A Perfect Darkness Read online

  Lucas didn’t even glance at the open door. He didn’t want to escape, but to take out the men one by one. With a bullet in his neck. She sat paralyzed, watching as he dug his elbow into the man’s stomach. The one with the gun, who appeared to be the leader, made no move to help his comrades. He was waiting for something, which she saw when Lucas’s motions slowed and he blinked several times. He wobbled, his eyes rolled back, his body slackened, then he crumpled to the floor with a painful thump.

  One man limped over as another checked Lucas’s pulse and peeled back an eyelid. After a nod to the man with the gun, the two hoisted Lucas up and carried him out the door.

  The leader turned toward her, about to say something, but she shouted, “You shot him!”

  “He was endangering you.”

  It was only just sinking in, that Lucas had been shot, that he was probably dead because people didn’t survive bullets to the neck, did they? Or if they did, they were paralyzed, but mostly they died. “Who are you people?”

  “FBI,” he said, flashing his badge so fast she could only see that it was a badge. The man, whose features were as stark as a mask, told her, “This guy’s been on our radar for months now. We had to wait for him to break in before we could arrest him.”

  “Arrest him? You shot him!” she said again, her scream edging into hysterical.

  “He’s a serial killer who’s eviscerated fourteen women with a carving knife.”

  “He didn’t have a knife.”

  “That you saw.” He looked into her eyes. “Did he say anything to you?”

  She was supposed to pretend to be afraid of Lucas. That he’d said nothing. She shook her head.

  He studied her. “Nothing at all?”

  “He didn’t have time. You—”

  “You’re lucky to be alive, ma’am,” he interrupted before turning and walking out of the room.

  “—shot him,” she finished with a whimper, then fell limp onto the bed, a cold fog starting from her fingers and stealing over the rest of her. Orn’ry was screeching in her office but she couldn’t move. Trembling followed the cold, tiny seizures sparking through her muscles.

  Offspring. Her father. Betrayal. Lucas’s urgent words careened around in her head. Then what the man had said: serial killer…eviscerated women…lucky to be alive.

  Lucas was right. Someone had been outside listening, watching.

  Watching her.

  A violent tremble shook her body. On wobbly legs, she walked to the window and pulled open the drapes, hoping for a glimpse of the vehicle the men had arrived in. The lights that usually illuminated the parking area were off, leaving the night in darkness. She heard the sound of a car start and pull away but never saw headlights.

  “Who are you people?”

  She became aware of the paper in her hand, now damp from sweat, and tucked it into her pajama waistband with shaky fingers. The most bizarre thing was how worried she was for Lucas, a stranger who’d broken into her apartment and scared the hell out of her. She managed to reach for the phone and dial Uncle Cyrus.

  He answered on the first ring. “Amy, what’s wrong?”

  “A man broke in…then these men…serial killer…they shot him!” Her teeth started chattering and she couldn’t utter anything else.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Amy cleaned up slowly, still stunned at the wreck of her living room and the reason behind it. Orn’ry was back in his cage clucking like a chicken, trying to get her attention.

  “Not now, buddy.”

  Her red bean bag chair lay in a clump, kicked into the corner; the gooseneck lamp under which she’d read—and cried over—Wuthering Heights twenty times was bent on the floor, bits of bulb glittering in the light. Neither the heat nor the rich cinnamon color on the walls could warm her. She kept pausing, mesmerized by the mess, feeling violated by the sight of it. The constellation globe her father had given her was dented. She should throw it away. Why did she keep it, anyway? He’d abandoned her. Guilt lanced her as it did whenever she let anger lick at her soul. With a sigh she set it back on the side table.

  “Amy?” Cyrus took a sharp breath as he pushed open the door. “What the hell happened? The door lock’s broken.”

  The lock wasn’t just broken; the metal and wood were shattered.

  She made her way to the door and saw the towering man with the shaved head picking his way through the disarray. She was even too traumatized to hide the True Confessions magazines scattered on the floor. Red blotches of blood dripped across the wood. Her stomach clenched.

