Chapter 8
The diner was dark inside, even though the sun was high in the sky. There was an empty seat at the counter. She could feel the toxic remnants of last night crawling around in her head. She wished her liver would hurry up and get rid of them. "Coffee," she said as the waitress handed her a menu.
"You can still go home," she mused, silently. "They will ask where you've been, and you will ignore them. All you have to do is give up on killing the bastard, put everything in the car, and drive."
The waitress was back with coffee. "Would you give me another minute please?" she asked. She hadn't even looked at the menu yet. She was still seeing Lydecker get out of the green truck. The details were burned into her brain. The girl's sweater was brown. He was wearing a hunter's cammo jacket, which was already spotted with rain. There were two bumper stickers on the truck, one on each side of a Washington license plate. She could even see the lettering on the plate.
"License plate." She must have said it out loud, because the waitress pulled her pen and pad out of her pocket, and gave her a confused frown.
"Um. I'll have the pancakes," she said, making herself smile.
Now she needed a good story so the Department of Motor Vehicles would tell her who owned the truck, and where they lived.
******
Dawn sat at her computer, and deliberately ignored the random piles of clothing that decorated her bedroom. Most of the afternoon had been spent trying to figure out what to wear.
The morning's activities, on the other hand, had been effective. She clicked through an enormous list of web search results. According to Dek, she was looking for someone who competed with 'high-power' rifle and any sort of pistol competition. She had no idea how she was going to find out how tall someone was from a match score bulletin.
A picture caught her eye. "Hey Dek!" she called. "Come see this!" She zoomed in on the picture to highlight the three smiling pistol shooters in the center.
Dek leaned over her shoulder, and whistled.
"So that's his taste," thought Dawn, frowning at him.
He looked puzzled for a moment, then the corners of his mouth turned up, and he raised an eyebrow. "What do you take me for, Dawn? She's probably fifteen. Besides, that's not the weapon we're looking for."
Dawn looked back at the picture. The girl in the center did look very young, and she was wearing a black baseball cap with "HK" in red lettering.
"She's pretty tough, though," said Dek. "That's a Mark 23. It's a really big .45. The pistol we're looking for is smaller."
"I wasn't looking at the gun," she replied, tapping her fingers on the mouse pad. "She's the girl I met at the library. Do you think she was carrying that gun?"
"If she was, you would have noticed. Like I said, that's a really big pistol, and hard to hide." He turned and headed back into the living room. "If we're going to be on time, you have half an hour to get dressed."
Dawn closed the picture and went back to the article. "Seventeen year old Evelyn Walker beat out last year's champion to take first place in. . . " she skimmed through the match results. "Brian Evanston says 'Until she goes off to college, I'm going to need to get used to second place. She's a natural.'" Dawn did the math: Evelyn must be almost 20 now.
"I'll have to get back to that later," she said to herself. "Now, I've got two bad choices."
The two dresses on the bed were different as night and day, and both wrong.
The one was sleek, short, and black. Dawn loved it with really tall shoes, and it always got her lots of male attention. The problem was, she couldn't sit down without creasing the skirt. She didn't have any idea how long they were going to need to stay at a party that might not be any fun, anyway, and the shoes always made her feet hurt.
Mom had picked out the other dress for her. Dawn had worn it exactly once, because Mom insisted. It was made from satin and heavy lace, a cream color almost intense enough to be yellow. The shoes that went with that were boring tan t-strap shoes with square, sensible two inch heels. To add insult to injury, there was a totally useless little round hat to match. She had the hairpins to hold it on her head, too.
"Fine," she muttered. "I'll be able to stand, and I'll be able to sit. Why aren't sexy clothes ever comfortable?"
****
They parked two blocks away and walked. The house turned out to be surprisingly easy to locate. Light streamed from a row of large windows that let him see that a polka was underway, even before they got close enough to hear the music.
"You are going to be polite and social," Lydecker said as they approached the front door. "Introduce yourself to everyone. Don't ask any questions, just wait for someone to contact you." He was going to try to stay out of the way.
"I'm fine with parties, Dek. Don't worry about it." Well, actually Dawn looked just a little bit jumpy, but there was nothing he could do about that.
He took her coat, and watched her head for the thickest part of the crowd in the living room. The hem of the dress swung with her walk. From the back, the most dramatic feature was the neckline, which exposed her spine almost to waist level.
