Down Time
Author: Barry Lyga
Date: 2018-08-02 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Young Adult; Horror; Short Stories; Thriller; Novella; Mystery Thriller; Fiction; Crime; Teen
Description: Billy Dent is the world's most notorious serial killer, but even killers need to go on vacation sometimes. When a mysterious death occurs in the hotel where Billy is staying, his "job" seems to call. Will his vacation truly be down time for him after all?In this prequel novella to the I Hunt Killers trilogy, bestselling author Barry Lyga crafts a creepy, intricately plotted mystery.
Publisher: Hachette Originals

Copyright

Copyright © 2018 by Barry Lyga

Cover design by Cindy Joy. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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First Edition: August 2018

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ISBN: 978-1-5387-1523-9 (ebook)

E3-20180711-JV-PC

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Begin Reading

Newsletters

Whenever he traveled—whether on business or, as now, for pleasure—Billy Dent fretted about his son, Jasper. In an ideal world, Billy would never be more than shouting distance from the boy, who—at age ten—was beginning to chafe at such parental attention. Billy knew this was natural, the course of maturity and development. Children should crave separation from their parents, else what’s the whole wide world for?

But he was a parent—a father—and he trusted only himself with the well-being of his child. Leaving Jasper with Billy’s own mother was a compromise made necessary by life itself.

Sometimes a man just had to go away. No two ways about it.

Billy worked hard. He had stresses in his life that most people couldn’t understand. And so, every now and then, he needed a vacation.

You never know what will happen when you go somewhere new.

Someone—maybe a victim, maybe a family member, he couldn’t remember—had told him that once, and he hated it because it was true, and Billy hated being out of control, hated being out of his comfort zone.

So he took his vacations reluctantly. He loved his boy and he loved his work and he felt ill at ease sleeping in a bed not his own, under a roof not his own. A man’s home is his castle, the old saying went, and while Billy knew that to be claptrap and nonsense, the fact was he felt safer and more competent and just more stable in his house than anywhere else in the world.

But life didn’t give a good goddamn about your personal safety or comfort. Life loved nothing more than dragging you outside into the squinting light and harsh air.

As long as Billy lived in this world, as Billy’s father was wont to say, he had to abide by it.

For the most part.

“Give Daddy a hug,” he told Jasper. The boy stood sullen in the corner, not reacting, not moving, just glaring at Billy with those hazel eyes, so unlike Billy’s own blue. A spasm of fatherly pride rippled through him—that sort of unearthly contempt wasn’t a natural thing in a boy so young. It had to be taught. It had to be implanted. Billy was as proud of Jasper’s aloofness as a rookie farmer is of his first sprout.

From the kitchen came the sound of Billy’s mother clattering the pans. She was going to make pasta, and it would take her at least five minutes of fussing and fretting to realize she needed a pot, not a pan. Something was wrong with her brain, Billy knew. It didn’t surprise him, but it did occasionally catch him off guard. Billy had a single terror in the whole wide world, and that was losing his own mind.

He would keep an eye on his mother. He would have to. Sometimes old folks just went a bit loopy, but sometimes they snapped like rubber bands, rotten and overstretched.

“Be good for Gramma,” he said sternly, tousling his boy’s hair. Jasper snorted something that could have been disgust or annoyance.

At such a provocation, Billy’s own father would have paused his own life long enough to whup the living hell out of Billy or his sister, Samantha.

Billy was not his father. Billy was stronger. He allowed Jasper his acting out, his attempts at rebellion. At the end of the day, push come to shove, the boy knew who was boss. Who ruled the roost.

“I love you,” he told Jasper. “Be good,” he said again, and then he called out a farewell to his mother, still grumbling and a-noising in the kitchen.

Outside on the stoop, he took a deep breath and sighed.

You’re a good father, he reminded himself, and he thought of the last woman he’d killed, which always bucked up his mood. Then he climbed into his Jeep and drove.

When he traveled for pleasure, Billy always made certain to go somewhere far, somewhere that required flight. He didn’t like flying—the forced closeness to others, the intimacy of a colonoscopy (along with most of the smell). But these were the sacrifices one made for one’s livelihood and for one’s art. It would be surpassing strange, he surmised, for a man of his age and circumstances to never have boarded—not once—an airplane or traveled a distance for pleasure. He couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion. Not from the locals, the yammering neighbors, those bleating sheep with nothing on their minds but one instant to the next. Not from the bastard cops or the government or whoever might be watching.

Someone was always watching, Billy knew. It was his burden to make sure they watched but never saw.

And so he flew, building a false profile of himself, fabricating an identity he didn’t recognize, one that would appear “normal” and “safe” to those around him. Outside Billy, he thought of him. A different person. A different skin inhabited by the real deal.

Now he permitted himself to become a bit player in the security theater of the TSA at the airport, suppressing chuckles at their ineptitude and blindness. He was a white man solidly in his thirties in the United States of America in the glorious twenty-first century; as long as he smiled, he was invisible, intangible. A ghost to those seeking wrongdoers and potential terror.

The flight was, of course, jam-packed. Billy managed to find room for his bag in the overhead compartment. He refused to check baggage. He wouldn’t have some random prospect pawing through his personal belongings. No, sir. That would not happen on Billy’s watch.

The previous year, on his self-mandated vacation, he’d watched as some unfortunate ahead of him in the security line had been pulled aside, her suitcase opened in full view of God and the rabble, her clothing sifted and searched. Billy decided then and there that, were he subjected to such an indignity, he would have no choice but to burn that suitcase and everything in it. There could be no other solution.

But they’d not chosen him then, as they did not choose him now. He sailed through the security checkpoint with a smile on his lips and amused contempt in his heart.

As always, he sat on the aisle, affording himself at least a modicum of freedom from the useless sack of flesh beside him. He spent most of the flight with his eyes closed, feigning sleep, all the while indulging in the luxury of imagining himself with a blade and a hatchet, running up and down the aisle.…

Up and down… Up and down…

Plane, landed. Car, rented. Billy flashed an extraspecial smile at the woman at the rental counter—she was plain and knew it—and miraculously received an upgrade to a sportier model. It was the sort of car Billy disdained, but Outside Billy would be expected to be thrilled, so he gabbled about how great the car was and jauntily saluted the counter prospect as he drove off.

His hotel was part of a larger resort on the beach, given the ill-conceived name Castle by the Sea. It was a neo-Gothic monstrosity, all towers and gables done in pastel colors, as though the architect had thrown a blood clot in his brain halfway through designing it and no one had dared to gainsay him. The place reeked of bad taste and ill intent, but Billy swallowed his bile and pretended enthusiasm and gee-whiz joy as he checked in.

“One key or two, Mr. Dent?”

Billy never understood why hotels offered two keys to someone checking in alone, but he suspected a nefarious reason. He declined the second key, as always.

The (solitary) keycard to his room bore a garish logo for a local pizza place. Everyone was trying to control his mind. He made sure to put the card facedown on the desk when in his room.

He spent the first day of his vacation on the beach, baking his flesh like the prospects did, desperately chasing some insane ideal of attractiveness at the expense of their own free time and health. He debated letting himself burn—returning to the Nod tan was mandatory, to prove he’d gone away; progressing to a nice red sunburn would solidify Outside Billy’s hapless single-dad image—but he decided he didn’t want to suffer through it. So he dutifully applied sunscreen every hour like clockwork and stared at the gadget he’d brought with him. It was new, something called a Kindle, and you could read books on it or you could do as Billy had done and put your own documents on it. He’d put his notes for his next prospect on it. He was a meticulous man, with a memory that was pure Kodak, but even he needed to write some things down. He figured the Kindle gadget was better than loose scraps of paper.

