Thursday. 6:00 P.M.
Had anyone been watching, the two figures would have appeared almost spectral. A man and a woman, both dressed in white, moving together across a translucent, nearly monochromatic emptiness, where sand blended into sea and sea into overcast sky without perceptible delineation.
For a time, they seemed lost in thought, each looking down, each noting the prints their steps left behind in the sand. After a while they stopped and the woman turned toward her companion. She took one of his hands in hers as if willing him to move closer. He didn’t. She let go. A wisp of blond hair blew across her face. She brushed it away.
She spoke, but her words were impossible for anyone but the man to hear. He shook his head. They resumed their walk, legs moving in tandem, as if attached by invisible cords. He slipped an arm around her waist. She leaned in close.
A small bird, a purple sandpiper, ran across their path, flapping furiously with one good wing. The other hung broken and useless. They watched it for a moment. Once again she asked a question. Once again there was a shake of the head. The bird rushed off. The two people continued down the beach.
Finally, where the sand ended, they came to a small parking lot, which was empty save for a single car. A black Porsche Boxster. The man offered his hand to help the woman up onto the wooden boardwalk that separated the beach from the blacktop. She took it and climbed up. Resting a hand on his shoulder, she stood, first on one foot, then on the other, and shook the sand from her sandals. Then they walked to the car. She leaned against the door, raised her arms around his neck, and pulled him to her. He slid a hand under her jacket to stroke the smooth skin on her back. She leaned into his caress. His hand came around to the front and cupped her small breast, squeezing it gently, playing with her nipple until it was erect. Then it slid to the other side. He stroked the scar tissue where the other breast used to be. She stiffened and moved his hand away. He put it back. She moved it away again and once again he put it back. This time she let it stay.
She looked up and found his lips with her own. ‘Why are we doing this?’
‘Because it feels good?’
‘Beside that.’
‘Because the risk excites you?’
‘Yes. I suppose it does.’
He slipped his hand down between her legs and probed gently.
‘They searched my car,’ she said, her breath starting to come faster. ‘They found that girl’s earring. The one who was killed in the scrap yard?’
He pulled back, studying her with deep-set eyes, saying nothing.
‘O-negative, wasn’t she?’
Still he said nothing.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, leaning in to kiss him again. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
‘No,’ he responded after a moment. ‘No, I’m certain you won’t.’
His fingers found the top button of her trousers and worked it open. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Someone might see.’
He pulled down her zipper and slid her pants and panties down over her slim hips.
‘Yes. Someone might,’ he whispered. ‘Isn’t that what excites you?’
They could both feel her heart pounding against her chest as his hand moved back between her legs. Two fingers slid inside.
‘Wait,’ she whispered. She stepped out of the pants and folded them neatly, then placed them through the open window onto the front seat of the car. She watched as he did the same, except he left his in a heap on the ground. She took him in her hand and he grew hard. She leaned back against the car. She let out a little gasp as he entered her.
As they moved together, he studied her face. Eyes closed, lips parted, moaning softly in pleasure. He slipped his left hand around the back of her neck, his right hand into the pocket of his jacket. He felt the handle of the folding knife just where it should be. Hiding the knife behind his back, he pressed its small button, flipping it open. She didn’t notice. He rubbed his thumb across the edge of the blade. A minute later, at almost the exact instant Hattie Spencer reached orgasm, her gasp of pleasure morphed into a cry of pain.
*
Sixteen hundred miles to the south, all sound was drowned out by the screaming twin engines of the Learjet 35 lifting off runway 23 at Boca Raton Airport. The plane’s flight plan listed its destination as a private airfield in northern New Hampshire. The Learjet was outfitted as a flying ambulance. In the back, a doctor and a nurse tended a single patient, an old man in the last stages of congestive heart failure. Up front, the crew of two, pilot and copilot, ignored their passengers. They didn’t know their names and had been exceptionally well paid not to ask.