"I know..." he saw the man say as his mind faded, succ.u.mbing to the pain. "I know that hurts."

Brandon was semi-lucid as the man carried him back to the bed behind the white, gauzy drapes. Who... who are you...?

Brandon tried to sign as the man lay him against the mattress again, forgetting in his daze that the man wouldn't understand him.

"It's alright," the man said, smiling, gently easing Brandon's hands back down. "You're safe here, pet.i.t. n.o.body's going to hurt you. Sleep now."

You're like me, Brandon thought, as his eyelids fluttered closed. You... you're one of us...

Chapter Fifteen.

When Lina woke, she was alone in the motel room. She sat up in bed, groggy and disoriented. The light from outside, seeping through the drawn draperies was bright and pale, no longer early morning. She glanced at the clock and found it nearly noon.

"Brandon?" she called, her voice hoa.r.s.e. Brilliant, Lina, she thought, pushing her hand through her hair. Give a shout out to the deaf guy.

She rose slowly, realizing she still had a white, terrycloth towel wrapped around her torso. She'd been waiting for him to get out of the shower so that she could take a turn. The light was now off in the bathroom, but she peeked inside anyway. He was gone.

There was no sign of him, and she felt a tremor of panic flutter through her.

Where did he go? Oh, my G.o.d, what if they found him again? Followed us somehow? What if they...?

She saw a yellow plastic bag on the bed, and picked it up, puzzled. Inside, she found T-shirts, sweatpants, a hoodie, and some flip-flops, along with a receipt from a nearby Dollar-A-Rama store. Brandon had bought clothes for her. She could tell from the sales slip that he'd bought some for himself, too, but of the second hooded jacket and sandals, there was no sign. He left again, she thought. He went and bought these, then brought them back. He left again, but for where?

She frowned thoughtfully, and as her eyes cut around the room, she saw the note on the bedside table. She felt another tremble of anxious fear, and leaned over the bed to grab it. Oh, Brandon, she thought. Don't tell me you went and did something chivalrous and stupid. Please don't...

But she read the note and realized that he had, and crumpled the page in her hand. His words-the sweetest anyone had ever offered to her-had been meant to comfort and rea.s.sure, but instead, left her filled with terrified dismay. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" she cried, throwing the note across the room. She sat down heavily against the bed, her eyes swimming with tears. G.o.d, they'll kill him, she thought. If they find him, they'll kill him, and he's all alone against them now.

She pressed her fingertips against her mouth and struggled to compose herself, to force herself into a clinical frame of mind-to think about things like a cop. She felt raw and unraveled, as if she'd been ripped loose at the seams. I need to pull my s.h.i.t together, she told herself firmly. I was imagining things last night. That stuff about their eyes, their mouths... their teeth...

all of it imagined. I was half-asleep and frightened, still buzzing from the champagne, and they were both strung out on meth or something else-something worse. They were crazed.

And I shot one of them.

That realization shuddered through her. She had shot and killed a woman last night; had sprayed her brains out of the backside of her skull in the middle of Jackson's living room. She knew that the apartment had to be crawling with cops now-homicide detectives, crime scene investigators, the medical examiner's crew.

If Brandon's brother, Caine, the one he'd impaled against the wall with a katana blade, had survived, he could easily identify Lina as the one who'd shot the girl, Emily n.o.ble. And even if he hadn't, it was only a matter of time before she was pinpointed as a suspect. Her brother's home was the crime scene, and she had ready access. Even if none of the neighbors had seen her and Brandon fleeing the scene the night before, her bullets were all over the place, buried in both victims. It wouldn't take long before investigators put two and two together.

I need to turn myself in.

She wasn't necessarily concerned about the legal ramifications of doing this. She'd acted in self-defense. However, she figured the n.o.bles would go after her like a starving wolf against a ham bone, all claws unfurled and fangs bared. She didn't want to think about the clout their kind of money commanded or the cut-throat lawyers they could afford. Christ, when they're finished with me in civil court, I'll be lucky to have anything left of my pension, much less my paychecks.

She tried not to think about what Brandon's brother, Caine, had shrieked at her as he'd thrashed in the corridor, struggling to wrench the katana blade from his gut. I will bleed you dry, you b.i.t.c.h!

