Nightwork, page 37
A couple glitches and mangled lines here and there, but no one in the audience would know it.
He didn’t relax until his Kim—and she shined so damn bright—finished the closing Bye Bye Birdie number, and the audience surged to its feet.
Then he watched those glowing faces come out for the curtain call, one by one or in pairs, line up together with that applause rolling over them.
Join hands, take the bow. Take it again, and again.
He walked onstage when the cast called for him, took a bow of his own.
One down, he thought as he helped reorganize costumes, two to go. He made sure all props had been secured, and turning out lights as he went, left by the side door.
He found Miranda sitting on the low stone wall by the parking lot.
“I didn’t know you were waiting. I figured you had your car.”
“Lorna drove me in, and I didn’t mind waiting. Not only a pretty night, but I’m still riding on the show.”
Pride just swelled through him. “They were great, weren’t they? Really great.”
“They were amazing. I’ve seen my share of high school musicals, Booth. I’ve been in my share. That was a serious cut above.”
“They worked their asses off.”
She laid a hand on his arm as he unlocked his car. “Take some credit.”
“Oh, I do. I worked my ass off, too. Worth it,” he added as they got in the car. “Seriously beyond worth it. But two more to go.”
“The girl who played Kim.”
“Alicia.”
“Does she have plans?”
“Her parents hope she’ll go into teaching.”
“Is that what she hopes?”
“Not really. They’re supportive—the dance lessons, the school plays. She’s done some community theater in the summer, and they’re good with it. I like to think what they saw tonight—because she slayed—will help them give her a chance to take a real shot at what she wants.”
“I hope she gets it. They love you. Your theater kids. They love you, and it shows.”
“It’s mutual.”
He pulled under his carport, glanced at the mudroom door. He unlocked it, reset the alarm.
“I don’t know about you, but I could go for some wine. I just need to check something in my office.”
“Then I’ll get the wine.”
When she brought it into his office, she gasped at what she saw on his monitor. “That’s your house, outside the house. LaPorte’s people, breaking into the house.”
“Trying to,” he corrected. “They’re not B and E men. They could bust down a door, break a window—which would bring the cops coming and let me know somebody wanted in. Still, that’s probably what she’s arguing for here.”
He tapped the screen. “The lady’s bored. No one to maim, no one to kill, day after day. It can wear on you.”
Her heart stuck jaggedly in her throat. “Jesus, Booth.”
“I got an alert on my phone when they tried the doors, but I had to focus on the show. Even if they got in—which they couldn’t without that brute force—they wouldn’t have found anything I didn’t want them to.”
“You were expecting this.”
Nodding, he took the wine, ran through the videos again while he drank. “If I knew my target would be out of the house for a solid three hours, I’d want to take a nice tour of his place, get a feel, find what I could find.”
“You could show this to the police. It would ruin their plans, and piss off LaPorte.”
“I could, and wouldn’t mind ruining their plans or pissing off LaPorte. But Warwick’s good at what she does, and she’s good at what she does because she likes to kill and maim. She’s smart and she’s skilled, but she’s also sick and unstable. She could decide to kill whoever went over there to question them about this little visit.”
Booth swiveled, then tugged Miranda into his lap.
“Are you happy about this?”
“I will, happily, send this video to LaPorte and tell him to pull his bullshit watchers out, or deal’s off. I’ll add considerable outrage.”
He kissed the side of her neck. “That’ll feel good,” he murmured. “So does this.”
“I take it having people who like to maim and kill try to break into your house makes you happy and stirs your sexual appetites.”
“The show made me happy—the attempted break-in is just satisfying. And you stir up my sexual appetites. I liked looking out and seeing you in the audience.” He skimmed a hand up her side, just brushing her breast. “I’d like to look out tomorrow night and see you.”
“Because you don’t want me here if they try to break in again.”
“That’s a bonus, but I liked seeing you when I looked out.”
“Can I watch from the wings?” He managed to soothe her and arouse her at the same time. “It’s been years since I felt that backstage rush.”
“Sure. I’m just going to set my drink down because what I have in mind requires both my hands.”
“Oh?” She tossed back her hair, lifted an eyebrow. “And what do you have in mind?”
“I’ll show you.”
He had her shirt unbuttoned in under five seconds, and the front snap of her bra released. Then he used his thumbs, just his thumbs.
And his teeth.
She had to grip his shoulder in one hand as her spine melted. “I think … God! I’m going to put my glass down, too.”
“Good idea.” He flipped open the hook of her pants. “Because I’m just getting started.”
He didn’t strip her clothes away. He found it erotic, exciting to take her when they were both half-dressed. Her shirt, so crisp and white, fell off her shoulders, caught at her wrists, and laid bare so much smooth skin.
The sounds she made with her mouth avid on his kindled fires in his blood, in his gut, in his loins. Urgent, desperate sounds as she grappled with his belt.
The chair rocked and swayed under them as he worked her pants over her hips. And with one arm locked tight around her, he slid his hand down, teased, stroked, tormented until his fingers penetrated the wet and the warm.