Might as well make use of his baking time.

Measure twice, cut once, went the adage. It was the closest Billy came to religion. It was his Gospel. He never took a prospect until he’d planned every movement down to the inch, every pause down to the heartbeat. That was how he’d hit triple digits and managed not to get caught, even in an era of technology that followed you like a lonely roadside puppy.

So absorbed was he in his reading and conjuring that he didn’t notice a shadow flit over him until a Frisbee whuffed softly into the sand at his feet. He glanced up just in time to behold a fetching woman in a pink bikini dash up to him.

“Sorry!” she called. “Sorry!”

“Nothing to apologize for,” he drawled, taking her in from the safety of his sunglasses.

Easily ten years his junior, ripe in the fullness of youth the way only girls in their twenties could be. Breasts just slightly out of proportion for her frame, one buttock nearly completely exposed by a hitch in her bikini bottom. Hair red like a road flare.

There was something about a redhead in pink, Billy had to admit.

“Did I hit you?” she asked, sweeping that crimson mop out of her eyes. She favored him with a smile that was pure strawberries and cream, bright red lips against dazzling white teeth. Her chest heaved lightly from her chase of the Frisbee, a trickle of perspiration wending its way down her throat toward her cleavage.

Billy grinned lazily. “Not at all.” He allowed himself to enjoy the view as she stooped for the disc.

It had been a while. Since he’d had a woman.

“Is that one of those Kindle things?” she asked, popping up and leaning toward him, casting her shadow over him. Without waiting for an answer, she went on: “What are you reading?”

Billy tilted the Kindle toward his chest, obscuring the screen. “Fantasy,” he replied.

“Like Lord of the Rings?”

“Not quite as epic,” he confessed.

She shrugged and laughed. “Enjoy!” she said, and trotted off.

Billy watched her go.

He sighed.

He looked at the Kindle again.

That evening, he forced himself to eat in the hotel restaurant, though he’d have preferred room service, then forced himself to sit in the hotel bar and pretend to enjoy a soccer game on the giant TV hanging from one wall.

Solitude meant the world to him. He couldn’t tolerate being among the prospects any longer than necessary.

But Outside Billy needed to be seen.

He nursed a Coke and grenadine, his default beverage when in a drinking establishment. He never drank alcohol.

Never.

Never.

Not ever.

That stuff couldn’t be trusted. Billy needed his wits about him. Always, always his wits about him.

So he sat and drank what would appear to be a something-and-Coke to anyone watching, and he ruminated on his past and his future, the two tied up in the figure of his son, Jasper.

Jasper.

The boy had been a mistake. An accident. Or so he’d thought. Janice had gotten pregnant deliberately, even though they’d agreed early on that their lifestyle precluded children. Billy had, at first, been outraged when she’d told him.…

No, that wasn’t true. Outraged was too small a word to contain the fury he’d felt. The mingled betrayal and rage and righteous anger.

And then she’d told him… She’d told him why—

“Is this seat taken?”

Billy blinked and looked over to his right. He couldn’t believe he’d been caught off guard like that. No prospect could sneak up on him, and yet here it had happened. Here it—

“Hello again,” he said with instant, easy charm.

Frisbee Girl from the beach smiled at him and slid onto the stool next to him. “Well, this is a coincidence. Are you stalking me?” she asked with mock seriousness.

Billy allowed himself a genuine, from-the-gut laugh. An experienced stalker, he’d never once been asked the question. Mostly because no one had ever realized he was stalking them until circumstances made that information obvious and moot.

“I was here first,” he pointed out.

“True.” She signaled for the waiter and ordered a frozen margarita.

He didn’t care for aggression and forwardness in a woman—found it offensive and disconcerting—but he was playing Outside Billy now. And he had to admit he had a liking for redheads. Along with the hair usually came creamy white skin, like a fine Brie. He didn’t bother wondering if she was a natural redhead—her approach to him meant he was fated to find out.

“How’s your fantasy coming along?” she asked, and Billy mentally tsked at her brazenness.

“I’ll get around to finishing it someday.” Someday was thirty-seven days away, according to the time line he’d drawn up. In thirty-seven days, Rhoda McClellan of East Lansing, Michigan, would know the joy and the pleasure of Billy’s depredations, as well as the limits of her own mortal flesh.

“Last fantasy I read was Harry Potter,” she admitted. “I can’t get into anything magical these days. It’s all romance novels now. Am I supposed to admit that?”

Outside Billy couldn’t tell the woman off or get up and leave. Outside Billy, when confronted with a beautiful, younger woman, would stick around and see what developed.

“You can admit whatever you want. Think of me as a priest.”

She pouted at that. “Priest?”

“Maybe Episcopalian,” he allowed, grinning.

“I’m Nadine,” she said, taking a sip of her drink as the bartender slid it toward her. “And you are Father…?”

“Billy.”

“And do you always take off your wedding band before you head to the bar, Billy?”

Her eyes danced as she said it, saucy, proud of herself for noticing, daring him to be flustered, to deny. It was a game to her, he realized, a stupid, insipid game she played to make herself feel better and more important than she was.

He glanced at his left hand, as though seeing it for the first time. Sure enough, a noticeable, slightly smooth ring marked his recently removed wedding band. A single day’s tanning hadn’t sufficed to obliterate the evidence. Maybe that was a metaphor for something.

“Just stopped wearing it recently,” he told her. “Took me a while.”

“Divorced?”

He shook his head and grimaced. “Just up and gone.”

It wasn’t what she was expecting. It wasn’t part of the game. He was supposed to be a cad, whoring around on his wife. Or a recently divorced sad sack. Either one would charge her up and rev her engine. Either one would jump-start the thrill that would put her on her back, legs open.

This wasn’t part of the game. Until now.

“What do you mean?”

Billy sighed expansively, as though depressed by and simultaneously resigned to his own story. “Woke up one morning, and she was gone. Just…” He whistled, short and sharp. “Gone. Like a magic trick. No forwarding number, no address, no good-bye letter. Poof.” He mimed blowing dandelion fluff into the breeze.

Nadine’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? She left you all alone?”

“Would I kid about something like that? Didn’t leave me alone, though. She left me with our boy, Jasper.”

“She left her son?” As though that were the worst crime Nadine could imagine. Billy had imagined—and perpetrated—much, much worse.

But he was Outside Billy, so he nodded slowly and sadly. “Yeah. ’Bout two years now. Just got to the point where I could take the ring off. Everyone kept tellin’ me it was time. ‘She ain’t coming back, Billy.’ ‘Move on, Billy.’” He smiled ruefully. “So I figured I’d take it off, get out of town…”

“Wow. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. That’s just crazy.”

Billy conjured his words, crafted them with care, molding them into a knife. He jammed them into her chest, just under the sternum, straight into her juicy young heart:

“Well, and the hell of it is, tomorrow woulda been our anniversary.”

Nadine gasp-frowned precisely as he knew she would, that combination of sympathy and shock that so few women knew how to suppress.

Billy had handily won the game. Everything else was just theater.

Janice.

Janice was gone.

His beautiful Janice.

His Ugly J.

She was gone.

It was true, what he’d told Nadine. All of it was true, but all of it was not all of it.

Janice was gone, yes. She’d vanished one day.

But Billy had known it was coming. Had been ready for the day.

Janice had, against all odds, risen to consideration for the rank of Crow King.

