Nightlife (45 page)

He pressed on until he came to the farthest reaches of the screen of trees, then doubled back through thick-trunked palms, ferns, palmettos, banyans. As he neared the perfect man-made rocky bluff, the noise of the turbine-driven waterfall drowned out whatever faint rustling noises he made.

The rocks, finally. Safety, shelter, and water.

Tony crouched between the sinewy multiple trunks of a twisting banyan and the water’s edge, and there he shed his clothes. Everything went into a neat pile. He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out another vial. Substantially larger than what he’d given Agualar.

While bringing himself to the brink of change and beyond, he remembered the effects the drug had brought about when he and Sasha had taken it together. The meshing of mind and spirit in some higher plane of existence, the union allowing him to subjugate her will, make it bend to his own. He was born for this. The game was his to win.

And so in the midst of artificial paradise, he became new. The remolding of his head and shoulders into a sleek, scaled bullet. The cavernous mouth rimmed with carnivore teeth. The coarse, webbed hands. Far more effective for certain situations than the old Tony could ever have been.

The water was cool, as inviting as a silken featherbed. He slipped in and beneath its surface with barely a ripple. Free at last to swim and take full advantage of what the gifts of nature redefined had bestowed. Freshwater flowed past gills, infusing them with oxygen richer than he had ever known with lungs. No orgasm could ever have felt as intense or lasted as long.

Within his soul, his spirit searched the inner planes for another nearby spark of life. Nothing yet. He was content to wait.

The amount he had left with Agualar would never be enough to bring on the change, even if the man had known of it and willed it. Just enough to open his mind.

And leave exposed its vulnerable white underbelly.

Tony dove, he swam. He explored the bottom of the pond, its sand and rocks. He glided beneath the waterfall, heard and felt the pounding roar overhead. Farther in, behind the falls, he found a grate recessed into the rocks where water was sucked in and recycled for the spillway. He swam away, skimming bottom . . .

. . . and soon sensed that feather-tickle of a new window opening near his soul. The first terrifying and awe-inspiring steps down someone else’s road, illuminated by green powder.

contact

He stroked, he soothed frayed nerves into submission, as gentle and unobtrusive as a guardian angel. Even from out here, Tony could sense Agualar’s quickened heartbeat, then its slowing as he ministered to the fear. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.

With any luck, Agualar would think the thoughts were his and his alone. Never suspecting them of being spoon-fed.

Soothing . . .

Calm . . .

Tranquil.. . .

Nothing but bliss, soft and loving.

Come on in, the water’s fine. . . .

Tony swam in broad circles at the bottom of dark, dark water. And oh, what secrets it held.

While above, there came footsteps. A shedding of clothes. Low groans of someone in the throes of never-ending wonder. Finally, a tremendous splash.

Tony felt the shock waves from above, minute ripples reaching all the way down, tingling along nerve receptors across his new hide. He didn’t even need sight to pinpoint direction.

He flashed up from the depths, jaws opening, the shark’s-tooth necklace trailing down against his chest.

Contact.

Hard. Fast. Bloody.

Thrashing, flailing. A flurry of jaws and pyramid-shaped teeth like razors. Screams that gargled in a throat choking with water.

Tony dragged him all the way under, no longer disgusted by the man’s bulk. Not in the least, the more the merrier. He burrowed into gushing warmth, drove the struggling body into the rocks. Nowhere left to go. Agualar’s fingers clutched weakly at the grate.

And moments later, the waterfall began to run red.

Justin sat half awake, half asleep, while the hours they had spent in the car hung over him like swollen clouds. Swabbed with moonlight, April was curled in the seat beside him, in deeper sleep. The first several times she whimpered, he couldn’t place the sound. Tiny high-pitched moans, weaving in and out of stray thoughts trying to become dreams. They tugged him awake, and for a moment he blinked and watched the turmoil rippling across her sleeping face.

No peace, even in slumber. He gently shook her by the shoulder.

April awoke with a start, a soft cry. She clutched at his hand. Seconds later, she was leaning into him, embracing with heat, fear, desperation. Her cheeks felt damp against his throat.

“You were having bad dreams,” he whispered.

She nodded.

“Want to tell me about them?”

“Huh-uh.” A quick shake of her head. “Just hold me.”

Whether it was late Thursday night or early Friday morning, Justin did not know. Darkness hung poised somewhere between fading dusk and coming dawn. As much one as the other.

They had followed their mark in the white Daytona, northeast across Tampa, until he arrived at what was presumably his home. A shabby two-story house in a block full of similarly humble dwellings, not far east of the University of South Florida. April had said the general area had been coined Suitcase City, so named for the transient population.

At first they’d parked along with other cars out on the street, a block away but in view of his car in the driveway. But after darkness fell, they knew they had to get closer. Easier said than done; the only available places were too close for anonymity. Justin had turned their car onto an intersecting street, around the corner from the guy’s house. Out of sight as well, as they found what was undeniably an unoccupied house with a badly overgrown lawn and boarded windows. He parked in its driveway. Kerebawa solved the visibility problem by leaving the car and finding a bushy vantage point from which to keep an eye on things. Anything happened, he promised to be back in a flash to let them know. Justin had told him to come back for a shift change when he felt tired.

Hours ago, that had been. Kerebawa seemed adamant about pulling his weight. The only time they had seen him since was after April had hiked off on an expedition for fast food, and they sneaked him some chicken.