He imagined her reaction if he were to run fingers down that expanse of smooth skin. Was she ticklish? He didn't know. It wouldn't be hard to find out. Dawn had been dropping little hints. "No reason to take advantage of her remarkably poor taste in men." He had to wonder if she was really serious.
"On the other hand, she's put up with a lot." Dek remembered how little success he'd had controlling his irritation when he found himself in trapped someone else's place. He'd been barely able to stand, but that hadn't kept him from wanting to leave. Real sleep had alternated with pretending to sleep. He hadn't been able to decide if it was malingering or gaining a tactical advantage. Dawn had been incredibly patient.
He imagined a tiny cartoon devil sitting on his shoulder. "Why not indulge her?" said the cartoon, with a leer. "You know you've got something she wants."
****
She fit the rifle case at the back of the trunk, and added a medium sized duffle bag. A cardboard box held more ammuniton for the handgun, the one that she didn't have anymore. She made herself relax and un-clench her teeth.
"Don't give up now!" she told herself. "You are going to make him pay."
But she couldn't help thinking about where she had hidden all the ID cards that said "Evelyn Walker."
****
Dawn was getting bored with small talk. She caught a glimpse of Dek. "I wonder if he realizes how hot he looks in a midnight blue tuxedo." She smiled to herself. "That's Dek, girl. You can bet he knows *exactly* how hot he looks." It was really too bad he wasn't doing it to impress her. She turned her attention back to her conversation with the man with the burgundy bow-tie and the bad hairpiece.
That bit of social tedium came to a successful close, and she scanned the room for other party guests that she hadn't chatted with yet.
"Do you dance, Dawn?" asked Dek, from just behind her.
"You mean ballroom? No." She turned to face him, and just missed getting her feet tangled with each other.
"Have you ever tried?"
"No."
"Then the matter is still open." He was smiling again, and she found herself following him into the ball room.
Her first impression was the vastness of the oak floor. A full fifty feet of smooth wood ran from the windows at the front of the house to the French doors at the back. The room was about half that wide, with windows and mirrors alternating on the far wall. The archway behind her lead back to the entry way and the living room. Pairs of dancers were moving off the floor, others moving on. The two of them wound up near a corner. Dawn hoped the were out of the way.
Dek lifted her left hand to the top of his shoulder, and tucked his right hand just above the curve of her waist. "Stay tense enough that you can tell which way I'm going," he told her, taking her other hand. "It's going to be your basic waltz. You start by taking one long step back with your left foot."
"Right," said Dawn, and hoped that she wasn't going to make a total fool of herself.
The music started, and she could hear the three counts per measure. And then they were moving. Long step back with on the left, followed by two small steps. Somehow they were facing in the other direction now, and she took a long step forward, right foot. She hadn't stepped on Dek or anyone else yet!
She let herself relax a little, and discovered that if she wasn't thinking too hard about it, she knew which way she was supposed to be going. The turns worked better if she picked up her heels a little.
Dawn quit trying to watch where they were going, and the walls spun by in a blur.
****
She parked the car behind a large van with a ladder on the roof. "I'm packed, I've got gas," she whispered. "I just have to finish the job."
A quick walk in the chilly air brought her to a large, run-down house with an overgrown yard. A couple of lights were on, at the second floor. The green truck was not parked outside, but a red and white Ford Pinto was up on blocks.
She snuck around to the back of the house, and forced open one of the basement windows. The basement was dirty and packed with junk of every description. She had just enough light to make her way to the stairs and up to the ground level without knocking anything over.
The first floor was silent, and she opened the door to "Office" without any trouble. She let it latch noiselessly behind her, and slowly scanned the filing cabinets looking for tenant files.
A few minutes later, she'd determined that a Dawn lived in one of the second floor apartments, a Charles in the other, and the attic room was not rented out right now.
"I guess I'll check out the attic while I wait," she thought, pocketing the key to Dawn's apartment, and another to the unit on the third floor.
***
In the middle of the second waltz, Dawn discovered that she could close her eyes and still know exactly where to put her feet.
"Dizzy?" asked Dek.
"No, I just wanted to see what it was like."
"Very trusting." She was amused to hear the slightest hint of laughter in his voice.
"You haven't run me into anyone yet." She opened her eyes, looked over her shoulder, and saw their reflection in the window glass. At first, she wasn't sure it was the two of them. But that was Dek, so the girl must be her. The dress was confusing her. It looked totally different in motion. The skirt swung away from her legs, and looked dramatic instead of dowdy.
