Perfect Strangers

Part 3

…all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Ernest Hemingway

Ashort journey by car takes us to a farm in the countryside, where we board a twin-engine plane, which James expertly pilots. Because hello, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore. This guy is definitely not your average artist.

If he even is an artist. That’s probably just a cover for whatever he really is. The murderer/gunslinger/hot psychopath thing.

And here I thought he was sensitive. I’d like to smack myself in the face.

After about an hour’s flight in which we exchange exactly zero words, he lands on another miniscule strip of concrete in another country field. A sleek black Mercedes awaits, because hot psychopaths don’t own Volkswagens.

We drive accompanied by more silence. He’s probably thinking I’m musing over all our possible honeymoon spots, the delusional bastard.

In reality, I’m wondering what’s stopping me from turning on him and clawing his pretty blue eyes right out of their sockets.Têxt belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.

Curiosity gets some points. I honestly can’t wait to hear what he has to say for himself. I doubt if even my own grandiose imagination could compete with whatever he’s got up his sleeves.

Maybe I can use it in a novel.

Sheer disbelief is also in the race. My self-preservation and fight-or-flight instincts have been dumped into a Cuisinart and puréed. I don’t know which way is up.

Then there’s that idiotic impulse that has me rescuing sick kittens and runaway ostriches. That tender, warm-hearted, sentimental impulse that I’d like to cut out of my heart with a razor blade.

Unlike James, I can’t shut off my emotions with the flick of a switch.

I still like the jerk.

I like him very much.

Okay, more than very much, but we’ve already established that he’s a psychopath, so I’m not going there.

No, I decide, hardening my heart, the real reason I haven’t clawed his eyes out yet is because I need to know what he knows about what happened to my daughter. Then I’m out of here.

Wherever here is.

Staring straight ahead, I ask him where we’re going.

“Home.”

His voice is soft and warm. I glance over and find him looking out the windshield, his hands relaxed around the steering wheel. The setting sun casts a golden sheen on his handsome face, making him look like an angel.

He’s smiling.

“Where are we?”

“Southeastern France. Near the village of Sault, in Vaucluse.” He meets my blank gaze, and his smile grows warmer. “Provence, sweetheart. We’re in Provence.”

We crest the low rise of a hill, and I gasp at the beautiful scene laid out before me.

Nestled on a ridge flanked by forest on one side and a rolling valley on the other, a medieval stone village glows warmest ochre in the dying rays of sun. Its tiled roofs are washed crimson. Its bell-topped church spire soars high into the cerulean sky.

Like a painting by an old master, the lush valley beckons the eye toward the distant horizon with a breathtaking view of mile beyond mile of lavender fields, glowing deepest purple and blue in the twilight. Their straight lines traverse the gentle rise and fall of earth as far as the eye can see, row upon row of luscious color and vibrant life interrupted once in a while by an olive tree spreading its gnarled, silvery branches over the teeming violet army of flowers bursting forth below.

It’s a feast for the eyes. My vision is saturated with color. Everything is so vivid and bright.

Then James rolls down the windows, and I breathe in the scent of heaven.

Sweet and dusky, delicate and distinct, the heady aroma of the lavender fields overwhelms my senses. Inhaling deeply, I close my eyes and simply let it surround me, the most beautiful, relaxing cloud.

James murmurs, “There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

When I open my eyes, he’s looking at me tenderly. “My script writers can’t take credit for that. It’s the poet Rumi. Are you familiar with him?”

“I watched you kill three men today. Don’t you dare start quoting ancient Persian mystics to me.”

He grins. “Four.”

“Excuse me?”

“I killed four men at the hotel. And I should’ve known you’d recognize Rumi. You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

Laughing at my expression, he reaches over and squeezes my thigh. “I know you have questions and you’re really fucking mad at me right now, but I have to tell you that I’ve honestly never felt this happy in my life.”

I say flatly, “You’re a psychopath.”

“Nah.”

