Chapter 11
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
JAKOB
The house at the coordinates I was given—what feels like a lifetime ago, already—is an extremely ordinary colonial in an extremely ordinary suburb in the southwest section of Rochester.
It's gray brick with dark blue siding on the upper story, and twin dormers with shutters painted a truly garish shade of purple.
A colorful profusion of zinnias lines the walkway leading from the sidewalk to the front door; the lawn is in need of mowing, and the flower beds up against the house need weeding.
There are no cars in the driveway or parked on the street, but that's no indication it's empty; the blinds are all drawn and the garage door shut. This is a quiet suburb, the purview of working families. It’s the perfect place for a safehouse.
I park on a corner a few hundred feet away and settle in to watch.
Beside me, Brys has dozed off again—I'm rather jealous of that ability.
Sleep has never been my friend. In fact, I'm shocked at how well I slept last night.
I didn't expect to sleep more than a couple of hours, as usual, especially not with a woman I barely knew, even as exhausted as I was.
I possess the fairly rare genetic mutation that allows me to function normally on an average of four hours of sleep, and I can function on one or two, as someone else might on four.
Waking up with her nuzzled up against me, her soft thighs bare against mine, those strange, hypnotic blue-ringed eyes hazy and lazy and hot with arousal—frankly ravenous, they were…I don't know what came over me.
I could literally smell her arousal wafting up from beneath the blankets; that heady scent sent me into an aroused frenzy I could barely contain, even with my iron will.
What is it about her that makes me feel so…
off-balance, out of control, and disoriented within myself?
Physical attraction alone cannot account for my reaction to her.
Granted, my attraction to her body is a raging inferno of an intensity I simply do not know how to explain or understand.
It's not about body parts, no matter how magnificent hers are.
It can't be about who she is as a person, either, because we don't know one another at all, and I don’t see myself being able to open up to her.
Isabel stole my soul nearly twenty years ago, and with it my heart.
I may have died as far as the world is concerned, but my heart never fully caught on.
Time has certainly played its part. The vicious agony of separation and loss has dulled.
The feverish madness of obsession has dimmed and cooled, to a great degree, but she affects me still.
Seeing her yesterday was…brutal.
She never saw me, thank god. But I saw her. I saw her face. I saw her husband, her kids—my son.
My son.
No. Her son, his son. He may have my DNA, but he will never know I exist, and nor should he.
I have lived a decade without Isabel, yet that mad, turbulent time when she met Logan, discovered herself, and came to understand what I'd done to her is still ravaging my psyche.
I cannot forget; I cannot forgive myself.
I glance at Brys again. Thick, dense black lashes rest against her cheeks.
Her hair is back in a thick braid, but a few tendrils have come loose to drift around her cheek and chin.
At rest, she looks barely thirty, if that, although I know she has to be at least five years older based on her statement about the timing of my near-deal with her father.
She's a fascinating, complicated woman, resilient and brave.
She's dealt with everything that has happened with remarkable adaptability, calm, and practicality, especially for a woman who, by all accounts, grew up wealthy and privileged.
She hasn't complained; she has made it clear she's unhappy about the whole situation—understandably—but I think she also knows that I didn't want to and wasn't trying to pull her into my mess.
She just gets on with the business of surviving, of doing what has to be done.
She vomited at the sight of the dead man's brains on the wall, and then pulled herself together.
I admire her resiliency, if nothing else.
It's shocking to see such things in real life, right in front of you.
Television doesn't prepare you for the scent of death, the stench of gore.
Inevitably, of course, my mind wanders to this morning—again, and again, and again.
So eager, so willing. Ravenous. Insatiable. Immediately willing to play along with my fucked-up mind games, my need to control…well, everything. God, she was fucking magnificent. Giving me what I demanded and somehow making it seductive, yet somehow…elegant.
Sex is not an elegant thing, usually. It's wet, messy, noisy, strange, intimate.
Baring your body to another person, touching their most erogenous places, inciting such intense sensations…
it's a highly personal thing, yet we engage in it with strangers. Perhaps we do so because of how vulnerable a thing it is—a stranger’s judgment and criticism of our bodies, of our sexual performance…
in a way, it is less frightening a thing because they do not know us, cannot, will not.
After the heat has abated, we go our separate ways, feeling a little better for having gotten off, and for the most part, never think of that stranger again.
The same act with someone you know well, someone who knows your mind, your heart, your soul, someone who has seen you sick, clumsy, at your worst? That is frightening.
Brys made sex elegant. Graceful, beautiful.
Her hunger was rapturous. She took my release with erotic delight, and if I had wanted her to, she would have kept going; kept giving; kept taking.
When it was her turn, she gave me her body with utter trust. She let me take her past her threshold and into a release so intense she was left sobbing—that requires courage, especially with a man she scarcely knows.
My eyes slide shut for a moment—over the past decade of isolation, whenever I close my eyes, it has been Isabel I see.
When I grip myself in the shower and bring myself to climax, it is memories of her I have turned to, time and again.
Even when availing myself of the services of the girls who lease rooms from me down in Hel, it is Isabel I was with, in my mind.
Unhealthy, I know. Toxic. Obsessive. Yet I couldn’t ever banish her from my mind, couldn't untangle her from my soul.
Eventually, I spent a year in total celibacy—not even pleasuring myself—in an attempt to exorcise her from within me.
I learned to meditate. I journaled and dream-journaled.
I did anonymous, voice-only therapy. I threw myself into exercise, lifting massive amounts of weight and running on the treadmill to the point of insanity.
It worked.
Mostly.
I no longer think of her almost at all. I never went back to hiring girls from Hel; it felt…
wrong, somehow, in ways I could never articulate.