****
The door to the third floor apartment was actually on the second floor. She opened it with the key, and revealed a dark, dusty, flight of stairs. She closed the door behind her, and climbed the stairs.
The ceiling was the shape of the underside of the roof. It was highest in the center where the two gables, front and back, met the ridge. There were windows on every wall except the one facing the road, and they let enough light in to see what sort of junk the last tenant left behind.
One small door opened into a kitchen the size of a closet. The other one revealed a bathroom of similar proportions. She could hear the muffled chatter of the people downstairs, but nothing from Dawn's.
She lay down on the floor. The wood was hard, smooth and cold. She tucked her hands into her pockets, and tried to relax for the long wait.
****
"May I cut in?" asked a man with round wire frame glasses and a dark mustache. The woman he was dancing with had short, businesslike brown hair, but an exotic-looking teal silk dress with gold embroidery.
Dek nodded to the man, and the two couples paused in their dancing, and re-assembled themselves. Dek was now dancing away with the woman, and Dawn with the interloper.
"I'll catch up with you later, Dawn," Dek said over the woman's shoulder.
"I'm a friend of Sam's," said the man as the two of them got back into the dance. "You should probably call me Vic, unless you are particularly good at pronouncing Indian names." Dawn shook her head. She could smell pipe tobacco, cedar and mothballs.
"I'm sorry I'm a bit out of practice," he said sheepishly. Dawn found that she had some trouble figuring out where to go, but if she paid attention no one would get hurt.
The music ended, and Dawn followed Vic into the kitchen, then up the stairs. The two of them found chairs in a little room that must be an office, because it was stuffed with bookshelves and computer things.
"Sam asked me to thank you for your advice," Vic said, "and to give you these." He reached into his jacket, and she thought for a moment of Dek, and guns. The flash of metal in his hands was something else, though.
Dawn accepted two writeable CDs, in plastic sleeves. Someone had scrawled "5/7/99 1 of 2" on one, and "5/7/99 2 of 2" on the other.
"Tell Dr. Hayworth that I appreciate this," she said, turning the discs in her hand. "Did he say what was on them?"
"Not a word," said Vic. "He just said that he was heading out of the country."
"I'm glad Sam is being careful," said Dawn as Vic turned to leave.
She spent quite a few minutes in the bathroom. She took off the hat, fit the CDs into the top of it, and re-pinned it as carefully as she could.
*****
"You can't do it," said the voice. She was sitting in a plastic chair, and her feet didn't reach the floor. She looked down at her hands, clenched around the grip of a full size Beretta.
"I owe you!" she wanted to shout. "What did you do to them?" She tried, but she couldn't lift the pistol, and couldn't lift her head.
She woke up, and opened her eyes to look up at the dingy ceiling sloping up over her head. She was panting, and her pulse echoed in her ears.
It was getting dark, outside, and here in the empty apartment.
She shifted to try and find a more comfortable position on the cold floor. The boards squeaked as she shifted her weight. She could hear kitchen sounds from Dawn's neighbor, but still no sound from Dawn's.
"Max wouldn't quit now," she thought. "Zack wouldn't quit now. You can't either."
*****
Dek looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs. "Are you ready to try something hard?"
Dawn felt her ears turn red. "He didn't mean that the way it sounded!" she told herself silently.
"I mean," he continued, with a quick flash of a smile "now that you've got the general idea, we can try some more complicated steps." Dawn decided that Dek had an evil sense of humor.
*****
She heard footsteps from downstairs, and was instantly awake.
"It's time to find out if you are really a failure," she thought.
*****
Dawn listened to the drive hum as her computer tried to load from one of those ancient CDs. As she expected, it was encrypted, but there were a couple of different ways to deal with that.
"Can you just do a straight copy?" asked Dek, from the living room. She heard first one shoe, then the other fall to the floor.
"Sure can," she said, and dropped a blank into the drive.
Dek padded in, stocking foot, and undid the bow tie while he looked over her shoulder. He took a quick glance at the screen, then turned away. Dawn wondered what happened to her happy, charming dance partner. The cool, all-business Dek was back. She wasn't sure if she liked that. "It's almost as if I was just a cover story," she grumbled to herself. "If I'm going to be used for something, shouldn't I get a say in what?"
She looked up at Dek. "Why haven't you tried to take me to bed?" she asked, trying to end the suspense like ripping off a band-aid. He set the Glock down on the corner of the dresser and sighed.