My voice rises. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, pal, but a normal person who’d recently murdered four other human beings wouldn’t be feeling quite so chipper.”

He shrugs. “So I’m not normal. Doesn’t mean I’m a psychopath.”

“Fine. You’re a serial killer.”

He has the audacity to look insulted. “Now you’re just being mean.”

When I’m silent too long, glaring daggers at his profile, he sighs. “It’s just my job, Olivia. I’m very good at it, but it’s only a job. It’s what I do for a living.”

He kills people for a living. I know it isn’t motion sickness that has bile rising up in the back of my throat.

With a profound sense that I’ve fallen through a crack in the universe and am now inhabiting another, unknown dimension, I say in a strangled voice, “You’re…an assassin?”

He wrinkles his nose. “I prefer the term pest control engineer.”

I stare at him. After a moment, I drop my head into my hands and groan.

James launches into an explanation of the situation that he obviously thinks will make everything rational and acceptable to me, evidenced by his confident, matter-of-fact tone.

“I freelance for governments, international corporations, and high net worth individuals who are in need of—as I prefer to call it—pest control. I’m very selective about the jobs I accept, and I have several iron-clad rules. The first is no women or children.”

I mutter into my palms, “Such a hero.”

He ignores my blistering sarcasm. “The second is that the target has to be a bag of shit.”

I lift my head and squint at him. “I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t accept jobs where the motive is simply greed, hatred, or revenge. There are many others in my line of work who don’t care about the reasons why someone would want another person dead—they only care about the paycheck. Not me. I have to know the intended target is someone who’s caused a lot of pain and suffering to other people, and who the world would be better off without. My research into the mark’s background is meticulous.”

He glances over at me. His eyes are dark. “In other words, if I show up at your door, you deserve it.”

I can’t close my mouth. I try and try, but my lower jaw simply hangs uselessly open.

“The third and final rule,” he continues, “is that I’m provided with pictures from the mark’s funeral.”

I manage to make my mouth work to form a single, horrified word. “Why?”

A series of strange emotions crosses his face. Distaste turns into pity which turns into something that looks like regret. His voice drops an octave. “So I can see the expressions of his family. Even the dirtiest dog has someone who loves him.”

I’m glad I don’t have anything in my stomach, because it would be making a reappearance right now. I say with contempt, “That’s the most morbid, disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”

He shakes his head. “You misunderstand. The pictures aren’t for me to gloat over. They’re for me to draw.”

When our eyes meet and I see the anguish there, I get it. “Your collection. Those portraits in Perspectives of Grief.”

He nods slowly. “I’m not a monster, Olivia. I know the different between right and wrong. No matter how noble I try to convince myself my first two rules might be, I realize that what I do is immoral. So drawing the grief of the people who are affected by my actions is my small way of paying penance.

“Maybe it’s futile”—he laughs, a low, self-loathing sound—“no, it’s definitely futile, but it’s my small way of making amends. All the proceeds from the sale of my artwork go to charities that serve victims of violence.”

“So you’re a killer with a conscience,” I say bitterly. “Congratulations. You’re also a pathological liar—”

“I’ve never lied to you,” he cuts in, his voice hard.

“I’d laugh at that if I weren’t so sick to my stomach,” I counter, turning to look out the window into the purple-blue dusk.

His voice turns urgent. “Name one thing I’ve lied to you about.”

“Being an artist!”

“I am an artist. That’s just not the only thing I am.”

I mutter, “Please.”

“What else do you think I’ve lied about?”

When I turn to look at him, he’s leaning toward me, staring at me with his brows drawn together and a worried look in his eyes. Exasperated, I throw my hands in the air. “Everything!”

“Like what?”

Anger grabs hold of me, turning my face hot and making my hands shake. “Like that you knew who I was before we met.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Your phone told me different!”

He grips the steering wheel as if he’s about to tear it off. Through a clenched jaw, he says, “When I saw you at the café, I had no idea who you were. All I knew is that you were beautiful and I wanted to meet you. I needed to meet you. I was drawn to you as I’ve never been drawn to a woman before. So after I sat at your table and you walked away from me, I did a little research.”

