Michael drew up to the curb in front of Alexandra's building and cut Kitt's engine. He was wearing what he considered to be appropriate working attire; dark pants, expensive black shoes, a black collarless shirt and a black leather coat. His Ray-Bans weren't entirely necessary in the gathering dusk, but he knew they were an important part of the uniform.
He buzzed her apartment.
"Yes?"
"It's Glaser."
He heard the door unlock itself, and went inside. It was done in tasteful taupe and beige, with bonded stone floors and recessed lighting. Classy, he thought.
Alexandra was lying on a scarlet Danish Modern couch, smoking a black cigarette in a long holder, and wearing a red satin robe. Her lips and her nails were two shades darker than the robe; her eyes were smoky and veiled, and her hair was as ever pulled back into a neat and ordered bun. Michael took the scene in without removing his sunglasses; he had seen a number of stunningly beautiful women in his time, but Alexandra was up there with the very best of them.
"Come here," she said. "I have a special job for you."
He went. Her voice was low and throaty, her eyes drew him inexorably closer. He could feel rationality leaving him, and unconsciously touched the heavy black band of the communicator watch; the familiar dark plastic reassured him, and he felt some semblance of control return.
"What do you want me to do?"
"As in every business, mine is fraught with competition," Alexandra said, and blew a smoke ring. "One of my main competitors overstepped his bounds yesterday night, and killed several of my best men. Now, I'm all for reasonably peaceful coexistence, but Schreck was not within his jurisdiction. This part of LA is mine. Vic, I want you and Raoul to take Schreck out."
Michael had feared something like this. Carefully schooling his face and his body to show no surprise, he took a seat on the edge of the opposite couch. "Tonight?"
"Yes. Raoul will take you there. He knows where Schreck lives."
"Do you have any preference in terms of M.O.?" Michael asked offhandedly, trying not to sound disgusted. Alexandra flicked ash from her cigarette and regarded the ceiling thoughtfully.
"I must confess to a shameful partiality for a gangland-style execution," she said, and laughed; a delightful low sound that Michael found he wanted to listen to for a very long time. "But listen to your heart, Vic, it will tell you what you should do."
"When do we go?"
"Raoul should be here in a few minutes. Have a cigarette."
Michael had quit several years before, but this woman was having a very nerve-wracking effect on him. He selected one from the box on the table and lit it from the aromatic candle that burned beside the cigarette box, drawing deeply. Alexandra was looking at him in a calculating sort of way.
"You please me," she said, after a moment. "Yes, you please me a great deal, Victor Glaser. It's been a long time since I had one like you, all hard around the edges. Do I please you?"
Michael stared at her, and slowly drew off his Ray-Bans. "I can honestly say you are the most beautiful woman I've seen in twenty years," he said simply. Alexandra laughed again, that low pealing musical laugh. She leaned forward slightly.
"You'll have to do better than that," she told him.
Michael tried to keep his eyes on Alexandra's face, but the calculated glimpses he was being allowed of the delectable landscape beneath her robe were making it difficult. She reached out a manicured hand, tipped with perfect blood-colored nails, and ever so lightly caressed the edge of Michael's cheekbone. He reached up and covered her hand with his.
Alexandra found her heart was racing. Surprised at herself, she took a mental step back. Was it so long since she'd had a lover? Or was it just that Glaser exuded a particularly powerful charisma, something almost frightening in its intensity?
The doorbell rang. Raoul was announced, and Alexandra withdrew her fingers from Michael's grasp, reclining again on the sofa with catlike grace. Michael drew deeply on his cigarette, schooling his features into an expression of cool professionalism, and put his sunglasses back on.
Raoul walked in. He was dark, Mediterranean, dressed in nondescript black, already smoking. He took Michael in at a glance, looked at Alexandra with his head on one side. "This is the man you told me of?"
"Raoul, meet Vic Glaser," Alexandra said lazily. "You'll be working together tonight. Vic, Raoul will explain whatever you may need to know. Schreck is probably accompanied by his lover; she can be got rid of too. She may not be worth your time, but I'd rather have her silenced than take the chance that she might experience a sudden access of bravery and decide to try something stupid."
"As you wish," Raoul said. "What about armaments?"
"Quite," Alexandra said, getting up with a ripple of vermilion silk. "Follow me." She led the way to a walnut table on which lay two Glock 9mm automatic pistols and eight clips. "These are new and clean, not registered to anyone. The ammunition in these clips has been treated with a specific toxin that causes death within an hour if the slightest amount of it is introduced into a wound: you needn't shoot perfectly straight, since a graze by one of these bullets is guaranteed to kill."
Michael's blood ran cold to hear the woman take such satisfaction in that statement. "Is there an antidote?" he asked.
"There is. If by some misadventure one of you gets hit by one of these bullets....Schreck has them too, so watch out....you must administer one cc of it by hypodermic syringe, intravenously. I have the hypos prepared already." Alexandra turned to a wall safe and opened it quickly, so quickly neither Raoul nor Michael could see the combination. She took out two minute hypodermic syringes and shut the safe again, handing a syringe to them both. "One cc, remember. Within fifteen minutes."
Michael nodded, bitterly. Devon had had no idea what this was going to entail. Both men picked up a Glock and four clips from the table, shoved the gun into their shoulder holster and the clips into their pockets. "Is that everything?"
"I think so," Alexandra said, yawning. "Oh, and if anything goes wrong, first commit ritual suicide and then call me."
Raoul grinned mirthlessly. "Your car or mine?" he asked Michael.
"Let's take mine," Michael said. He might well need Kitt's help to get through tonight.
"See you later, babe," Raoul tossed over his shoulder to Alexandra, who favored him with a burning glare and reassumed her position on the couch. The two men made their way downstairs and out onto the street. Kitt waited, full of dark foreboding. Michael could feel his resistance as Raoul got in, and swore he'd make it up to his partner in the future. Raoul directed him to a house up in the canyons, not far from the house where Charles Manson's girls had committed multiple murder.