She cried out once, twice, shuddering, shuddering before her head dropped limply onto his shoulder.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
She’d gone liquid, he thought, like wax in the sun. Still hot, so hot and fluid.
“Sure you can. Just a little more.” Light strokes now, until her breath began to thicken, and her hips began to move against his hand. “Give me just a little more.”
He’d wrecked her, destroyed her, renewed her. The pleasure, torturous, glorious, built again so she could only yield to it, to him, could only let him take what he wanted, how he wanted, as long as he wanted.
When at last, at last, he thrust inside her, she could only press her face against his neck and let him drive her.
* * *
When Booth stepped onstage at the end of the final performance, the cast and crew presented him with a ham. It made him laugh through the odd sorrow of being done.
Then his Kim stepped forward. “We have something to go with it. Some of us will be back next year and look to you to turn another group of hams into a troupe. And some of us will graduate next month and move on. But none of us will forget you. So…”
She started it, a cappella, then the music flowed in, and the rest joined.
“We love you, Mr. B, oh yes we do. We love you, Mr. B, and we’ll be true.”
It floored him, left him speechless. All those voices filled his heart so he had to struggle for composure when they finished, when the applause died off.
When he looked at their faces, he knew love.
“Thank you. Thank you for the gift, and I don’t mean the ham. You’re treasures to me, every one of you. Take a last bow. And curtain.”
After the curtain, the celebration, the cast party, he lay in bed beside Miranda. As he lay in the dark he wondered if he’d be one of those who came back next year, or one of those who moved on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
He had finals to prepare, but since he’d been there, done that, he had a lot more time to spend on the Goddess and how he intended to steal her.
He had the rest of the week before he put his first step into play, one he’d fully intended to take solo. But Miranda had other ideas.
He considered ways to talk her out of it—all, he already knew, futile—as he took pleasure in one of his favorite spring after-school chores.
Mowing the lawn.
He thought he’d blacken some chicken for dinner, serve it with wild rice and asparagus.
Leaves had unfurled nicely in the woods and azaleas had popped. People took advantage of warm evenings and had boats out on the river.
The grass he mowed smelled like summer—one of his favorite perfumes.
He saw Selene step out of the woods—no camera this time—with a purposeful stride. He switched off the mower, and met her hard look coolly.
“I’d say you heard from the boss.”
“You think you’re a smart guy.”
“No, I don’t. I know I am. I’m smart enough to know you can shoot me dead right here on my half-mown lawn with that gun under your hoodie. And I figure we’re both smart enough to know if you do, you’ll have LaPorte hunting you until somebody puts a knife or bullet in you. And that would cut down hard on the projection of your career.”
“You cost me fifty grand.”
“You could look at it that way.” Booth leaned casually against the lawn mower. “Or you could look at it another. You’re not stuck in that dump of a house for the next two months, give or take, and with an asshole like Cannery.”
“Fifty grand,” she repeated.
“Well, don’t look at me. You got made. It happens. Suck it up, Selene.”
She stepped into him. “I can wait until you do whatever LaPorte wants you to do, kill you then. Or I can take out that useless redheaded slut.”
Her eyes changed—mild surprise—as his did. She didn’t back up at the threat in his. But neither did he.
“Do you know my rep as well as I know yours? If not, do some research. You hurt her, give her a goddamn hangnail, and I’ll hunt you down. I’ll never stop, and you’ll never find me. I won’t kill you—much too quick and over. But I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your life in prison. And not a nice, regulated American prison. I know the places you’ve worked, Selene, and some of their prisons make the system here look like Disneyland.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“No?” When he stepped back with her gun in his hand, her eyes widened. “I should. I could kill you here and now, bury your body in the woods, and lay it out so the fingers point at Cannery. Or you can walk away, consider the fifty a loss, and keep going. Because trust me, I’m going to know where you are and what you’re doing from this point on. You made that a mission for me. Go look up Frank Javier and see what happened to him when he got in my way. It should help you decide how to play this.”
“You think this ends it?”
“I think I’m pointing your own gun at your gut, and could end it right here. Now get off my lawn.”
She turned, stalked toward the woods.
“Frank Javier, Lima, Peru,” Booth called after her. “Look him up.”
He heard the door open behind him as Selene disappeared into the woods. “Stay in the house,” he said without turning around.
“She’s gone. You’re holding a gun. Would you have shot her?”
“No, but that’s my failing. LaPorte doesn’t have the same sensibilities, and he’ll get an earful on this.”
For safety, Booth ejected the magazine, made certain the chamber was empty. Just because he hated guns didn’t mean he didn’t know how they worked.
He turned then and saw Miranda on the patio with his kitchen cleaver in her hands.
“Jesus, Miranda. Go put that away.”
“What are you going to do with that weapon?”
“I’m going to plant it in the bungalow after they leave. But now I’m going to let LaPorte know his hired gun cost him another million. Up front.”
“Did you—” She broke off, then started again. “Booth, did you kill this Javier person?”