She had to go away, had to prove herself in the great games played by their kind. She was a woman, and serial killers did not trust women, as a rule. As useful sidekicks, sure. As convenient patsies or decoys, absolutely.

But as a ruler…

As a leader…

Billy knew that Janice was different from the rest of the creatures—like Nadine, for example—who wandered the world calling themselves women. They were prospects, nothing more, lesser beings meant for the pleasure of their betters.

Janice was special. She had taught Billy much. She had taken the raw materials of his homicidal intellect and the depths of his human understanding, and she had turned him into a powerhouse of death, a remorseless murder engine. He would always love her for that.

He would love her as he’d loved no other woman. Love was that rarest of emotions, the sort that prospects thought they felt for one another. But Billy knew the truth. Prospects knew only the base, animalistic love of pets for their masters. The true, refined emotion of love was reserved for those such as him. And his Janice.

And his boy.

Nadine was, in fact, a natural redhead.

Nadine’s room, of course. That was predetermined. From the moment she’d sat down next to him at the bar, he’d known where the night would take them, and it would have to be her room. No way in hell he would let a prospect see his room, his private place, his property.

In terms of physical acts between a man and woman, Billy knew this: There was sex and there was satisfaction. One was a primal urge, as animalistic as the need to eat and drink. The other—more sophisticated—transcended to a higher plane.

Each sated, but to different degrees.

He was not so supreme or empyreal as to deny that he was made of flesh and blood, that he craved the pleasure and release of flesh and blood. He was and he did.

But it in no way fulfilled the way the other did.

He lay there and tried not to think of it, tried not to think of the blood and the bone and the gristle, the meat of humanity, the cut, the break, the spill.

Beside him, Nadine shifted and murmured, “Oh, my. Someone’s ready already.”

And he was, but not for that, for the other, though he could not, so they did it her way instead, and while it wasn’t perfect—it didn’t satisfy, no, not at all—it was good enough in its own way.

Finished, he lay beside her, planning his moment of escape, and he thought of Janice and Jasper—Jasper, who was his heart beating outside his body. Remembered the moment when Janice had told him she was pregnant. His fury. His rage.

Janice was a killer through and through, damn near bred for it. But she was still a woman, still weaker than Billy physically, and he could have killed her then and there. Her death shot through him like a blast of wind, a subzero moment of murder lighting him on cold fire everywhere he could feel. She knew it, too. Knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling in that instant. Her eyes glimmered with knowledge; her lips quirked in a too-aware grin.

She knew he wanted her dead, and yet she did nothing, took no action, simply stood before him, one hand clutching the pregnancy test as though it could defend her from his wrath, as though anything in the vast tracts of the universe could defend her from his wrath.

But it was Janice. And his wrath drained away almost as quickly as it had come upon him.

She knew that, too. Knew him so well. Watched the anger gush from him and spiral away.

Janice knew what he wanted or needed before he did. So maybe this baby wasn’t such a bad idea.

“Let me tell you the rest,” she said, and leaned in and whispered her plans.

Truth be told, Billy had never entirely been on board with the idea of killing the baby. Snuffing out the life of a child—especially one born with utmost trust in its killer—was no challenge, no hardship. There were no bragging rights to be had, no sense of self-satisfaction. It was a major leaguer hitting a home run at the local park on a Sunday at a town barbecue. Who would care?

But Janice wanted to do it, and Billy had difficulty denying Janice whatever she wanted. And besides—she was already knocked up, so why not?

He had suggested, though, early in her pregnancy, that perhaps the best way to kill their offspring was to avail themselves of the legal alternative.

Janice had exploded in indignation. “Are you kidding me? That’s a solution for scared teenage girls and Xanax-addled suburban mommies who can’t handle one more dirty diaper. That’s not a solution worthy of a Crow, Billy. I’m ashamed even to hear you say it.”

And then the child, Jasper, had been born, and Billy had felt something within him that he’d only ever felt toward Janice.

It was love.

He’d known in that moment, as his son squalled bloody and shivering on his wife’s chest, that he could not kill Jasper. No. Jasper was not to be consigned to the oblivion of the prospects.

Jasper was to be a Crow. Like his mother and his father.

Billy had leaned over and whispered in Janice’s ear, too soft for the doctor or the nurses to hear:

“He’s one of us.”

Janice, exhausted, had nodded in agreement and clutched his hand tight.

And Billy woke up, groaning, cursing himself. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in Nadine’s bed. Who knew lying on the beach—such a waste of time and energy—could be so tiring?

Nadine slept turned away from him, her breathing almost completely silent, the sheet spilling down off her creamy shoulder, revealing an expanse of unblemished back and the dimple just above her buttocks.

He felt himself stir, felt a lurch deep in his gut. He wanted to do things to her. Things that couldn’t be undone.

But, no. That was business. And he was on vacation.

According to the clock on the nightstand, it was a little past seven in the morning. With the curtains drawn, the room was twilight-dark. He felt around on the floor for his clothes, cursing mentally when he discovered that his pants pockets had disgorged their contents at some point between his body and the floor. His wallet lay a few feet away, his keycard nearby.

Gathering everything together, he dressed quickly and without a sound, a skill honed over years of practice and necessity. Then he slipped out of Nadine’s room. Down the hall, a maid emerged from another guest room but didn’t so much as glance in his direction. She was a youngish black woman, and Billy was grateful she didn’t take note of him. Black women unnerved him. He didn’t know why and didn’t particularly care. He just avoided them, and they seemed quite happy to avoid him as well.

Billy retraced his steps back to the elevator and went to his room, composing rejection lines should his path cross Nadine’s again. I guess I’m not ready to love again. And It’s too soon. I thought it wasn’t, but I was wrong.

Things like that. There was every chance Nadine had just been looking for a one-night stand, a convenient vacation fuck-buddy, but he couldn’t let her get any closer than she’d already gotten. Lonely single dad taps hot young ass on vacation worked for Outside Billy, but Local bachelor scores new girlfriend would seriously crimp Inside Billy’s plans.

At his room, he jammed the keycard into the slot. Rather than being greeted by the click of the lock disengaging, instead he heard nothing. The little red light flickered on.

He sighed and tried again. Damn things. What was wrong with a good old-fashioned key, anyway? No one could trace you with a key, and it pretty much always worked.

Red light.

He tried a third time, slowly guiding the card into the slot.

Red light.

Son of a bitch. He tried a fourth time, swiping the card in and out quickly. Slow, fast, who the hell knew what the damn sensors wanted?

Red light.

Red fucking light.

He stared at the card in his hand.

There was no pizza logo. Instead, there was a thin-line drawing of a martini glass, with a loopy font reading, TRY THE ELEGANCE LOUNGE! and then tiny type spelling out an address.

Well, shit. Wrong damn card. He would have to go to the front desk and…

No. That wouldn’t do. Because then Nadine would have the key to his room. That was no good, no good at all.

Back down the hall. Down the elevator. The maid’s cart from before was closer to Nadine’s room, but the maid herself was nowhere to be seen.

Billy listened at the door for a moment and, hearing nothing, slid the card into the lock. Worked perfectly the first time, green light and all.

He slipped into the room, which was still dark. With effortless, practiced grace, he closed the door silently.

Nadine still lay in bed.

Billy glanced around for his keycard. Dropping to hands and knees, he crawled along the edge of the bed, feeling for the card. His fingers found it before his eyes did, half under the nightstand on the side of the bed where he’d slept. He put Nadine’s in its place and stood up and—

—banged his knee right on the edge of the goddamned nightstand! Rattling the lamp and sending a cheap hotel pen rolling. In the quiet of the room, it sounded like a trash can tumbling down a hill.

