Urge to Kill

The man who’d broken into the Seventy-ninth Street office and knocked out Quinn sat at an inside table in the Aces Up diner on Amsterdam, sipping cold green tea and watching people and traffic stream past outside. Twin parallel lines of concern were etched vertically above the bridge of his nose. He was still unhappy about how his plan to become the hunter rather than the hunted had turned out.

The break-in had been easy enough. He smiled at the thought of it. How ironic that the police would take over office space and not concern themselves with the quality of the lock on the door. That was exactly how bureaucracies worked. Or didn’t work. With a good set of picks in expert hands, the lock had yielded after only a few minutes.

The plan had been to enter and obtain information, then leave without any indication that he’d been there. He would then know what Quinn knew, and Quinn would be unaware of it. That might make the game somewhat less interesting, but definitely safer.

A waiter came and placed the tuna salad sandwich he’d ordered on the table before him, then topped off his iced tea.

He had been hungry, and as he replenished his body with food and energy, optimism gradually replaced his concern. Last night—or early this morning—might have gone a lot worse. The suddenness of Quinn’s entrance and discovery of an intruder had surprised both of them. And in the ensuing struggle to escape, he had injured Quinn, given him something to think about other than his hunt.

Quinn wasn’t a young man, but there was an obvious strength in him, and he knew how to fight, so it was lucky that he hadn’t had time to set himself for the intruder’s attack. The game might have ended right there. As it was, the break-in had been partially successful in that it might have thrown Quinn and his detectives off their game.

He took a sip of tea.

Yes, it could have been worse.

Now Quinn would walk with the added dimension of fear, the cold tingle up the spine that came with the realization that stalker might at any moment become stalked. The intruder smiled. He’d been in that position and knew how it felt. It seemed to turn the world upside down.

Not that it would keep Quinn subdued for long. He’d know how to handle fear. He was an old hand at his game, a seasoned hunter.

But now he was a hunter who would occasionally glance back over his shoulder.

What was that legendary baseball pitcher’s adage? Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

One day Quinn might look back too late, and there would be what had been gaining on him, suddenly caught up.

Quinn was breathing heavily with the effort of keeping his weight off Zoe as he rolled from on top of her and onto his cool side of the bed. He blew out a breath toward the ceiling, then turned his head to the side to look across his pillow at her.

Zoe was still on her back, one of her bare legs gracefully bent at the knee. Her nude body was glistening with perspiration. She and Quinn were both sweating, but the ceiling fan was on and would soon cool their bodies. The fan made a barely discernable tick, tick, tick as the broad wicker blades rotated, as if to punctuate the room’s isolation from the outside world.

Zoe noticed he was staring at her, and looked back at him with a kind of dreamy expression in her half-closed eyes.

“You okay?” Quinn asked.

“Men ask that a lot.”

“How do you know?”

“My patients. I know a lot of secrets.”

Quinn stared up at the ceiling, thinking about his visit with Alfred Beeker.

Tick, tick, tick…

“I am,” Zoe said.

“Huh?”

“Okay. Better than okay.” She reached over and gently touched his arm. “What are you thinking?”

“Women ask that a lot,” Quinn said.

“Do men ever answer honestly?”

“Sometimes.”

“So answer honestly now.”

“I’m thinking I’m a little old for a nooner.”

She slapped his arm, laughing. “Bastard!”

He leaned over, kissed her forehead, then climbed out of the bed. “If I can figure out how to open your fancy refrigerator, I’m going to get a beer. You want anything?”

“Right now,” she said, “I don’t feel as if I need anything.”

Pretty sure that was a compliment, Quinn made his way into Zoe’s state-of-the-art kitchen. The one she admitted she seldom cooked in. Quinn was sure she was telling the truth there. The gleaming white appliances looked brand new, especially the double-oven stove, which resembled the instrument panel of a jet airliner.