  As soon as his arms went around her, she sank into his big, hard body and felt the trembling start again. Cyrus wasn’t a true uncle. He’d been her father’s best friend from their Army days and had kept in touch since her dad’s death.

  “You all right?” he asked, kissing the top of her head as he always did.

  She nodded even as tears squeezed out. She fought them because she was strong, because she couldn’t let herself shatter like that bulb. “I’m sorry to bother you like this.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  He led her to the couch, and didn’t complain about sinking into its plum depths, as he usually did. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart. You said a man broke in? A serial killer?”

  She grabbed up the patchwork bunny her mom had made before she was even born and shook her head. “No, he wasn’t…that’s what one of the men said. Lucas—that’s his name, the man who broke in—he said he wouldn’t hurt me, that he had to tell me things.” She pulled her fingers through brown hair that couldn’t make up its mind whether it was straight or wavy and ended up somewhere in between. “He knew my name. He said I’m an Offspring and that people are watching me. He said the words, ‘your father’s supposed suicide.’”

  It was only then that she remembered Lucas’s order not to say anything. He’d meant to those men, though. How could she not tell the only person she trusted?

  “Could it be that this guy has been watching you, studying you?” Cyrus replied. “Predators do that, you know. Maybe he found out about your father and figured drawing you into some paranoid conspiracy was a way to get to you. Who knows, maybe he even believes it.”

  “No, he knew me. I can’t explain it, but the way he looked at me…I know it sounds crazy, but it was like he’s…cared about me for a long time.”

  “Sociopaths have incredible people skills, even though they have no emotions. He was just playing you.”

  What Cyrus was saying made sense, but it didn’t feel right. Was she looped to put any stock into an intruder’s urgent ramblings?

  She hugged one of the pillows. “Then three men broke in and shot him. They just took him out, without reading him his rights or anything. He didn’t have a weapon, at least that I saw. The lead guy said they were FBI but flashed his badge so fast there was no way I could see it. Nothing on their uniforms said FBI.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “Maybe you just didn’t see it in the confusion.”

  “Sure. That makes sense. Except…wouldn’t they have asked me questions? I’m a witness. Supposedly an almost victim. They didn’t even ask my name or get my phone number for a follow-up interview. They were just…gone. Poof. No, wait. He did ask if Lucas had said anything. Not what he’d done but what he’d said. Don’t you find that odd?”

  Cyrus thought it over, squirming as the Killer Grape—his name for her purple couch—sucked him down like quicksand. “Law enforcement agencies have their way of doing things.” He would know, she thought, having worked for the CIA for over twenty years. “I learned not to question things.”

  Amy drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Not even when they bust into your home, shoot someone, and haul him away without saying more than, ‘You’re lucky to be alive’?” Her emotions bubbled again at the memory of Lucas crashing to the floor. “That not-questioning thing might work for you, but it doesn’t work for me.”

 
“I admit, it sounds a bit strange. I’ll look into it.”

  She nodded. “Ask if he’s…dead.”

  “I’ll find out everything I can.”

  “These guys were good. I mean, not good like good guys, but professional. Completely controlled. Their glows were so tight to their bodies I could hardly see them.”

  Cyrus was the only person who knew about her glows. For a few uncomfortable weeks he’d asked her to accompany him on interviews for new recruits and assess their glows.

  He grazed her cheek with his fingers. “How about you come over to my house? Your door’s busted.”

  “And leave my place open to anyone who happens by? No way.” At his look of concern, she mustered up some humor and flexed her biceps. “Me strong, fight off predators.” When he wasn’t convinced, she said, “How about we push the Grape in front of the door?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll be fine. Remember, they have the guy.”

  Cyrus was wrestling his way out of the couch. “I don’t like you being here alone. Emotionally more than physically. You might feel brave now, but any minute the adrenaline is going to drain, and you’ll fall apart.”

