‘He owed a little money, but it wasn’t about that,’ Luis said dismissively.
‘What then? You resented him starting a new life? Getting clean, breaking away from the gangs?’
Luis smiled chillingly. ‘You confuse me with someone who had the slightest interest in Trey Raymond’s life, Dr Roberts. I’ve told you before, I’m a businessman. Trey wasn’t part of the family. He was a user. A customer. Customers come, customers go.’
Nikki frowned. ‘Trey was tortured, brutally tortured before he died. What could he possibly have done to deserve that?’
Rodriguez yawned, and Nikki felt a surge of rage and hatred rush through her body as if she’d been electrocuted. How could Anne have married this monster? This vile sadist? Even if she didn’t know the truth about his illegal businesses, the fortune he’d made peddling despair and death, Anne couldn’t have lived with this man and not seen the casual cruelty that drove him. No one could be that blind. Could they?
‘Trey Raymond had something I wanted,’ said Luis. ‘I offered him a fair price, but he refused to give it to me. That was a grave mistake.’
‘What could Trey possibly have had that you wanted?’ asked Nikki, her eyes filling with tears suddenly. So many terrible things had happened, she’d allowed herself to push the horror of Trey’s death and her grief for him to one side. But now, facing her own death, th
ey came flooding back like water through a breaking dam. ‘You’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Trey had nothing! The most valuable thing he owned was a stupid skateboard that Doug bought him.’
‘He had information,’ Luis said simply. ‘About your sessions with my wife, the ones I was unable to surveil myself. I asked him, very nicely, to deliver me that information. He refused. So he died.’
‘But … he didn’t know anything!’ Nikki gasped. ‘All our sessions were private.’
‘Liar!’ Luis snapped, irritated. ‘You keep notes. The police have copies.’
‘Not of my sessions with Anne, they don’t,’ said Nikki truthfully. ‘I never recorded those.’
Luis looked skeptical. ‘Never recorded them? Why not?’
Nikki shrugged helplessly. ‘She wouldn’t allow it. I should have insisted …’ She looked away, guilt and regret overwhelming her. ‘You were asking Trey to give you information he never had. No one had it, because it didn’t exist – other than in here.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘You killed him for nothing!’
Luis paused for a moment to take this in. Then he started to laugh, quietly at first, but then the laughs got louder and fuller and more menacing.
‘And so the comedy of errors goes on!’ he said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. ‘I’m glad you shared that with me, Dr Roberts. Truly I am. Quite the irony. But at least you can rest assured your death won’t be for nothing.’ Lifting his gun a third time, the look in his eyes left Nikki in no doubt: her time had run out.
‘Like all good plays, my dear, I’m afraid there must be a final act. And this is yours. Goodbye, Dr Roberts.’
‘Burn in hell!’ Nikki snarled back at him.
And with a single, deafening bang, everything went black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
First came the darkness.
Then the quiet.
No breath. No movement. Only stillness.
Peace.
So this was death.
It was nice while it lasted. Unfortunately for Nikki, it didn’t last long. The darkness remained, but at some point she realized she could hear her own heartbeat, her pulse thud, thudding inside her aching skull. Time began to speed back up, but gradually, like an animal emerging hesitantly from a long hibernation. And when it did, the pain began, waves of it, sharp and burning.
My leg. Reaching down her fingers found the warm, sticky wound. She’d been shot just below the knee. She realized then that the darkness surrounding wasn’t a product of her own lost consciousness, but a real, external thing. There must have been a power cut! Like an act of God. Only Nikki didn’t believe in God. In the confusion, Rodriguez must have misfired and hit her leg. Christ, it hurt. She wondered how much blood she’d lost. Touching the wound again she made a sound, involuntary, a sort of high-pitched, keening whine, like an animal caught in a trap.
It was a mistake.
She heard him instantly, turning and shuffling in the pitch-darkness, moving towards the sound, lunging blindly. Then a clatter as he slipped and lost his footing. He was cursing in Spanish, wheezing – was he hurt too? – but no. When he spoke his voice was strong. The quiver Nikki heard in it wasn’t pain but anger.
‘I hear you, you bitch!’