Compared to that, the prospect of a lawsuit sounded nearly bright.

I need to turn myself in, she thought again, rising to her feet. She went to the bathroom and flipped on the switch, flooding the small room with bright, stark light. She blinked in shock at her reflection in the mirror; her hair hung in a dull, disheveled mess about her face. Her eyes were swollen with tears, rimmed and ringed with exhausted shadows. She had dark smudges peppered and smeared on her cheeks, forehead and neck; closer examination revealed it was blood, contact spray from where she'd shot Brandon's brother and sister. She felt her stomach hitch at this realization, her gullet heaving, and she stumbled sideways, grasping the rim of the toilet bowl and leaning over as she vomited. She retched violently, her stomach heaving again and again, tightening with each bout into painful knots. She knelt on the floor and huddled against the toilet bowl, spitting feebly and shuddering.

I have to find Brandon, she thought, closing her eyes and reaching up, pawing blindly until she hit the commode handle to flush.

He needs me. He can't be alone against these people.

She limped to her feet, grimacing at the bitter taste left her mouth, and spitting again into the toilet. She turned on the shower, opening the hot faucet as wide as it would go, and then stood under the pelting, stinging spray. Caine may not be dead, she thought. The wound had been gruesome, but not immediately fatal, and if he'd been rushed to the hospital in time, he could have well survived Brandon's sword strike.And if he did, Lina thought, ducking her face beneath the shower's relentless spray, scrubbing with her hands to get the dried blood off her skin. If that son of a b.i.t.c.h survived, he and I are going to have ourselves a little talk. He's going to tell me what the f.u.c.k is going on, and then he's going to help me find Brandon.

Lina blinked in admittedly stupefied surprise when the cab pulled up in front of Jackson's apartment building. Instead of the flurry of activity she'd been expecting-crime scene vans, marked and unmarked police cars, ambulances, all with lights flashing and illegally parked-there was absolutely nothing. No cops on the street, no service vehicles, no curious crowd of onlookers.

Nothing. It looked like absolutely any other ordinary, mundane morning, as if nothing in the world was unusual or awry.

She frowned as she paid the driver, using a twenty dollar bill Brandon had left for her. He'd tucked fifty dollars, neatly folded, in the shopping bag with her clothes, and although she knew he'd meant it for this-cab fare to see her home again, she'd still sat on the edge of the motel bed, her stomach taut, her throat constricted, her eyes stinging with fresh tears. She'd felt momentarily, heartbreakingly like a wh.o.r.e, like he'd paid her for the lovemaking they'd enjoyed the night before. No better than a hooker, she'd thought, even though she knew it wasn't true. It had still hurt her, though, and for that moment, her carefully rea.s.sembled cool had withered once more, and she'd cried.

She felt her composure faltering again, this time in mounting bewilderment, as she walked into the apartment building, and took the stairs to the eighth floor. She found Jackson's door unguarded. A tall piece of plywood had been placed over the ruined remnants of his threshold, secured in place with a pair of padlocks. There was nothing besides this; no crime scene tape, no painted stenciling ordering trespa.s.sers away by edict of the police. Lina stood, her hands on her hips, blinking stupidly at the board and feeling absolutely dumbfounded.

"Oh, Angelina, thank goodness it's you!" she heard someone exclaim from behind her, and she turned to find Sun Ying, Jackson's middle-aged, rotund, Korean landlady coming down the hallway toward her. Sun carried a large, loaded key ring in one doughy hand, and the keys rattled noisily together as she moved. "I've been trying to call you all morning at the number Jackie gave for you, but no answer!"

"I... I've been out," Lina said lamely, clumsily.

"You won't believe it," Sun said. She stopped beside Lina and began to sift through the keys. "Some kids trashed Jackie's apartment last night! The police think they broke in somehow, had some kind of wild party and just junked it!"

"Kids?" Lina asked, watching in stunned, numb disbelief as Sun unlocked first one padlock and then the other. She pried by the metal hinges and then wrestled with the heavy plywood plank.

