Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 51900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 260(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 260(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Chapter Five
Ghost makes a living from the shadows, which makes the fact that the lights are off in Mark Walker’s house expected, if not inconvenient. I can’t shoot what I can’t see, and I can’t carry a pie while trying to shoot what I can’t see.
My gut says Ghost doesn’t want to kill me and really wants this pie, but I also tell myself I’ll arrest my next perp instead of killing them, and it doesn’t happen. Ghost is a seasoned killer, and it would suck to die while holding a pie I didn’t even get to enjoy—at least let me have a full belly—but I go with my gut. I open the door, reaching inside and flipping on the light, using the back of my hand to prevent an overlay of fingerprints, though I’m doubtful Ghost will be stupid enough to leave his behind. It’s the other people who visited Walker I want to identify.
The room is illuminated in a warm glow, and I’m greeted by a foyer with a fancy chandelier overhead. Hamptons money loves fancy chandeliers, as if how a lightbulb is displayed validates their existence and everyone can now bow at their feet. Also typical, a stairwell lined with an oriental rug twists and turns in an upward path, with an open archway to my left and a shut door to my right. It’s the shut door that sets me on edge—the kind of place the boogie man hangs out and waits on you, but Ghost wouldn’t hide from me.
That would make him appear weak when I’ve already become some sort of weakness for him, even if he doesn’t know it, though I suspect he does. Weak isn’t dumb. It’s human, something I suspect he’s feeling for the first time in a very long time.
I walk left, carefully flipping on another light to find myself in a sitting room with a shiny black grand piano in my direct line of sight, and it’s not exactly clean and tidy. A man I can only presume to be Mark Walker is lying across it on his back, his head hanging off to face me, a bullet between his eyes, blood dripping crimson on the cream-colored carpet.
I’m aware of Ghost sitting on the couch to my right, but I remain focused on Mark, on the perfectly placed bullet, on the degree of congeal to the blood that tells me he’s been here for hours. It’s a dangerous, bold move, and I wonder if it was all for this time with me.
And if so, why?
“Is that the pie?”
He needs my attention, can’t stand not having it, and even expects and craves it. I rotate on him and scowl, aware of his uncovered face, a handsome forty-something face with a chiseled jawline and high cheekbones fitting of a model, not a killer. Dahmer would be jealous. When I saw him before he wore a hoodie, shadows on his face, nighttime in his favor. I had him drawn and it was completely wrong which is curious. How was I this wrong?
There’s expectancy in his expression, a desire to strike fear in me when I realize this means he plans to kill me. Instead, I feel relief. In a world filled with games, we’re done playing them, at least after tonight. One of us will not leave this house alive.
I like it.
It works for me.
I dive right in and admonish him, flicking my chin at Mark Walker’s dead body. “Could you not have waited until I asked him a few questions? I mean, fuck, Ghost. I need to know what he knows about Murphy.”
As if I don’t know he’s going to try to make me dead; therefore, the facts are irrelevant. As if I’m not going to make him dead. “Maybe I know what you need to know.”
His gaze is steady, perhaps deceptively steady, but there is no doubt he knows a lot more than most, or I wouldn’t be doing this stupid dance with him. I cross to join him, sitting down and noting the plates and silverware already present. I open the box in my lap, remove the pie, and toss the container before setting the prize on the table between us.
I reach for the butter knife he’s set out and hold it up. “I prefer a sharper blade. It’s less messy.”
“A blade is messy.”
I flash back to me on top of Roger, stabbing him over and over, blood splattering all over me. “Depends on how it’s used.”
“Based on experience?”
“Knowledge.”
His eyes narrow. “Knowledge?”
“That’s right,” I say, and that’s all he gets, not that it really matters what I say. One of us is already dead, and it’s not me.
He seems to think better than to push. “As a woman, I’d think a blade would be less effective than a firearm.”
“Shooting someone’s rather boring, don’t you think?” I dig the blunt blade into the pie and hit the shell with no success, setting it back down on the table “We need a proper knife.”