Billy put on Outside Billy’s sheepish grin and prepared to launch into one of his preplanned excuses, but Nadine didn’t stir.

That sound you hear is the bullet that just whizzed past your head, Billy. Get the hell out of here before she wakes up.

But something nagged at him. She should have woken up. She should have at least moved in her sleep.

He crept over to her side of the bed and stared down at her.

Billy suppressed something that could have been a gasp or a chuckle, which one he couldn’t be sure without actually hearing it.

Nadine was dead.

Billy’s first rule of murder was: Don’t panic.

Which was not the same thing as “don’t be afraid.” Fear and panic were cousins, maybe even of the kissing sort, but no further went the relationship. Fear was fine. Fear crystallized and condensed the world into easy categories, making judgments swift and sure. Fear was orderly and sensible. Panic, though…

Panic was uncontrolled. Chaotic. And Billy just couldn’t have that in his life.

She had been alive when he left, and now she was dead. The shortest path from the one to the other was murder. Someone had done this.

He took in the room quickly, not scanning for details, but just skimming for anything out of the ordinary, particularly any evidence that whoever had done this was still in the room. One good thing about hotel rooms—they weren’t usually designed with nooks and crannies and alcoves and niches. Little boxes for little people leading little lives. Everything open and obvious.

He poked his head into the bathroom, finding only his own reflection.

Nothing under the bed.

A small closet was next to the bathroom. Billy listened at the door with a water glass. Nothing. Just to be safe, he flattened himself against the wall and turned the knob from the side, then wrenched the door open, danced farther away, ready to smash the glass against the nightstand for a weapon if need be.

The closet was empty.

Whoever had killed Nadine was gone. Billy wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news.

Hero father captures killer on vacation! would make Outside Billy a hero but would also conjure an unwelcome level of fame and public scrutiny that could make Billy’s future plans moot and his history a deadly weapon waiting to be surfaced by some enterprising reporter.

But Local dad’s one-night stand found dead! was no good, either. Billy could protest all the livelong day that he was innocent, but suspicion would evermore cling to him… making his future plans moot and et cetera, see above.

Well, damn.

He’d always figured that if his career ever shut down, it would be by some bastard cop getting lucky. Not from sampling some strange while on vacation.

His prints were everywhere. Of course they were. That was the whole point of this vacation: to appear “normal.” A man in his thirties, without female companionship on the regular, single daddy to a young boy, does the responsible thing and goes out of town for said piece of strange. Vacation helped Billy stay sharp, yes, but it also added another brick to the tall, thick wall of alibi Billy had been building his entire life. It made Outside Billy that much more impervious to suspicion.

Now his fingerprints, his DNA, and his hair were all over a murder scene. A murder he truthfully hadn’t committed.

For a change.

Under normal circumstances—those times when Billy wanted to leave someone dead—he could clean up easily. But that was because he had plotted and planned the blissful murder moments for months in advance. He came prepared, with his murder kit. He knew exactly what he would touch and when, exactly where hair or DNA would linger. Cleaning up his own crime scenes had become almost second nature to him, but that second nature depended on the sizable investment of preplanning. Right now, he had nothing to go on.

Burn it down. Burn the whole place down.

Tempting. But evidence could survive a fire. A good coroner could determine that Nadine’s death had preceded the blaze, making what had been suspicious before now doubly so. And besides, Billy was no arsonist. He had a passing understanding of the craft, of course, but he wasn’t confident enough in his skills to take on the sprawling monstrosity that was Castle by the Sea, nor to risk an arson investigator deducing that the fire had been set deliberately.

How would that look for his “normal” image? To be identified as a visitor to a hotel that just happened to be burned to the ground on the same day that a woman died in one of its rooms?

Billy sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. He couldn’t purge the crime scene. He couldn’t destroy the building. And he couldn’t dispose of the body.

Well, that last one wasn’t true. Billy was a bona fide expert in disposing of bodies. Had earned his PhD in the subject, really. Just using what was in the room—never mind a quick trip into town for some innocent-seeming hardware—he could get the body out of here and disappear it fairly easily.

But that would only solve the immediate problem, to wit: Dead bitch in bed. The bigger, long-term problem—Dead bitch knew me, was seen with me by fifty people in the hotel bar—still lingered.

There was only one way to solve the problem, Billy realized. Without intending to, he chuckled at the very thought.

He was going to have to solve this murder.

It was the only way. He would need to figure out who’d killed her and then, somehow, point the police to the guilty party without implicating himself. Hopefully, the queries would end there. There was a chance the bastard cops would press further, discover his prints and DNA. But with a killer in custody, they would likely ignore it. If questioned, he could—and would—admit to a one-night stand. He would be dismissed, and his name would be in some detective’s notes in a file somewhere.

Not ideal, but he could live with it. After all, he had no other options.

First rule of murder was don’t panic, but the first rule of solving a murder, Billy figured, was most likely to figure out how the deceased had shuffled off this mortal coil.

He had pretended to be many things in his illustrious, ongoing career. He had feigned a near infinite variety of deliverymen, a plumber, a general contractor, a door-to-door salesman, and even—one particularly memorable time—a Jehovah’s Witness.

Now he would pretend to be a cop.

He flicked on the lamp and searched the room quickly and efficiently. A lifetime of stalking—including breaking and entering when the situation demanded it, and oh, the situation almost always did—had prepared him well for executing swift searches of people’s private things. Nadine’s room was small and impersonal, but she’d unpacked her suitcase and put her things in the tiny hotel dresser. Billy riffled through her clothes, not lingering on her thongs and nearly invisible bras. She was dead. There was no more pleasure to be had from her, not when his own freedom was in jeopardy.

Nothing suspicious among her belongings. He checked the drawers in the nightstand, rummaged around in the bathroom. Razor in the shower, along with jumbo-sized bottles of her personal shampoo, conditioner, and body moisturizer. The vanity of women could be measured by the weight of their suitcases.

Last, he examined the body. Not that he was squeamish. God, no. Not Billy Dent. Perversely, he’d been saving the best for last.

There was no obvious reason for her to be dead. No evident trauma. No entry wounds or cuts.

Maybe he was all wrong about this. Maybe no one was at fault. Could this just be natural causes? He grinned. She wouldn’t be the first woman he’d killed, but she’d be the first to die from exposure to his cock.

Rigor mortis had yet to set in, but Nadine’s cheeks had already taken on a grayish sheen. He resisted the urge to poke at them like taffy or rubber cement.

With slow care, he lifted her limbs, examining them for deviations or disturbances. They were as supple and as smooth as they’d been wrapped around him the night before.

It was a risk to tilt the body—her blood might shift too much and pool to one side, revealing to some smart-ass medical examiner that she’d been moved postmortem—but he had to chance it, for the sake of thoroughness. He lifted her as little as he could, craning his neck to look under her. That fine ass—upturned toward him and thrusting just hours ago—was unblemished. Nothing along her back or the backs of her legs, either, other than a mole that possibly presaged skin cancer.

“I diagnose that as not a big deal for you in your present situation, darlin’,” Billy told her.

He gently lowered her back onto the bed, supine.

Natural causes. Natural causes. Billy didn’t believe in God (such things were for those who needed to believe in the intercession of the divine to make sense of their sad lives), but he knew for a fact that the whole of the universe understood him, approved of him, and protected him when necessary. Maybe this had been natural causes. That meant a new plan—he would have to make certain that he was here when she was found by housekeeping, then offer an appropriately shocked and bland statement to the authorities.