Schreck's mansion was done in Forties white stucco, the ornamental shrubberies carefully clipped. A red Ferrari sat in the drive; Michael noticed vaguely that it was that particular brilliant shade which Bonnie always referred to as 'midlife crisis red.' Beside the Ferrari was a Jag, and behind that a Lincoln Town Car. Behind his Ray-Bans, Michael allowed one of his eyebrows to raise.
Raoul told him to park a little way down the street. Moving quietly and carefully, the two men crept closer to the white house. A single light was on in the upper storey. He turned to Raoul.
"Schreck's bedroom," the other man whispered. With ease, he shinned up the support pole of the balcony running underneath the window. Michael followed, with slightly more effort. The curtains were pulled almost all the way across. Michael could make out the edge of a huge bed, and a foot with scarlet toenails.
Just then Raoul flung out an arm and flattened him against the wall. Below, a security guard prowled, his flashlight searching the balcony where Michael had been a minute before. Both men breathed shallowly until he'd gone.
"What do we do?" Michael hissed.
"We go in shooting and get away fast," Raoul said, screwing a silencer onto the barrel of his Glock and handing one to Michael. "I go first. You clean up after me."
Michael nodded tightly. His mind was racing. How could he stop this? How could he avoid killing?
Schreck was apparently just as bad a seed as Alexandra. That didn't justify this, he told himself firmly. Nothing justified this.
But Raoul was already moving with the oiled grace of a cat, and Michael had no choice but to follow him.
In the first instant after Raoul had yanked the window open and jumped in, time seemed to move extremely slowly for Michael. He leapt through the window, took in the scene of the naked couple in the bed, the man very blond and with icy blue eyes, the girl dark and Hispanic-looking, her great breasts half-covered by her long dark hair. Raoul's arm was already levelled at the man, who was reaching for the bedside table; slowly, agonizingly so, Michael saw the black form of an automatic lying there. Raoul's finger tightened, and without conscious thought Michael flung himself at the other man, convinced he'd never make it, that he was too late.
The moment shattered as the gun went off. But Michael had made it. Slamming into Raoul's side, he knocked his arm up and the shot missed its intended target by more than a foot. As Raoul and Michael hit the floor together, the bullet found a mark.
Raoul picked himself up, his dark eyes on fire with hatred. He levelled the Glock against Michael, who rolled over and came up with his own gun at the ready; but Raoul wasn't moving. Michael hadn't registered the second shot, hadn't been aware there had been one; but Raoul slowly toppled over and lay still on the stained carpet, a little red hole in the back of his neck. Michael swung around and saw the black barrel of the blond man's gun staring at him. Absently he noticed the mess Raoul's first shot had made of the Latina girl's stomach. Time slowed down again as the black muzzle flashed red, and this time Michael heard the shot. He flung himself to one side, avoiding the bullet, and advanced. Somehow this had to be ended. The blond man fired again, again missing, and now Michael had a heavy silver vase in his hand, and he flung himself forward and swung the vase at Schreck's skull.
There was a sound like a ripe melon being dropped onto concrete, and Schreck lay limply back against the pillows. Michael dropped the vase.
He sat back, panting, his entire body afire with sour adrenaline. Blood stained his clothes, none of it his. He got up, staggering, and ran to the window. He had to get out. Had to get away.
A voice from behind him made his blood run cold again. A woman's voice.
"You....bastard...." she hissed. He swung around and saw Schreck's whore, her torn and ripped body staining the sheets scarlet, raising herself on one elbow with what must have been the last of her strength. He went cold as he saw Schreck's gun clasped firmly in her bloody fingers.
Before he could pull his own Glock from his holster she'd fired. The bullet plucked at his shoulder, and for a moment he wasn't even sure he'd been hit; but then the pain of the graze hit him with full force. He thought sickly of Alexandra's matter-of-fact voice. A graze by one of these bullets is sure to kill. He pulled out his gun, but before he could fire, her fingers went limp and her eyes rolled back in her head.
Dead silence filled the room. Michael felt frantically in his pocket for the hypo with the antidote. Horrified, he pulled out a shattered and empty plastic cylinder; his fall had crushed it. He fell on his knees beside Raoul and searched his pockets for his hypo, but it too was useless. Biting his lip as the sounds of sirens began to sour the night air, he slid out through the window and down the support back the way they'd come, keeping to the shadows as he ran back to Kitt.
"Michael, what happened?" Kitt demanded as he got in and the car pulled away. Michael lay back in the seat, breathing heavily. The agony of the wound was pulsing in his mind; it was difficult to think. How long had it been since he was shot? How much of the fifteen minutes was left?
"Schreck's dead," he managed. "His girlfriend and Raoul are dead too. It went wrong. The bullets have poison on them. I have fifteen minutes to get the antidote."
Kitt was silent, speeding them down through the canyons, terribly aware of the desperate need for haste. "The woman has the antidote?"
"Yes," Michael said. Already he felt the waves of dizziness, the difficulty in breathing. Kitt scanned his vitals, suppressed an exclamation of concern. "You'd better tell Devon."
By the time they pulled up in front of Alexandra's building Michael was unconscious. His breathing was fast and shallow, his heartbeat thready and faint. Kitt was frantic. Leaning on his horn, he watched as Alexandra's form appeared at the window.
"Help!" he yelled. "It's Vic. He's hurt!"
"What do I care?" Alexandra called down.
"Please," Kitt begged. "I can't help him. Nobody can." Something in his voice touched Alexandra. Standing at the window, she watched to see someone help Michael out of his car and up the steps. Nothing happened. She cursed vehemently and grabbed a syringe from the safe, hurrying downstairs.
"What the...?" she said almost to herself as she noticed there was no one else in the car. As she approached, the driver's side door popped open. "What is going on here?"
"Please," a voice said out of nowhere. "Help him. He's dying. He got one of the bullets ten minutes ago."
"Who's talking to me?" Alexandra snapped in sudden fear. "What is going on?"
