one individual without a starting point (like a motive or a relationship to the victim) is nearly impossible. It’s like looking for a needle in a statewide, sometimes nationwide haystack.

  And Simone is smart enough to know this.

  And she’s capitalizing on it.

  This is where I see the flaw in her plan, though. The risk in situations like these falls on the one orchestrating the deal if they don’t handle every detail just right.

  And we all know the devil’s in the details. The devil just hasn’t found Simone yet. And if I can help her, maybe he won’t.

  My mind whirls. What the serious hell has she gotten herself into?

  I look through files and times and dates. I briefly study the arrangements and the payments, of which there are quite a few that total a significant sum of money, until I begin to see a pattern emerge. I sift through the pieces, a picture beginning to formulate, but it’s difficult to wrap my head around what she’s doing.

  Or what it seems like she’s doing.

  The groan of pipes sounds seconds before the water shuts off, and I scramble to close out the site and put her laptop back where I found it and then rush back to the living room, leaping over the end of the couch to assume the position I was in when she last saw me.

  I focus on my breathing to lower my heart rate as quickly as possible so that there’s no sign I’ve been awake or exerting. By the time she comes back out, and comes straight into the living room to check on me, I’m fast asleep.

  As far as she can tell.

  I keep my body relaxed, my breathing deep as Simone gets ready. It doesn’t take as long as I imagined that it might. Within what I would guess to be thirty to thirty-five minutes, she’s walking back into the living room, the heavier thump of her gate indicating that she’s wearing heels as she walks toward the door.

  The instant she closes it behind her, I’m up and throwing on the rest of my clothes, racing down the stairs to follow her.

  When I peek out the main door to the building, I look left and then right, spotting her just as she disappears around a corner about a block ahead. I hurry to catch up, easing around that same corner as she’s stepping to the curb to hail a taxi. Same way she did two nights ago.

  Just when I think she’s going to take me on the same wild goose chase she did before, Simone surprises me by exiting the cab at another club, a high-end place called Captain’s. I watch from the street as she goes in through a rear door. This must be where she “works.”

  I pay my driver and get out, making my way inside after paying a hefty cover charge. When I get to the main dining and “viewing” room as they call it, I can see why. It’s the picture of opulence, especially for what amounts to being a strip club. Everything is tastefully decorated and the women are not just attractive, but downright beautiful from what I can see as I follow the hostess to my seat.

  I ask for something in one of the darker corners. For my request, I get a knowing smile that makes my skin crawl. I don’t explain to her that that is not why I want it. She wouldn’t believe me anyway. I mean, look at where I am.

  I order some food. I’m starved.

  There’s a chance Simone came here for some other reason, that she might not actually dance here. If that’s the case, I’ll have to pick up her trail another night. There isn’t an easy way to find out what she’s doing in the back without risking her seeing me, and right now, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take. The likelihood of her picking me out of the crowd, with lights in her eyes and me in the dark are slim, but if that were to happen, I’d just plead coincidence and let her assume I frequent clubs like this. Things can’t get too much worse on that front. She’d probably think that’s funny, damn her.

  The food is actually excellent. I gobble it down, hungrier than I thought I was, and then settle back with a full stomach to watch the show and await Simone. If she’s even going to dance tonight that is.

  Beautiful women come and go on the stage, each smooth and firm and built to just about perfection. None of them, however, arouse more than a mild boredom in me. There’s one woman I want to see. More and more as I think about seeing her in this type of venue.

  I pay little attention to the music, only making a note of it when it changes, which is what signals a different dancer is coming on stage. However, it dims completely when I see a familiar curvy figure step onto the stage, a wig of waist-length, straight jet-black hair flowing down over her bare shoulders.

  Simone.

  Her strut down the stage is everything I should’ve known a woman like her would make it. It’s slow, sensual. Slinky almost. Alluring as hell.

  She’s wearing a modified Cleopatra outfit—a narrow swath of white material that falls from each shoulder, down over each breast, frames her shiny gold panties, and then ends at the tops of her bare feet. A wide gold belt holds the two strips to her body and matches the glittering headpiece encircling her wig.

  She’s stunning.