I provide those girls with a comfortable, safe, protected place in which to practice their chosen profession.
They are there willingly, of their own free will and choice.
My lease terms are generous in their favor.
I ensure that Hel is a drug-free working environment; I even provide referrals to drug, crisis, and sexual assault counseling.
I have a whole onboarding presentation that Inez—Sophia— now has prepared for potential new hires, listing the benefits of working for me.
I am not a pimp; I do not take a percentage. I merely provide a safe place for them to do what they're going to do, anyway. It's the only ethical way to approach sex work.
I realize I may be an outlier on this topic—in the States, at least; sex work has existed since the dawn of human civilization, and I think it probably occurred in some recognizable capacity before we developed civilization.
It is going to happen, and if it isn't regulated and the workers and clients protected, violence and exploitation become the means of control of supply, and those who suffer the most are the sex workers.
To me, this is wrong; I have experienced it firsthand.
Society and government exist to provide structure and support for all members.
A wild, dangerous notion, I'm sure, especially in this age.
My rumination is disrupted when the garage door of the safehouse trundles upward—a blacked-out Lincoln Navigator approaches from the left, slows to turn into the driveway, pulls into the garage, and halts.
The brake lights glow red for a moment and then shut off.
The driver’s door opens; the driver is a suit-clad young man, brawny and lithe—obviously a former operator.
He opens the rear passenger door for the occupant—a leg emerges, khaki-clad, with loafers.
Fucking loafers: obnoxious, pretentious, impractical footwear, and uglier than sin.
Loafers are to shoes what the Pontiac Aztek is to automobiles.
I digress.
The rest of the person unfolds—a black polo tucked in just so.
Dark hair slicked back. Clean-shaven. Khakis pressed, the cuffs hitting just right.
The polo is fitted, likely tailored. Preening, arrogant peacock of a man with the soul of a cornered pit viper.
I would gleefully, and with great relish, watch that man's brains paint an alley wall.
If I had my way, he would spend the rest of his short life at the bottom of a cobalt mine, and his death would be slow and excruciating.
Alas, the privilege of his murder belongs to Nicolai.
At the very least, I can facilitate that process.
The two figures enter the home, and the garage door rolls quietly back down, and all is still and quiet once more. You'd never know that this sleepy little Rochester suburb harbors one of the cruelest, most bloodthirsty monsters on the planet.
I pull the cell phone I took from the dead guy from my hip pocket, power it on, and dial a long string of numbers; it rings three times, and then there's a digital beep.
"It's me. Quarry is in Rochester, New York.
Coordinates to follow. Send Lash ASAP." I recite the coordinates and then end the call.
That done, I power the phone off, remove the battery, and pocket both pieces.
"Who is Lash? And why send him?" Brys's voice is slow and sleepy. "Who did you call?"
I glance at her; she stretches, yawns, and then watches me expectantly.
"It was an answering service—basically a voicemail box that forwards the message to predetermined recipients.
" I weigh how much to tell her. "Lash is an employee.
He possesses…certain skills that will be invaluable in this situation.
More importantly, he hates Pugli far more than I, or anyone, ever could. "
"Jesus. What did he do to him?"
"Not only is it not my story to tell, but you also do not want to hear it. Suffice it to say that even the devil would be horrified."
She blinks. "Dear god. I think you're right—I don't think I want to know."
"Trust me when I say that you do not."
"And Lash, what is he like?"
"Complicated. Mysterious. Scary. Kind."
She frowns. “How can he be scary and kind?"
I shrug. "They are not opposites. He is scary to those on the receiving end of his skills, but if he is your friend, there is no one kinder."
"So we're glad he's on our side?"
My grin at her statement is probably a cold, frightening thing. "Oh yes. Very, very, very glad."
"How do you come to have an employee like that?" she asks.
I let out a long, slow, cheek-puffing sigh. "If you'll recall, Brys, not long after we met, I told you that if you were to know the truth of what manner of man I am, you would take your chances with the killers in there,” I indicate the safehouse. "That is still true. I am not a good man, Brys."
She stares at the house for a long time.
"I don't know that I believe that, Jakob.
I have seen no evidence supporting this claim.
Perhaps, in the past, it was true. But I like to think people can change…
they just have to want to." Her eyes cut to me.
"Listen, Jakob. I just need to know where we stand, okay?
If you want the sex stuff to be strictly physical and we keep our pasts and our emotions out of it, I can do that.
Most of my liaisons for the past few years have been of that nature.
If you'd rather keep things strictly try-not-to-die and eliminate the sex altogether, that's fine too.
Like I said, I just need to know the score so I can adjust my expectations accordingly.
Just be honest with me, Jakob, even if you're being honest that you can't or won't engage with me emotionally. "
I look at her as a dozen responses bing-bong through my mind, as if someone had sent too many balls into a pinball machine. "I must consider this, Brys. I will not give you a dishonest or disingenuous answer."
Her smile is shockingly tender and understanding. "I appreciate that answer more than I can say, Jakob. Take your time. I'd rather a truthful and genuine answer tomorrow than a lie or a half-truth now." A long silence ensues. "So…is this what a stakeout is like?"
I shrug. "I don't know. I have never been on a stakeout before. I have been many things in my life, but never law enforcement."
"Like what?"
I glance at her. "Hmm?"
"You said you have been many things. Like what?"
I should not trust her. I should not divulge any of my many sordid truths. It should stay physical—for her sake, if nothing else.
"I was a victim of sex trafficking and forced into prostitution as a teenager."
Into her stunned silence comes the unmistakable sound of gunfire.