"Because I can't risk having you decide that I'm a dirty old man," he answered, turning to face her. "The two of us together will be able to crack *that* faster than either of us alone." He nodded towards the computer.
"Do I seem like the kind of person who will go off the deep end instead of saying 'No, thanks'?" He was worried about offending her?
"No. I also don't want to give you any ideas about some kind of mercy fuck." He frowned. "I'm not going to accept that. Ever. I still have a few standards left."
"I have standards, too!" protested Dawn.
"Then you need to decide what you are willing to risk, and make me an offer." He had his hands in his pockets, and no trace of a smile.
"Risk?" What sort of mind games was he playing now?
"Well, depending on what you are looking for, there are the standard set of physical risks." He shrugged. "What you really need to think about is: What if I turn you down, or what if I agree, but reality just doesn't measure up to what you are expecting?"
"So I need to make you an offer?" Dawn wondered if he wanted her confused, or he just didn't realize quite how unusual this conversation was. She had only had to hint, before.
"Doesn't have to be just one offer," he said with a smile. "I'm willing to stand here all night and turn you down."
"Arrogant bastard," thought Dawn. "I want my tango partner back." An idea formed. She was just going to have to accept the risks. It was the only way to find out.
"OK," she heard herself say. "I want to compare the reality of a kiss, with the imaginary one." She glanced at the computer, which was methodically copying the second CD, and got to her feet.
"If that's what it takes to make you happy."
"Actually, I want you to shut up and quit asking me difficult questions." Dawn met him half way. She was surprised to find that she was exactly his height, with her heels still on.
Dawn touched his cheek, and shivered, remembering the dark, wet sand under her boots, and the shape of a man's body in her truck's headlights. "I thought he was dead," she remembered. The warmth of his skin reminded her that she had been wrong.
He closed the distance between them. She felt the pressure of one hand against the bare skin of her arm, and the other against the side of her neck. His thumb slid along the side of her jaw, and she tipped her head towards his fingers.
His lips met hers, slowly, and she could almost taste caution. Even the slight contact between them held her attention, and she wondered if it was possible to die from frustration. He seemed to make up his mind, and things changed. Dek's mouth moved against hers, and his hand behind her head prevented her escape, even if she'd been thinking of it. "Frustration is not what I need to worry about," she realized.
"So what are your findings?" His voice was cool, but now she knew what was behind it.
"Reality is winning, but I need to verify my experimental results." Dawn tried to match his tone, as if she were speaking of something far away, and of no importance. She was quite sure that she wasn't successful.
"I'm always eager," purred Lydecker, "to gratify a woman's scientific curiosity."
*****
She could tell from the whispered voices filtering through the floor from downstairs that she wasn't listening to foreplay anymore. She had never really considered that there would be any woman, anywhere, who would be willing to take Lydecker to bed with her. She found that the reality was a bit disturbing.
"The time to strike," she reminded herself, "is when the enemy is occupied by other things."
She slid her hand under the sleeve of her coat, and slowly peeled the tape off her arm. The ceramic knife was almost black in the dim light. She mentally reviewed all the ways to kill someone instantly and quietly with a blade.
Several of them were entirely suitable for a knife that would slice through meat quickly and smoothly, but chip or break against bone.
"Start with whoever is on top," she thought, "and the body will pin the other one for just long enough to finish the job. No witnesses." Two bodies worth of blood would be an enormous pool. The idea made her feel ill, and she was glad she hadn't eaten since breakfast.
When she got to her feet, she felt dizzy. "Too long in one place," she told herself. The noise from downstairs continued. The little bit of squeaking from the floor clearly hadn't disturbed them.
She decided that a little bit of speed was more important than total quiet. The floorboards creaked twice more on her way to the top of the stairs. This end of the room was darker, and the bottom steps were totally obscured. She felt with her toe for the edge of the top step.
"Lydecker's going to pay for all of them," she whispered. Her other foot reached for the next step. She could still see the dark shape of the blade against the shadows, and she imagined blood.
Her fingers opened, as if they weren't taking orders from her brain anymore. The black knife spun end over end, bounced once, then shattered at the bottom. She could hear it turn to slivers of ceramic. It sounded like ice breaking.
She sat on the top step, opening and closing her hands. She watched her fingers extend, then close into fists, and felt tendons sliding under her skin. Everything was under control again.
"What is wrong with me?" she asked the empty stairs.
