The Death Dealer

“It was you,” she said. “There were eyewitnesses, and you’ll be identified eventually.” She saw his hand where it lay on the table and grabbed it. He winced. She turned it over. There was a big scrape mark on his palm.

“Look, I really don’t want a media frenzy. You understand that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly. Life could be so odd. She had met Joe when he and Leslie MacIntyre had discovered the horrible pit in the subway tunnel where she had been taken after she’d been kidnapped by the monster who’d been stalking the streets of Lower Manhattan. His other victims had wound up dead. Leslie had been killed in the showdown.

Joe had been devastated.

But that day he and Genevieve had formed a certain bond. Maybe because they were both broken in a way.

Genevieve wasn’t certain if she had made it through because she had been smart, because she had stroked the killer’s ego or only because her instinct for survival had been desperate and strong. She had relied on herself in the awful days when she had been a prisoner, and in the aftermath she had created a block against those memories.

What had been harder to handle had been the press. Finding the right words to say at all times. Her uncle—who had raised her as his own child—had been a fierce taskmaster. She had been born to privilege, and he had taught her to be responsible. He had made her tough, had expected her to work hard and then harder.

After the rescue, she had been treated as if she were as fragile as a thin-shelled egg, though she had told the truth about her ordeal. Even so, rumors had found their way into the press that were more horrible than anything she’d been through, and for much too long she had been an object of pity. She appreciated that people could be compassionate, but she loathed being pitied, loathed the possibility that she might end up in the papers again.

She looked at Joe. “But it was you, on the highway, who saved that child, right?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Joe, my voice is down.”

“I won’t be able to work if this gets out. Come on, please. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

She lowered her head, smiling. Leave it to Joe. It was all about the work. She forced the smile to go away. “Take this case, Joe.”

He groaned. “Are you blackmailing me?” he demanded.

Her smile deepened. She hadn’t thought of that, but it wasn’t a bad idea. “Maybe. Now, come on, I’ll drive you home. It’s late.”

“No, but I’ll see you home.”

“Joe, you’ve had a few.”

“I meant that I’ll drive with you to your place and take a cab from there.”

“I’m okay, Joe. I carry Mace now, and I can take care of myself,” she said firmly.

Hmm. She was touchy, she realized. Friends saw friends home all the time.

Maybe being defensive was a good thing if he thought that he needed to look after her. She definitely didn’t want his pity or to have him as a guardian. She was tough enough to take care of herself. She had proven it. She had survived. And she meant to keep doing so. She had thrown herself into self-defense classes, and she spent hours on a treadmill, getting fit.

Running.

As if she could outrun the past.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but I’d still like to see you to your place. And I’d like you to promise you’ll keep your mouth shut about me helping out at the accident,” he said firmly.

“Joe, I’ll keep my mouth shut. And you can see me home,” she told him gravely, “if you promise to take on the case.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so afraid, Gen. Really. I simply don’t believe your mother is a target.”

“Joe…” She hesitated. She didn’t know herself why she was so concerned. Her mother hadn’t been a close friend of the dead man. Eileen and Thorne had been casual acquaintances, at best, brought together only by their membership on the board.

But she was scared. Bone-deep frightened. It was something that had just settled over her, and she wouldn’t be comfortable until the killer was caught.

“Please. The cops aren’t getting anywhere.”

“Give them time.”

“In time,” she told him, even though she herself had been thinking earlier that the press should cut the cops some slack, “somebody else could die.”

He lifted his hands, staring at her, shaking his head.

“Eileen hasn’t been threatened in any way, has she?”

“No.”

“Genevieve…” He lowered his head for a moment, then shook it again. “Gen, it’s only been a week, which is no time at all. You’ve been watching too much television. A murder like Thorne Bigelow’s isn’t solved in a one-hour episode.”

“I know that,” she said sharply.

“Then…”

“Joe, this is what you do for a living. I want to hire you.”

He sighed. “I’d be stepping in where people are hard at work already. I don’t know that I could find out anything new.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe you could do something. Before somebody else gets killed. That’s just it, Joe. Someone else could die.”

It was strange, but just then Kathryn, their waitress, came by, her eyes wide. “Man, what a night for the bizarre!”

“Why? What happened?” Genevieve asked.

Joe was studying Kathryn with apprehension.

The waitress shook her head. “There’s always one in every crowd, you know? Someone who just has to stick their nose in and make a tragedy worse.”

“What are you talking about?” Joe asked.

“The psychic,” Kathryn said.

“What psychic?” Joe demanded.

“Go look at the television,” Kathryn said disgustedly. “There’s a reporter talking to her right now, actually. Just turn around and you can see. It’s that Robert Kinley, and he’s with some so-called psychic named Lori Star, who claims that some guy named Sam Layman or Latham or something was supposed to die in the accident, and that it was the Poe Killer behind it.”

“How could she know that?” Joe asked, his expression darkening.

Kathryn shrugged. “She said she just knows it. And she says she knows more, too.”