She had her pride.

Although she was taking a pair of his boxers. No way she was going home in nothing but a raincoat.

Heading over to the bag Jim Heron had rifled through, she found two pairs of the things, and she took one, pulling them up her legs and onto her waist. They fit okay—and wait, there was another pair of warm-up pants in there, along with a couple of shirts.

She ended up having to roll the sweats over at the waistband, and the shirt swam on her, but everything was black, and as she slipped her shoes on and pulled the raincoat around her, she felt a lot less like a hooker.

Matthias was still in the shower.

It was tempting to sneak out and save them both the awkwardness, and, looking toward the door, she put her bag up on her shoulder. She could always write a note?

Nah. She refused to be a coward—

The muffled sound of her alarm went off in her purse.

Shoving her hand in deep, she rooted around, found the damn phone, and took it out. The familiar, annoying beeping made her skin crawl, but that was the point. Anything more user-friendly and she worried she’d sleep through it.

After she shut things off, she glanced back over at the open door of the bathroom.

The waiting wore on her, and she checked her voicemail to pass the time. There were three messages when she got into the system—

“Hi, this is Dan over at Caldwell Auto. We’ve been looking at your car, and to be honest with you, it’s right on the edge of being totaled. A vehicle that age, with this kind of damage? We could fix it, but I can’t guarantee it wouldn’t lemon on you a week later. My advice is that you take the insurance money and buy something new. Give me a call….”

For some reason, the idea that her car had died made her tear up.

Man, she needed to pull it together.

Message number two was from her hair salon, reminding her that she had an appointment coming up with Pablo.

Message number three was…

“Hey, this is Tony’s friend? From over at the police department? Jason?” The guy’s inflection turned it all into questions, as if he weren’t sure of his own name. “Listen…I need to talk to you ASAP. That bullet you found? It’s a match—that round was discharged from the same weapon that was used in the shooting down at the Marriott”—a chill started at the back of her neck and spread all over her body—“and that means you need to come in and talk to us. It’s ten o’clock now and I need to get some sleep—but first thing tomorrow morning, I’ve got to disclose this and your…”

At that moment, the shower cut off in the bathroom.

Leaning to the side, she watched Matthias step out of the tub. He seemed so much bigger now, and as she looked down, she saw only faded scars on his lower body, nothing that would warrant self-consciousness. Or a limp.

Tony’s friend was still talking as Matthias turned away to get the towel he’d left on the back of the toilet—

Mels nearly dropped her phone.

Covering his back, from the tops of his shoulders to below his waist, was a massive black-and-white tattoo of the Grim Reaper standing in a field of grave markers—and underneath it were dozens and dozens of hatch marks in an orderly row.

It was precisely like the one that Eric had shown her—

Get. Out. Now.

Mels bolted for the door, but didn’t make it.

Just as she started to run, Matthias stepped out of the humid little room, right into her path.

Matthias had gone the shower route not because he particularly wanted to be clean, but because he’d had to scrub his aching head. He’d never been one for good-byes—although previously, that had been because he’d never really been emotionally involved with anybody.

Now, it was because the prospect of leaving Mels hurt like hell.

What did he say? How did he let her walk out the door?

Wrapping a towel around his waist, he walked out of the bathroom and—

Mels screeched to a halt in front of him, like she’d pulled short out of a dead run. Dressed in some of the clothes he’d gotten at the gift shop, she looked like she was being chased.

“Mels—”

“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 fucked-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.

Bracing herself, she measured her reflection on the back of her closet door.

Shit. Still her.

Guess she’d been hoping to see someone else in the mirror, somebody who hadn’t spent the night before screwing a stranger she hadn’t known for more than a couple of days…who had turned out to be a violent criminal.

“Oh, God…”

Disgusted, she turned her back on herself, went downstairs, and started the coffee. She didn’t make it to the cups in the cupboard, however. Instead, she got stalled at her chair at the kitchen table, even as the percolating got louder on the counter as the cycle finished up.

In the oppressive quiet of the house, her mind seemed to be obsessed with replaying The Matthias Movie, everything from that moment of impact outside the cemetery to the visit in the hospital afterward…from her tracking him down at that garage to the two of them at the hotel…from the first night to last night….

She’d had inner doubts all along, and yup, look at how it had turned out.

“So stupid…so goddamn stupid.”

Putting her head in her hands, she rubbed her temples with her thumbs, wondering how long it was going to take before she didn’t blame herself for this mess.

Long time. Maybe forever.

Part of her just wanted to rewind time and return to that night when Dick had come to her desk and tap-danced through his prick routine. If only she had decided to leave before that, like at five o’clock with the other reporters, she could have avoided the letch-boss thing…and everything else that had followed.

If only…

As she sat in her mother’s cheery kitchen, the minutes drained away, the sun shifting its position from warming her back to bathing the side of her face and body. And as it moved, so did the close-exam thing, the introspection shifting from just Matthias to other areas of her life, like her career, and what it had been like to live in this house, and how the last few years since her father’s death had gone.

Looking at everything, it was clear she’d needed this wake-up call. She’d been so damned driven, and yet stuck in neutral: living at home, but not there for her mother; in mourning for her father—just not aware of it.