“I’ve never killed anyone, and don’t intend to ever kill anyone.” He walked to his garden shed to stow the gun and the magazine. Separately. “He’s in a craphole prison in Peru.”
“What did he do to have you make that happen?”
He turned, gave her a steady look. “He tried something along the lines she just did. He got in my way. Go put that away now,” he said more gently. “I have to make a call.”
She put the cleaver back, noted, as if looking at someone else’s hand, hers was steady. But she couldn’t quite will her heartbeat back to normal.
She’d come into the kitchen for a bottle of water after shutting down her work for the day. And glanced out the window because she heard voices through the screen. Just glanced out as she twisted off the top of the water bottle.
And there was Booth facing off against a hired killer.
She’d grabbed the cleaver. She still didn’t have a clue exactly what she’d intended to do with it, but seconds later Booth had a gun in his hand.
Her gun. He’d taken a gun from a professional killer as easily as she might pluck a wildflower from a meadow.
How did she feel about that? Maybe she’d figure it out once her heart stopped banging against her ribs.
She took a long drink of water, then another while she watched Booth standing on the narrow pier, talking on his cell.
She grabbed another bottle of water and went outside.
He glanced back as she walked to the pier and looked mildly annoyed. The look didn’t match the cold snap of his voice.
“I told you not to fuck with me, LaPorte. Sending your psycho killer to my goddamn house is fucking with me. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you did or didn’t,” he said after a brief pause. “You fucked with me, you broke the terms, and it’s going to cost you another million. Pay up or find somebody else to get the rock. You know where to wire it. I’ll check in twenty minutes. If the money’s not there, deal’s off. Oh, and if she comes back here, they’re going to find her body on your fucking doorstep. Count on it.”
He broke the connection, pocketed his phone, then took the water she held out. “You couldn’t just stay in the house for ten minutes?”
“If she comes back to kill you, I don’t think hiding in the house will stop her from coming after me.”
“She won’t touch you.”
“Just you?”
“She won’t come back. She’s done here.”
Behind him a bird swooped low over the river, then winged skyward again. He had a thin line of sweat down the center of his T-shirt. Not from fear, she thought, not even from fury.
From the simple and homey task of mowing the lawn on a sunny afternoon.
“How do you know she’s done?”
“Because the satisfaction of killing me isn’t worth having LaPorte hiring someone to kill her. And when the job’s done, she’ll be in prison.”
“How do you know that?”
“Unless LaPorte has her taken out first, I’m going to make sure of it.”
“Like you did with this Javier?”
“Yeah, like that. I’ve got to finish mowing the lawn.”
Miranda just put a hand on his chest. “Tell me about Javier. I have a vested interest, Booth. If you hadn’t taken the gun away from her, she might have used it. You said he got in your way. How?”
“He’s a third-rate thief who tried to frame me for one of his jobs. Sloppy job, as most of his tended to be, and he put the man who wasn’t supposed to be home that night in the hospital. Told the guy he was beating half to death he was the Chameleon, and topped it off by calling in an anonymous tip.”
He paused, tipped back the water, and drank.
“Weak because sloppy and physical violence isn’t my style, but it brought some heat. So I hired him.”
“You hired him.”
“A wealthy Peruvian named—what did I use? Right, Lejandro Vega—and I also purchased the twelve-carat diamond solitaire he’d stolen from the man he’d beaten at the same meeting. I planted it and a couple other items in his flat, and alerted the authorities to a break-in, in progress. They rounded him up, solved two cases at once. And he’s doing a very long stretch in a very inhospitable Peruvian prison. I slipped in once, just to let him know who sent him there, and why.”
Her throat had gone dry, but she’d already finished the water. “You ‘slipped in’ to a Peruvian prison.”
“Not that hard, and necessary from my perspective. I wanted the word out.” With eyes calm and cool, he scanned the water, and over to the woods where Selene had retreated.
“I pay my debts.”
He finished off the water, handed her the empty bottle. “I need to finish mowing the back. I’ll deal with the front tomorrow. We’re having blackened chicken for dinner, and I want to marinate it for an hour.”
She stopped him again, this time with a hand to his cheek. “You’re so angry.”
“Damn right I’m angry. She came here, armed. You were in the house.”
“I had a cleaver.”
He let out a half laugh, then turned her hand to press his lips to her palm. “She won’t be back. LaPorte will make sure of it. More, in the end, all this turned to our advantage.”
“How’s that?”
“He was rattled. I could hear it. He didn’t control her. I did. And now I’m controlling him. It’s costing him another million.”
“Will he pay?”
Booth took out his phone, checked. “He already has.”
She realized, from her viewpoint, Booth could do anything, handle anything. So she nodded.
“Good. Go perform your miracle with chicken. I’ll finish mowing. I have a very cute backyard at my town house,” she said when he hesitated. “I take care of it myself. I like taking care of it myself.”
“Okay. All right. I’m sorry about all of this.”
She handed him back the water bottle. “How stupid is it to apologize for having the spine and the skill to chase off a professional killer?”