The diner was dark inside, even though the sun was high in the sky. There was an empty seat at the counter. She could feel the toxic remnants of last night crawling around in her head. She wished her liver would hurry up and get rid of them. "Coffee," she said as the waitress handed her a menu.
"You can still go home," she mused, silently. "They will ask where you've been, and you will ignore them. All you have to do is give up on killing the bastard, put everything in the car, and drive."
The waitress was back with coffee. "Would you give me another minute please?" she asked. She hadn't even looked at the menu yet. She was still seeing Lydecker get out of the green truck. The details were burned into her brain. The girl's sweater was brown. He was wearing a hunter's cammo jacket, which was already spotted with rain. There were two bumper stickers on the truck, one on each side of a Washington license plate. She could even see the lettering on the plate.
"License plate." She must have said it out loud, because the waitress pulled her pen and pad out of her pocket, and gave her a confused frown.
"Um. I'll have the pancakes," she said, making herself smile.
Now she needed a good story so the Department of Motor Vehicles would tell her who owned the truck, and where they lived.
******
Dawn sat at her computer, and deliberately ignored the random piles of clothing that decorated her bedroom. Most of the afternoon had been spent trying to figure out what to wear.
The morning's activities, on the other hand, had been effective. She clicked through an enormous list of web search results. According to Dek, she was looking for someone who competed with 'high-power' rifle and any sort of pistol competition. She had no idea how she was going to find out how tall someone was from a match score bulletin.
A picture caught her eye. "Hey Dek!" she called. "Come see this!" She zoomed in on the picture to highlight the three smiling pistol shooters in the center.
Dek leaned over her shoulder, and whistled.
"So that's his taste," thought Dawn, frowning at him.
He looked puzzled for a moment, then the corners of his mouth turned up, and he raised an eyebrow. "What do you take me for, Dawn? She's probably fifteen. Besides, that's not the weapon we're looking for."
Dawn looked back at the picture. The girl in the center did look very young, and she was wearing a black baseball cap with "HK" in red lettering.
"She's pretty tough, though," said Dek. "That's a Mark 23. It's a really big .45. The pistol we're looking for is smaller."
"I wasn't looking at the gun," she replied, tapping her fingers on the mouse pad. "She's the girl I met at the library. Do you think she was carrying that gun?"
"If she was, you would have noticed. Like I said, that's a really big pistol, and hard to hide." He turned and headed back into the living room. "If we're going to be on time, you have half an hour to get dressed."
Dawn closed the picture and went back to the article. "Seventeen year old Evelyn Walker beat out last year's champion to take first place in. . . " she skimmed through the match results. "Brian Evanston says 'Until she goes off to college, I'm going to need to get used to second place. She's a natural.'" Dawn did the math: Evelyn must be almost 20 now.
"I'll have to get back to that later," she said to herself. "Now, I've got two bad choices."
The two dresses on the bed were different as night and day, and both wrong.
The one was sleek, short, and black. Dawn loved it with really tall shoes, and it always got her lots of male attention. The problem was, she couldn't sit down without creasing the skirt. She didn't have any idea how long they were going to need to stay at a party that might not be any fun, anyway, and the shoes always made her feet hurt.
Mom had picked out the other dress for her. Dawn had worn it exactly once, because Mom insisted. It was made from satin and heavy lace, a cream color almost intense enough to be yellow. The shoes that went with that were boring tan t-strap shoes with square, sensible two inch heels. To add insult to injury, there was a totally useless little round hat to match. She had the hairpins to hold it on her head, too.
"Fine," she muttered. "I'll be able to stand, and I'll be able to sit. Why aren't sexy clothes ever comfortable?"
****
They parked two blocks away and walked. The house turned out to be surprisingly easy to locate. Light streamed from a row of large windows that let him see that a polka was underway, even before they got close enough to hear the music.
"You are going to be polite and social," Lydecker said as they approached the front door. "Introduce yourself to everyone. Don't ask any questions, just wait for someone to contact you." He was going to try to stay out of the way.
"I'm fine with parties, Dek. Don't worry about it." Well, actually Dawn looked just a little bit jumpy, but there was nothing he could do about that.
He took her coat, and watched her head for the thickest part of the crowd in the living room. The hem of the dress swung with her walk. From the back, the most dramatic feature was the neckline, which exposed her spine almost to waist level.
