“Get away from me.” She shoved a hand in her purse, and before she took it out, he knew she was going for her gun.
Sure enough, that muzzle trained directly at the center of his chest.
He put his hands up, palms forward. “What’s going on?”
“Nice tattoo—oh, and I just found out that you shot that man here in the hotel. The bullet matches.”
“What bullet?”
“The one that I found outside that garage—when I came to see you the first time. You remember, don’t you? Well, I gave the casing to someone who did a ballistics comparison—and your gun is the one that was used in that shooting.”
Matthias closed his eyes. Shit, that shell must have been from Jim’s gun, the one he’d taken, the one that, yeah, he’d used on the operative down in the basement hallway.
“Did you disappear the body from the morgue, too? I’m guessing that, given the ink you two share, you’re connected—but don’t bother giving me the details. I won’t trust anything you say.” Mels shook her head, disgust written not just in her face, but in her whole body. “It was lies, all of it—wasn’t it. The amnesia…the limp—those damn scars, your eye.” She cursed in a vile way. “Jesus Christ, it was a f**ked-up contact lens, wasn’t it—with some makeup to get the old injuries to look worse. Oh, God…” Now, she cringed. “The impotence, too, right? Guess you decided getting laid was worth the risk of exposure. Or did you just get lazy with the upkeep?”
As he died right in front of her, Matthias could only cross his arms over his chest and take what she gave him. He didn’t blame her for the extrapolations: Miracles were inexplicable for a reason, and the conclusions she was jumping to, while they screwed him, would seem like the only possible explanations if he were in her shoes….
When she finally stopped talking, he opened his mouth; then shut it when he realized that he had nothing of value to add. He’d hated lying to her—but she wasn’t going to hear that.
Shit, she might as well have pulled that trigger. He sure as hell felt as if she’d mortally wounded him—but honestly, it was his own damn fault, all of this: Although patches of the past remained in a fog, he knew this was exactly the kind of reckoning that had been waiting for him with her.
And in the end, the only thing he could do was step aside and give her the way out—and maybe this was good. There was no way she was going to ever come looking for him now.
The instant he moved, Mels went for the door, all the while keeping that gun on him, and then just as she stepped into the hall, she glanced back.
In a dead voice, she whispered, “There’s only one thing I don’t understand. Why did you bother? What do I have that you want?”
Everything, he thought.
“So it was just a game, huh,” she bit out. “Well, not sure what you thought the prize was—but I am telling you right now to never contact me again under any circumstances. Oh, and I’m calling the police station this minute and telling them everything I know about you. Although I have to wonder exactly how much that is.”
And then she was gone, the door shutting automatically behind her.
Matthias closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.
He’d known that leaving her was going to hurt—but like this? With her thinking he was a manipulator and a liar?
Then again, in his heart, he knew she was right. He’d always been a master liar.
A schemer.
A manipulator—
The headache came on hard and fast, and, as it turned out, it was the final one…not because he died, but because on that short-napped carpet of the hotel room, right at the foot of the door Mels had put to good use, everything came back to him—all of it.
From beginning to end, through all the evil in the middle, his memory returned with a roar, exploding the lid off of whatever had kept it down, filling the space between his ears, owning him.
It was ten thousand TVs in a room, all with the sound cranked up, the din so great it was a wonder people down on the street didn’t hear the noise.
It was a tsunami that swept onto the shore, wiping clean these last few days of relative innocence with Mels, ruining the landscape he had created for himself with her, revealing the foul earth beneath the feelings he had found with her.
It was, in many ways, worse than the nightmare of Hell.
Because after he saw what he was, up close and in detail, with no shadows to obscure the ugliness, he knew whatever game he was caught in was not going to end well.
His soul was rotten to the core.
And he’d already learned that what you sowed was what you reaped.
46
When Mels got home, she took the longest shower of her life: After scrubbing her skin with a soapy washcloth, she stood under the spray until the hot water heater was empty and things got stone cold.
Stepping out and wrapping her flushed body in a towel, she thought she really shouldn’t have told Matthias she was going to call the police. No doubt he’d already pulled out of that hotel room—although knowing how paranoid he’d always been, he probably would have done that anyway now that the lie was over.
At least she’d done the right thing. She’d called Detective de la Cruz from the taxi—at his home, no less. And she’d told him everything, even though she felt like she had shamed her father with the way she’d behaved.
At least de la Cruz was on it, and doing his job well: Matthias’s room was going to get a visit imminently—probably already had—
Shoot. She really should have stayed put to make sure that Matthias met the police, but at the point when she’d left, she’d been focused on her personal safety.
Dear Lord, she felt dirty…absolutely filthy, and her emotions were another goddamn mess.
The irony, of course, was that the reporter in her was convinced she’d feel better if only she knew the why’s: Why her? Why now?
What the hell had he really wanted?
Then again, maybe that approach was no more illuminating than asking an out-of-control bus for its thinking behind which pedestrian it had “chosen” to run over.
Going into her bedroom, she took more care than usual as she got dressed, and she also delayed things an extra fifteen minutes to do her hair with a curling iron—which was unheard-of.
Last time she’d taken that thing out had been for a friend’s wedding, like, a year and a half ago.
Makeup seemed like a good idea, too, and she even threw some pumps on.