“Nothing,” Susan said.
“Do you realize the competition we have for this story? It’s national.” Derek lowered his voice. “Ian will shit if he finds out you’re working on something else.”
“I think it might have something to do with Parker,” Susan said.
There was a short pause. “It will take a few minutes,” Derek said. “I’ll call you back.”
Susan had opened the driver’s window and was smoking a cigarette to get the taste of hazelnut-flavored coffee out of her mouth when Derek called back.
“There was a story,” he said. “September 2005. Stuart Davis and his girlfriend, Annabelle Nixon. They lived together. Disappeared. They found their car parked on Twenty-third. No trace of them since. The story had some legs because he was a junior aide in Senator Castle’s office.”
“Zebra,” Susan whispered.
“Huh?” Derek said.
The press conference was minutes away. Susan got out of the car and dropped the cigarette on the street. “E-mail me everything we have,” she said.
It was all coming back to Senator Castle. Susan searched her mind for any clue from her investigation into the Molly Palmer story, anyone who acted suspiciously. She had interviewed a hundred people over the last few months. And frankly, they had all acted suspiciously. But there had been one kid in particular, a high school kid who knew one of Castle’s sons. Maybe it was time to pay him another visit.
CHAPTER
48
Archie sat on the end of Gretchen’s bed, his feet on the floor. The mattress was firm, the gray satin duvet slick beneath his hands. The master suite’s vaulted ceilings made the room feel huge and off-kilter. The sideways perspective made Archie feel a swoon of vertigo.
Gretchen undressed. She did it uneventfully, as if this were something they did often together, as if they had always been lovers. Her clothes neatly folded on a chair by the closet, she turned back and faced him, naked.
Archie felt all the blood in his body rush south. She was bruised. Hematomas from her attack shadowed her ribs and stomach, her left clavicle was raw and swollen. And still she was lovely. Prison, if nothing else, created time for an excellent workout regimen, and Gretchen was toned and slim. But you didn’t get that kind of face and body without the perfect mix of genetics. The DNA that had played a role in making her a monster had also made her a beauty. Without the mix that had granted her that perfect profile, who knows? She might have been another kind of person, a good person.
The ceiling fan rotated overhead, throwing shadows on the ceiling, her face, the carpet. Shapes shifted on the periphery of Archie’s vision.
Gretchen padded over to where Archie sat, and took his face in her hands and lifted his chin so he was looking up at her. Their knees touched. He gripped the satin, slippery in his fingers.
She lowered her chin, and looked up flirtatiously. “Shall I hurt you?” she asked.
“No,” Archie said.
She tilted her head and smiled. “Do you want to hurt me?”
Archie sighed. “No.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
He lifted his hands from the bed and put one on each of her hips. The light in the room was low but he could see goose bumps rise on her flesh from his touch. “Redemption,” he said. “Barring that, distraction.”
“Distraction I might be able to help you with,” Gretchen said. She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek, his face still cupped in her hands. “You know,” she said, “I am capable of human emotion.”
He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was something real between them, some fucked-up twisted connection.
He pulled her to him and she moved her hands behind his neck and they kissed again. Her naked body in his arms was almost too much for Archie to bear.
He cleared his throat. “You taste sweet,” he said.
“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s you. Your system’s not cleaning out toxins like it should.”
“Undress me,” he said.
He held up one wrist and she unbuttoned the cuff. Then he held up the other wrist and she unbuttoned that cuff. Then she went to work on the eight buttons that connected the front flaps. She did it by touch, never losing eye contact with him, just sliding her fingers down the vertical band of buttons until she found the next one. When the shirt was open, she slid it off his shoulders and held it for a moment before letting it drop to the carpet.
Her eyes still leveled at him, she reached toward his groin and freed the undershirt from under his waistband. He held up his arms and she lifted it off his torso and then dropped it on top of the dress shirt.
Her eyes immediately went to his chest. He could see them move over his scars, tracing the damage she had done to him. His flesh was a minefield. Even nurses had to steel themselves the first time they saw him. Not Gretchen. Her face shone with appreciation. She looked at it like it was a Picasso.