  The tremors had already returned, but she hid them by using the arm of the couch to push herself up. “I’ll call the locksmith, clean up, get some work done. I’ve got an urgent job to work on. It’ll keep my mind focused on normal, sane things.”

  Cyrus looked as though he were going to argue further, then relented. “I guess.”

  She kissed his cheek, but he studied her for cracks. “You don’t have to be brave all the time, you know.”

  “I can’t help myself.” She gave him a feeble smile. Having lost her mom when she was three and her dad at five, she’d learned not to rely on anyone being around for the long haul. Her aunt had taken her in, but Amy had felt that if she became too much of an intrusion she’d be sent away.

  “It’s not being brave,” he said. “You’ve always kept this wall around you. Do you ever think about reaching out, Amy? Do you ever need anyone?”

  She thought of her dream lover, but knew she couldn’t mention him. Or the fact that Cyrus, too, seemed to keep a buffer zone between them, which suited her just fine. He was the only other person, besides Lucas, whose glow she couldn’t read. Cyrus had explained that he learned to shield himself from assessing eyes.

  She forced a smile. “You taught me to be tough. Be proud.”

  “I am proud of you. But being tough doesn’t mean you have to handle everything by yourself.”

  “Love you for caring,” she said, leaning in to give him a hug, feeling a crack open inside her.

  He looked chagrined but hugged her back.

  “Let me know as soon as you find out something,” she said.

  “And you let me know when you’re ready to talk. You just went through a terrifying ordeal. Talking will help you sort it out.”

  She nodded, but Lucas hadn’t been terrifying, except for those first few moments. It was what he’d said and what happened to him that scared her. Cyrus stepped outside and helped her push the Grape to the door. The sun was beginning to rise, coloring the sky shades of pink and gray.

  Standing with the couch between them, he said, “I’ll arrange for the door to be fixed. And Amy, I wouldn’t mention this to anyone. We don’t know what’s going on here.”

  After he left and the door was sealed shut, she spotted something on the floor where the couch had been. Lucas’s necklace, the chain broken. The edges of the cross bit into her palm as she curled her fingers around it.

  The paper. She pulled it out of her waistband and collapsed onto the couch. At the top was her name and address. Below that:

  Bill Hammond, 1416 Cannon Ave.

  Maybe this Bill Hammond had something to do with what Lucas was trying to tell her.

  Why hadn’t she told Cyrus about the paper? Because some guy who broke into her apartment told her not to trust anyone? She felt as though she was betraying him somehow. The confounding part was, she didn’t know which him it was: Cyrus, for not disclosing all; or Lucas, for telling Cyrus some.

  Her energy drained out of her, just as Cyrus had warned. She closed her eyes, loving how the couch seemed to hold her as she sank into the velvety cushion. She needed sleep. Lots of it. But images of the night flashed through her mind, shooting her up from the couch. Surely there would be something on the news about it. She tuned the television to one of those twenty-four-hour-so-much-news-you-could-throw-up channels and listened while she worked on Bromley’s hard drive.

  After an hour, nothing. She needed answers to the bizarre questions Lucas had posed. She couldn’t wait to find out what Cyrus dug up.

  CHAPTER 3

  Amy was staring at a computer screen filled with jumbled file names when a knock on the door startled her. She jerked around, knocking her empty mug of coffee over. Were they back?

  “Calm down, it’s probably the locksmith,” she said under her breath, and hollered, “Coming!” She turned down the Staind CD she’d been listening to, nudged the couch out of the way, and pulled the door open. Orn’ry took his usual defensive stance on his perch, head down and body flattened. He hated visitors.

  Not the locksmith, but Ozzie Stavros, neighbor, friend, and fellow computer geek. Even this early his thick, dark hair was combed back in glossy waves and he smelled like a fresh dose of cologne. He took in the couch barricade with a lift of a thick eyebrow. “Mrs. Cameron said she heard some commotion early this morning. She thought you were having a party.” He was looking at the shattered doorknob. “I heard that rock stuff you listen to so I knew you were awake, even though you’re hardly ever up this early.”