  Sexier, even in her more modest costume, and more beautiful and more graceful than all of the other women I’ve seen combined. And when I watch her hips start to move, a fluid wave from left to right, I realize that I want more than anything else to see her dance.

  But not like this.

  I look aro
und at all the other men here, all of them facing the stage, sitting up to take notice of this incredible creature, and my chest gets tight with a mixture of jealousy and a bone-deep sadness that she’s on display this way—someone so smart and gorgeous, someone who has so much more to offer the world than just her striking body and her innate sexuality.

  I watch Simone for thirty seconds or so, eventually looking away until she leaves the stage. Even more than before, more than ever, I want to find out what she’s doing and I want to save her from it. Save her from herself. Save her from ruining her life and whatever future we might have together.

  I don’t know how many dances she will do tonight, but I can’t sit through another one. I’ll have to try again another night.

  For today, I’m done.

  23

  Noah

  I can’t get the image of Simone dancing out of my head. I haven’t talked to Poppy in two days, mainly because of Simone. She’s the hardest part of this to deal with, the hardest part to come to terms with. She’s part of the woman I love, but she’s the part that hurts. She’s the claws and teeth of love, the sharp edge and the boot heel. She’s the part that can rip a man to shreds and then laugh about it right to his face.

  She scares me.

  She also fascinates me.

  My brain just has a difficult time reconciling this woman with the woman I love.

  This one is made for lust and lies and deceit and pleasure and pain. Not for love. Nothing so soft, so…weak. She’s the type never to be tamed, never to be broken. She won’t apologize for her wild way, and will forever only be happy if she can run naked in the wind.

  Or whatever her version of that is.

  I think everyone has a little bit of her in them, myself included, but most of us can keep her bottled up, keep her from hurting us or anyone else.

  But for some, Simone can’t be controlled. She takes over. And once she’s free…

  I understand Simone.

  Maybe that’s what scares me most.

  After dark, I drive my car over to Poppy’s building. I usually take cabs or walk simply because it’s a pain in the ass to find parking half the time, but what I’m getting into now is delicate work. I need my own way around, my own place to park and watch that front door for her to exit.

  My own anonymous way to follow her.

  Simone exits her building at one forty-nine AM. She’s wearing a sassy red bobbed wig and a skintight one-piece dress that has laces up both sides. It’s sexy in a trashy sort of way, but I’m beginning to think she does that more on purpose than as a fashion statement.

  I just can’t figure out why, can’t figure out what her end game is.

  I watch her until she turns the corner, guessing that she’ll go a little farther and hail a cab like she’s been doing. I give her a couple of minutes lead and then I pull out, heading in that direction. I’m just turning the bend when I see her duck into a yellow cab.

  As I suspected.

  I follow at a safe distance, hanging back as she has the cab drop her off only to hail another down the street two blocks.

  She goes through another convoluted path to get to another cheesy motel, this time to pick up a small black car. She takes it to a different club, one called The Pink, parks in their alley this time and she waits, just like she did that first night. There’s no on-street parking here, so I keep circling the block, hoping I don’t miss her when she leaves.

  I nearly do, though. I’m just coming through the red light when I see her exit the alley. She gets ahead of me, but not so far that I can’t follow her to another motel, where she picks up yet another car.

  When she stops, I notice that, once again, she’s in different clothes, and, once again, they’re very nondescript. And she has a passenger again.

  Her routine continues to be predictable, but only in the ways that I observed the other night. She goes in to stay at motel number two. The lights don’t come on and only she comes out some time later. I follow her as she retraces her steps and then goes back home, just like she did that first night.

  Tonight, I’m no closer to discovering what she’s up to. And if I don’t step up my game, I doubt I will. At least not in time to be of any help to her.

  Back at my place, I pull out my laptop and attack this whole thing with fresh eyes and fresh determination. I log in and slip through the back door to Simone’s site Winston told me about. Rifling through here feels like rifling through the drawers in her bedroom, picking through her mind, through her personal spaces. Introducing myself to all her demons.

  But I do it.

  Because I have to.

  I go through every client, every transaction, look through every site and link she’s messing with. The only thing I’m able to determine is that she’s shutting off certain traffic cameras and even private security cameras, and she’s doing it for the nights and times she’s in those areas. I know this because I can see where she’s disabled them for tonight, and it’s all along the route she took, right down to the different motels and the club.

