Page 5 of Price of Angels

“Good.”

And so Michael had gone for his usual dinner beforehand, to give the girl, Serena, time to wake up and get ready to leave for her night shift job at the twenty-four hour CVS. On a full belly, he’d driven out to her apartment, parked in a shadowed section of the lot not monitored by cameras. He’d waited for her to appear in the dim flickering security lights: flash of bleached hair, store-issue polo shirt, khakis. She’d walked with her head down and her bare arms clenched tight across her middle to ward off the sharp winter chill.

She’d never seen him leave the truck, never heard his swift, cat-footed approach. Slender, and petite, she’d been like a breakable thing made of twigs in his arms. A panicking toy, as his hand clamped so tight over her mouth that she couldn’t open her jaw wide enough to bite him. A very fragile, underfed, damageable little woman, as he’d crushed her in the total cover of shadows.

It made him sick. The Salisbury steak made a gallant leap up toward the top of his stomach. He didn’t want to do this to a woman. Not right, not right at all.

But Ghost had ordered him, so he strangled her, right there, in the parking lot, so as not to make a mess. Her struggle was laughable. Not one whimper slipped beyond the unrelenting pressure of his hand at her mouth. And after, she sagged limp in his arms. A broken doll, with badly dyed hair falling across her slack face, making her look like a Barbie, sightless eyes and vacant stare.

People watched too many crime shows, Michael decided, now, as he watched the flames flicker at the edges of the grave, as the fire really began to catch; thick smoke doubled over on itself, and rose, colorless by the time it dissipated through the tall pines; if he inhaled deeply, he could smell the hickory; yum, like dinner. People watched all sorts of primetime dramas in which crack forensics teams solved the most enigmatic of murders, bringing swift, irrefutable justice to killers just like him.

But it didn’t work like that in the real world. Away from all the dramatic close-ups and the inspiring musical scores, killers like him slipped beneath everyone’s notice. A penniless girl with no family and friends disappears one night as she leaves for work? Who’s going to report that? Her boss, maybe. But by the next morning, he would have taken her car to the chop shop Ghost’s friend ran, and Michael would have left behind not one shred of evidence. No leads, no directions, no hunches. Girls like Serena disappeared all the time. No one would think to look for her charred bones on this idyllic hill among fifty rolling acres of field and forest, without a human witness for miles.

The fire was getting restless, the flames licking up in great impatient tongues. Michael closed his eyes and tried not to think about how much the smell reminded him of food.

His thoughts wandered. Food…

He ate dinner almost every night at Bell Bar. Sometimes, a public place afforded him more privacy than any of the private Dog lairs around Dartmoor. And sometimes…well, sometimes he allowed himself to enjoy, just a little, the undaunted company of Holly the waitress, who never seemed phased by this silence.

Tonight, though. Bizarre.

It had begun a few months ago as a strange sort of pseudo-childlike outreach of friendliness from her. She’d bring his drink, his food, and then ask about the book he was reading. Comment on the weather. He’d thought, at first, that there was something wrong with her, that she had some sort of mental deficiency. But then he’d glanced up into her wide green eyes and beneath the overture, he’d seen the unadulterated terror in her. Holly was a girl who was very afraid of something, and she was covering that fear with a soft, feminine sort of sociability, provocative in a way that was unconscious; it was innocent, the appeal, was there because of the way she was built and the way the sweetness just came pouring out of her.

He’d grown used to her. Once, he’d even had sort of a conversation with her, aboutOliver Twist, of all things, because she wanted to get a library card, but had no idea what to check out once she did, because she’d had “not much exposure to books” and wasn’t sure what she’d like to read. That had sent up a dozen red flags, but Michael had let it slide, had instead written out a list of books for her on a damp napkin.

He knew she’d never gone to the library, because she hadn’t brought it up again. And that wasn’t like her to let something drop. If he had a tear in his shirt sleeve, she commented on it. If he ordered a different kind of drink, she commented. Holly seemed, desperately, to want to bridge some common ground between them, during her visits at his booth. If she’d read any of those books, she would have been talking about them, trying to use them as some sort of bond.

Michael had decided that, though terrified, she must also be lonely, and wanting a friend. She was a poor judge of character, though, if she was pickinghim. Of all the men and women who came into that bar, it was him she wanted to spend her time with. He didn’t get it. Any man in the place would have offered to be her white knight. But she had no interest in sex. She never flirted, never said anything suggestive, never smiled that smile that girls used to get bigger tips.

That had all begun to change, though. In the last few weeks, the way she leaned against his table had gone from unconsciously sexy, to intentionally seductive. She was flashing him the low-lidded eyes, the cleavage, reaching to touch his hand with fingertips that trembled as she traced the vein at the back of his thumb. Before, she’d merely relaxed in his presence, and that was what he’d found attractive about her: the way she was so pretty and soft and gentle when she began to let her guard down. But her blatant flirting? That was stiff and unnatural.

And then tonight…

“No,” he’d told her, because her eyes had been gleaming like a prey animal’s, and her breath had been short, and she’d been too petrified to keep her hands still on the table. Like hell did he want to force himself inside a frightened, dry, shaking girl who didn’t even want him. Women were complicated creatures he wouldn’t pretend to understand, but he knew enough to be sure that an unwilling partner would make the whole dynamic all the more one-sided and awkward.

Holly had been crying, as she walked away. He’d hurt her feelings, and really, he hadn’t wanted to do that. “Come back,” he should have told her. “It’s not your fault. I’m just no good at this. And besides, you’re scared to fucking death.”

He wanted to ask her what she was so afraid of. He was wildly curious, at this point. Whatever it was, it was more frightening to her than the idea of offering her body to someone.

He felt a restless tightening of his skin, a prickling of awareness down his spine that put pressure in his pelvis. He couldn’t let himself dwell on her offer. It was very tempting.

Through the windshield, he watched the fire rally one last time, and then begin to die down, the smoke turning dark and quenching. He’d let it clear a little, and then he’d cover what remained of the body, six feet of earth to keep the coyotes from digging it up. And then he’d strip off his smoke-smelling clothes, bag them, pull on fresh, and go fetch the girl’s car to the chop shop.

No time to think about a green-eyed girl wanting to give it up to him.

“Are you alright?”

Ava wasn’t sure why the question had come blurting out of her. Maybe it had something to do with these new, fluffy mommy hormones coursing through her bloodstream. She wasn’t normally one for inquiring after strangers, but at this point, she’d said it, and she couldn’t take it back.

Holly the waitress gave her an automatic, halfhearted smile as she collected Mercy’s empty glasses and dinner plate, but her tear-filled eyes widened in slight surprise. She hadn’t expected the question either.

“I’m fine,” she said, voice quivering at the end. “Let me get these dishes cleared away, and I can bring you a refill.”

“Oh no, we don’t need anything else,” Ava said, with a quick glance toward Mercy’s three empties. “Just the check, if you would.”

“Right.” Holly, tray loaded, executed a whirling turn, and disappeared between two tables, in more than a professional hurry.

Ava frowned to herself. Unlike RJ and a handful of the other Dogs, she had no curiosity about Holly the waitress, aside from the dim wonder that the girl kept funneling her attention toward Michael, of all people. But tonight, she’d watched, as Mercy got up to, as he so eloquently put it, “take a leak,” Holly slip out of Michael’s booth, the bright shine of tears standing in her eyes. Hardly a mystery, given Michael’s blank-faced disinterest in everyone and everything, but Ava had felt a faint stirring of concern. Some maternal instinct sifting up to the surface, she guessed.

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