“We’d just spent the night together. I don’t know what it meant to her, but I was so hopeful that maybe it might be something more, but now…”

He said it out loud, practicing. It sounded convincing to him.

Killed her with my cock. Well, damn. That’s a far shot from a swoon, Nadine, old gal. You done paid Little Billy the ultimate compliment, you have. How many men can claim to have killed a woman with pleasure?

He took one last look at her face and realized he needed to check under her head.

Tough to do. Any movement could lock her face into position in the wrong way. Might as well pin a note on her that read BODY MOVED AFTER DEATH.

He brushed her hair from her ear so that he would have a clear view of her neck for lifting…

… and groaned.

No need to move her. Right there on the pillow was a single red dot. Blood, Billy knew.

He crouched down and angled the bedside lamp, holding her hair aloft and away to prevent casting shadows. Just under her ear, almost perpendicular to the splotch of blood, was a tiny pinprick.

Well, that was it, then. Billy’s tallywhacker was off the hook for this particular homicide. Nadine had died not from a night of good and thorough fucking (better and more thorough than she’d deserved, truthfully), but rather from an injection of something incompatible with the human organism.

Billy rocked back on his heels and clucked his tongue. “No style at all,” he muttered. “Not a lick of it.”

Didn’t matter. Whether she’d died pretty or ugly or boring, she was dead, and he was stuck.

She hadn’t struggled much—the sheets were in a postcoital disarray, not a fight-for-your-life tangle—so whatever she’d been injected with had probably contained a fast-acting paralytic. Maybe vecuronium, mixed in with one of the high-end narcotics. Stir in a little ketamine… Sure, that would work. Get it into the vein—as it appeared the mystery man had done—and she’d be out within thirty seconds. Less for a skinny little thing like her.

He mused for a while on the possible drug combinations, but there were too many. Shaking himself out of his chemistry reverie, he cast about for any other clues. The carpet pile was too shallow to bear footprints, and his own shoes would have perturbed any that had remained anyway. Footprints made him think of fingerprints… which couldn’t help him. Fingerprint dust was nasty, messy stuff that would only shout that someone had been here before the cops. In any event, what would he compare prints to?

They’d be useless anyway—it was a hotel room, and there would be dozens of prints from dozens of guests. Unless this joint had the world’s most dedicated cleaning crew, which he doubted.

Shaking his head, he chuckled. No wonder the cops never caught him. Half their tools were from a fucking Fisher-Price play set.

He located her cell phone on the nightstand. Hesitated a moment. He could explain his prints on the door handle, the toilet lever, the sink and faucet, even on her body. But he couldn’t explain them on her cell phone.

Scrounging in the bathroom again, he came up with a thin plastic shower cap, provided by the helpful staff of the Castle by the Sea. He stuck his hand in it and picked up the phone.

No calls since he’d seen her at the bar. He checked her sent e-mail folder, but that was similarly useless.

Billy resisted the urge to gnaw at his lower lip. Over a hard-fought lifetime, he’d disciplined himself not to give in to physical tics while prospecting. Bite your fingernails? Hell, you might leave one behind, and there’s your DNA for the bastard cops. Bite your lip? Might draw some blood. More DNA. How stupid do you have to be?

He tried to invert his thinking. When leaving a crime scene, he did his best to think like the cops who would be coming after him. He would imagine how they would see the crime scene and what they would do. Then he would take steps to neutralize everything they did. Now he had to do it in reverse—imagining what the cops would do and do it, not stop it.

Surveillance cameras.

Question the staff.

Those were the first and most obvious tactics, but Billy could avail himself of neither. Not without pretending to be a cop, which was like wading deeper into the quicksand.

She’d been alive when he left her, that much he was sure of. So that meant the killer had offed her somewhere in that meager space of time that he was gone. The killer couldn’t have known that Billy was coming back, so he was one lucky sonofabitch to get in and out in those ten or so minutes.

How had the killer gotten in? Billy could think of several ways, but then again, he had a particular talent for breaking and entering that he’d honed and nurtured over the years. Most involved what the young peckerheads these days called “social engineering.” Not everyone had those skills. So what would your average dumb-ass killer do to get in?

He paced back to the door and tried to imagine. Knocking. Calling through the door in an authoritative voice that it was the hotel manager and something was amiss…

No. It didn’t track. She’d have to get up to let him in, and she had been naked. She would have had to put something on before answering the door, and then the killer would have had to strip her again. Did the killer have enough time to talk his way in, kill her, remove whatever she’d thrown on, and get out before Billy came back?

No. He didn’t think so. Getting clothes off a dead body was more time-consuming than it might seem at first blush, as Billy knew from hard-won personal experience. One time, in Ohio, he’d wasted damn near three minutes trying to figure out how to get a girl’s skirt off. She was pretty damn dead and, thus, no help to him at all in this particular area. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t find any sort of a zipper or clasp, until he finally realized that the goddamned thing wound around her like a mummy’s wrap.

Three minutes didn’t sound like much time, and it wasn’t—to a prospect. But to a man with Billy’s vocation, those minutes were crucial. Stepping off a time line could mean the difference between life as a free man and life in prison. After that debacle, he’d undertaken an intensive three-month study of women’s clothing, including an online fashion course for which he’d registered under an assumed name and used high-grade privacy tools to block his IP address. He knew his culottes from his jorts, and he would never be caught off guard again.

Staring down at Nadine, he was doubly certain that she hadn’t dressed after he’d left. Not just because of the time line, but also the fact that there was no sign of a struggle. The killer hadn’t talked his way in. He’d come upon her unawares and jabbed her with his special cocktail of kill-juice as she slept.

Billy’s lip curled. Drugs. He didn’t think much of them. A useful tool for incapacitating, yes, but to kill with them? It lacked imagination. It lacked the personal touch. Damn near anyone could do it.

And besides, what was the fun in killing so quickly and painlessly? The whole point was the pain and the lingering.

Once again, he pulled himself back to the present and the matter at hand. If she didn’t get up to let the killer in, then how had he gotten in? Billy knew he’d closed the door firmly behind him, so it wasn’t a crime of opportunity.

Maybe it was an employee? Someone with a master key or a dupe?

No. Too risky. Keycards were tracked. Billy always assumed that the keycards at hotels were imprinted with all manner of his personal information. When not on vacation—when traveling on business—he always took them with him, shredded them, then melted the remains in the furnace at home.

Had there been another man? Someone else she’d been seeing or interested in or sleeping with? An ex-boyfriend at the same hotel, or a friend with benefits? Someone else who came by first thing in the morning, fucked her, then killed her?

No. Absolutely zero evidence of it.

Then again, Billy had done plenty of things in the past that had left no evidence.

He slid back the blackout curtain, grimacing at the bright spill of sunlight that intruded on the room. Nadine’s room overlooked the pool, four stories below. Across the way, another hotel’s windows peered this way. Not wanting to be seen or photographed, Billy quickly checked the locks on the window.

Only there were no locks.

Because the window couldn’t open.

He pulled the curtains back into place with a stronger tug than was strictly necessary. Damn it! He’d exposed himself for nothing.

No one was looking out the window for you. Stop being paranoid. No one was watching. You’re at the beach, not in some slum tenement.

His eyes flicked to the bed.

Except she’s dead. And you didn’t do it for a change, so someone else did, and who knows where—

He nearly clucked his tongue but stopped himself. Those unconscious, involuntary physical reactions. They’ll get you every time.

The killer hadn’t come in through the door. Couldn’t come in through the window.

Which left only one possibility.

The killer had been here all along.

The whole time.