  When I see her skills at work, I have to admire her sharp mind. She’s not only beautiful and cunning, but she’s wickedly intelligent. She’s hacked sites that some of the professionals I know at the Bureau would have trouble hacking.

  My eyes are scratchy and bleary by the time the sun comes up. I know that I won’t be effective for very long when I’m this tired, so I call it a day and head for bed.

  I wake up to six texts from Poppy.

  When the hell does Simone/Poppy sleep?

  * * *

  After mulling it over for a few hours on a rested brain, I realize I’m going to have to get a little closer to this thing. I need more information about the passengers she’s picking up, and I need more information about what they do in the hotel room, in the dark, for those minutes.

  As I’m thinking, I get a text. It’s Poppy. She wants to see me.

  I want to see her, too, but is it the smart thing?

  It could be.

  It could not be.

  If I’m with her, Simone isn’t out wreaking havoc. But if I’m with her, because Simone isn’t out wreaking havoc, I can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

  But I need to see her—Poppy, not Simone.

  I need to see her. So maybe just for a while.

  Feel like a little roadtrip tonight?

  Three bubbles pop up immediately and I can almost see her smile when I read the response.

  Yes! Yes, yes, yes! That sounds great!

  I feel a small smile of my own spread across my face.

  Not even going to ask what we’re doing or where we’re going?

  A short pause.

  Hell no. I’m in.

  I send a thumb’s up sign, my smile slowly fading. I know if I could see my face, I’d still see the concern, the distraction, the dread there, lurking under the smile.

  24

  Poppy

  N oah is prompt. He said eight and he’s ringing the buzzer at three minutes before. I’m nearly dancing from foot to foot as I wait for him to mount the stairs. Part of me is hoping he’ll kiss me and whisk me away to the bedroom, and we’ll just spend the night making love instead. It seems that everything is better when we’re making love.

  But the moment I see him, I know we won’t. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, nothing as obvious as a frown or a grimace, or even the absence of a smile. In fact, Noah is smiling, but something is off. I know it as surely as I know my fingers are curled into the soft cotton of my shirt dress.

  He walks straight to me and pulls me into his arms, kissing me like I hoped he would. And his kiss is wonderful, filling every crevice and gap in my heart with everything heady and exhilarating that it always does.

  But.

  There’s a but.

  I don’t know what’s in the but, but there’s a but and it’s alive and writhing and thriving, sitting between us like a breathing thing.

  Something is wrong. Something is
different. I don’t know how I know, but I know. It is.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks when he drags his mouth away from mine long enough to take a breath.

  “Nothing. Nothing in the world. Everything is just right now that you’re here.”

  Noah’s eyes soften, some of the man that I love seeping back into them. Maybe everything will be okay.

  Maybe.

  “That’s what I want to hear.”

  “What else would you like to hear?” I ask, twining my arms around his neck and lacing the fingers together at his nape.

  His mouth crooks up on one side. “Uh, that’s a pretty loaded question.”

  “It is?”

  “It is. ”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it’s a long list. A lonnng list.”

  “Beginning with?”

  “’Harder, Noah!’ and ‘You’re so incredible, Noah!’ and ‘Put it right here, Noah!’”

  While I laugh, my heart feels a bit disappointed. “I could take care of all those. Is that all? Or do you have any more requests?”

  “I’d trade them all for one.”

  My stomach clenches into a knot and my pulse beats an excited thump in my throat. “And that one would be?”

  “’I love you, Noah.’”

  I know my smile is a beam of brightness within the dark oval of my face where we stand, hidden in my doorway. There’s nothing I’d rather hear from him. Not one thing.

  My voice drops low. “I do love you, Noah. More than anything in the whole world.”

  Noah buries his face in the curve between my neck and shoulder, and holds me so close it makes my breathing shallow and difficult. But I won’t ask him to ease his hold. I won’t ask him to let me go. I would rather suffocate.

  “I love you, too,” he whispers, his warm words stirring the few tendrils of my hair that have escaped the confines of my loose top knot.

  “Where are we going?” I finally ask him breathily, my head growing light and dizzy.