"Help me with this," Sun said, and she and Lina shoved it aside, propping it against the wall. "See for yourself," Sun said, nodding past the threshold. "They made a mess. Everything broken and busted up, holes in the walls, the kitchen cabinets all wrecked. G.o.dd.a.m.n kids." She shook her head. "Mrs. Nunez across the hall said she even heard gunshots last night. So did Mr.

Trapper downstairs-that and a lot of banging. They both called the police right away. I tell you, if I ever find out who did this, I'll plant my foot up their a.s.ses."

But what about Emily? Lina asked, walking hesitantly, uncertainly into the apartment. I shot her in the head. There should be blood everywhere.

There should have been, but there wasn't. Lina looked around in shock. Everything was just as they'd left it. The coffee table was shattered; the kitchen trashed. But the floor-which should have been doused in Emily n.o.ble's blood and brain matter- was absolutely spotless.

What the f.u.c.k...?

Lina darted for the hallway and switched on the overhead light. She could see the crunched section of the wall where Brandon had shoved Caine; she saw the slim, black hole in the drywall where the katana blade had punched through. In fact, the katana lay on the corridor floor, its long, narrow blade flashing in the sudden, yellow light.There was no sign of blood anywhere. Not on the floor, not on the blade, not along the edges of the hole in the wall. "What the f.u.c.k...?" Lina whispered, brushing her fingertips against the ragged edges of the hole. They came away white from drywall dust, but nothing more.

"I know," Sun said, standing behind her, folding her arms over her ample bosom. "The police told me maybe whoever did this had been staying here all this time with Jackie gone. I told them no, that's not possible. You've been coming and going, taking care of things for him, watering his plants." She shook her head. "I hope they didn't go and p.i.s.s in any of his plants. You know how he loves those things. And p.i.s.s will kill them dead at the roots in nothing, no time flat."

I don't understand, Lina thought, rising to her feet again. She'd heard of organized crime hits, professional jobs, where specialists came in afterward and cleaned up any trace of evidence. But how in the h.e.l.l could anyone have gotten in here and cleaned this up so thoroughly so quickly? There's no way. Sun said two of the neighbors heard gun shots and called the police. They would have been here in no more than ten minutes, tops, after Brandon and I left. How the f.u.c.k is this possible?

"Did you see what they did to the front door?" Sun exclaimed. "My insurance adjuster is coming this afternoon to take a look at the damage to that and the wall, but Jackie's going to have to take care of anything with his furniture and what-not himself. He- ".

"I'll call him," Lina murmured, turning on her heel and walking down the hall into Jackson's bedroom. The bed was still unmade, the sheets rumpled and swept aside in the aftermath of the lovemaking she'd enjoyed with Brandon, and for a moment, she stood frozen in the doorway, her heart hesitating, her breath bated, her self-control slipping. Then she shook her head and forced herself forward.

"You know what I think?" Sun said, following closely behind her. "I bet it was some of his students from that school. Deaf or not, they can still be hoodlums. And they've got to know he's out of town. Shame on them, that's all I have to say. This is the last thing he needs, what with your mother and all."

Lina knelt beside the bed, slipping the straps of Brandon's oversized duffel bag against her hand. She hoisted it onto the bed, rifling through the contents quickly, curiously. She planned to take it with her, to tear it apart back at her own place, in a desperate hunt for anything that might help her. Brandon said he was going someplace far away, she thought. He doesn't have enough cash to get that Audi out of impound, so that leaves him with a bus or a plane. Those are as good a place to start as any.

"I'm going to take this with me, okay?" she said to Sun, turning around, hefting the duffel bag by the shoulder strap. She reached down, lifting Brandon's beige barn jacket in hand, too. "And this."

"Sure, I... I guess," Sun said, sounding surprised and puzzled.

Lina had left her cell phone on Jackie's nightstand, and she jumped, startled, as it suddenly rang. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it in hand and flipped it open. Please let it be Brandon, she thought. G.o.d, just let him call me so I can go and help him.

"Finally," Jude said when Lina answered, and she bit her teeth against a groan. "I've been trying to reach you all morning."

Not now, she thought "Jude, this is not a good-" she began.

