The Beast

Keeping an arm around her, Assail spun her back to face him, took his phone out, and a split second later, a discreet chiming sound from the front of the mansion was heard on the far side of the closed study doors.

“Ask and you shall receive,” he murmured as he kissed her hard and then disengaged her from him, giving her a push toward the exit. “Answer that yourself. Welcome them properly.”

She hurried off with a giggle, as if she liked being told what to do—and God, he couldn’t help but think of Marisol. If he had ordered his lovely cat burglar around like that? She would have castrated him and worn his balls for earrings.

A burning in the center of his chest made him reach for the vial of coke in the inner pocket of his Brioni suit jacket, but it wasn’t actually his addiction calling his hand to home for once.

The extra dose made his head hum, but that was going to work for him.

He had a lot of ground to cover tonight.

* * *

“Okay, where are you, where are you . . .”

As Jo drove ever deeper into Caldwell’s main, mostly failing, industrial park, she leaned into her VW’s windshield and wiped the sleeve of her jacket on the glass to clear the condensation. She could have cranked on the defroster—except the damn thing wasn’t working.

“I need another month before I can pay for that,” she muttered. “Until then, I’m not going to breathe.”

As she thought about Bill confronting her on her parents’ wealth, she had to laugh. Yes, it was true that principled stances were laudable. They rarely paid the bills, however—or fixed broken blowers that smelled like an electrical fire when you turned them on.

You did tend to sleep better at night, though.

When her phone started ringing, she grabbed for it, checked the screen, and tossed the thing back to the seat. She had other stuff to worry about other than Bryant’s after-hours demands. Besides, she had left his dry cleaning right where he’d told her to, on the front porch of his condo.

“Okay, here we are.”

As her headlights illuminated a flat-roofed, one-story building that was long as a city block and paneled in gray metal siding, she entered its empty parking lot and continued down toward its unadorned entrance. When she pulled up to the glass doors and the sign that had the name of the factory blackened out with layers of spray paint, she hit the brakes, killed the engine and got out.

There was yellow police tape in a circle all around, the fragile barrier whistling in the wind . . . a seal plastered on the door crack with the words CRIME SCENE in big letters on it . . . and evidence of a lot of foot traffic having been in and out, a path carved in the leaves and debris by shuffling feet and equipment that had been rolled or dragged along the ground.

Man, it was dark out here. Especially as her headlights turned themselves off.

“I need to get that carry permit,” she said out loud.

When her eyes adjusted, the graffiti on the building became visible again, and the pitted parking lot reemerged in her field of vision. There was no ambient city glow going on out in this part of Caldwell; too many abandoned buildings, the business park having failed when the economy went into the crapper seven years before.

Just as she was getting antsy and thinking of calling Bill, a car came over the rise and entered the lot as she had.

As Bill pulled up next to her, he put his window down and leaned across some other man. “Follow me.”

She gave him a thumbs-up and got back in her car.

Around they went, down the long front and the shorter side of the building. The facility’s rear door was even less fancy than the front; it didn’t even have a sign. The graffiti was thicker here, the signatures and angled line drawings layering one upon another like people talking over each other at a party.

Jo got out and locked her car. “Hey.”

The guy who emerged from Bill’s car was a little bit of a surprise. Six feet, maybe taller. Prematurely gray hair, but the hot kind, like Max’s from Catfish. Dark heavy glasses, as if being ocularly challenged and having a sense of style were prereqs for hanging with Bill. The body was . . .

Well, very good. Broad shoulders, tight waist, long legs.

“This is my cousin, Troy Thomas.”

“Hey,” the guy said, offering his hand. “Bill’s told me about you.”

“I can imagine.” She gave him a shake and then nodded over at the rear entrance. “Listen, you guys, there’s a seal on this door as well. I’m not feeling good about this.”

“I have clearance.” Troy pulled out a pass card. “It’s okay.”

“He’s in the CSI unit,” Bill explained.

“And I need to pick up some equipment, so this is authorized. Just please don’t touch anything, and no pictures, okay?”

“Absolutely.” Jo dropped her arm when she realized she was about to swear, palm-to-heart.

Troy led the way, cutting through the seal with a box knife before inserting his card in a CPD electronic padlock.

“Watch your step,” he said as he opened the door and flipped on the lights.

The shallow hall had two-toned carpet: cream on the outsides of the footpath, a mucky gray/brown where work boots had trodden. Streaks of dishwater gray grit lined the wall vertically, denoting leaks in the ceiling. The smell was something between moldy bread and sweat socks.

And fresh copper.

As they walked forward, there were cans of drooling paint to step over, some tools, and a couple of drywall buckets, all of which seemed to suggest the old owners, or maybe the bank that had repossessed the place, might have taken a stab at some renovation—only to give up when it proved to be too costly.