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How could she possibly trust him or his word?

Jane put her hand in her pocket and felt for the razor. The answer to that one was easy. She couldn’t.

Chapter Fourteen

Up in his bedroom at the big house, Phury sat with his back against his headboard and his blue velvet duvet over his legs. His prosthesis was off, and a blunt was smoldering in a heavy glass ashtray next to him. Mozart drifted out of a set of hidden Bose speakers.

The book of firearms in front of him was being used as a lap easel instead of reading material. A thick sheet of white paper was laid out on top of the thing, but he hadn’t made any marks on it with his Ticonderoga No. 2 for a while. The portrait was complete. He’d finished it about an hour ago and was working up the courage to wad it up and throw it out.

Even though he was never satisfied with his drawings, he almost liked this one. From out of the blizzard-thick blankness of the page, a female’s face and neck and hair had been revealed by strokes of lead. Bella was staring off to the left, a slight smile on her lips, a strand of her dark hair across her cheek. He’d caught sight of the pose at Last Meal this evening. She’d been looking at Zsadist, which explained the secret lift to her mouth.

In all the poses he’d drawn her in, Phury always sketched her with her eyes elsewhere. If she were staring out of the page, at him, that just seemed inappropriate. Hell, drawing her at all was inappropriate.

He flattened his hand over her face, prepared to crumple the paper.

At the last moment he went for the blunt instead, craving some artificial ease as his heart beat too hard. He was smoking a lot lately. More than ever. And though relying on the chemical calm made him feel dirty, the idea of stopping never crossed his mind. He couldn’t imagine getting through the day without help.

As he took another hit and held on to the smoke with his lungs, he thought of his brush with heroin. Back in December the backflip off the H-cliff had been prevented not by his making a good choice, but because John Matthew happened to pick the right time to interrupt.

Phury exhaled and stared at the tip of the blunt. The temptation to try something more hard-core was back. He could feel the urge to go to Rehv and ask the male for another Baggie full of deep nod. Maybe then he’d get some peace.

A knock went off on his door and Z’s voice said, “Can I come in?”

Phury stuffed the drawing into the belly of the firearms book. “Yeah.”

Z walked in and didn’t say another word. With his hands on his hips, he paced back and forth, back and forth, at the end of the bed. Phury waited, lighting up another blunt and tracking his identical twin as Z wore out the carpet.

You didn’t push Z to talk any more than you’d try to coerce a fish onto the business end of a hook with a lot of chatter. Silence was the only lure that worked.

Finally the brother stopped. “She’s bleeding.”

Phury’s heart jumped, and he splayed his hand out over the cover of the book. “How much and for how long?”

“She’s been hiding it from me, so I don’t know.”

“How’d you find out?”

“I found a thing of Always stuffed in the back of the cabinet right next to the toilet.”

“Maybe they’re old.”

“Last time when I got my buzz razor out, they weren’t there.”

Shit. “She has to go to Havers’s, then.”

“Her next appointment isn’t for a week.” Z started up with the pacing again. “I know she’s not telling me because she’s afraid I’ll freak out.”

“Maybe what you found is being used for another reason?”

Z stopped. “Oh, yeah. Right. Because those things are multifunctional. Like Q-tips or some shit. Look, would you talk to her?”

“What?” Phury quickly took a drag. “This is private. Between you and her.”

Z scrubbed the top of his skull-trimmed head. “You’re better with shit like this than I am. The last thing she needs is for me to break down in front of her, or worse, yell at her because I’m scared to death and not being reasonable.”

Phury tried to take a deep breath,