"Time? Yeah, fine," he snapped in reply. His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e and flat, like he spoke while pinching his nose closed. "Tell me about it. I won't keep you long, trust me. I just have a message for your little G.o.dd.a.m.n boyfriend. My nose is broken, the caps on my front teeth are cracked, and his sorry a.s.s is going to pay to get them fixed. Plus some compensatory damages like pain and suffering. Not to mention humiliation."

Lina frowned. "Jude, you were drunk last night," she said. "If you're humiliated about what happened, it's your fault, no one else's.""You're wrong about that, Lina," Jude said. He was really angry, his voice edged with sharp malice. "I didn't bust up my own face. Your boyfriend, Brandon n.o.ble, did that."

"Because you..." she began, and her voice faded in surprise. Jude chuckled humorlessly at her pause.

"Yeah, I know his last name, and who his G.o.dd.a.m.n family is. I figured that out real quick, Lina. One of Jackie's old students?

Who else could it be? I remember you both talking about Brandon, about the whole d.a.m.n n.o.ble family."

"Jude, I don't know what you're-"

"Bloodhorse Distillery, "Jude said. "Triple Crown contenders. Thoroughbred horse breeding. Any of that ring a bell? And G.o.dd.a.m.n deep pockets, you'd better believe that. Tell Deaf-and-Dumb he just made the biggest mistake of his f.u.c.king life. I wouldn't be surprised if his grandfather doesn't cut him out of the will for this. Believe me, he was pretty p.i.s.sed off to hear about it."

Lina felt her stomach suddenly twist into a knot. "What?"

"I'm a lawyer, Lina," Jude said with a laugh. "I know how to follow the money. As soon as I got home from the hospital last night, I tracked down the n.o.ble family's attorney and gave him a ring. Told him what had happened, that I'd been to the emergency room and I had the bills to prove it. I also told him Brandon n.o.ble had stolen a thousand-dollar suit from me. That's a G.o.dd.a.m.n felony, if I decide to pursue it. He was very accommodating-forwarded me right to Augustus n.o.ble's cell phone."

Oh, my G.o.d, Lina thought, closing her eyes. "What have you done?" she whispered. That's how they found us last night.

Jude told them where to look.

"You stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h," she said.

"Stupid, h.e.l.l," Jude shot back. "I'm about to be a very rich son of a b.i.t.c.h, Lina. I should thank you for-"

Lina hung up on him, snapping the phone closed. She uttered a furious little cry and hurled the phone across the room. From the doorway, Sun jumped, startled, as it smacked against the wall.

"Who was that?" the landlady asked in a small, hesitant voice.

"n.o.body important." Lina grabbed her overnight bag, the one she'd brought from her apartment a seeming eternity ago. She marched across the room and stooped long enough to s.n.a.t.c.h up her phone again. Then she turned, brushing past Sun. "I'll call Jackie and let him know what happened. I'll try to get a hold of his insurance company, too. Thanks, Sun."

She paused in the living room, reaching down and grabbing Jude's rumpled suit from the floor where Brandon had left it the night before. She shook loose any shards of gla.s.s from the broken coffee table, and draped the clothes across her arm. "I'll be taking these, too," she said to Sun, s.n.a.t.c.hing Jude's shoes and cufflinks off the floor and sparing her a glance as she left the apartment.

Her first stop was Jude's apartment building, an old and expensive Victorian condominium complex. The building had bra.s.s- plated elevator cars, a marble foyer and a deskman on duty at all times. He looked up, immaculate in his crisp grey uniform and cap, as Lina marched through the revolving front door.

"May I help you?" he asked.

"Yeah," Lina replied, and she threw the Dolce and Gabbana suit, watching the jacket, slacks, shirt, and tie scatter across the polished floor. "You can ring the son of a b.i.t.c.h in 4-A and let him know his f.u.c.king suit's downstairs."

Next, she pitched the Italian leather loafers across the foyer, followed by the gold cufflinks. "Tell him I'd cram it up his a.s.s, but then he wouldn't be able to breathe."She turned and stomped away, her hands closed in furious fists, her mouth twisted in a wicked smile.

Lina stopped by her apartment long enough to change clothes and reload her pistol. While she was there, she turned the contents of Brandon's duffel bag out against her bed and listened to her cell phone messages.