After hanging the DO NOT DISTURB tag on Nadine’s door—and double-checking that no one was in the hall—Billy slipped into the corridor and hastened to the lobby, where the hotel’s free breakfast buffet was still in full swing. He needed to be seen, just in case he had to establish an alibi later.

Piling a plate high with runny scrambled eggs and burnt hash browns, Billy settled in at a small table with two chairs, his back to a half-wall topped with greenery. He forced himself to eat the disgusting mess slowly and methodically. Food was fuel, and fuel kept the brain-gears turning.

The killer had been in the room the whole time. It was the only explanation that fit the facts. The closet Billy had dutifully checked in the morning had been occupied all night because the killer hadn’t slipped in when Billy left—he’d been there when Billy left. He’d been there while Billy slept.

While Billy fucked.

His ego told him it was impossible, but Billy’s sense of self-preservation had no trouble overriding his ego. Someone had been in the room when he’d gotten there the previous night with Nadine, and that person knew Billy’s face, his voice.

Questions assailed him: Did Nadine know the killer was there? Had this been some sort of weird setup or a sex game gone awry? What were the odds of someone deciding to murder Billy’s one-night stand before he even bedded her?

The combination of unanswerable questions and greasy, grotesque buffet chow spun his head and roiled his gut. Billy rolled his temples with his forefingers. Nothing made any sense. And still, a dead girl doused in his DNA was up on the fourth floor, hidden only by the insufficient and insignificant shield of a flimsy, laminated DO NOT DISTURB sign.

A bright, sharp image of Jasper knifed through the shadowy queries and hazy images of Nadine’s room. His boy. He had to figure this out for his boy. If Billy went away, who knew what would happen to Jasper? He could hear the clang and complaint of his mother in the kitchen, echoing in his near-perfect memory. No good.

He surreptitiously glanced around the lobby. Any of these people could be the killer. Any one of them, and any one of the hundreds of others elsewhere in the hotel. Assuming the killer hadn’t already fled. Which… Why wouldn’t he? Why not run off after doing the deed?

Unless he wants to stick around to see what’s what…

Billy suddenly realized he might have a target on his own back. Kill the only witness…? Sure.

But…

It just wasn’t making any sense. If the killer was in the closet all night, why not come out and shoot up Nadine and Billy with kill-juice? Remove the possibility of Billy’s remembering something or tattling to the cops, narrowing the time frame. It just didn’t make sense to keep Billy alive. Even for an amateur.

Unless this wasn’t a murder; it was a game.

He dumped his tray at the trash cans. The Crows—that secret society of serial killers to which he belonged, of which Janice even now fought her way to the top—played games all the time. It was how they winnowed out the winners from the losers, the real deals from the pretenders.

Billy was known throughout the Crows. He was not to be trifled with, especially now that his wife was in contention to be the next Crow King.

But hell—some serial killers didn’t follow rules all that well.

What if…

On a whim, he stopped at the front desk. “’Scuse me,” he said with his most winning smile to the middling-attractive clerk. “I saw a Jeep with a Third Infantry bumper sticker out in your parking lot that looks a hell of a lot like the one my buddy I served with drives. Wonderin’ if we ended up at the same place by coincidence. Can you tell me if you have a Jack Dawes registered?”

She hesitated just a moment. Billy amped up his smile and threw in a dose of eagerness for good measure. Her fingers clacked at a hidden keyboard for a moment.

“No Jack Dawes, sir. No Dawes at all, actually.”

“Well, thanks for checkin’.”

“Thank you for your service,” she said with great sincerity.

Billy, who had spent nary a day in uniform, nodded gravely in return.

Back in his room—the safest spot in the hotel, though that wasn’t saying much—Billy paced and pondered. The Dawes routine had been a long shot, but one with little downside and great upside potential. Those were the sorts of opportunities Billy liked. Sure, you were often disappointed, but rarely were you harmed. Crows often used the alias Jack Dawes for all sorts of purposes, and if some Crow had decided to call out Billy, there was a good chance he’d set out a flag with the name.

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. If Billy was the target, then a Crow made sense. But if Nadine was the target, then… Who? Why? The idea of his first (consensual) fuck in months being killed almost under his nose just seemed a coincidence beyond even the most fecund imagination.

So someone had to be taking aim at him. Sending him a message. It had to be about Billy.

He knew the weaknesses of killers. He’d studied them in others, discovered them in himself, then ruthlessly purged them. Returning to the scene of the crime… He understood its pull and succumbed once or twice, but never again, not in all his long years of killing.

Now he had no choice. It wasn’t his crime, but returning was no less fraught. Still, he went back to Nadine’s room, positive he’d missed something. This time, he took with him the plastic bags from his room’s ice bucket, as well as the tongs, just in case he needed to collect evidence without leaving any more fingerprints. Yeah, his prints were already in the room, but no sense leaving even more and making it even easier for the cops, right?

He opened the drawers in the nightstands—Bible, envelopes, nothing more. Checked under the desk and in the trash can. Went through the bathroom again. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

Her phone lay on the room’s little desk, just where he’d placed it after checking it before. He skimmed through her contacts, just in case any familiar names came up, but it was mostly a list of first names, punctuated by occasional scatological commentary.

No new e-mails or phone calls. So at least no one was checking up on her.

He tapped the little SMS icon. He’d forgotten all about text messages. He didn’t use ’em himself—better for kids and illiterates—but someone Nadine’s age probably lived most of her life in texts.

The first thing he saw when the SMS app opened was a picture of himself.

His grip tightened ever so slightly on the phone. The photo originated from a phone number he didn’t recognize, and the sender must not have been in Nadine’s address book, because no name was associated with it. He flicked at the screen, but there was no history. The mystery phone number had sent exactly one message, the photo, and nothing else.

He flinched involuntarily at his own visage on the tiny screen. Seeing Outside Billy always unnerved him. He didn’t like photographs of him existing at all, preferring to be a ghost in the machinery of the world. This evidence that others could see him, could capture and repeat him, disturbed him as little else in the sad world of the prospects could.

Worse yet: He realized after a moment that the photo was recent. Him, checking into Castle by the Sea.

Someone had stood in the hotel lobby and snapped a photo of Billy as he’d stood at the front desk. And Billy had been completely unaware.

His rage boiled within, flaring his nostrils, quickening his breath. It took every tool at his disposal to calm himself, to regulate his lungs and his heart back into the normal range. With great focus and control, he steered himself away from the deadly shoals of abject panic. He’d spent years studying different forms of meditation, seeking the ultimate mastery over his own body, and now that education paid off. A lesser man—a prospect—might have ranted. Hurled the phone to the ground or against the wall. Screamed. Hyperventilated.

All useless detritus of the pointless emotions of fear and anger at this point. None of that would help Billy achieve what he had to achieve: Tracking down whoever had taken this photo and ending him.

After deleting the photo and replacing the phone, Billy retreated to his room and contemplated the mystery phone number. He hadn’t written it down or entered it into his own phone—that would just prove to someone that Billy had seen the number in the first place, tying him into this whole mess even deeper. No, Billy just memorized it. Memorizing had always come easy to him. He could still remember the phone number, the license plate number, and the bra size of his first successful kill. Not even intentionally. Things just fell into his brain and stuck there, usually forever.

Like this phone number.

No way in hell would he call it from his cell, or even from his room phone. Not a chance, Charlie. He’d lived too long leaving no way for anyone to track back to him; he wouldn’t start Hansel-and-Gretel-ing at this late date.

Made no sense to call from Nadine’s cell, either—the killer knew she was dead, and so would absolutely not pick up a call from that number. Nor from her room, for the same reason.