He imagined her reaction if he were to run fingers down that expanse of smooth skin. Was she ticklish? He didn't know. It wouldn't be hard to find out. Dawn had been dropping little hints. "No reason to take advantage of her remarkably poor taste in men." He had to wonder if she was really serious.
"On the other hand, she's put up with a lot." Dek remembered how little success he'd had controlling his irritation when he found himself in trapped someone else's place. He'd been barely able to stand, but that hadn't kept him from wanting to leave. Real sleep had alternated with pretending to sleep. He hadn't been able to decide if it was malingering or gaining a tactical advantage. Dawn had been incredibly patient.
He imagined a tiny cartoon devil sitting on his shoulder. "Why not indulge her?" said the cartoon, with a leer. "You know you've got something she wants."
****
She fit the rifle case at the back of the trunk, and added a medium sized duffle bag. A cardboard box held more ammuniton for the handgun, the one that she didn't have anymore. She made herself relax and un-clench her teeth.
"Don't give up now!" she told herself. "You are going to make him pay."
But she couldn't help thinking about where she had hidden all the ID cards that said "Evelyn Walker."
****
Dawn was getting bored with small talk. She caught a glimpse of Dek. "I wonder if he realizes how hot he looks in a midnight blue tuxedo." She smiled to herself. "That's Dek, girl. You can bet he knows *exactly* how hot he looks." It was really too bad he wasn't doing it to impress her. She turned her attention back to her conversation with the man with the burgundy bow-tie and the bad hairpiece.
That bit of social tedium came to a successful close, and she scanned the room for other party guests that she hadn't chatted with yet.
"Do you dance, Dawn?" asked Dek, from just behind her.
"You mean ballroom? No." She turned to face him, and just missed getting her feet tangled with each other.
"Have you ever tried?"
"No."
"Then the matter is still open." He was smiling again, and she found herself following him into the ball room.
Her first impression was the vastness of the oak floor. A full fifty feet of smooth wood ran from the windows at the front of the house to the French doors at the back. The room was about half that wide, with windows and mirrors alternating on the far wall. The archway behind her lead back to the entry way and the living room. Pairs of dancers were moving off the floor, others moving on. The two of them wound up near a corner. Dawn hoped the were out of the way.
Dek lifted her left hand to the top of his shoulder, and tucked his right hand just above the curve of her waist. "Stay tense enough that you can tell which way I'm going," he told her, taking her other hand. "It's going to be your basic waltz. You start by taking one long step back with your left foot."
"Right," said Dawn, and hoped that she wasn't going to make a total fool of herself.
The music started, and she could hear the three counts per measure. And then they were moving. Long step back with on the left, followed by two small steps. Somehow they were facing in the other direction now, and she took a long step forward, right foot. She hadn't stepped on Dek or anyone else yet!
She let herself relax a little, and discovered that if she wasn't thinking too hard about it, she knew which way she was supposed to be going. The turns worked better if she picked up her heels a little.
Dawn quit trying to watch where they were going, and the walls spun by in a blur.
****
She parked the car behind a large van with a ladder on the roof. "I'm packed, I've got gas," she whispered. "I just have to finish the job."
A quick walk in the chilly air brought her to a large, run-down house with an overgrown yard. A couple of lights were on, at the second floor. The green truck was not parked outside, but a red and white Ford Pinto was up on blocks.
She snuck around to the back of the house, and forced open one of the basement windows. The basement was dirty and packed with junk of every description. She had just enough light to make her way to the stairs and up to the ground level without knocking anything over.
The first floor was silent, and she opened the door to "Office" without any trouble. She let it latch noiselessly behind her, and slowly scanned the filing cabinets looking for tenant files.
A few minutes later, she'd determined that a Dawn lived in one of the second floor apartments, a Charles in the other, and the attic room was not rented out right now.
"I guess I'll check out the attic while I wait," she thought, pocketing the key to Dawn's apartment, and another to the unit on the third floor.
***
In the middle of the second waltz, Dawn discovered that she could close her eyes and still know exactly where to put her feet.
"Dizzy?" asked Dek.
"No, I just wanted to see what it was like."
"Very trusting." She was amused to hear the slightest hint of laughter in his voice.
"You haven't run me into anyone yet." She opened her eyes, looked over her shoulder, and saw their reflection in the window glass. At first, she wasn't sure it was the two of them. But that was Dek, so the girl must be her. The dress was confusing her. It looked totally different in motion. The skirt swung away from her legs, and looked dramatic instead of dowdy.