"I'm the car," Kitt said urgently. "Please. He hasn't got much time."
Alexandra had had some doubts about Victor Glaser before; now she was almost sure he was not what he said he was. The card from Masaku could have been forged, after all, and good shots were not hard to get a hold of if you knew where to look. He had waited a little too long before answering to 'Vic' more than once; he had seemed distinctly uncomfortable at the assignment she'd sent him on tonight. Looking at the equipment within the car she thought suddenly that this must be some kind of tracking system; there was something very straight-and-narrow about 'Vic', and hadn't she heard something about an extralegal law enforcement team that involved a talking car?
"You're the car," she said. She'd been infiltrated. Fuck. Many had tried; none until now had managed.
"Yes," Kitt said. "Please. I'll explain. Just don't let him die."
She regarded the black Trans Am for a moment. It was so beautiful, and there was something very compelling and human in the soft, agonized tones. What the hell. She could always shoot him later.
She took the plastic guard from the needle, took Michael's limp arm and slid the needle into the vein, injecting exactly a cc into his bloodstream. Then she folded her arms, stood up and stared at the car.
"You'd better come inside so we can talk privately," she said at length, her voice cold and not particularly enthusiastic at the prospect. Kitt closed his door and fired his engine, following her down into the underground parking lot. He slid himself into a slot beside her lowrider and her BMW.
"Now let me get this straight," Alexandra said. "I am speaking to a car?"
"In a manner of speaking," Kitt said tiredly. He didn't know how to explain without explaining that Michael had come here with the express intention of taking her down. She might already know. "I'm a computer, installed inside this Trans Am. I control the car. Victor Glaser is my partner."
"What's his real name?" Alexandra asked, lighting a cigarette. Something made her want to hear this voice, compelled her to listen, to experience this.
"Michael Knight," Kitt admitted. "Look, Miss Spar, I..."
"Call me Alexandra," Alexandra heard herself say. "And you are...?"
"Kitt," Kitt said, almost surprised by the warmth in her tone.
"Kitt," Alexandra repeated, tasting the name. "It fits you. Tell me, Kitt, why are you and Michael Knight here in L.A. trying to infiltrate my organization?"
Kitt was exhausted with worry and constant monitoring of his partner. He couldn't find the energy to put together a plausible lie, and something inside him seemed to break. "We came here to take down the drug rings: you and Schreck, and another one in Santa Monica." He could mow her down, of course. He could drive right out of this garage. He could do what they had come to do.
But she loved cars, and she had saved Michael. She hadn't had to do that.
Alexandra dropped the end of her cigarette to the floor and crushed it with her heel. "I see," she said. At this point what she ought to do, she knew, was to shoot Michael Knight and blow up the Trans Am into lots of little pieces; but something new and hot had awakened in her body and her mind which told her that might be the biggest mistake of her life. She found herself thinking of the way his hand had felt on hers, the sharp curve of his cheekbone under her fingers. No one had captivated her this way in years.
There was something in Alexandra's life which she hadn't experienced for so long she didn't miss it, and the way she felt now as she stood in front of the pointed black prow of the Trans Am and heard Kitt's voice brought it back to her. Without really knowing why, she walked forward the few paces between her and Kitt and reached out a carmine-tipped finger to the black hood, ran it over the silky, warm surface. Behind the wheel, Michael moaned and shifted, already beginning to recover. She saw the glistening blackness of blood on his shoulder.
"You'd better let me see that," she said quietly. "He's losing a lot of blood."
Wordlessly Kitt opened the door. Alexandra gently explored the wound; a long deep graze over his left shoulder, cutting into the flesh just below the curvature of the joint. Kitt opened his glove compartment, showing Alexandra his first-aid kit. With a mutter of thanks, she cleaned away the worst of the blood and had a closer look.
He'd need stitches, but she could patch him up fairly well with what she had here. She cleaned the gouge thoroughly, glad for Michael's sake that he was still unconscious, for it would have been agonizing to experience this. When she was sure it was clean she covered it with antibiotic ointment and brought the lips of the wound together with a tight bandage. "That'll do for now," she said, closing the kit and replacing it. "Thank you for trusting me."
"I don't have a lot of choice," Kitt said dryly. "What are you going to do to us?"
"Nothing," Alexandra said after a moment. "Go on. Get out."
Kitt couldn't believe it. "Nothing? You mean you're just going to let us get away?"
"More or less. Get out before I change my mind. Oh, and Kitt?"
"Yes?"
"What happened, at Schreck's?"
"He's dead," Kitt said. "As is his girlfriend and your associate."
"Raoul? Oh well. He was getting tiresomely arrogant, anyway," Alexandra said. Turning her back on the Trans Am and his occupant, she left the garage, climbing the steps to her apartment. Kitt, left alone with the BMW and the Cadillac, couldn't believe it. For a moment he remained where he was, aware of the supreme illogic of what Alexandra Spar had just done, and then his own logic circuits kicked in and he lit the engine, pulling them out of the garage and speeding out of LA on their way back to FLAG.
"Karr?" Riley asked. They sat alone out on the driveway of Richard's house, from where the distant Henry Mountains were visible as darker outlines in the night. She lay on his hood.
"Yes?"
"What's Kitt doing? I mean, do you know anything about what's going on at FLAG right now?"
"I'm getting a tremendous sense of mingled relief and confusion, along with a lot of fatigue and stress," Karr said absently. "He's terribly worried about Michael. That's the foremost thing in his mind."
"What's wrong with Michael?"
"I don't know," Karr said. "He's sort of blocking me. I don't know if it's intentional."
Silence fell again. Riley found herself tracing little circles on Karr's hood. He found it highly distracting. Her slight weight on his hood, her presence, the warmth of her body, were flooding all his circuits with his perceptions. He had never felt this way about anything or anyone before. The feeling, like so many others, was entirely novel and not entirely undisturbing. He attributed it to his sudden ability to admit his emotions, but he was aware that it was more important than that.
"Riley," he said after a little time, "what do you think of Jay Rose?"