Back in Billy’s childhood, convenient, nigh-untraceable, highly anonymous pay phones were everywhere. But the world had moved on, and he didn’t have time to go searching for one. And so, the front desk beckoned.

On his way to the elevator, Billy caught himself whistling. There was a mirror across from the elevator doors, and he stared at himself for a moment. Outside Billy was smiling. Inside Billy realized he was almost giddy. It was the sensation he had the night before he went out prospecting, when all the months of planning, all the hard work and dedication and devotion to endless minute details came together.

The endorphin rush of a plan well-plotted, a murder sublimely designed.

He felt that way now. His blood thrummed, and Outside Billy grinned. The idea that he could only be happy when in imminent danger of being caught didn’t appeal to him.… But he wasn’t one to deny himself any pleasure. He was enjoying this impromptu hunt, especially now that he knew he would prevail. The killer had made a mistake.

They always made mistakes.

Except for Billy.

A new prospect was on duty at the front desk, this one a young Hispanic man whom Billy charmed just as easily as the woman who’d been at the desk before. Man or woman, straight or gay, prospects were prospects—they bent to the will of their betters without even realizing.

Rodrigo (according to his name tag) happily handed a landline over the counter. The cord was just long enough that Billy could step around a half-wall in the lobby for a little bit of privacy. He had a sudden flash to his childhood, a time he rarely if ever thought of: His sister, Samantha, flinging herself at the ringing phone mounted to the kitchen wall, snatching up the receiver, then darting around the bend in the wall, her voice a covert hush that spiked into occasional squeals.

That same phone still hung from the same spot on the wall. Assuming his mother hadn’t ripped it down by now.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he quickly punched in the number that had texted a photo of him to Nadine. After three rings, he experienced the slightest frisson of doubt, then reproached himself for ever questioning himself as the line opened midway through the fourth ring.

“Yeah?” Male. Even in the single syllable, Billy detected a note of caution.

A cop or a prospect would meet caution with caution, trying to put the man on the other end at ease. Getting the guy relaxed, the theory went, would elicit his cooperation and patience.

Billy knew better. He knew people—prospects—better than they knew themselves because he’d spent a lifetime studying them, scrutinizing, beginning with his own sister. People rarely reacted in sensible ways, though their reactions were usually predictable to Billy.

This guy—this cautious guy on the other end—still had in his possession a phone he’d used to contact a murder victim. That he’d not yet destroyed and discarded that phone meant one of two things: Either he was a complete idiot, or he was expecting a call at that number.

Either way, being timid and trying to put him at ease wouldn’t work. Caution and calm and reserve were for planning. Once planning was over, it was time for action.

“How the hell are you?” Billy boomed into the phone. “Enjoyin’ your time at Castle by the Sea?”

A smart, thinking man would disconnect the call. But Billy knew he’d caught his prey off guard.

“Wait, what?” the guy asked.

Wait, what? When his first move should have been to break the connection, then stomp the phone into oblivion, then toss the pieces into a sewer.

“Castle by the Sea,” Billy said again with great cheer. “Hell of a place, ain’t it? Relaxin’ vibe, easy access to the beach. And the taquitos at happy hour are to die for.”

“Who is this?”

Billy chuckled. The man on the other end sounded wary. Sounded wary, but the word didn’t apply. Not to this idiot. He wasn’t smart enough to be wary.

Lowering his voice, Billy broadened his smile for the benefit of any lookee-loos. “You know who it is. I’m the witness, friend. And not the only one.”

“Witness? To what?”

If Billy had had any doubts at all about the man on the other end of the line being his quarry, they’d have been scrubbed away by the eraser of continued conversation. An innocent man would not be puzzled or even indignant by this point in such a strange phone call. An innocent man would be angry or perplexed enough to hang up.

A guilty man—or a man with guilty knowledge—would pretend to be innocent but would keep the conversation going to see what Billy knew.

“Seriously, who the hell is this?” the other man asked.

“Look, it ain’t that I don’t appreciate the attempt, as bungled as it was. It’s just that—”

“Bungled?”

Billy bloated his voice with a too-innocent, gee-whiz quality, pitched it low and nearly inaudible. “Well, look, I don’t mean to offend. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but it just seems to me that—speaking as a strictly disinterested observer, mind you—that if you plan on killin’ someone, well, you should probably kill ’em. Am I right?”

Silence for a moment. Just a moment.

An innocent man would threaten to call the police at this point.

More silence. Weighing his options. Trying to tease the truth out of a noiseless phone connection.

Billy threw some more words into the water like chum: “Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe I’m seein’ this all wrong. Maybe you meant to give her just enough chemistry set jizz to stop her breathing long enough for her to go all vegetable. But, I mean, I’m no expert, but I imagine she’ll regain some kinda brain function at some point. Probably just enough to, y’know, point to some guy in a lineup or a photo array.”

“You were with her.…” It was a near-strangled sound.

“Sure. As her one-night stand. But I bet you met up with her in person at some point. How it worked, right? Some kinda money had to change hands. Maybe she’s a working girl, maybe an escort, maybe just a college kid looking to make some dough on the side, don’t care if she gotta spread her legs for it. Hail feminism, done made women embrace their sexuality, right?”

Nothing.

“So you meet up with her. Exchange dough. Later, you text her a picture of me ’cause you gotta do it close to when she’s gonna pull the trigger. No way for you to know if I’ve cut my hair or anything, right? Then you send her my way, and she and I have ourselves a good time. But she knows your face as well as she knows mine.”

“Look, you—”

Billy clapped the receiver back into the body of the phone. He spun around to the front desk and handed the phone over. “Thanks so much,” he said, grinning.

He didn’t want to wait for the elevator. He took the stairs two at a time, regulating his breathing so that by the time he pushed through the stairwell door and emerged into the hallway, he appeared no more winded than if he’d just strolled down from the floor above.

Sauntering past a maid in the hall, Billy snapped his fingers as though he’d just forgotten something.

“Darlin’,” he said to the maid, “I sure am sorry, but I just spilled some of that room service coffee on my bed. I’m happy to take care of it, if you don’t mind…?”

With a shrug and a smile, she gestured to the cart. Billy chose a neatly folded sheet and nodded with gratitude.

Back in Nadine’s room, he left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. He tore a sheet of paper off the pad on the desk and stepped briskly into the closet. With swift, purposeful movements, he crumpled the paper and stuffed it into the hole in the doorframe. Now he could pull the door closed all the way without the cylinder engaging.

In the dark of the closet, he heard a sound from outside. The door to the room unlocking.

Hotels. Always offering two keycards. Unlike Billy, Nadine had accepted the second one, and her killer had taken it with him. Sloppy.

Must have still been at the hotel. Idiot.

Billy counted to three, slowly. Most people counting to three—especially in dire situations where they were actively trying to calm themselves—sped up. Not Billy. He could be on the run from six Dobermans and a pissed-off daddy with a shotgun and he’d still get the count right. It had saved his bacon more than once.

A three-count was pretty much exactly how long he figured it would take the killer to get from the door to the bedside.

On three, Billy burst through the door. He didn’t know what waited on the other side, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t wait to assess the situation. He couldn’t sit in the closet and risk inching the door open enough to scope out his prey. Every millisecond he waited, the odds jumped that the killer would realize he’d been suckered.

So Billy jumped, too.

Blitzkrieg was a fine weapon in any killer’s arsenal. There was a time for planning and patience and subtlety, yeah, sure, but when push came to shove, it was best to shove as hard and as fast and as brutally as possible.