Justin keyed the ignition to auxiliary power to check the time. Blue-green digitals, almost two o’clock. From somewhere in the neighborhood he could hear a stereo, through open windows, but it sounded small, far away. A distant lullaby when he didn’t feel much able to sleep at the moment.

He kissed April on wet cheeks. Salty. Nuzzled at her forlorn attempt at a smile.

“What do you want to do to celebrate when all this is over?”

She pulled her hair free where it clung damply to her neck.

“I want to go someplace where it’s cold. I want to feel cold outside.”

A worthy goal. They had spent too much time sweating in cramped cars, sweating out hopeless situations. Somewhere cold in May, June. Far far north. Sometimes it felt as if he would never know cold again.

“Make love with me,” she said softly. “Please.”

“Right here? Now?”

She nodded. Clutched at him. “I need to feel you with me.”

He stroked her hair, traced a finger along her cheek, jaw-line. “What if Kerebawa comes back?”

“Then he comes back.” She lifted fingers to her blouse and slowly began to unbutton. In the moonlight, her hand was a sensual ghost. “As close together as they live in his home, you don’t think he’s used to that by now?”

“Probably.” It was the last thing he needed to say for a while.

Justin slipped his jeans down as she wriggled out of hers and let them lie in the floor atop accumulated trash. He scooted out from behind the wheel, slumped a fraction to let her turn her back to the windshield and ease down onto him. She gasped, leaned in, and hung on to his shoulder, then swayed back.

Moonlight burned through her hair, turning it platinum, and as she began to ride him with a frantic urgency, he felt on his chest the splash of a single tear.

Late Friday morning, Tony tried on Agualar’s office throne, just for size. It felt a little sprung out by the ample butt of the late, unlamented kingpin, but still, not bad. Not bad at all.

He got up, strolled out from behind the polymer desk, crossed the room to a mirrored mosaic on the far wall. Nine separate square mirrors in all, etched with a pattern that looked vaguely oriental. Tony stared past the pattern, checking his reflection. A far cry from last evening. Now he sported one of his two-grand white suits. Freshly showered and shaved up in one of Agualar’s sumptuous bathrooms, with his hair skinned back from his forehead into an immaculate ponytail. He was the resplendent picture of success.

A grand morning, absolutely. Tony had company, inside himself. Chunks of the essence of Rafael Agualar, held eternally in a prison of flesh, locked into a soundless scream. Until he, like Sasha, would be drained into a negated existence. Food for the soul. Tony had never felt as nourished, neither physically nor spiritually.

A knock at the door.

“Yo,” Tony called out.

The door swung half-open and Lupo popped his head in, much as Agualar’s boy Andy had done last night.

“First car just came up out on the drive,” Lupo said.

“You know who it is?”

“Guys at the gate radioed back, said they thought it was Rojas.”

Tony nodded. “Keep everybody waiting out in the front room until they’re
all
here.”

Lupo said he would, and that was that.

The takeover of Rafael Agualar’s stronghold of a home had been accomplished with military precision. After dispatching Lord High Agualar himself, Tony had waited out the skullflush regression in the pond, flexing muscles and psyche alike. Working off the lethargic bloat of his meal. A couple hours before dawn, he climbed painfully out of the water as he became himself again. No worries about the staff raising an eventual alarm over the boss’s absence; Agualar had signed that particular clause of the death warrant by his own hand— had told Andy in no uncertain terms that he should be left alone all night.

Tony had waited for dawn, and by the time the first blue and pink smudges kissed the eastern sky, he was dressed back in black. When coming out for the moonlight swim, Agualar had left his office exit unlocked; another subconscious suggestion Tony had planted while tiptoeing through the man’s mind. Tony had crouched just beyond the range of the camera covering the unlocked door. Timing was vital here. He knew from Santos’s briefings that he would have a three-second window of opportunity to get inside unseen moments after the camera had finished a thirty-degree pivot, due to the rotation of monitor images in the security room.

Once inside, Tony had retrieved the pistol from Agualar’s office desk, then stalked the plush world of eggshell and gray, up to the second floor. Burst into the security room like a nightmare. He’d just as soon have dropped both guys on the monitors right where they sat. One shot, two shots, wipe the brains up later. But Agualar’s gun was a revolver, not prone to silencing. A pair of shots would rouse the rest of the house and sleeping staff.

So he improvised. Held the gun on them while he entered, and in that moment of terminal surprise and its attendant paralysis, they offered precious little fight before he clubbed both their skulls. And as he watched them slide unconscious to the carpet, Tony knew he had chosen the moment of attack with a strategist’s eye. Dawn. Favored by the military for launching offensives against the enemy. Dawn found an enemy encampment in its most psychologically vulnerable state, he had heard. The night had been survived, the greater security of daylight lay ahead, reprieve and finish line all in one. Mental safeguards relaxed. For a wise attacker, then, dawn was when your punches packed the most.

Tony stripped the fallen security men, bound them with their own shirts, stuffed their mouths with their own underwear, and dragged them into a closet. Then he turned attentively to the matt black console of closed-circuit video monitors and computer grid showing a graphic overhead map of the entire estate. After scanning the control panels for a few moments, he found the in-house remote controlling the front gate. And kept his eyes glued to the gate monitor, showing two guards with far too little to do.