"He's gorgeous," she said promptly. "Absolutely mindblowingly gorgeous. He's also apparently the world's foremost doctor and psychiatrist. He can do almost anything. He's pretty much the ideal human being."
There was a certain warmth in her voice that made Karr feel distinctly negative for no reason he could define. "You...like him, then?"
"Yes, I like him. Why?"
"I was just wondering," Karr said. Riley put her head to one side, leaning back against the windshield. It felt so good just to be here, to listen to his voice again, to know that he had really come back, that she did not question the way she reacted to that voice, or to notice Karr's tone when he asked what she thought of Jay. She watched the stars wheel across the sky, slowly, aware of the passage of time.
"Do you want to go for a drive?" Karr asked at length, diffidently.
"I'd love to," she said, and slid off the hood. Karr clicked open the Shadow's door for her, and she slipped inside. She felt rather than heard the deep thunder of the great engine as he fired his turbines and took off into the desert night.
Not since she had been with the young beautiful NASCAR driver had she felt such exhilaration in speed. He'd taken her with him in his rebuilt 65 Barracuda on speed trials, reaching 160 mph in the desert dragways of Nevada. Her father never knew where she was going; had he known, she would never have been able to leave the house again. As it was, she sat pressed by G-force back into Karr's soft upholstery and reveled in their speed. She risked a glance at the speedometer, which stood at two hundred, and she laughed out loud for sheer pleasure. "I love you, Karr," she cried as they screamed through the night.
Michael Knight came back into the world, and found it an unpleasant place. Brilliant light hurt his eyes; his shoulder pulsed with inexorable waves of pain that seemed to make the room around him billow and swirl. Struggling to focus, he tried to remember what had happened. There had been a woman, a lady in red, and the barrel of a gun.....
Oh yes. Alexandra.
Shifting flesh-colored shadows insinuated themselves into his field of view. After a moment his eyes obeyed his brain, and slid into focus.
"Bonnie," he croaked. "Where am I?"
"In hospital," Bonnie told him quietly. "How do you feel?"
"Lousy," Michael admitted. She smiled sadly.
"They say you'll pull through. Your arm won't be much use for a while, though. Lucky it's the left arm."
"How long have I been out?"
"Kitt brought you in about five hours ago. You were in surgery for a while."
Michael closed his eyes, thinking. How had he got the antidote? How had he survived? Kitt must have brought him to Alexandra, convinced her to save his life. Chalk up another one to Kitt, he thought warmly. That's...how many times he's saved my life now? Michael found he didn't really want to keep count. "What did Kitt tell you?"
"Only that you had been found out. The woman Alexandra Spar seems to have taken a shine to you, since you're still breathing. Schreck isn't, though."
"Are you sure?" Michael asked tiredly, aware of the way the pain was building. "I can't remember much of the attack."
"Kitt says he didn't read any lifeforms in the house." Bonnie sat down by the bed and took his good hand in hers. "He's frantic with worry for you. I'd better go and report that you seem to be out of the woods."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Michael protested. "This damn shoulder is killing me."
Bonnie nodded sympathetically. "The nurse said you're to have painkillers when you wake up. Here." She handed him a couple of dark red capsules and a glass of water, and he took them wordlessly. "They'll knock you out. I'm going to go and reassure your partner, but I'll be back in a couple of hours."
"Bonnie," he said miserably. "If she knows, then we're useless. We can't do anything against her anymore. This whole job is ruined."
"Not at all," she assured him. "You've given us some vital information we couldn't have had any other way. Especially about those poisoned bullets. The residual chemicals of the antidote were recovered from your blood, and we've managed to isolate both the toxin and the antidote. We're armed against them."
The last thing Michael saw, as he slid under dark waters again, was Bonnie's heartbreaking smile.
"How is he?" Kitt demanded the instant she hurried through the hospital's front doors. Bonnie trotted over to where he sat against the curb, looking impatient.
"He's out of danger. The wound is going to keep his left arm out of action for a few weeks, but apart from that he's fine. You saved his life. Again."
"That's my purpose," Kitt said, relieved. "Well, one of them anyway."
"Kitt, how on earth did you get Spar to give him the antidote?"
"I begged," he said simply. "She has a thing for cars. She also has a thing for Michael, I believe. They've been having some interesting conversations."
Bonnie raised an eyebrow. Kitt sighed. "Well, I had to monitor him," the AI said. "He might have been in danger. I kept the comlink open whenever he was in her apartment. She made a move just before they left to hit Schreck."
"Oh yes?" Bonnie said, her voice flinty. "How did he respond?"
"He said something about how she was the most beautiful woman he'd seen in twenty years," Kitt said, embarrassed. "He was acting, of course."
"Of course."
Kitt regarded the slight form of the computer technician with very human insight. "Bonnie, it's none of my business, but I've seen how Michael acts around you, I've seen how he watches you, I've listened to him speak of you, and my impression is that he is in love not with Alexandra Spar but with Bonnie Barstow."
Bonnie looked at the Trans Am, and suddenly smiled, like daybreak. "Thank you, Kitt," she said simply, and reached out a hand to his roof, running her fingers along the sleek surface. "You always did have a way with words."
"Devon will want to know Michael's all right," Kitt said after a while, and there was the faint click-hiss of his videophone dialling. Devon's office sprang into being on the screen.
"What's going on?" the FLAG director demanded, his British accent brittle.
"Michael's going to be all right," Bonnie said. Devon, on the screen, turned to bring her into his field of view where she leaned on Kitt's open windowframe. "They say they've also identified and synthesized the toxin and its antidote. Michael should be able to use his left arm again in about two weeks."
"Two weeks?" Devon repeated, looking ill. "And they were found out?"
"Yes," Kitt put in. "Spar knows, and yet she let us go, perhaps because she is developing feelings for Michael."
Devon raised an aristocratic eyebrow. "Oh yes?"
"Apparently," Bonnie said, "she also has a thing for cars. Convenient, no?"
"I suppose so," Devon said. "When is Michael getting out of the hospital?"