The killer turned from the bed, half-crouched, eyes alight with a combination of surprise, rage, and bloodlust. He was tall and slender, with delicate features now twisted into a snarl.

With the sheet twisted tightly and stretched between his hands, Billy flung himself bodily at the killer, who barely had time to react. In less than a second, the sheet, wound to the thickness of a hefty nautical rope, wrapped around the killer’s throat. His eyes bugged as he realized what was happening, hands raised for combat suddenly shooting to his neck.

Too late. Billy’s momentum knocked them both over. They hit the bed, bounced off, crashed to the floor. The killer’s hands were trapped somewhere under him, and Billy—astride him—had the advantage. He crossed his arms, tightening the makeshift garrote. Breathed in deep through his nose, then out in short puffs through his mouth. Not a conscious decision at all—years of training, now muscle memory. Last thing he needed was to hyperventilate into unconsciousness while in the middle of his work.

The killer scrabbled at the sheet with fingers so long and feminine that Billy expected to see nail polish there. Impassively, he stared down at the killer, no longer fearing the man’s hands. As oxygen fled the brain, the body directed all efforts to reacquiring it.

The man’s lips moved. In a papery hush, he managed: “But… she… said…”

Billy tightened the sheet. He didn’t care what Nadine had said.

The killer’s legs kicked once, weakly. His hands dropped away. Unconscious.

Billy, who had been possum’d more than once, waited a ten-count before he let himself relax.

He had damn little time. As the sheet slackened around the killer’s neck, blood and oxygen would flow back into the brain. Wakening would be swift.

He dragged the other man to the closet. The garment bar inside was sturdy, metal, bolted to a flange that was mounted into a stud. Moving quickly, precisely, with the sparing and exact gestures of a man who has practiced extended hours, until the unnatural becomes second nature, he fashioned a serviceable noose from one end of the sheet. He looped it over the killer’s head, tightened it with the knot to the left side of the killer’s neck.

There had been a study once that most suicides positioned the knot to the left. Billy always went with the percentages.

The killer’s eyes began to flutter open just as Billy tugged the free end of the sheet into position over the garment bar. Before the man could struggle, Billy hauled on his end of the sheet, tightening the knot and cutting off blood flow and oxygen again. The killer sagged back into unconsciousness.

Billy braced himself against the back of the closet and gently nudged the killer with his foot, pushing the man forward into a leaning position. Then he waited patiently until the killer’s legs spasmed and the smell of human excrement assaulted his nose. Good smell, that. It meant the job was done. Death often loosened the sphincter.

He tied the free end of the sheet to the garment bar, then gently adjusted the position of the body—leaning forward on its knees to the extreme end of the sheet. When he let go, the body slumped to one side, but that was fine. Bodies and gravity did their dance, and no one knew what clinch they’d be in when the music ended and the lights came up.

Billy’s heart raced as he stepped back into the room; his blood thrummed in his ears.

He caught his breath and frisked the body quickly, but thoroughly. Wallet with cash and no ID. Good. Traveling as anonymously as possible. First smart thing he’d done.

In a jacket pocket, a capped needle and an empty vial. Probably waiting to get somewhere safe to discard them. Oh, well.

He left everything in the man’s pockets except for the cell phone he found, complete with the picture of Billy on the sent text screen. Billy erased the phone, then tucked it into his own pocket. It would go into the furnace at home.

He stepped back to admire his handiwork. “What we got here is a murder/suicide. Damn sad it is, especially with such a beautiful beach out there to enjoy.”

Clucking his tongue, he glanced from one body to the other and back again. “I thought you two crazy kids would make it. I really did.”

On his way to the door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the smallish mirror mounted pointlessly over the desk. For an instant—just an instant—Inside Billy showed himself, all dragon’s teeth and lion mane and eyes coruscating like bleeding suns.

Billy grinned; fire and black, choking smoke purled up from between his lips.

Poking his head into the hall, he saw he had a clear shot at the elevator. He took down the DO NOT DISTURB sign and listened for the satisfying click of the door locking behind him.

On the beach, he wondered: Who had the killer been? Then again, did it really matter? Some Crow looking to make a name for himself. Trying to set Billy up for the ultimate indignity—capture.

But the end result was Billy’s best vacation in years. He’d gotten laid and gotten to kill someone, and pinned two deaths on one loser. Not bad.

By the time he returned to the Castle by the Sea, an ambulance and two police cruisers were parked outside. Billy joined the crowd of gawking rubberneckers. After a moment, an EMT emerged, pushing a stretcher on which lay a body bag. A gasp rose up from the crowd. Billy slipped inside and approached the front desk, where a very flustered manager was mopping sweat from her forehead with the cuff of her hotel blazer.

“Say, what’s goin’ on out there?” Billy asked, hooking a thumb toward the parking lot.

She smiled at him tightly, eyes squinted with concern. “I’m sorry. We’ve been asked not to talk about it.”

“C’mon, darlin’.” He flashed her a smile that had unlocked doors and dropped panties in six states.

She blushed satisfactorily. Vacation or no, he could work when he needed to. “There’s been a murder. And a suicide.”

“Ain’t that just awful.” Billy clucked his tongue. “Some people just can’t control themselves, I suppose.”

You never know what will happen when you go somewhere new.

True.

He stayed two more days. Leaving early would have looked odd, even though anyone could be justified vacating a hotel after hearing about a murder under its roof. Billy wasn’t “anyone,” though—he had to be above reproach, above suspicion, at all times.

Those two days were as boring as the previous one had been exciting. He’d enjoyed his little chase more than he wanted to admit.

Still, staying on gave him the opportunity to keep a weather eye on the investigation. After the first day, the bastard cops vacated the premises, and by the second day, the local news seemed to have declared the whole thing a one-night stand gone horribly wrong. It had the savor of a closed case from what Billy could tell, and that’s just how he liked it.

He checked out of Castle by the Sea without so much as a sideways glance from a cop. With his usual Outside Billy smile, he took his receipt from the gal at the desk and sauntered through the lobby. Inside Billy couldn’t wait to get the living fuck away from this place, back home, back to the Nod, back to Jasper.

“Oh, Mr. Dent!” came the voice of the front-desk clerk. “Mr. Dent!” she called out again.

Billy gritted his teeth. Almost out the door. Almost gone. If he ran, it would look suspicious. If he stayed, he could be walking into a trap. He thought he’d managed to wash Nadine off his hands, but maybe he’d forgotten something and the cops were waiting for him to leave before pouncing.…

Possibilities and alternatives blew through him in a split second, and then he turned back to the desk. “Yes, darlin’?”

Flustered, she held an envelope out to him. “I almost forgot—a message came in for you just a little while ago.”

Billy took the envelope and saluted her with it. He waited until had put twenty miles between himself and the hotel before pulling over to the side of the road.

The envelope was embossed with the hotel’s name and logo, but it was otherwise unremarkable. He opened it with his penknife and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

Three words.

Three words and a single, uppercase letter.

Billy absorbed them, rolled them over in his mouth as though tasting them.

Then, at last, he chuckled.

The chuckles became honest-to-God laughter, then guffaws. He kept on until he wept.

He burned the envelope by the side of the road and let its ashes waft away. The note itself he would keep a little while longer. Maybe he would even give it pride-of-place in his hidden rumpus room, where he kept souvenirs of his escapades.

Back in the rental car, he tucked the note into the sun visor for the time being and pulled back into traffic. Every now and then, as he neared the airport, he would glance up and see three words and a letter, in handwriting so well known to him:

Happy anniversary, darling. —J

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