Page 2 of The Darkest Half

The man smiles, close-lipped. He inhales another drag and takes his precious time before answering.

“She’s inside,” he says, smoke streaming from his mouth, “waiting for you.”

OK, I’m no idiot. I know that everything about this is wrong and suspicious. But worse is that I already know, not so deep underneath the surface, that I’m in a load of shit. The man is too composed. That smile on his face too confident. In the back of my mind, it’s why I haven’t moved backward or forward; why I haven’t pressed the trigger and put a bullet in this guy’s head already—because I know, without having to see or hear them, that there are more where he came from.

I’m surrounded.

I’m fucked.

So much for the element of surprise. The surprise is on me. Mr. Moretti is clever; I’ll give him that. He knew I’d get here long before the forty-eight hours he gave me were up, and he would be waiting. But I’m not dead. And neither is Jackie—I know this because they’d have killed me by now—so what does Mr. Moretti want? He definitely wants something from me.

“All right.”

I follow the orderly into the building; an offensive layer of bleach lingers on the air; the walls and ceiling are white-gray, the floor sterile white tile that makes the squeaking of rubber-soled shoes loud and annoying. I follow him down a long stretch of brightly lit hallway with doors on either side. Rooms. Unlit. Large, square-shaped plexiglass windows. But they’re all empty.

We round the corner at the end of the hall and step into a room with many tables. There are two doors: the one we entered and another obscured by shadow on the other side, which is closed and probably locked.

With that thought, I hear the door behind me close and then lock; the lights in the ceiling hum to life above me as someone flips a switch on the other side of the room beside a darkened door. It’s another orderly; he remains standing there, guarding that exit; hands folded down in front of him. The only other potential way out of this room is through that elongated plexiglass window; it’s as tall as I am from the waist up and stretches about twenty feet along the wall, revealing the hallway outside.

“Have a seat,” the orderly says, pointing to a chair.

“I’ll stand.”

He shrugs with that “suit yourself” look.

He hasn’t told me to get rid of my gun, and I find that both strange and my only relief.

I hear heels tapping, and then fluorescent light floods the hallway outside the plexiglass. The tapping gets louder as the woman approaches—I’m sure it’s a woman and not a man wearing dress shoes because I know the sound of a woman’s walk—and the distinct sound of a woman’s walk in a pair of stilettos. Another Moretti sister, maybe?

A tall woman walks past the window; yellow-blond hair is pinned up at the base of her neck. She’s wearing a black silk blouse with long flowing sleeves and a tight gray pencil skirt that hugs voluptuous curves and stops above her knees. The orderly standing guard at the door closes it behind her.

“Hello, Niklas,” the woman says.

Niklas?

“Hello.”

“You’re probably wondering who I am.” She moves toward me on those stilettos, pulls out a chair at the table and sits down, crosses her legs, props her right elbow on the table, and dangles her hand from it.

“No,” I tell her, “I don’t really care who you are; I’m here for Mr. Moretti and for Jackie.”

The woman smiles, close-lipped; she licks the dryness from her lips and casually presses her back against the chair.

“Why don’t you have a seat,” she says, glancing at the empty chair next to her.

“Just like I told that guy, I’d rather stand.”

“I’d rather you sit,” she says, and although her tone never changed, I still felt the faintest hint of threat in her words.

I point my gun right at her face, finger on the trigger; the two orderlies move toward us, but they stop when she puts up her hand. Her gaze never moves from mine, and in it, I see nothing but bursting confidence and complete and utter fearlessness. She knows I’m not gonna shoot her—at least not right now, while she has all the cards and I’m standing here trying to pretend I have anything. I don’t have shit, and she knows it.

I lower my gun and sit heavily on the chair with a defeated sigh; my legs splayed out into the floor. I rest my gun on my lap but keep it in my hand, ready to fire.

“Where is Mr. Moretti?”

“He’s not here,” she says.

“Yeah, so, when’s he gonna be here?”

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