"They're keeping him overnight for observation," Bonnie said. It was just about dawn, lemon-yellow light pouring up into the blue darkness, washing away the stars. "This time tomorrow he should be a free man."
"You and Kitt stay around, okay?" Devon said. "Bring him home tomorrow."
"Our pleasure," Kitt assured Devon.
Jay Rose stood leaning on the balcony over the atrium of Richard Harrington's house, and drank. From somewhere music was playing. Soft music, full of sorrow. Through the haze of Jack Daniels he could make out words. Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla, judicandus homo reus.....
The day of tears will come, he thought absently. Yes, I suppose it will. Why on earth is Richard playing Mozart's Requiem? Nobody here is dead.
Karr had his memories back. Karr was complete. Karr was more or less healed. He had done what he had set out to do, not without a lot of help from the mysterious Kitt. There was absolutely no reason for him to be here.
He gazed down into the atrium, far below. Richard was down there, moving slowly. Jay saw the bottle of whiskey, empty, fall from his hand. Richard picked something up from the edge of a table; Jay identified it as a bunch of keys from the faint jingle he heard. Richard was just as drunk as he was. Surely he wasn't going to....
He was. He unlocked the white Stingray and slung himself inside. Jay started unsteadily down the steps after him; there was no way Richard should be driving. In fact, he was a lot drunker than Jay; looking around, Jay noticed an additional bottle of Jack half-empty on the table. Damn and blast Harrington, Jay thought, breaking into a run as Richard lit the Stingray's engine. "Richard," he yelled. "What are you doing?"
Richard didn't answer, but slipped Grey into gear and pulled out of the atrium. Jay cursed inventively in German and got into his own car, the rental Firebird. This was incredibly stupid, he told himself. We are most likely going to end up dead. Where the hell was Richard going anyway?
Dizzily he followed the taillights of the Stingray, out onto the road and down the hill to the turnoff for Capitol Reef. Jay pulled out ahead of Richard and slowed down, forcing the other man to slow too, and finally stop. Leaping out of the Firebird, Jay ran to the side of the Stingray, opened the door. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "You're completely plastered."
"That's the point," Richard said coldly and before Jay could stop him he jammed the Stingray into gear again and roared past him, almost flattening Jay in his haste. Running back to the Firebird, Jay kept a part of his mind working on Richard's statement as he pulled out onto the road after the other car. That's the point. Driving while paralytic was the point? Richard wasn't given to suicidal tendencies, Jay thought sourly as he followed the swerving taillights. At least he wasn't normally so given. This had to have something to do with Karr.
It was difficult to keep the Firebird straight on the road. His surroundings came and went in billows, his depth perception was shot. All he was sure of was the double red glow ahead, the oscillating double vision of Grey's taillights making him feel sick. Somehow he had to get Richard off the road, out of the car, somehow he had to end this stupid game.
Afterwards, Jay would remember only the sudden swerve of the car ahead, the bright red curve the taillights left in the air as Richard lost control and the Stingray slid in a terrible scream of tortured metal off the road and down the embankment to the bottom of the dry arroyo beside the road's crown, rolling over once to land right side up thirty feet or so below the road.
Jay cursed, pulling the Firebird to a skidding halt at the side of the road, and half-ran, half-slid down the slope to where Grey sat at an angle, beautiful white skin dented and scratched. The engine was still running, and Jay yanked open the door and shut it off before turning his attention to Richard.
He lay limp in the seat, eyes closed. A line of blood traced its delicate way out of his dark hair and trickled over his face; he had been thrown hard against the door as Grey flipped, and Jay thought absently that his arm looked at least dislocated if not broken. He felt for a pulse, found it, deep and slow and faint. Some of the alcohol had faded under the onslaught of adrenaline, and he was able to concentrate enough to raise Richard's eyelids and notice that his pupils were, thankfully, even. Probably no major damage, but he didn't want to move him without a neck brace and backboard. Stupid fool, he told his friend silently. What were you trying to do? And why?
He reached over for the car phone, which luckily still worked.
"911, what is the nature of your emergency?"
"I have a friend who's been in a car accident," he said, and gave their location, then sat back against Grey's warm side to wait.
Karr pulled the Shadow to a halt by the side of the deserted highway. "What did you say?"
"I love you," Riley repeated quietly, aware of the deadly seriousness of the statement. Karr was silent for so long that she was afraid, and she was just about to add something when he shut off the engine, silence resounding through the cabin, and sighed.
"That's what I thought you said," Karr told her softly. "Do you mean it?"
"Yes," Riley told him after a moment, so simply she didn't need to add anything.
"How can you? I mean, I'm a computer. Can you....love....something like me?"
"You're not just a computer," Riley said sharply. "And you are not a thing. You are Karr, and I have always loved you. Even back at the beginning, when you were the KARR, I loved you. That is how it has always been. I have never told you, and I didn't mean to tell you tonight; but it slipped out. You have a magnificently unique and very human personality, you are brilliant and charismatic and sexy. I couldn't help falling in love with you."
Karr didn't say anything, but he raised the cabin temperature slightly as Riley shivered in the dawn chill. He was having difficulty taking in what she had told him. All his life he had been emotionless, or nearly so; he had ignored and attempted to evade his emotions, and the concept that someone else, a human, could have such a depth of feeling for him was shocking and strange. He considered. Could it be possible? Riley was one of the most intelligent people he'd ever met. If she thought she loved him....
"Forgive me," he said, aware of the timbre of the silence. "I'm having a hard time internalizing that."
"I shouldn't have told you," Riley said quietly, leaning her head against the window. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
"No," he said, surprised to hear his own voice. "No. Don't apologize. It's not bad. It's just...unexpected."
"I understand," Riley said. She ached to know what he felt about her, desired to know so strongly that it felt like a physical pain, but she was not going to ask; she would wait for him to volunteer that information on his own time. For a long time they sat there, as her heart sank within her, and suddenly Karr shivered.
