Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Forty-two

When I woke up, I was sick. Hangover sick. I saw Trey sitting in the chair beside my hospital bed, his upper half sprawled on the edge of the mattress. He was asleep, his head tucked into one curled-up arm. The second I turned my head, he stirred and sat up.

“You’re awake.”

“What happened?”

I started coughing, and he reached for a glass of water and held it to my lips. He looked bleary, still like a page from GQ, only one that had been wadded up and then spread flat again.

“There was an accident,” he said.

“I know that much. What happened?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

I lifted the sheet and looked down to see a swath of compression bandages around my ankle. Details lurched in my memory—the smoke, the crunch of impact, the pain, the ambulance, more pain, and then a needle-pricked slide into nothing.

“I broke my leg, didn’t I?”

“No, you sprained your ankle. You also have a mild concussion, some contusions, and several contact burns from the airbag. A black eye too. The nosebleed has stopped, however.”

I reached up. A bandage the size of a waffle covered my right temple. I gingerly traced the puffy swollen tissue beneath my right eye.

“It feels squishy.”

“It’s the other eye.”

I decided not to touch that one. “What happened?”

“Someone broke into Rico’s car and rigged a timed explosive device in the glove compartment. It malfunctioned, however, so there was no explosion, only smoke.”

I got lightheaded. “Somebody tried to blow me up?”

“Not you. Rico. Detective Cummings says it was wired to go off five minutes after the driver’s side door opened.”

I slumped back against the pillow. A freaking bomb. Not personal, not a knife in the chest or hands around the neck. Something that could have taken out a city block.

Trey returned the water glass to the table. “You jumped the curb and hit a concrete barrier. If you’d made it to the interstate, there could have been serious complications, but nothing as potentially lethal as what would have happened had it functioned properly.”

“Is Rico okay?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“He went home to rest. He told me to call if you woke up.”

“When did you get here?”

Trey blinked at me. “I haven’t left.”

I looked closer at his clothes. Not wrinkled from being slumped on the bed. Wrinkled from sleeping in a chair. I also caught the barely visible sheen of dried blood on the French cuffs.

“Omigod, are you okay?”

“Typical impact damage, nothing serious.”

I wanted to see all the way into his skull, to know what might have been shaken loose, what fresh weirdness awaited when the neurons finally settled. But all I could see was the afterburn of worry and exhaustion.

I coughed, and the pain made me wince. Plus I started tearing up with a vengeance, which was exactly what I didn’t need at the moment.

“Would you get a nurse, please?”

Trey headed for the door, leaving the water where I couldn’t reach it.

***

Sloane Sykes arrived right after breakfast, her reporter’s bag on her shoulder. She came in wearing jeans and carrying a single polyester rose. Pink. She slapped it on my tray next to a slice of ham. “Brought you flowers.”

“Flower,” I corrected. “Singular.”

“Whatever. It got me past your security.” She appraised me with curious admiration. “So that’s the fabled Trey Seaver, huh? I was expecting someone bulkier.”

She craned for another look at him. He was on his cell phone, and from that angle, I could see the bruises on his jaw. He cut a look my way, raised an eyebrow. I made an okay sign, and he returned to his call.

“He’s bulky enough.” I sipped at my pale lukewarm coffee and dumped three packs of sugar in it. “And he let you in because I vouched for your good character. He’s not terribly thrilled about it, but I told him I owed you one.”

“You owe me several.” She sat in the square chair and scooted up beside me. “So tell me how it feels to be the victim of attempted murder?”

“It wasn’t me they were after, it was Rico. It was his car, not mine.”

“But you were in it.”

I stirred the coffee. “That was a fluke.”

“Surely somebody knew that you’d be in that car?”

“Not unless they were psychic.”

She made notes. “So the Dead Poet Killer strikes again.”

“That whole thing is a piece of nonsense dreamed up by Frankie Styles and people like you.”

She wasn’t insulted. “A serial killer targeting poets goes above the fold, that’s for sure.”

“But even if this is the work of some poet-obsessed serial killer, this wasn’t a part of his plan. I’m not a poet.”

