Devina had been delayed nearly an hour, and all for less than a sixteenth of an inch taken off the ends.
Like the bitch did her hair in the morning with the help of a tape measure?
Sometimes karma really did come back and bite you on the ass.
It took forever to dry the combination of extensions and real stuff, but Devina wasn’t worried about an intrusion: she’d locked the front door of the salon, and there was no way to see inside this far back. Also, the quiet location was another thing working in her favor. Pablo’s establishment was in the ritzy part of town, on a street jam-packed with stores that sold French bedding, English stationery, and Italian shoes.
This was the land of the country-club wifey, and that meant everything else but this salon closed at six o’clock.
Generally speaking, fembots had to earn their keep when their husbands came home.
And on that note, Devina had a feeling that the chick in the chair was someone’s second wife. Between the fake boobs, the Botox, and the too-thin thing, she was a brittle, jumpy version of a woman—which was what came when you liked things you couldn’t afford, and had sold yourself to an old goat to get them.
Then again, maybe she was banging her “Pilates teacher” on the side.
When Devina finally had Pablo’s hands put the dryer and the brush down, the bitch was leaning forward in the chair, fluffing everything out and turning this way and that.
She liked it.
“Well, I’m not paying you. This wasn’t what I asked for, and I hate it.” Except she was making these pursey puckers with her injected lips, like she was posing for a camera. “I am not paying.”
Actually, this was good. Less of a chance that she’d be tied to Pablo. Devina wasn’t about to lose her stylist, and he was just a medium in all this, a pass-through point that wouldn’t remember a thing.
The client picked up her ridiculous Takashi Murakami LV bag—like someone hadn’t told her you needed to be fifteen to carry that shit off? “I don’t know how much longer I can keep coming here.”
Hah. Devina knew the answer to that one.
Not. Long.
Pablo’s mouth started flapping, that falsely accented voice doing all kinds of ego petting as the target marched into the changing room and shut the door.
With a little time on her hands, Devina sent Pablo’s legs over to the reception desk. She wanted to check and see when her next appointment was, but everything was computerized, and although she could Google stuff, she was no hacker.
It was at the end of this week, wasn’t it?
When the woman came out—clothed in a “fashion-forward” ensemble that appeared to have been put together by a color-blind cubist who hated her—she seemed to already be getting into the habit of swinging the blond around.
This woman deserved to die on too many levels to count.
“Pablo” escorted his client to the door, and that meant it was time for Devina to pare off from her host. As she separated herself from the Jersey-boy-gone-Rio, she left him with no memory of having seen his last client. As far as he knew, the woman who was now a blonde hadn’t showed up—and the police, when they found the body, wouldn’t be able to trace the hair color to him.
Devina hadn’t used the stuff at the color bar. Too complicated.
More L’Oréal.
And during processing, she’d slipped out the back and put the box and the used tube and bottle in some random car that was parked two shops down.
No one was going to associate this with Pablo—and if they did, he was going to pass any lie detector with flying colors, because as far as he was concerned, he’d never seen the bitch.
Outside, the air was crisp, and Devina assumed an anonymous male image as she fell in lockstep behind the newly blonded. The woman immediately got her cell phone out, like she was all excited to share her tale of trauma at the hair salon.
Sorry, sweetie, that was a no-go.
With a quick blink of energy, Devina knocked out the iWhatever—which was yet another public service. No doubt she had just saved somebody who didn’t care a fifteener of indignant Louboutin-stamping about The Tragedy at Pablo’s.
As the woman stopped and tried fixing the problem by smacking the cell phone against her palm, Devina walked by, hands in the pockets of her jeans, head down, affect calm.
She continued along the row of darkened shops, checking the environs. No one else was on the sidewalks; nobody was passing by on the road; nothing was doing.
She knew when her prey resumed walking thanks to the clip-clip of those stilettos over the concrete. And there was the cursing, of course.
When the blinkers flared on a lone black-on-black Range Rover half a block down, Devina smiled. There was a cross street that cut through the lineup of shops about ten feet away, and that was just what she needed.
Willing four streetlamps to suddenly extinguish themselves, she slowed her pace and let those loud shoes catch up.
It was a case of perfect execution.
Literally.
Devina sprang herself around at just the right moment and grabbed a handful of that blond hair, securing a grip strong enough to rip the female off her feet. Then, in a quick succession of moves, the demon dominated the situation, taking control of arms and legs that flailed around, shifting a palm so that the mouth was covered, holding hard and fast.
Superior strength was leveraged to drag the victim into the cut-through, into further darkness as more streetlights were willed off.
There wasn’t any time to waste. Yes, this part of Caldwell was a snooze-fest at night, but a car could come by at any moment, and it would be nice to enjoy the killing in peace.
As dense shadows swallowed them both, Devina wasn’t worried about the Maker getting pissy about this kind of thing. She’d been on the earth since time had begun, her nature expressed through exactly this sort of shit.
And no one could argue that this pain in the ass was part of Jim Heron’s great quest to win the game. This was a sideline issue.
Now…if this female happened to be killed in a manner similar to the way another girl had been murdered? If there was a pattern carved into some skin that was of a runic nature exactly like said other dead body? If there were some commonalities in ethnic group and hair color?
And if that crap happened to bother Jim Heron, causing distraction, disquiet, and dysfunction?
Well, as her therapist always said, you could only control yourself and your actions.
If Jim couldn’t handle the shit, it wasn’t Devina’s fault…or problem.
32
Mels woke up to the feel of hands traveling across her belly and dipping in between her legs. Half-asleep, she eased onto her back and turned into the warmth, finding Matthias’s mouth in the darkness. Instantly, they returned to where they had been most of the night, pressed in tight, the heat pooling in her sex, the tension twisting in her gut.