Three Times a Lady

PART III

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

‘Named for Huracan, the Carib god of evil, hurricanes are amazing and destructive natural phenomena that occur 40 to 50 times worldwide each year. Hurricane season takes place in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Central Pacific from 1 June to 30 November, while in the Eastern Pacific the season stretches from 15 May to 30 November.’ – Matt Rosenberg, in his article, Terror of the Coasts.





CHAPTER 22

Directly to Nicholas’s right, Dinah Leach leaned her lithe body over the bar at Johnny’s Hideaway and attempted to catch a bartender’s attention.

He studied her face closely from the corner of his eye before stealing a quick peek down the front of her blouse. From the look of things, she was trying to trade in on her small measure of notoriety for some faster service. Presumptuous bitch. Did she really think she was better than everyone else in the nightclub? Better than him? If so, then she’d better enjoy it while she still could. Because pretty soon she’d never feel anything again.

Nicholas cocked his head in Dinah Leach’s direction as she leaned her glistening body even farther across the long bar, showing off her impressive cleavage to a male bartender. Worked like a charm. Then again, where was the big surprise in that? Good boob jobs tended to draw their fair share of attention, and Dinah Leach had a great boob job. Twenty thousand bucks, at a bare minimum, and Nicholas would know. Smart business move for her when you looked at things honestly.

Nicholas strained his ears and caught the whore’s words above the deafening music. She was ordering just one more drink before tabbing out for the night.

‘Vodka and Red Bull,’ she shouted, favouring the bartender with a seductive smile and a slight shimmy of her silicone hooters. ‘Easy on the Red Bull.’

The bartender nodded, then stole his own furtive peek down the front of her blouse before moving away quickly to prepare her drink. Thirty seconds later, the reality-television star was throwing back her head and draining the booze in four quick swallows.

From this distance, Nicholas could actually hear the ice cubes banging up against her veneer-covered front teeth. He cut his gaze down to the bill lying on the beer-soaked bar and lifted up his eyebrows. Two hundred and twelve bucks, not counting tip. An impressive night of drinking by anyone’s measure.

Curious, he watched Dinah Leach fill in the line for the gratuity. Another forty bucks for the leering bartender. And why not? What did she care? It was all just dirty paper to her, right?

With the woman standing no more than two feet away from him now, Nicholas realised how much older she looked in person than on television. Her face a little more haggard, her features a little more drawn, the wrinkles around her mouth a bit more pronounced.

Still, there was nothing at all wrong with the way Dinah Leach smelled. Not even close. Her light and fruity perfume floated up into Nicholas’s nostrils and made him dizzy, sending a delicious wave of olfactory delight flooding through his system.

Nicholas breathed in deeply and savoured her sweet smell, mentally handing it to her. Even after all that frantic dancing, Dinah Leach still smelled like a brisk walk through a garden on a fresh spring day.

He leaned over and whispered into her ear. ‘You smell absolutely wonderful, princess.’

Dinah Leach snapped her face over to him and pulled back her head on her shoulders. Her bright green eyes locked onto his like heat-seeking missiles. ‘Don’t waste your time, OK. It’s not going to work. I’m already spoken for.’

And with that decidedly rude comment, she simply turned on her heel and marched briskly out of the crowded bar, not even bothering to turn around to look back at him. Smug, self-satisfied, completely sure of herself – that was Dinah Leach, all right.

Poor thing. Who did she think she was kidding?

A hot jolt of anticipation rocketed through Nicholas’s veins as he watched the cocky slut saunter away, the urge to kill her even stronger now than it had been before. More insistent. Still, Nicholas was happy she wasn’t a complete wallflower. Her bitchy attitude would only make it that much more enjoyable when the time finally came to kill her. No guilt. No worries. Just good old-fashioned murder.

Just the way Annabeth Preston liked it.

‘Nice try, white boy.’

Nicholas turned in the direction of the deep voice coming from his left side. The ‘O.G.’ from the dance floor, grinning like a fool, his mouth hanging wide open to display the ridiculous hardware flashing inside.

Nicholas lifted up his eyebrows on his forehead. ‘Excuse me?’

The wannabe gangster shook his head and barked out a laugh. ‘I seen you talkin’ to that bitch, dude. You can just forget about it. She belongs to me.’

‘Does she know that?’

The black guy widened his grin. Not yet, but she’s about to find out. Ya heard me?’

Nicholas frowned. Looked like this guy had been watching Dinah Leach the entire time she’d been ordering her drink at the bar, too. Had he been watching Nicholas, as well? Probably not something he should leave up to chance at this point in the game.