Sloane cast a glance into the hall. “What about your bodyguard boyfriend? Anybody have a bone to pick with him?”

“He used to be a cop, so I imagine there’s tons of people who’d be happy to see him DOA. But he wasn’t supposed to be in the car either.”

She scratched a flurry of shorthand into a reporter’s notebook, but I noticed the tiny MP3 recorder whirring along simultaneously. We were on the record. I also noticed the edge of a police report peeking from the bag.

“Is that from last night?”

She nodded and handed it over. “You’ll especially like the photograph of the bomb.”

The colors in the shot were saturated and lurid, but the device seemed ridiculously amateurish. An ashy red brick with wires and a squat battery-ish thing duct-taped to a plastic sandwich bag.

Sloane tapped the photo. “It’s a model rocket motor fueled with kerosene. Some powdered creamer and confectioner’s sugar for accelerants. An exploding squib hooked to a kitchen timer. All of it wrapped around a hunk of fertilizer for maximum firepower.”

“So why didn’t it explode?”

“Wrong kind of fertilizer.”

“That’s all that stood between me and a violent flaming death, a purchasing error?”

“Seems so. But this does put paid to the mafia assassin theory.”

“Why?”

“Mafia assassins don’t screw up. This was badly done, like somebody pulled it straight off the Internet and didn’t know enough about nitrogen oxide to make it work. They put a chunk of Miracle-Grow on there and assumed it would go boom. Amateur night DIY.”

I sat there and stared at the pictures. It looked innocent and grubby, like a middle-school science project. Not an instrument of death.

I handed the folder back. “So what did Amber have to say?”

Sloane crossed her legs and dangled her shoe. “Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s right down the hall, dying to talk to you.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.” Sloane pulled the camera from her bag. “You don’t might if I snapped a photo first, do you?”

I slumped back against the pillow and resigned myself to it. There were worse pictures of me out there, I was sure.

“Fine. You want profile or straight on?”

***

Amber arrived under Trey’s intense scrutiny, her chestnut hair pinned up, her pale yellow dress wrinkled from the heat. She was even prettier in person, heartier and healthier, and she walked like a model—spine straight, neck elongated, one foot in front of the next.

She sat in the green faux-leather visitor’s chair, knees together, and explained that she and Lex were from the same hometown, some tiny place in Ohio. His parents were elderly and didn’t fly, so they’d authorized her to bring him home for the funeral. The story was precise and rehearsed, a consequence of the media onslaught, I supposed.

“How did you end up working with Lex in Florida?”

“I…I knew him as Kyle, so…”

“Of course. Kyle.” I could have kicked myself. “Please go on.”

She did. “We never lost touch after high school. He did a lot of traveling, the small circuits mostly, but then he moved to Tampa and started specializing in the corporate magic gigs. That’s when he called me and offered me a job. I was an actress in L.A. at the time, which meant I was broke and waitressing. Corporate magic was a relief after that—steady, easy, mostly weekdays.”

She shook her head, smiling. “Kyle was a natural. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.”

“I saw some videos. I couldn’t take my eyes off you either.”

She smiled bigger. “It took some getting used to, always getting vanished, or set on fire, or having rabbits plucked out of my hair.” Suddenly, her mouth twisted. “Is it true a python got Boxter?”

“Who?”

“The rabbit. His name was Boxter.”

I winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Then Kyle tried to sell the same snake?”

“Apparently so.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. I mean, he’d always had a dark side, and the corporate work was making it darker, but—”

“A dark side?”

She caught the spark of interest in my voice. Her expression grew cautious. “He’d developed a lot of contempt for the work, and it was coming out in weird ways. He lifted a manager’s wallet once. I was shocked, but he told me to stop worrying, that he’d just wanted to see if he could do it.”

I could see it happening, those swift talented hands, the sweet perverse challenge.

“I got mad, and Kyle returned the wallet, told the guy he’d found it. The manager was so happy, he gave Kyle a twenty for a reward. I got madder. Kyle got offended, told me to stop being so high-minded, that he’d restored that man’s faith in humanity for the low low price of twenty bucks.”

Her eyes glazed at the memory. She was pretty, but opaque. I was having a hard time seeing past the expert make-up and perfectly coiffed hair and polite responses.