"Riley," he said. "This time last week I would never have believed I could feel emotions at all, let alone something as deep and meaningful as love. I hardly know what love is. I don't even know how to classify it. But something about you.....affects me, deeply. I don't know how to express it. I...find that I want to be near you. I want to hear you talk, and see you, and feel your touch. This isn't easy for me."
"I know," she said softly, as something warm and bright and sweet began to well up inside her, something that made her voice shiver and her hands begin to shake, something that made her breath come short and strained. "I understand."
And now the silence was comfortable and warm, and Riley reached out for the Shadow's wheel and began to stroke it absently, softly, gently, running her fingertips over the hard-strapped black leather, sliding one hand behind the wheel to find the grey sensor Richard had installed out of the way. Karr made a wordless noise as her fingers brushed the sensor, and she transferred her attention to it. Aware of the grey oval's sensitivity, she was very careful, and her touch traced circles over it, hardly making contact, lightly teasing, stimulating, never quite overloading the circuit. Karr moaned softly as she grew more assured, and she felt something answering pull inside her.
Aware of the effect she was having, she felt the heat in the cabin rise slowly, and with reluctance she eased the intensity of her caress, slowly pulling away, transferring her fingers to the edge of the Shadow's dash, and then to the seat, opening her eyes. As her fingers slowed and stopped, Karr's voice panel lit briefly with a sigh; she thought she heard regret in the soft sound, and the bright hot wellspring inside her breastbone surged suddenly.
"That was like nothing I've ever felt before," he said after a while. "Riley, I'm sorry, but it's going to take me a while to get used to all this."
"I know," she said. "Me too."
They shared a companionable silence for a few moments before Karr lit the engine and pulled back out onto the highway, executing an elegant if illegal U-turn, back towards Torrey, and the new day.
Alexandra couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning on her great queen-size bed, she couldn't erase the black elegance of the Trans Am from her mind, couldn't forget the smooth sensuality of its....his.....voice. Michael had looked so ill lying there in the driver's seat, his shirt wet and sticky with blood, helpless.
No, not helpless, she thought, opening her eyes in the darkness. Not helpless; protected. Protected by Kitt.
This was ridiculous. She got out of bed, moving with catlike ease in the darkness, and wrapped a robe around herself. Five in the morning, and no sleep. Oh well. She'd done without it before.
She lit a few candles and poured herself a drink, staring out over the always-lit street below. She needed a vacation, somewhere far away from L.A. and the game.
And there was the problem of the outfit that had sent Michael and Kitt. She had let them live: she had let them get away with the knowledge of her whereabouts and her operation. Why on earth had she done that? she could hear Masaku demand. I don't bloody know, she retorted. Because he is beautiful and Kitt is beautiful and they have something I have always dreamed of. Because I'm getting old. Because I'm slipping.
She poured another drink and began to calculate. The base of operations, obviously, would need to be moved. She had another house, this one in Malibu, a beach house, ritzy, seldom used. It would do for a temporary headquarters while she searched for a suitable relocation point for her operation. Picking up her cell phone from the coffee table, she made a few brief calls.
Half an hour later she was driving her BMW north through Santa Monica toward Malibu; her associates were dealing with the problems of erasing all evidence of her presence from the house on Sunset, and her Malibu place was already being prepared for her residence there. Stopping for a traffic light, she fished the phone from her bag and dialed one of her operatives. "Make sure Schreck is dead," she said. This had just occurred to her. Glaser....Michael.....might not have actually managed to kill him, considering he was an undercover cop of some description. She cursed her oversight and noticed that the light had turned green, and pulled out of the intersection with a scream of rubber. Bloody hell. She really must be slipping.
Her people were immediately aware of her bad mood as they saw her slam the BMW's door and stalk up the steps to the front door of the Malibu mansion. There were exchanged looks of sympathy and mutual resignation among the men who were examining the place for bugs and wires, dusting, turning on the occasional light, taking the covers off furniture, making the beds and sweeping the floors. Alexandra stalked through the house, an unlit cigarette dangling from her carmined lips, her eyes bright with annoyance. "Someone give me a light," she demanded. There was a rush of Zippos being flicked, and a ring of fire surrounded her cigarette tip; she inhaled and blew a great cloud of blue smoke out into the clean air of the living room. "Get back to work. I want everything finished in an hour."
She threw her coat and bag down on a convenient sofa and made her way down the curving steps to her private beach, her heels making deep indentations in the white sand. There was something inexpressively soothing about the repetitive noise of the waves following one another to lap at her white shore, as the lemon light of dawn brightened to pale-gold and rose, blue in shadow. Here, Kitt and Michael seemed very far away, and the travails of the past few days faded to insignificance under the effects of the soft light and the sweet air of the sea. Behind her, the team of enthralled gangsters worked feverishly to perfect the mansion for their mistress's occupance; in the bright new light of Beverly Hills, a pair of nondescript men hung around the police-ridden home of Franz Schreck and his lover. It would all come out all right. For Alexandra, it always did.
Jay Rose paced the waiting room of Salt Lake City General, the last of the alcohol almost gone from his brain. He was furious with Richard, and worried, and deeply concerned about Riley. It was seven in the morning; she was probably back by now, and wondering where the hell her car, her lover, and Jay had gone. Just as he was searching for change to call Richard's house and leave a message for her, the doctor appeared in the doorway and nodded once.
"Thank God," Jay said. "What is it? A concussion?"
"Yes; a nasty one, and he's broken his left arm in two places. Apart from that and a whole lot of soft tissue trauma he's all right."
"Physically," Jay qualified. The doctor raised an eyebrow, did a doubletake.
"Hey, aren't you....?"
"Jay Rose," Jay said resignedly, watching the requisite glow of admiration in the other man's eyes. "It's a long story."
"I'm honored to have met you," said the doctor quietly, and grinned. "We're going to release your friend after a night of observation. If you'll forgive the presumption, I recommend you get some sleep. You look tired out."
"And hung over," Jay said wryly. "You're right. I'll be back tomorrow."
