Page 27 of Hell Bent

Before the doors could close, Turner shoved his hand in and they pinged back open. “I’ve got it,” he said. “You always looked like you had trouble chasing you.”

Alex jabbed the door-close button. “So?”

“Now you look like it caught up.”

9

Last Summer

Alex touched down at LAX at 9 a.m. on Sunday. Michael Anselm and Lethe had sprung for first class, so she’d ordered two shots of gratis whiskey to knock herself out and slept through the flight. She dreamed of her last night at Ground Zero, Hellie lying cold beside her, the feel of the bat in her hand. This time, Len spoke before she took her first swing.

Some doors don’t stay locked, Alex.

And then he’d stopped talking.

She woke drenched in sweat, Los Angeles sun beating through the muddy glass of the airplane window.

It was too hot to wear a hoodie, but just in case Eitan was watching arrivals, she put it on, zipped it up, and caught a cab to the 7-Eleven near her mom’s apartment. The bill ran her nearly one hundred bucks. The city looked hazy and bleak, the dull yellow-gray of an overcooked yolk.

She bought an iced coffee and Doritos, and set up about a half block away from the apartment. She wanted to see her mother, make sure she was okay. She had thought about just knocking on the door, but Mira would panic if she showed up unannounced. And how would Alex explain where she’d gotten the money to fly home?

She still felt a pang when she saw her mother’s friend Andrea at the intercom. A minute later, Mira emerged in yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with an ornate hamsa, reusable shopping bags slung over her shoulder. They strode off together, arms and legs pumping in a power walk, and Alex followed for a while. She knew they were headed to the farmers’ market, where they’d buy bone broth or spirulina or organic alfalfa. Her mother looked happy and golden, her blond hair freshly highlighted, her soft arms tanned. She looked like a stranger. The Mira Alex knew lived in a constant state of worry for her angry, crazy daughter. This woman’s daughter went to Yale. She had a summer job. She texted photos of her roommates and new spring flowers and noodle bowls.

Alex sat down on a bench at the edge of the park, and watched her mother and Andrea disappear into the white tents of the market. She felt breathless and teary and like she wanted to hit something. Mira had been a crap mother, too caught up in her own storms to be any kind of an anchor. For a while Alex had hated her, and some part of her still did. She hadn’t been born with her mother’s gift for forgiving or forgetting. She didn’t have Mira’s sunshine hair and soft blue eyes, her love for peace, her bookshelves lined with ways to be kinder, more empathetic, a gentler being in the world, a force for good. The awful truth was that if she could have stopped loving her mother, she would have. She would have let Eitan make his threats and stayed away forever. But she couldn’t shake the habit of loving Mira, and she couldn’t untangle the longing she felt for the mother she might have had from the desire to protect the one she did have.

She called Eitan. He didn’t answer, but a minute later she received a text.

Come after 10 tonight.

I could come now. That felt safer than You said lunch, you manipulative asshole.

The minutes ticked by. No answer. And there wouldn’t be one. The king did what the king liked. But if he wanted to kill her, he didn’t have a reason to wait for nightfall. That was almost reassuring. So what was this? Some kind of trap? An attempt to pump Alex for information on Len or his cousin’s death? Alex had to believe she could talk her way out of it. Eitan thought she was a junkie, a joke, and as long as he didn’t take her seriously, she was safe.

Alex sat watching the market a while longer, then hopped a bus down Ventura Boulevard. She told herself she was just killing time, but it didn’t stop her from getting off at her old stop, or walking the old route to Ground Zero. Why? She hadn’t been back since she’d been taken away in an ambulance, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to see that ugly old apartment building with its stained stucco and its sad balconies looking out at nothing.

But it was gone, not a scrap or sign of it left, just a big dirt hole and a lot of rebar going up for whatever new thing would replace it, all of it surrounded by a chain-link fence.

It made sense. No one wanted to rent an apartment where a multiple murder had taken place. A crime that was still unsolved. And no one was going to put up a monument here or even one of those flimsy white crosses surrounded by cheap flowers and stuffed animals and handwritten notes. Nobody cared about the people who had died here. Criminals. Dealers. Losers.

Alex wished she’d brought something pretty for Hellie, a rose or some shitty grocery store carnations or one of the cards from Hellie’s old tarot deck. The Star. The Sun. Hellie had been both of those things.

Had she expected to find her here? A Gray haunting this miserable spot? No. If Hellie came back through the Veil, she would go to the ocean, to the boardwalk, drawn by the clatter of skateboards and syrupy snow cones, the sweet clouds of heat coming off those big drums of kettle corn, couples kissing at the tattoo parlor, surfers daring the water. Alex was tempted to go look for her, to spend the afternoon in Venice, heart leaping after every blond head. It would be a kind of penance.

“I should have found a way to save us both,” she said to no one. She stood sweating in the sun for as long as she could bear it, and then walked back to the bus stop. This whole town felt like a graveyard.

Alex spent her remaining hours up at the Getty, watching the sun set through the smog, eating a stack of chocolate chip cookies from the café. She made herself walk through the galleries because she felt she should. There was a Gérôme exhibit up. She’d never heard of him, but she read the typed descriptions beside each painting and stood for a long time in front of The Grief of the Pasha, looking at the tiger’s dead body laid gently on a bed of flowers, and thinking about the hole where Ground Zero had been.

A little before ten, she had a car take her up to Eitan’s house on Mulholland. She could see the rush of the 405 below, red blood cells, white blood cells, a flood of tiny lights. She might die here tonight and no one would know.

“You want me to wait?” the driver asked when they reached the security gate.

“I’m good.” Maybe if she said it enough times it would be true.

She thought about just hopping the fence, but Eitan had dogs. She thought about texting Dawes so that someone would know she’d been here. But what was the point? Was Dawes going to avenge her? Would Turner pull a few strings, get someone to look into her case, have Eitan brought in for questioning with one of his expensive lawyers?

Alex was about to press the buzzer on the intercom when the gate began to open on silent hinges. She looked up and waved at the camera perched on the wall. I’m harmless. I’m nobody and nothing worth bothering with.

She walked up the long path, sneakers crunching on the gravel. She could hear the sound of the freeway far below. It was the sound of your own blood moving through your veins when you cupped your hands over your ears. Olive trees lined the path, and there were six cars parked in the circular driveway. A Bentley, a Range Rover, a Lambo, two Chevy Suburbans, and a bright yellow Mercedes.