“No…not at all.” Sarah looked at him and Darwin looked right back at her. So many men had trouble maintaining eye contact-they glanced away, afraid of appearing forward, or lowered their eyes, worried that they weren’t sufficiently seductive. Darwin’s gaze was neutral, cold even, but self-assured and steady. As though the world were just a passing parade. Now she remembered where she had seen eyes like his. The national zoo. Timber wolf. Canis lupus. She had spent hours watching the gray wolves when she was younger, fascinated by their predatory calm. No wonder Redbeard had sent him to protect them from Ibn Azziz. A good choice.

“What is it, Miss Dougan?”

“Please, call me Sarah. I think we’re past the formalities.”

Darwin smiled. “I appreciate that.”

“Will we be landing at the airstrip behind Redbeard’s villa or at the central hospital?”

“That decision hasn’t been made yet.”

Sarah looked at the door to the operating room. “It’s hard to wait.”

“One gets used to it. Waiting can even be pleasurable. Like anticipation.”

“I suppose.” Sarah crossed her legs, her foot scuffing his pants leg. “Sorry,” she said, brushing the material. “How did you find us? Rakkim thought we covered our tracks.”

“You should feel proud.” Darwin folded his hands in his lap. “If I hadn’t come into possession of the same information Detective Colarusso passed on to you, I wouldn’t have known where to look. Once I did, it was relatively easy to-”

“Anthony told you?”

Darwin put his hands up. “Not at all. I simply used the same source he did. A most accommodating woman in the personnel department.”

Sarah cocked her head as the plane banked. “What’s happening?”

“Just a standard course correction. Everything is quite all right.” Darwin leaned forward slightly. “I’m something of a nostalgia collector myself. CDs, movie posters, comic books. Heroes and monsters. Perhaps that’s why I was so attracted to your work.”

Sarah drifted, lulled by the hum of the engines. She didn’t like the conflation of old-regime popular culture with nostalgia, even though it was a common misperception. She closed her eyes. Still hearing gunshots. Still seeing the sad expression on Fancy’s face. Fatima Abdullah. Lying on the bare concrete as they carried Rakkim out. Darwin said she was dead, said they had to hurry, and they did…but as Sarah passed by the body, she cursed the police who had killed her. Hoped that there was someone to give her a decent burial. Fancy had said a name…Jeri Lynn. Sarah hoped someone would call Jeri Lynn. Hoped Jeri Lynn would bury Fancy with the proper respect. The proper prayers.

“Have you ever researched late-twentieth-century pornography?”

Sarah blinked herself alert. “No…I never considered it.”

“Oh, you really should. Very interesting stuff. The whole culture is there.”

“I’ve never seen anything about it in the professional literature. I’m sure it would be restricted. Is there some sort of archive?”

“No, most of it’s in private hands.”

“So, how do you…?” Sarah glanced again at the bulkhead door, a little uncomfortable with the conversation. “Of course. As you said, you’re a collector.”

“You can see a whole shift during the late nineties. Tattoos everywhere, women as well as the men. Piercings…piercings in places it’s hard to imagine one volunteering for. Even their movie stars did it. Even their gods offered themselves up.” Darwin steepled his fingertips. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Return to the primitive, that’s what their social scientists termed it. I see it more as a hunger for slavery. They were so free, so unencumbered by morality, that they craved chains. And the sexual practices themselves-”

“Were you…” Sarah’s smile was forced. “Were you following us all the way from Seattle? I’m just…I’m just trying to find out if we made any mistakes.”

“Laudable,” said Darwin. “No, your mistakes were only human. I was waiting for you in Long Beach. Last known address of Fatima Abdullah. I thought I had missed you, then one of our roaming eyes called and said he had seen you two sitting in a coffee shop in Huntington Beach. You evidently weren’t in as much of a hurry to find her as we thought.”

Sarah felt her cheeks coloring.

“Something wild in the air in Southern California, don’t you think?” Darwin flexed his fingertips. “You didn’t even close your motel room windows. I was standing down below all night. Almost close enough to touch, and I could hear everything. Such sounds. The grunting and groaning. I wonder what your uncle would think if he heard them.” Darwin’s eyes hadn’t changed in the slightest. They remained cool and gray and distant. “Something has been bothering me. Maybe you can help. That third time…where exactly was Rakkim putting it? I couldn’t tell and it’s been bothering me ever since.”

Sarah stared…and…finally…saw him.

“I guess we’ll have to mark that down on the list of eternal mysteries.” Darwin seemed happier now. Satisfied, now that she knew. “It’s a problem, isn’t it? Deciding how you feel about me.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I mean, in spite of those other things, I did save your life. Yours and Rakkim’s.”

“It’s no problem.” Sarah was surprised at her calm. It was as if she had taken something from Darwin and used it to anchor herself. To protect herself from her terror. “I feel the same way about you as I do about any other hired killer.”

“I prefer the term assassin.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Why don’t you just call me Darwin and we’ll let it go at that?”

“Darwin? Is that your real name?”

“I know, I know. Named after a blasphemer. Don’t think that didn’t cause a world of trouble growing up. Ah, well, we all carry the burden of history, don’t we?”

The engines shifted tone, higher pitched now as the plane banked steeply.

“We won’t be landing in Seattle. I’m afraid that’s something else I lied to you about.” Darwin smiled. “Do you appreciate irony?”

Sarah watched him.

“Rakkim is AB negative. A rare blood type. There were only two pints available on such short notice.” Darwin leaned closer, and Sarah saw scuttling things in his eyes and wondered how she could have missed them. “I’m AB negative too. If the doctors needed more in-flight, they were going to give him a transfusion of my blood. Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Sarah fought to keep herself from trembling. She didn’t succeed.

“My blood.” Darwin rocked with laughter. “I bet you would have thought about that every time he fucked you up the ass.” He was howling now, head thrown back, teeth bared.

CHAPTER 49

“Thanks again for meeting me, Director,” said Colarusso.

“I wanted to talk with you anyway.” Redbeard didn’t take his eyes off the metallic fuselage rising from the waters of Puget Sound. The tail section of the downed 977 superjumbo jet jutted fifty feet into the air. The engines of the ferryboat throbbed, sending a vibration through the deck. The rest of the tourists were inside, watching the monument through the double-paned windows, but Redbeard and Colarusso stood outside in the elements, the cold wind whipping their clothes.

Salt stung Colarusso’s nostrils. “My chief seems to think you and me are close because of you insisting I handle the murders at Marian Warriq’s house,” he said, uneasy hearing of Redbeard’s interest in him. “That’s how I drew this assignment.”

“What was it the chief of police didn’t want to ask me himself?”

“We’ve had all these dead bounty hunters turn up in the last few days,” said Colarusso. “All of them affiliated with the Black Robes.”

“And Chief Edson thinks State Security is responsible?”

“You got it.”

“State Security is responsible.”