"What number should we call if there's any change?"
Jay thought, and gave the man Richard's home number. He could make it back there before he crashed, and Riley would need his explanation; it would work better in person. Such things always did.
He made his way back down to the Firebird, drove out of the city, south towards Torrey. The new light hurt his eyes, he felt distinctly sick, and his head pounded, but Richard was safe. Grey had been pulled out of the arroyo and had been towed to a Torrey garage for repairs; no doubt Riley would want some say in that, but he hadn't been thinking when the tow truck had arrived. He had bitten his lip at the state of the Stingray; there was surprisingly little structural damage, but the pristine white skin was ravaged; dented, scraped, scratched and bent. Already, from his association with Richard and Riley, he had developed an affection for cars which was not entirely rational.
He pulled into the forecourt of Richard's house a few hours before noon. Karr sat silently towards the back of the atrium, and Riley was pacing. As Jay's Firebird came to a stop, she ran up to it, putting her hands on her hips, expectant. He opened the door. God, how his head ached.
"Where the hell are Richard and Grey?" she demanded.
"There was an accident," he said tiredly. "He's all right. Riley, do me a favor and get me several aspirins." There was autocracy in his beautiful voice, and she swallowed her anger and her terror, and brought him a bottle of Excedrin and a glass of water. "Thank you."
"Jay," she said, and now her voice was quiet and afraid. "Tell me what happened. You look like hell."
"Why, thank you," he said dryly, and got out of the car with some difficulty. Riley supported him to the couch. He was distantly aware that her arm felt incredibly good around his shoulders. "Richard drank a very large amount of whiskey, and took it into his head to go for a drive in your car. I don't know what he was thinking. I followed him, of course, although I was two and three-quarters sheets to the wind myself. He lost control and flipped, but Grey landed right side up in a dry streambed and Richard came through it with nothing more than a concussion and a broken arm. Grey's not badly damaged."
Riley had gone white. Dead white. Greyish-white. For a moment, Jay was dreadfully afraid she was going to faint, but she took visible control of herself and some color came back into her face. "Oh, my God," she said quietly. "Oh God. He did that once before. Only once. When they shut Karr down for the first time."
Jay glanced over to where the Shadow sat quietly and darkly in the new light. "Was he drunk?"
"Shitfaced."
Jay nodded, and wished he hadn't. The nausea that had been with him ever since the accident was building, with the pounding beat of his headache. He groaned, got up with some difficulty. Riley looked at him sharply, saw the sweat stand out on his forehead, and guessed what was wrong. She sighed, put her arm around him, allowed him to lean on her. He was so slight that his weight was hardly enough to drag her steps down; she helped him to the downstairs bathroom, and held his head for him while he was sick.
"I'm sorry," he said when he could speak, miserable. She shook her head.
"Don't be. Are you going to be all right now?"
"I think so," he said. She got him a glass of water to wash out his mouth, and helped him up.
"I'm putting you to bed," she told him. "Where's Richard?"
"Salt Lake General," he told her, his eyes firmly closed.
"Right." She led him to the guest bedroom and supported him down to the bed, propping up pillows behind him. "Relax and try to get some sleep. You saved Richard's life."
He was already so deep that he would only remember her lips brushing his forehead as a dream.
"What's going on?" Karr asked, concerned. "Is Jay all right?"
"He will be," Riley assured the AI. "He's just hungover and exhausted. Richard had an accident. He's in the hospital."
"Oh," Karr said, and his voice was soft and quiet with worry. Riley winced to hear it, and reached out to him.
"He's all right. Just a concussion and a broken arm. But I am furious with him for doing something so stupid. He was drunk."
Karr said nothing, but rolled forward a few feet so that his black prow came under her reaching hand, and she leant on him wordlessly for a long moment.
That day passed very quickly for Michael Knight and for Richard Harrington, neither of whom was aware of the passage of time. For Bonnie and Riley and Karr it dragged, every hour feeling like two.
Bonnie lay in the darkness of the Semi, a darkness pierced by myriad LEDs and the faint glow of Kitt's monitoring systems. Kitt himself sat in his habitual place just inside the Semi's rear doors, quiescent. She was trying to grab a few hours' sleep, having been up for far too long, but she couldn't relax. Checking all the monitor readouts for the fifth time, she tried to pinpoint what was bothering her.
Schreck, she thought suddenly. Was he really dead?
"Kitt?"
"Yes, Bonnie?" Kitt said sleepily. She thought carefully about what she was going to say.
"When Michael and the hit man entered Schreck's house, are you absolutely sure Schreck was killed?"
Kitt didn't answer immediately. "I read only one lifeform within the house," he said neutrally, "and that was Michael. However, there was a great deal of interference caused by the thick walls of the house and the bulletproof shielding of the bedroom. I could have been mistaken."
"Did Michael specifically say he'd seen him die?"
"No," Kitt told her. "He said that Schreck was dead, but I don't think that he was in a very clear frame of mind at the time. Why? Do you think he's alive?"
"I'd like to make sure he's either dead or behind bars," Bonnie said, thinking. "We need to find out."
"I agree," Kitt said, and she heard unfamiliar steel in the light tones. Bonnie got up and went to him, leaning against the black hood. "I should go back."
"Not alone," Bonnie told him. "You're rather too obvious to go without a driver."
"Not at night I'm not," he pointed out. "And I'm well equipped for surveillance, besides being bulletproof." Bonnie's fingers tightened convulsively at the image of people shooting at Kitt.
"Let's ask Devon," she said reasonably. "He'll know what's best."
Kitt opened a link to Devon's office. Bonnie leaned in through the open window and watched as Devon's face came onscreen. "Good evening," Kitt said.
"Good evening to you," Devon returned the greeting. "What's going on?"
"It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile making sure that Schreck's not at large," Bonnie said. Devon raised an aristocratic eyebrow.
"I thought he had been killed in the attack," he said.
"We're not sure. Kitt wants to go in alone and find out."