****
The door to the third floor apartment was actually on the second floor. She opened it with the key, and revealed a dark, dusty, flight of stairs. She closed the door behind her, and climbed the stairs.
The ceiling was the shape of the underside of the roof. It was highest in the center where the two gables, front and back, met the ridge. There were windows on every wall except the one facing the road, and they let enough light in to see what sort of junk the last tenant left behind.
One small door opened into a kitchen the size of a closet. The other one revealed a bathroom of similar proportions. She could hear the muffled chatter of the people downstairs, but nothing from Dawn's.
She lay down on the floor. The wood was hard, smooth and cold. She tucked her hands into her pockets, and tried to relax for the long wait.
****
"May I cut in?" asked a man with round wire frame glasses and a dark mustache. The woman he was dancing with had short, businesslike brown hair, but an exotic-looking teal silk dress with gold embroidery.
Dek nodded to the man, and the two couples paused in their dancing, and re-assembled themselves. Dek was now dancing away with the woman, and Dawn with the interloper.
"I'll catch up with you later, Dawn," Dek said over the woman's shoulder.
"I'm a friend of Sam's," said the man as the two of them got back into the dance. "You should probably call me Vic, unless you are particularly good at pronouncing Indian names." Dawn shook her head. She could smell pipe tobacco, cedar and mothballs.
"I'm sorry I'm a bit out of practice," he said sheepishly. Dawn found that she had some trouble figuring out where to go, but if she paid attention no one would get hurt.
The music ended, and Dawn followed Vic into the kitchen, then up the stairs. The two of them found chairs in a little room that must be an office, because it was stuffed with bookshelves and computer things.
"Sam asked me to thank you for your advice," Vic said, "and to give you these." He reached into his jacket, and she thought for a moment of Dek, and guns. The flash of metal in his hands was something else, though.
Dawn accepted two writeable CDs, in plastic sleeves. Someone had scrawled "5/7/99 1 of 2" on one, and "5/7/99 2 of 2" on the other.
"Tell Dr. Hayworth that I appreciate this," she said, turning the discs in her hand. "Did he say what was on them?"
"Not a word," said Vic. "He just said that he was heading out of the country."
"I'm glad Sam is being careful," said Dawn as Vic turned to leave.
She spent quite a few minutes in the bathroom. She took off the hat, fit the CDs into the top of it, and re-pinned it as carefully as she could.
*****
"You can't do it," said the voice. She was sitting in a plastic chair, and her feet didn't reach the floor. She looked down at her hands, clenched around the grip of a full size Beretta.
"I owe you!" she wanted to shout. "What did you do to them?" She tried, but she couldn't lift the pistol, and couldn't lift her head.
She woke up, and opened her eyes to look up at the dingy ceiling sloping up over her head. She was panting, and her pulse echoed in her ears.
It was getting dark, outside, and here in the empty apartment.
She shifted to try and find a more comfortable position on the cold floor. The boards squeaked as she shifted her weight. She could hear kitchen sounds from Dawn's neighbor, but still no sound from Dawn's.
"Max wouldn't quit now," she thought. "Zack wouldn't quit now. You can't either."
*****
Dek looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs. "Are you ready to try something hard?"
Dawn felt her ears turn red. "He didn't mean that the way it sounded!" she told herself silently.
"I mean," he continued, with a quick flash of a smile "now that you've got the general idea, we can try some more complicated steps." Dawn decided that Dek had an evil sense of humor.
*****
She heard footsteps from downstairs, and was instantly awake.
"It's time to find out if you are really a failure," she thought.
*****
Dawn listened to the drive hum as her computer tried to load from one of those ancient CDs. As she expected, it was encrypted, but there were a couple of different ways to deal with that.
"Can you just do a straight copy?" asked Dek, from the living room. She heard first one shoe, then the other fall to the floor.
"Sure can," she said, and dropped a blank into the drive.
Dek padded in, stocking foot, and undid the bow tie while he looked over her shoulder. He took a quick glance at the screen, then turned away. Dawn wondered what happened to her happy, charming dance partner. The cool, all-business Dek was back. She wasn't sure if she liked that. "It's almost as if I was just a cover story," she grumbled to herself. "If I'm going to be used for something, shouldn't I get a say in what?"
She looked up at Dek. "Why haven't you tried to take me to bed?" she asked, trying to end the suspense like ripping off a band-aid. He set the Glock down on the corner of the dresser and sighed.
