Sometime later, we’re in a residential area with lots of houses and lawn. Definitely upper middle class. Maybe he owns one of the houses with a big yard for his dogs.
He parks his car in front of a house in a cul-de-sac. He gets out. I park mine, but as I start to open the door, some cautious instinct—the one that’s kept me alive all these years—sends a chill down my spine. Things aren’t right.
He’s pulling on gloves as he moves toward the house. Who does that when they get home?
But that isn’t all. No dog barks. Sections of the lawn look flat and crushed, like something heavy rolled over it recently. A mailbox is knocked over, too. Tolyan seems so precise that I can’t imagine him leaving his home in this kind of condition. Maybe he’s here to see a girlfriend, although my gut disagrees. He couldn’t ignore the growl from my belly. He wouldn’t ignore a mailbox on the ground if this were his girlfriend’s home.
Not only that, he didn’t park his car in the garage or even in front of it. He put his car on the curb like a guest who’s here for a quick visit. The house is lit on the top floor and the living room. A cat darts across the window with the curtains pulled back.
He moves toward the door, his gait loose and steady. Not a walk of a man coming home after a long day. More like a lion stalking an impala that’s foolish enough to be away from its herd.
Whose house is this, then?
He doesn’t glance in my direction, even though the headlights have been on all this time. He’s behaving like it’s no big deal. Or maybe he’s faking nonchalance. After all, you have to pretend like nothing’s wrong to make people believe it themselves.
When he slips into the house, I kill the engine. Then I hold my breath and wait.
Chapter Six
Tolyan
The little fawn followed.
But then, I knew she would, even before I left the hotel. She didn’t try to hide or be less obvious that she has unresolved business with me. Beyond the coffee she bought me out of so-called gratitude. Even while she was eating her sandwich, she kept glancing at me from time to time, waiting for a good moment to spit out the words circling in her head. It’s so, so easy to read her innocent eyes.
They might not have remained so innocent or trusting if she’d known what was going through my mind as I watched her eat the sandwich that would’ve taken me three bites to finish. She opened her mouth wide and went for big bites, but simply couldn’t manage it. And every time a little bit of the white horseradish sauce got on those pink lips, her little tongue emerged to lick it.
And I thought about that mouth opening over my cock, taking it in. How wet and hot and sweet it’d feel. Would it be tight, since her mouth is so small? Would she work her tongue over the head, licking the precum like she did with the sauce? Her hair would undoubtedly be warm and silky as my fingers glided through, as I used it to hold her. What noise would she make as I thrust into her mouth? Would her whiskey eyes soften? Would she be shocked if I ordered her to fuck her pussy with her fingers and use her thumb on her clit?
When she climaxed with her fingers inside her pussy and my cock buried deep in her mouth, I’d come, too. And watch what I gave her coat those lips…
But no, she didn’t know any of that. Which is why she ran after me when I left the room to deal with a minor problem involving a drunken idiot. And that’s why she followed me here.
It would have been so easy to lose her. She’s a rank amateur, after all. An old part of me, one that used to enjoy showing off, whispered that it would be easy to lose a tail as unskilled as her, but I ignored it. No need to be cruel.
I drove like a placid old lady.
Oh, little fawn. I know you want to ask me for help. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at me, your gaze glowing with hope and desperation.
I want you to gather enough courage to ask. And to know what you can expect when you do.
Because I don’t put a Band-Aid over cancer. I excise it.
And I want you to be my bait. My willing bait.
Roy Wilks thinks he’s a lion, but he’s really a jackal that’s very good at staying out of my reach. I could go to where he is, but that is inconvenient and poses too many unknown variables, such as where to do my work and dispose the trash afterward cleanly and efficiently. Besides, my traveling to where he is would leave a trail and leave Lizochka and Thomas unprotected in L.A. for far too long.
I want Roy Wilks to come out of his den and make his way to Los Angeles, where I plan to snatch him and fulfill the wish my son made on his tenth birthday.
Plus, if I must be honest—and it’s good to be honest with oneself—I want my little fawn to be grateful. If I use her regardless of her preferences, she might not be. I’m not sure why it matters enough that I’m putting so much effort into winning her cooperation, but…for some reason, it does. It started to matter the moment I saw her picture while researching Roy Wilks’s background.
I park my car and pull on my work gloves. I like to keep my fingerprints to myself and my hands pristine. The material is thin but strong. The back of the hands have zero grip, so nobody can try to scratch or tear my skin. That’s quite inconvenient.
I walk toward the house, which is a disaster. If it were mine, the lawn wouldn’t be sporting tire tracks from police cars or have the mailbox knocked over and lying on the ground.
My home would be neat. Secure. Impenetrable.
I break out a pick and a torsion bar, stick them into the lock and work them a bit. Barely forty seconds pass before it opens with a click.
Pathetic.
The interior of the house is as sloppy and unkempt as the outside. Stale air. Actual dirty footprints on the non-carpeted areas. A few old pizza boxes and Chinese takeout cartons. No discarded chopsticks, though. Rick Owen doesn’t know how to use them.
But he knows how to use his fists. And he has an excellent backhand, so long as he’s raising it against his estranged wife and their son Jason.
His wife left him because he’s a piece of shit who kept escalating. Anger management and couples counseling didn’t help. But then, they rarely do. Most people don’t want to be helped. They want validation and understanding for their past actions.
Rick Owen happens to be a member of that majority. So he’s going to find a way to show that he’s right and everyone else is wrong. Left unchecked, that will end in the death of his wife and child, because they’re a wall between his truth and the people whose validation and understanding he seeks. I’ve seen it more times than I can remember.
I don’t, as a rule, intervene. Too many interventions bring unwanted attention. But Rick Owen crossed a line when he did what he did when Lizochka’s son was around and traumatized the child. Since Rick Owen is a cancer that doesn’t keep to its corner of the world, I have to do something about him before he really hurts the people I’m responsible for.
A cat dashes across my path. It looks filthy and uncared for. And slightly too thin. Rick hates cats, but he kept it because his wife loves it. Claimed it was only fair he got the cat if she was going to take the kid.
Why he wants to keep what he can’t bother to care for…
Then kidnaps his own son when he knows better…
The cops should have arrested him when they came for the child, but they didn’t. He is well connected to the right people in the city. And that buys him liberty that little people can’t have in the same circumstances.