"Lina, chere, ou es-tu?" Rene asked. Where are you? He'd called her cell within moments of her hanging up on him at the motel, according to the time stamp on the message. She frowned to hear him, despite the obvious concern in his voice. He only spoke French in lieu of English when he was drunk or stoned on his painkillers-or both-because he'd forget himself. He'd told her once that that was a Cajun thing, lapsing periodically into French in the course of a conversation, or worse, interspersing French words into his English dialogue. She'd once found it charming, but now, she found it grating, because it meant he was wasted. And apparently indulging in a little casual f.u.c.k, too, she thought, her frown deepening as she remembered the high- pitched, irritating woman's laughter from his end of the line that morning. Not that this bothered her. What grated on Lina's nerves was that Rene had a fondness for vacuous, bleached-blond, centerfold types with enormous-and obviously fake- b.r.e.a.s.t.s and absolutely no appreciation for multisyllabic words. Just what a man with more time, liquor, and money than sense needs.

She deleted his message without even bothering to listen to the rest of it. The next was from Melanie, and she winced to hear her friend's voice. "Look, we're on our way to the airport, but I'll call you when we get back from the honeymoon," Melanie said. "I want to talk about this, Lina. About last night. I want to hear your side of things, find out what happened. We-"

No, you don't, Lina thought, erasing the message. Trust me, Melanie.

The last message came from Jackie, from less than an hour ago. Although he preferred his keypad phone, where he could type in his messages himself, he also relied on a vocal-relay service to communicate with people who weren't hearing impaired. "This message is from Jackson Jones," said a female operator, reading aloud as Jackie had typed to her on his TDD. "Call me, Scarecrow. Where are you? How is Brandon? You haven't forgotten about my plants, have you?"

"Sorry, Jackie," Lina murmured, snapping the phone closed and hanging up on his message. "I've got other things on my mind."

As she sifted through Brandon's things, she found a photograph tucked beneath a pair of jeans; a wrinkled four-by-six image of Jackson and Brandon. Brandon was a boy in the picture, sixteen years old if a day, and Jackie had his arm draped fondly around his neck. Both of them grinned broadly at the camera.

With the photo, she found a prescription bottle of medicine. She frowned, reading the label. Jackson Jones, it said. Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride), 75 mg. Directions: Take two tablets by mouth every 12 hours as needed.

As needed for what? she thought, puzzled. What the h.e.l.l are Jackie's pills doing in Brandon's bag? And what are they for?

She opened the bottle lid and recognized the little lavender pills. She'd seen Brandon take two in the cab yesterday. He'd carried them wrapped in aluminum foil in his pocket, and had told her they were for his hands. Was he lying to me? These aren't painkillers. I've seen this s.h.i.t advertised on television. It's to help you quit smoking, I think.

Why the h.e.l.l is my brother's name on the label?

"Maybe I need to give Jackie a call after all," she murmured, frowning. She'd shrugged Brandon's barn jacket on over her fresh T-shirt, pausing long enough to close her eyes and momentarily draw the scent of him from the thick, coa.r.s.e fabric and against her nose. She tucked the photograph down inside the front pocket, then checked the clip on her nine-millimeter, locking it home.

She thumbed the safety on and holstered it at the small of her back, against the waistband of her jeans. She clipped her badge to the front of her pants and then headed for the door. Time to get to work, she thought.

Chapter Sixteen.

Here, pet.i.t.

Brandon stirred, feeling something press between his lips, a small, bitter-tasting pill. He winced, trying to spit it out, but felt gentle fingertips push it insistently against his tongue.

It's for your pain. Take it. It's alright.

He sensed a man's voice, soft and gentle, a lulling, comforting, warm sensation resounding inside his mind. He felt a hand slip against the back of his head, raising him somewhat, and then the rim of a cup touched his mouth. He drank, swallowing the pill.

He was parched; his mouth and throat felt dry and sc.r.a.ped raw, and he gulped greedily at the water until he choked. Water spit down his chin, splattering against his chest as he whooped for breath.

Easy now, the man said. Not so fast, pet.i.t. We've got plenty more.