Chapter 34 #2
He changed his tune. “Okay, then. Do it.”
Jamison’s eyes thinned, his color rising, his eyes glittering dangerously.
“Just try,” Pierce goaded. “Hit me! Go ahead! See what happens.”
That did it!
Jamison’s control snapped.
He roared and rushed forward.
Pierce sidestepped onto the very edge of the pool.
Stuck out his foot.
Jamison feinted, but tripped.
Flailed.
Grabbed Pierce’s leg as he went down.
Crack!
Jamison’s face slammed against the cement. Blood spurted from his nose.
Pierce teetered and then landed hard. On his back. At the lip of the pool.
Pain radiated from his spine.
Still, they grappled. Swinging and breathing hard. In a tangle of curses and flying fists, they rolled near the water, Pierce trying to block the blows, Jamison spitting blood and punching wildly.
Wrestling near the pool’s rim.
Landing punches.
Jabbing.
Swearing.
Pain jolting with each hit.
Pierce attempted to pin Jamison, but his opponent’s fist shot upward, slamming into Pierce’s cheek with a sickening crunch.
In a surge of strength, Jamison arched his back muscles, yelled, and flipped Pierce onto his back. Pain rattled Pierce’s vertebrae. A sea of red blocked his vision as blood rained down from Jamison’s wide nostrils.
“You sanctimonious son of a bitch!” Jamison cried, ready to strike again.
Despite the pain and weight pinning him down, Pierce twisted, every muscle in his body straining with the lift.
Jamison’s legs tightened.
But his balance shifted.
One final push.
They toppled.
Entangled.
Over the edge.
Splashed into the water.
Jamison’s legs loosened.
Pierce kicked.
With as much force as he could muster.
Then again as Jamison flailed, gulping water.
Quickly, Pierce swam underwater, putting as much distance as he could between him and Jamison, and surfacing near the waterfall, shaking the water from his hair, zeroing his gaze on Jamison as he bobbed to the surface fifteen feet away.
Blood from Jamison’s nose ran into the water.
But the fight had been washed from him in the cold water.
“Oh, Christ,” he muttered, blinking. He was in the shallower end, able to stand, his shoulders slumping. “Shit,” he muttered, using two hands to scrape his hair from his face. “God! I’m—Oh, hell. What the fuck was I thinking?”
“You tell me.” Pierce treaded water, his gaze fixed on the man who was either friend or foe, depending on his run of emotions.
Jamison swiped at the end of his nose with his arm. “I don’t … Oh, fuck.” He looked up at the sky as if searching for answers.
“You okay?” Pierce asked, easing toward the ladder.
“Hell, no. Would you be?” Jamison asked.
“No. But I sure as hell wouldn’t try to kill my best friend.”
Jamison barked out a humorless laugh. “If I tried to kill you,” he said, “you’d be dead by now.”
“Sure.”
“Hey, man, I’m sorry.” And he looked it, as he wiped snot and blood from the end of his nose again. “Jesus, you’re in a suit.”
“You’ll get the dry-cleaning bill,” Pierce said, reaching the ladder.
“I think I owe you a new suit.”
“You do,” Pierce agreed. “So make it an Armani.”
“Okay. Fine.” Jamison slogged through the water and crawled up the steps at the shallow end. He snagged a towel from the back of a chaise longue and wiped his face. “What do we do now?”
That was an easy one. “You take care of your girls and let me find your wife.” Pierce climbed out of the pool, his clothes dripping all over the warm concrete.
“Deal?”
“Deal,” Jamison said with a sigh. He tossed Pierce the towel, now damp and stained with some watery blood. “I don’t like it, and I hate to admit you’re right. You know that, but, in this case, damn it, you are. Now, just hold up your part and find Naomi.”
The new stones were ready.
Polished and gleaming to a perfect sheen.
Each etched in blood.
Placed on his workbench in his private sanctuary.
While Perry Como sang “Ave Maria,” he replaced the vial and worried that he might run out before his mission was accomplished. The goat’s blood and calf blood were easily replaced, but the human blood was an issue.
Specific.
His source was no longer available.
He should have been more careful and thought ahead.
But how could he have known there were so many sinners who had to be exposed?
His list had grown.
Not that Nikki Gillette wouldn’t have found her way onto the list, but she was an interruption, had altered his plan, because she’d forced herself to the forefront.
He read her latest article about the Savannah Slasher, and he scowled. It didn’t reveal his identity. But he knew her, understood how dogged she was, what risks she would take. But he also realized that she now had a vulnerability. She was a mother. With a small child.
That was what he would use against her.
The curly-headed toddler.
Chloe.
He’d learned her name and where she went to preschool and that she was often left with Nikki’s older sister. The blonde who snuck long, black cigarettes around the corner of the garage.
He’d watched as she’d left her young charge unattended for a few moments while she stole a smoke.
He would have to deal with Nikki Gillette.
And soon.
He picked up his vial of fast-depleting human blood.
Good for one, maybe two more applications.
He’d been foolish not to harvest more, and at that thought, his mother’s voice came to him. Rough and low, but rising above Perry Como’s smooth baritone.
“How could you be so foolish? So stupid? When your IQ is supposed to be so high. Near genius. Isn’t that what the school tests showed?
But here you are, useless as ever, playing with rocks.
” She tutted then, clicking her tongue in disgust. “Such a disappointment. You could have been something, but you’re not.
” More tsking and shaking of her head as she reached for her pack of Marlboro Reds. “Such a goddamned disappointment.”
And there she’d done it. Taken the Lord’s name in vain.
Not ever opening a Bible. Never stepping inside a church.
Not once praying! If it had been up to her, she would have raised him as an atheist, but his father, often absent or lost in listening to his collection of precious records, had stepped in.
With the aid of his paternal grandmother, God rest her soul, his father had seen to his Christian upbringing and his understanding of piety.
Of atonement. Of retribution. Of the love and wrath of God.
His mother had never understood faith.
And so he’d taught her.
With her own knife.
That sharp little blade with its ram-horned hilt. Fashioned by her father, his grandfather, from the horns of a sheep the old man had slaughtered himself.
Now, he picked up the folding knife and caressed its worn handle.
Ahh, Mother, he thought, with a prideful sense of satisfaction.
You were right.
I wouldn’t be in this predicament if I’d thought ahead.
If I’d planned more carefully.
If I’d drained more of your blood when I’d had the chance.