“But you didn’t know about Lex?” I said.

“I noticed the tattoos, of course. And the hair. But the corporate clientele didn’t go for the new look, so he had to cover his hands with stage make-up, black the red streak out.”

“Did he ever talk to you about poetry?”

“That started a little over a year ago. He’d been barhopping in Miami one weekend and got pulled out of the audience to judge a poetry slam. That’s what you call it, right? A slam?”

I nodded. She continued.

“He started writing a lot after that. He even tried out for some teams, but never made it. Jacksonville, Miami, Atlanta, Savannah. He studied the winners like his life depended on it—in person, online—but he could never quite figure out how to make it work.” She inhaled with a shudder. “I’m guessing Lex had more success than Kyle did.”

“Did you ever see him perform as Lex?”

“No. I saw the videos, though, a few days ago. They didn’t make sense. Kyle was so earnest and sweet, Lex was so…” Her voice trembled. “Look, he wasn’t perfect. The part where you say he’s a thief makes sense, but I’m hearing that he blackmailed people and threatened people and set people up. That wasn’t the Kyle I knew. He wasn’t evil.”

“So what changed? Why did he create Lex?”

“I don’t know, but it happened quickly, over the last few months. He was never in town anymore. I know now he was here, but he never shared any of this with me.”

“This may sound off-the-wall, but I’ve heard that some of your corporate clients were…connected.”

She cocked her head at me, and for a moment it was like talking to Trey. Cool and curious, all surface and artifice. But I knew that wasn’t true of Trey. And I suspected it wasn’t true of her.

“The people we worked for weren’t gangsters,” she said. “I don’t know who killed Kyle. Or that woman. But I’m sure it had nothing to do with our work in Tampa.”

“But you cared about him, didn’t you? More than as a business partner?”

Her chin trembled, but only a little. “I was his friend. Maybe his only one.”

I reached out and took her hand. She jumped, startled. Her skin was cool and moist, her bones fine and delicate.

“I have some poems of his,” I explained. “In a box at my boyfriend’s place. I want them to go to someone who cared about him. Who knew and appreciated that sweetness.”

She nodded. And then I did see a tear, sparkling at the corner of her eye. She wiped her eyes delicately, trying to preserve her mascara.

“I would like that. So would his parents. Thank you.” She stood. “I’m meeting the rest of the team in a little while. One of them has something to give me too, a painting.”

Frankie still working the angles. “Good luck getting that on a plane to Iowa. And be sure to wear something camera-ready. If I know Frankie, this exchange will end up being a photo op.”

“It’s Ohio. And if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s smile pretty.”

She stood and smoothed her dress. Sloane gathered her files and shut off her recorder. She looked at the hallway and then back at me. “Listen, this is totally off the record…but if you’re so all-fired convinced that you weren’t the target, why is Trey guarding your door and not Rico’s?”

The utter rightness of what she’d said ripped through me. I got light-headed with the sense of it, which was as clear and coherent as a bucket of ice water.

“Trey!” I yelled.

***

Rico called forty-five minutes later. “I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the gesture, sending your gorgeous boyfriend over and all, but as you’ve explained, he doesn’t play for my team, so…”

“Be quiet and unfold the sofa. He needs a nap.”

“Like Mister Armani’s gonna settle for the Broyhill.”

“He will if I tell him to.”

A pause. “Sometimes you talk about that man like he’s a well-trained Rottweiler, you know that?”

I didn’t reply. The comment stung, mostly because it was true, but I’d deal with that particular personality flaw later. At that moment, all I wanted was Rico safe.

His voice was gentle but firm. “Baby girl, you know this is no good.”

“Rico—”

“Tch-tch. Just listen. How about we both come back up there and stay with you? They said they’d be releasing you this afternoon anyway.”

“Rico—”

“Trey agrees with me, don’t you, Trey? He’s nodding yes.”

I thought about it. As plans went, it wasn’t bad. Everybody in one spot, nurses in the hall, security guards on every floor.

“Whatever. But if you two insist on coming back, can you smuggle in a cheeseburger? I’m starved.”