Nicholas lifted the corners of his mouth into a smirk. ‘Go get her, tiger,’ he said, knowing that you needed to show guys like this one that you weren’t afraid of them, much like you needed to do when confronting an aggressive dog. Or was that dawg? ‘She’s more your speed, anyway. To me, she’s just a worthless whore. Nice tits, though.’

The black guy widened his eyes. For several long moments, it looked as though he might attack. But when he saw the cold, dead look in Nicholas’s freezing green eyes, he immediately thought better of it. Good thing for him, too.

Instead of attacking him physically, the black guy simply flipped Nicholas the bird with both his middle fingers and followed Dinah Leach out of the crowded bar. Fake bravado, of course, but at least he’d had sense enough to leave it at that.

Nicholas shook his head and cursed the inconvenience as he watched the black guy stalk his mark out of the crowded nightclub. No matter how much time and effort you put into these sorts of things, murder was never an easy feat to accomplish. Logistically, at least.

Nicholas breathed in deeply. No doubt the black guy with the ridiculous teeth in his mouth had a bit of nonconsensual sex with Dinah Leach out in the parking lot on his mind right about now. It was the only way bullies like him ever got laid. But that wasn’t happening. Not tonight. Not on Nicholas’s watch. His mother wouldn’t have liked that one little bit.

Finally leaving the bar and trailing the black man toward the exit, Nicholas kept no more than fifteen feet behind him the entire way. He rolled his neck on his shoulders to loosen up his muscles as he went, knowing he’d need to act fast. This was it. Show time. Time to clear out this obstacle from his path so that the main festivities could finally get under way. Grunt work, really. Nonetheless, work that needed to be done.

Stepping outside the noisy bar a moment later, Nicholas saw that the wind had already started to pick up, blowing various bits of garbage and other debris around the surprisingly empty parking lot. Little bits of dust kicked up into his face and stung his eyes, making them water profusely. Still, Nicholas was happy to welcome the first signs of his accomplice. From the look of things, Hurricane Allison was definitely on her way.

Reaching a blind spot around the corner of the building twenty seconds later, Nicholas picked up his pace and removed the .45 from the inside pocket of his Armani blazer. Stopping less than a foot behind the black guy, he flicked off the safety and glanced around quickly to make sure no one was watching him. Didn’t want an audience for this, after all. Not yet, anyway.

Seeing that the coast was clear, Nicholas lifted the gun to the base of the black man’s skull and pulled the trigger once, somehow timing the action to perfectly coincide with a loud crash of thunder.

The ‘O.G.’ crumpled to the ground like a bag of dropped bricks, his backward-facing Atlanta Falcons baseball cap flying off his head as he tumbled to the ground. Blood rushed out of his shattered skull and onto the blacktopped pavement, pooling at Nicholas’s feet. Bits of white bone and gray brain matter sprayed onto the sidewalk in front of them.

Stepping over the shimmering pool, Nicholas leaned down to examine the lifeless body. No need for a second shot, that much seemed clear. The man was already deader than a doornail.

Putting away his gun, Nicholas checked his pulse by placing two fingers against his throat. His heart rate hadn’t risen above a hundred the entire time he’d been killing the other man. His hands were still steady; his palms still dry. The evenness of his breath made even him wonder what had just happened.

Turning away and walking quickly back around the corner of the building, Nicholas caught one last glimpse of his quarry before she left the parking lot. Fifty yards away, Dinah Leach was getting inside her silver BMW for her fifteen-minute drive home; blissfully unaware of the fact that Nicholas had just saved her from what most likely would have been a very brutal rape. The self-absorbed moron was much too closed off in her own little world to notice anything going on around her. Much too consumed with her own insignificant life, completely confident in the knowledge that nothing could ever hurt her. After all, she was famous, right?

Nicholas pursed his lips as he watched Dinah Leach drive away into the darkness; happy she’d decided to leave the nightclub earlier than usual. Normally, she’d have stayed out dancing until the early-morning hours, but tonight she was obviously in a big hurry to beat the storm home.

Nicholas closed his eyes and luxuriated in the feeling of the wind whipping through his hair. For a moment, he almost felt sorry for Dinah Leach as the wind picked up even more and fluttered his perfectly tailoured Armani blazer around his trim waist. No matter how hard you tried, though, you could never really beat the storm, could you? Of course you couldn’t. And Hurricane Allison was almost here now. Nicholas could sense her; feel her soft breath on his cheek; the moistness of her saliva in the spitting rain.

And that was very bad news for Dinah Leach.

Very bad news, indeed.

Tick, tick, tick…