“He shouldn’t have to. He should just be able to take care of his family, and go to work. Instead, he has to deal with Denise Lowell, and all because he’s an easy target. She knows he has access to you, and she knows she can manipulate him. Do you think that’s fair?”
Zeth moves subtly, angling his body so that his torso and his hips are facing me. He won’t look me in the eye, though. At least he doesn’t, until he’s just about to vanish through the doorway, into the bowels of the house. “Nothing about life is fair, Sloane. If it were, serial killers and rapists would be riddled with ball cancer and charity workers would be winning the fucking lottery every week. Mason’s lucky. If I was Charlie Holsan, there’s no way he’d have just walked out of here in tact. He’d have had his throat slit and two guys would be in the process of burning off his fingerprints and pulling his fucking molars out of his head.” He doesn’t hang back to see what I might have to say to this. He storms off, out of sight, growling darkly under his breath.
“Isn’t that the whole point, though?” I yell after him. “Isn’t the whole point that you’re not Charlie Holsan?”
Chapter Nine
SLOANE
Morning light pours through the vast expanse of glass that forms the right hand wall of my bedroom. Miles away, Seattle is a faint blue smudge on the horizon, banded by the gunmetal grey of water in the far distance. The hour is early, must only be five-thirty, six, perhaps, and I’m gripped by the desperate need to pee.
I get up, flinging back the covers, unsurprised by the fact that the other side of my bed is still empty. Zeth slept at the warehouse last night. I gave him the space he needed, though what I needed was something else entirely. I needed reassurance and a strong pair of arms around me, holding me tight. I needed to be told I hadn’t just made the gravest of errors when I talked him out of killing Mason. Zeth didn’t agree with what I had asked of him, though; he was hardly going to be the one to comfort me and tell me everything is going to be okay, when he clearly believes otherwise.
I reach the bathroom just in time. It feels like my bladder’s about to explode, and my head right along with it. Man, I feel shitty. I feel worse than when I was gripped in the same flu bug half of St. Peter’s is now suffering through. Sure enough, when I try to stand up, the room spins like crazy, pitching and see-sawing, and without warning my stomach rolls. “Shit.” I drop down, managing to gather my hair off to one side just in the nick of time before I throw up, last night’s paltry dinner of cream cheese on toast making an unpleasant come back, spattering into the toilet bowl.
God, please, no. Please don’t say I’ve managed to catch a different strain of this thing. I wait there, hunched over the porcelain, waiting, biding my time, just in case I’m not done and I’m going to vomit for a second time. I don’t, though. My stomach muscles spasm, complaining bitterly as I get to my feet, but I seem to feel a little better. Could have been a one off, after all. It might not be the flu bug, returned with a vengeance to kick my ass. The antibiotics I took for my chest infection seemed to clear everything right up. More likely the cream cheese that’s been sitting in my refrigerator for weeks has finally upped and turned bad. I make a mental note to clear out the whole icebox in the next few days as I head back to the bedroom and swing myself back into bed. It’s a work day, but I’m not on shift until this afternoon. Better to rest and get as much sleep as I can before the madness of St. Peter’s later on. It’s a Friday—the emergency room is going to be packed full of drunks and reprobates, and I’m going to need every lick of strength I can muster to get myself through the night.
I fall asleep immediately, my dreams heavy and intense, pressing in on me. I’m aware of the fact that I’m dreaming as I shift through the bizarre landscape of my unconsciousness, the way you might slip from room to room in a familiar yet almost forgotten house, turning all the door handles, trying to find the way out. It feels like many hours have passed when I wake later, covered in sweat, wrapped tight in the bed sheets, but the clock on the bedside table only reads eight fifteen. Downstairs, the sound of the kettle boiling lets me know Zeth is home. Zeth Mayfair, making himself a pot of coffee. How very domesticated of him. I still have to pinch myself sometimes; it’s strange imagining him here with me, living in this house, amongst my things, sleeping in my bed, cooking in my kitchen. Just existing here alongside me. It seems as though it shouldn’t be possible, in truth. Men like Zeth don’t settle. They don’t live out the white picket fence fantasy, reading the paper on a Sunday morning and walking the dog. They’re more likely to spear you straight through the heart with your white picket fence post and kidnap Fido.