Devon looked thoughtful. "That might not be such a bad idea," he said after a moment. "If you go in after dark, you can be pretty sure no one will see you, and your scanning abilities will make it easier. Be careful, and get out at once if anything goes wrong. All we need to know is whether he's alive or dead, and if he's alive, where he is."
"Understood," Kitt said, all business. Bonnie sighed, giving up, and moved out of range.
Alexandra lay in the curtained and canopied bed in her Malibu mansion, wrapped and swathed in oyster silk, surrounded by ineffably expensive good taste. She was in that pleasant state of half-dreaming which inevitably ends too early.
It was late afternoon. She had slept several hours, and she felt in need of entertainment. Slithering out of the nest of silk sheets, she made her way across acres of lush carpet to her bathsuite, and turned on the taps in her pale marble tub. She had had a hand in the design of the bathroom as she had in the rest of the house, and the tub was exactly the right depth and size for her. Sunken into the floor, it was curved and polished to receive her body, and heating elements behind the marble skin kept the warmth of the water from seeping away into the stone. She lit aromatic candles, setting them around the perimeter of the tub, and flicked on her electric towel-warming rack. A light rain began to fall over the beach as she slid, magnificently naked, into the steaming water. Her dark hair, freed for once from its pins, floated in a dark aureole on the surface, streaming around her shoulders like mermaids' hair, refusing to relinquish the myriad bubbles that jeweled its strands. For the first time in days, Alexandra felt truly relaxed.
She found herself singing softly. What's mine is yours, you can have all of it, and I will learn to bear.....oh the boys on the radio, they crash and burn, they fold and fade so slow....In your endless summer night I'll be on the other side....When you're beautiful and dying, all the world that you've denied, when the water is too deep you can close your eyes and really sleep tonight....your beauty blinds.
Alexandra hadn't been in love for a very long time.
When she had been sixteen, and a stunningly beautiful small-time thief and drug user, she had met a red-haired boy in a black Camaro. He had bought a dime bag from her, and left her with something more than ten dollars; the imprint of a pair of clear grey eyes followed her everywhere she went. His name was Brent Harrison, and she had not seen him again for almost a year.
She remembered, lying in her six-thousand-dollar bathtub, that hard day in cold November. She had been down on her luck, living from one day to the next. Or rather, she remembered dully, from one trick to the next. Her beauty had allowed her to make enough to survive on the streets of L.A. and she had been lucky that far; she was clean. She had been standing in her leather skirt and five-inch heels, shivering, on the corner of Hollywood; and from nowhere a black car had drawn up. A car whose throaty brawling engine she recognized. It had undergone some modifications in the past months, and was gleaming glistening Steinway black, an entirely different effect from the dented and dusty Camaro she'd seen so long before in the dark streets. The driver's side window rolled down, and her heart went cold and hot inside her; for the eyes that met hers were light clear grey, the color of cigarette smoke in rain. Wordlessly, he beckoned, and she got into the car, and he drove her away.
More or less, away from everything. For a month she stayed with Brent Harrison in the high-rent district of Cielo Drive, healing. Flesh returned to her bones; her beauty, already nascent and stunning, blossomed to its peak. Brent had never forgotten the dark-haired girl who had sold him cocaine on the street almost a year before; the Venus who now occupied his bed and his home was a far cry from that girl. She had been young, then, and love was something new to her. With the singlemindedness that had characterized her even at that age, Alexandra had given all of herself to the grey-eyed youth. Nothing and no one had ever touched her in the way that he did.
It couldn't last, of course. Hardly six months had gone before Alexandra and Brent left each other. What she had had with him was world-shaking; precisely because it was so intense it couldn't last. The flame that in other people can last a lifetime flared up in half a year for her, and burned itself out, spent itself into ashes and blew away on a new wind.
She had been philosophical about it. Brent had introduced her to a man who went by the name of Masaku, a Japanese expatriate who was a sort of gangsters' guru, a fount of wisdom and experience in the ways and means of evading the law and making a great deal of money at the same time. Masaku, seeing in Alexandra the potential for superlative greatness, had taken her under his wing, and taught her everything she knew. Brent had been killed some years later, in a bust in New York. She had hardly grieved.
She grieved now, irrationally, lying in the steaming water, surrounded by the fragrance of burning candles, listening to the soft rain falling outside. Brent's grey eyes watched her, in a way they hadn't for years. Again, she felt the texture of his brilliant red-gold hair beneath her fingers, tasted his ivory skin, heard his words whispered into her ear. Alexandra floated, and wept.
She had not cried for so long she couldn't remember when the last time had been, but she wept now; her tears flowed into the bathwater and disappeared. Like tears falling into rain.
Hours later, she walked along her private white beach, her toes sinking into the coolness of the white sands, wrapped in an olive silk robe. Her hair was almost dry, flowing down her back almost to her knees, its waves stretched into long ripples by its own weight. She felt strangely light and at ease, as if the tears had been pent-up inside her for far too long, and their release had freed her in some way.
Kneeling by the water, she dipped a fingertip into it, drew circles on the surface. She supposed she'd made a long-needed peace with Brent, or at least his memory; a memory she hadn't called up for years. Still, she couldn't get Michael Knight out of her head. He pulsed gently behind her eyes; his voice, his face, the way he moved, and most effectively the last image she had of him, lying unconscious in the driver's seat of the black Trans Am.
The black Trans Am that talked, she clarified absently, rising and resuming her path. One of her very early fantasies had involved cars talking, and it had been a vague and recurring dream throughout most of her adult life. Cars fascinated Alexandra: their power, their beauty, their strength. Add a personality to that combination, and she was enthralled. Alexandra Spar didn't enthrall easily, but Kitt had managed it, with or without his driver.
She told herself firmly not to be ridiculous. They would come looking for her. They wouldn't rest until her operation was shut down. She had to be careful from here on in.
And she had a meeting in L.A. that night. Bugger. She retraced her steps. Dusk was falling over the beach, stars beginning to glow in the east. She just had time to change and lock up.