Free Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

two hot coffees and an almond-covered sweet roll along with several exhilarating pills courtesy of a corrupt Reno doctor. Now I had a third cup in the holder beside the driver’s seat. I drink too much coffee but the alternative is to succumb to alcohol, other addictive drugs, or Jesus. Thank God scientists always try to help us think better, and thank God for all the enhancements people in bug-eyed glasses have invented that involve nuanced alterations of the human body on a subatomic level that make you feel so good when you’re so bad.
    I felt good anticipating the bad, loaded up.
    A time comes when you’re committed. You’ve done so much, betrayed family, lied, stolen.
    Brenda Bee was the last boulder in my way, and she needed removing. Death for me would be a relief. I never thought of it as the end of consciousness. I thought of it as a leap into somewhere new.
    I wanted this over. I wanted money. I wanted freedom. I needed not to be caught. I needed her dead.
    I sat upright in the driver’s seat, feeling my eyeballs jump around in my head, hepped up. I checked for the knife, accidentally jabbing myself. I examined my finger. No blood. No DNA. Good.
    When the old pickup pulled up in front and the good-looking, middle-aged woman got out, kissing her hubby good-bye lovingly, lugging a backpack with a Prize’s logo. I recognized her. She, Brenda Bee, took care of the floor where Cyndi died. She vacuumed, dusted, wiped surfaces. She cleaned that room. Seeing her get out and smooth her hair, blowing a kiss to the man in the car, I felt for both of them, for a moment anyway.
    Giving her a fond wave, he drove off. She plunked her backpack down and sat on the bench inside the covered kiosk bedecked with graffiti.
    I looked up and down the street. Not a soul drifted in this light fog, but something could come soon, such as the next bus, due in five minutes. Conditions were not ideal, but I was fast and strong. I felt sure I could handle whatever needed handling. Her time had come, in a way, nothing to do with me. We all die.
    She hadn’t said much about what she saw that day—I knew this from an associate at the South Lake Tahoe Police Department. She had taken a look at me though, and at some point she would connect me with that moment, Cyndi’s death moment.
    That husband of hers had been with her every second since.
    Until now.
    Time to take her out, decision made.
    I breathed in and out. You must stay tuned with your body. When you ski down a hill, when you drive fast, when you take physical risks,
you must be vital. I took the time to analyze how I felt at that moment because that had helped me all the way through my life. I closed my eye for one moment to calculate and decide I was rip-cord hard in body, mind, and spirit.
    Brenda slouched on the bench, headphones in her ears, parka wrapped tightly around her. The sky lay cold across the mountains.
    I took one more long look down the street. I jumped out of my car, knife in hand, and ran at her as if she were a deer to be hunted down and killed in a forest.
    Somehow able to ignore the music blaring in her ears, she saw me and recognized danger hurtling toward her as forceful as a train. She ran. I ran faster. I caught up a hundred feet beyond the kiosk. I seized her hair and forced her head back. My sharp knife slid across her throat. She accepted the assault without making a sound.
    A gout of blood gushed out onto her parka. She fell limp.
    I pushed her forward. Her head knocked against the curb. Blood dribbled out of her like a mountain stream.
    Red.
    I couldn’t take my eyes away. Her own opened briefly, but she looked at the tall pine along the road, not at me.
    Then, a sound.
    I looked up.
    From far down the cold and empty street a bus rolled toward us.
    I ran to my car, set the knife on the newspaper-covered floor on the passenger side, and drove off in the opposite direction. I couldn’t help speeding a little, but at this hour and in this weather the cops