“Bullshit. You targeted me. I’m just trying to figure out why. Are you one of the men Chris warned me about, the ruthless ones who want to use me against him?”

Pausing for a moment to get himself under better control, he says darkly, “It was fate that brought us together, Olivia. Nothing else. I kept an apartment in that building for years before you ever came to visit. Your friend Estelle could’ve had an apartment in any one of thousands of other places in the city, but she had one in mine. Fate threw us together at the café, and again at the party. We were destined to meet.”

All this talk of fate and destiny is annoying me. I fold my arms over my chest and send him a challenging look. “I suppose next you’re going to tell me you’d never met Chris before that night at my apartment.”

“I hadn’t met him.” He pauses. “In person.”

“I knew it!”

Unbelievably, he’s frustrated by my outburst. His voice grows louder. “I knew of him. He knew of me. We’d never met.”

When I make an impatient motion with my hand that he should continue, he does. Carefully. “Your ex-husband is…”

“Just spit it out. It can’t be any worse than anything I’ve already had to deal with today.”

His expression tells me I might be surprised.

I warn, “Tell me right now or I’ll grab the steering wheel and send us into that ditch.”

“Okay.” He takes a breath. “Your ex-husband is an international arms dealer.”

A quarter mile of winding country road passes before I speak again. “He’s actually the US ambassador the UN.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding. “And he’s an international arms dealer. He uses his political position to facilitate his trade. You think it’s a coincidence he spends so much time in the Middle East when he’s the ambassador to the United Nations? He might as well be the ambassador to Oman.”

I protest faintly, “That’s ridiculous,” but my brain swarms with memories.

Chris talking low on the phone in the middle of the night, getting up to close the door to his office when I called out for him to come to bed.

Chris taking meetings at home with darting-eyed men in black suits and making excuses about avoiding the press when I asked why they weren’t meeting him at the office.

Chris receiving documents at home via courier that he would never open in my presence.

Chris learning to speak Arabic, though it wasn’t a requirement of his job, and he’d never shown an interest in Arab culture.

Chris learning to speak rudimentary Turkish…and Russian…and Czech.

Chris never, ever talking about his work, though he was consumed by it.

Chris’s bizarre behavior at the café and his warnings that he couldn’t keep me safe in Europe, that he had powerful enemies, and that if I didn’t get on a plane to New York in twenty-four hours, he’d send someone to make that happen.

Chris’s impotent fury when James said to him, “I think we both know she’s safer with me than with you.”

The only reason I’d be safer with a contract killer than my ex-husband is if my ex-husband is something much worse.

I stare in horror at James’s chiseled profile. “How did you two know of each other?”

“There aren’t that many people at my level who do what I do. And your ex has put out contracts that I’ve considered, but ultimately turned down.”

My feeling of sickness intensifying, I cover my mouth with my hand.

Chris has hired contract killers. Which, by proxy, makes him a killer.

Then, with the sensation that my understanding is an onion with layers that are being peeled away swiftly one by one, I whisper, “You know what happened to my daughter, don’t you?”

He nods grimly. “Yes. I’m so sorry. And I know it’s not much consolation, but I’m going to kill him.”

A high-pitched noise rings in my ears. I begin to shake. “Christopher?”

“No.” James turns his head and meets my gaze. “The man who fired the shots into the crowd.”

For a moment, my lungs freeze. I’m unable to breathe.

James knows who murdered Emmie.

Heat flashes over my body. I break out in a cold sweat, and my shaking grows worse. My voice comes out in a rasp. “Pull over!”

James’s look sharpens. “Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to throw up all over your dashboard.”

He guides the car quickly to the side of the road. He doesn’t have time to shut off the engine before I throw open the door, lean out, and retch violently into the lavender-scented twilight.

It isn’t until the final heaves have subsided that I start to cry.