The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [12]
Jim had had no hair, not on his head, not on his body. He’d been smooth as marble. Like a swimmer, she’d thought, and only later understood the full depth of her naïveté. Jim’s touch had always been cold and dry, as if he were too perfect for such things as sweat. The first time she’d heard him urinate, she’d felt a vague sense of surprise; he gave the impression of being above such basic biological functions.
Jim had been mannequin perfect. If only she’d held that thought longer.
She’d stick with J. T. Dillon. He’d once saved orphans. He’d been married and had a child. He’d destroyed things for money.
For her purposes, he would do.
And if helping her cost J. T. Dillon too much?
She already knew the answer; she’d spent years coming to terms with it.
Once, she’d dreamed of a white knight. Someone who would never hit her. Someone who would hold her close and tell her she was finally safe.
Now she remembered the feel of her finger tightening around the trigger. The pull of the trigger, the jerk of the trigger, the roar of the gun, and the ringing in her ears.
The acrid smell of gunpowder and the hoarse sound of Jim’s cry. The thud of his body falling down. The raw scent of fresh blood pooling on her carpet.
She remembered these things.
And she knew she could do anything.
FOUR
J.T. WAS UP at the crack of dawn. He didn’t want to be. God knows, it was stupid for a retired man to be up with the sun, but he’d spent too many years in the military to shake the routine from his bones. Oh-six-hundred: Soldier gets up. Oh-six-hundred-fifteen: Soldier does light calisthenics. Oh-six-hundred-thirty: Marine swims fifty laps, then showers. Oh-seven-hundred: Retired man pops open a beer in the middle of his living room and wonders what the hell he’s doing still getting up at oh-six-hundred.
Now it was after nine on the fourteenth of September. He’d survived another year, hung over, dehydrated, and sick of his own skin. No more tequila. He drank beer instead.
He was drinking his third when Rosalita arrived for the annual post-binge cleanup. Born into a family of eleven children, Rosalita had used her survival instincts to become one of the finest whores in Nogales. J.T. had met her the first week he’d moved to Nogales, picking her up in the usual manner. Over the years their relationship had somehow evolved to something neither of them dared to label. As a whore Rosalita had absolutely no morals and no shame, but as a businesswoman she had rock-solid ethics and the aggressiveness of a tiger. She was one of the few people J.T. respected, and one of even fewer people he trusted. Perhaps they’d become friends.
She straddled his lap wearing a red gauzy skirt and a thin white top tied beneath her generous breasts. J.T. cradled her hip with one hand. She didn’t notice. Her attention was focused absolutely on his face.
She’d spread an old green hand towel over his naked chest. Now she whipped the shaving cream in the small basin on the right and lathered it generously over his face. Rosalita believed a man should be shaved the old-fashioned way—with a straight razor and plenty of devilish intent.
He had enough respect for her temper to hold perfectly still.
He sat there, watching the world take on the warm, fuzzy hue he’d come to know in the last few years, and even then, even then he knew when she walked into the room.
Her feet were bare and silent on the hardwood floor, but she broadcasted her arrival with her scent. He’d been six when his father had taught him to air-dry his clothes, wash with odorless soap, and rinse his mouth with peroxide so the deer wouldn’t smell anything as he crept up behind. In those days he’d accepted such teachings with reverent awe. His whipcord-lean, ramrod-straight, rattlesnake-tough father was omnipotent in his eyes, the only man he knew who could bag a six-point buck with a single shot. The colonel had had his talents.
Rosalita sighted Angela