"Because I can't risk having you decide that I'm a dirty old man," he answered, turning to face her. "The two of us together will be able to crack *that* faster than either of us alone." He nodded towards the computer.
"Do I seem like the kind of person who will go off the deep end instead of saying 'No, thanks'?" He was worried about offending her?
"No. I also don't want to give you any ideas about some kind of mercy fuck." He frowned. "I'm not going to accept that. Ever. I still have a few standards left."
"I have standards, too!" protested Dawn.
"Then you need to decide what you are willing to risk, and make me an offer." He had his hands in his pockets, and no trace of a smile.
"Risk?" What sort of mind games was he playing now?
"Well, depending on what you are looking for, there are the standard set of physical risks." He shrugged. "What you really need to think about is: What if I turn you down, or what if I agree, but reality just doesn't measure up to what you are expecting?"
"So I need to make you an offer?" Dawn wondered if he wanted her confused, or he just didn't realize quite how unusual this conversation was. She had only had to hint, before.
"Doesn't have to be just one offer," he said with a smile. "I'm willing to stand here all night and turn you down."
"Arrogant bastard," thought Dawn. "I want my tango partner back." An idea formed. She was just going to have to accept the risks. It was the only way to find out.
"OK," she heard herself say. "I want to compare the reality of a kiss, with the imaginary one." She glanced at the computer, which was methodically copying the second CD, and got to her feet.
"If that's what it takes to make you happy."
"Actually, I want you to shut up and quit asking me difficult questions." Dawn met him half way. She was surprised to find that she was exactly his height, with her heels still on.
Dawn touched his cheek, and shivered, remembering the dark, wet sand under her boots, and the shape of a man's body in her truck's headlights. "I thought he was dead," she remembered. The warmth of his skin reminded her that she had been wrong.
He closed the distance between them. She felt the pressure of one hand against the bare skin of her arm, and the other against the side of her neck. His thumb slid along the side of her jaw, and she tipped her head towards his fingers.
His lips met hers, slowly, and she could almost taste caution. Even the slight contact between them held her attention, and she wondered if it was possible to die from frustration. He seemed to make up his mind, and things changed. Dek's mouth moved against hers, and his hand behind her head prevented her escape, even if she'd been thinking of it. "Frustration is not what I need to worry about," she realized.
"So what are your findings?" His voice was cool, but now she knew what was behind it.
"Reality is winning, but I need to verify my experimental results." Dawn tried to match his tone, as if she were speaking of something far away, and of no importance. She was quite sure that she wasn't successful.
"I'm always eager," purred Lydecker, "to gratify a woman's scientific curiosity."
*****
She could tell from the whispered voices filtering through the floor from downstairs that she wasn't listening to foreplay anymore. She had never really considered that there would be any woman, anywhere, who would be willing to take Lydecker to bed with her. She found that the reality was a bit disturbing.
"The time to strike," she reminded herself, "is when the enemy is occupied by other things."
She slid her hand under the sleeve of her coat, and slowly peeled the tape off her arm. The ceramic knife was almost black in the dim light. She mentally reviewed all the ways to kill someone instantly and quietly with a blade.
Several of them were entirely suitable for a knife that would slice through meat quickly and smoothly, but chip or break against bone.
"Start with whoever is on top," she thought, "and the body will pin the other one for just long enough to finish the job. No witnesses." Two bodies worth of blood would be an enormous pool. The idea made her feel ill, and she was glad she hadn't eaten since breakfast.
When she got to her feet, she felt dizzy. "Too long in one place," she told herself. The noise from downstairs continued. The little bit of squeaking from the floor clearly hadn't disturbed them.
She decided that a little bit of speed was more important than total quiet. The floorboards creaked twice more on her way to the top of the stairs. This end of the room was darker, and the bottom steps were totally obscured. She felt with her toe for the edge of the top step.
"Lydecker's going to pay for all of them," she whispered. Her other foot reached for the next step. She could still see the dark shape of the blade against the shadows, and she imagined blood.
Her fingers opened, as if they weren't taking orders from her brain anymore. The black knife spun end over end, bounced once, then shattered at the bottom. She could hear it turn to slivers of ceramic. It sounded like ice breaking.
She sat on the top step, opening and closing her hands. She watched her fingers extend, then close into fists, and felt tendons sliding under her skin. Everything was under control again.
"What is wrong with me?" she asked the empty stairs.