  Thank goodness Mrs. Cameron hadn’t heard the gunshot. It probably had a silencer on it. “I’m expecting a locksmith. To fix the door,” she added as he stared questioningly at the knob.

  Hm, how to explain this to someone she didn’t want involved? He eyed the room behind her now. She’d cleaned up most of the mess, but her gooseneck lamp was obviously disabled, and she noticed that her “Last Act of Defiance” framed poster was tilted.

  “Coffee?” she asked, buying time. “Fair trade French roast.”

  Ozzie was the one who’d gotten her into the organic, fair trade kick. He’d told her about those underpaid farmers in places like Uganda and Paraguay and all the chemicals used in traditional farming. She pulled the couch away enough for him to slip his small frame between it and the wall.

  He looked around for more evidence of whatever had happened the night before. Ozzie was a true nose bag. Whenever he came over, he snooped through her fridge and cabinets and told her how unhealthy her food was. He grossed her out with tales of what the sinister ingredients did to her body or about the animals sacrificed in their creation. He’d ruined her for veal.

  “Harry’s broken,” he said, picking up one of her Geex creations. During moments of frustration or boredom, she made creatures out of obsolete computer parts. Recycling, as Ozzie had pointed out. Harry was a CD drive with circuits for eyes and a nine-pin plug for a mouth. Well, he used to be. “He was my favorite,” he said on a sigh.

  “Mine, too.” She thought about going for the party lie, but he knew her better than that. “It wasn’t a party.”

  “I never figured you for a party girl, anyway.” With a nervous rub to his Roman nose, he added, “And I’d hope you’d invite me. So what happened?”

  “FBI raid,” she said, sticking as much to the truth as possible. “Wrong address.”

  “No way! They busted in your door and everything? That is so cool. How come nothing exciting ever happens to me?”

  “Boring is good,” she said. “Boring is safe and sane.” She handed him a cup of coffee with a dash of hormone-free milk.

  “So I should take it as a compliment the next time a girl says I’m boring?”

  Someone knocked on the door and a man called out, “Locksmith.”

  The man on the stoop didn’t look like
a locksmith. He looked like the men who had busted into her apartment. He wore a uniform lacking any logo and carried a black box. “I’m here to take care of the door,” he said, and began to step forward.

  Like the three who had busted in, he had the kind of face that got lost in a crowd. She suspected that was by design.

  She remained in the doorway. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? The FBI or whoever.”

  His expression was as deadpan as the leader’s had been. “I’m just here to fix the door.”

  She glanced back at Ozzie, who was hovering behind her. “Oz, can you go in the kitchen and, uh, fix your coffee or something?”

  “It’s already…oh. Uh, I guess.” He backed away.

  Amy lowered her voice and said to the man, “Look, I just want to know what’s going on.”

  He looked her right in the eye. “I’m just here to fix the door.”

  She remained there another few moments, hoping he would relent. He was definitely one of them, and he definitely wasn’t going to relent. She couldn’t see his glow and wondered if the FBI also trained their people to suppress their intentions. “I want to see some ID.”

  He whipped out his wallet and showed her both a driver’s license and a locksmith’s license under the name Michael Callahan. With a sigh she let him in.

  Orn’ry was having fits over the stranger, so Amy took him into her office.

  Ozzie followed. “Just to make sure everything’s all right,” he said, eyeing the locksmith. Orn’ry tried to bite Ozzie every time he got close to the perch. “That bird hates me.”

  “It’s nothing personal. He hates everyone who isn’t me.” She also peered out to check on the locksmith.

  “I’ve heard birds live a long time.”

  “Yeah, something like thirty or forty years. I don’t know how old Orn’ry is. Parrots also bond to their owners, and for some reason he never bonded to anyone but me. It’s weird because I’m not a bird person, but he’s grown on me.”