Livia Lone

5-NOW

In a little under an hour and a half, she was in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, once a thriving center of manufacturing, now an unlikely amalgam of small industry, hipster eateries, and container shipping yards wedged between Interstate 5 to the east and the Duwamish Waterway to the west.

She rode in along the overpass above the Union Pacific rail yard, cut across to Airport Way, and drifted into the gravel parking lot of the office trailer park at Corson Avenue, where she killed the engine and dismounted. Tentative yellowish light seeped over from the sodium-vapor streetlamps nearby, but beyond that, the area was pooled in shadows. She raised the helmet visor and tasted a morning moisture in the air, heard the whoosh of the earliest commuter vehicles on the freeway overpass above and behind her. Beneath the overpass, at the bases of the giant support columns, were a few cardboard shelters, their inhabitants silent, doubtless sleeping.

She unlocked her trailer, which she rented under a fictitious name and paid for in cash, rolled in the bike, and removed the magnetically attached stolen license plate. Then she pulled off the backpack, shoved the plate and the florescent vest into it, re-shouldered the pack, secured the trailer, and headed south along the sidewalk.

Thirty yards down, she paused to remove the helmet. She shook out her hair and glanced back. Nothing stirred. She put the helmet in the pack and moved off again.

Five minutes later, she reached her building, a three-story brick colossus dominating the western half of her fantastically misnamed dead-end street-South Garden. Built a hundred years earlier as a can and bottle manufacturer, it was now shared by an auto-wrecking operation, a metal recycling plant, and a machine shop run by the guy who owned the building. The guy had been there for decades, and had suffered enough break-ins that a few years earlier he had been thrilled to rent the third-floor storage space over his operation as a loft to the investigating SPD officer. The space-three thousand square feet cluttered with unused machine tools, featuring a kitchenette so spare it might embarrass a college student and a bathroom not much bigger than what you could find on an airplane-wasn’t well suited to human habitation, but it was perfect for Livia. She liked being on the border of the polluted Duwamish, with its crumbling brick warehouses, their windows shattered, corrugated eaves rusting like dried blood, smokestacks inert and anachronistic. And the area’s solitude, particularly late at night, was unmatched. Best of all was the access to tools she could use for motorcycle maintenance and repairs. The property developers were working with city hall to turn the warehouses into condos and upscale offices with views of the Duwamish, and one day, she knew, she would be sad to see her ghostly, brooding neighbors blazing with light and life. Well, nothing lasted forever. She knew that better than most.

There were multiple CCTV cameras installed around the building, trained on the doors, garage bays, and ground-floor windows, all of which were also alarmed. Ordinarily, the security wasn’t a problem, but after killing someone like Barnett, she didn’t want to be recorded entering at an odd hour. Late-night coming and going could be explained, of course, if it ever came to that, but it was always safer to have nothing to explain to begin with.

She set down the backpack and removed a mountaineering grappling hook-four steel prongs she had coated with spray rubber and attached to a length of knotted climbing rope. She re-shouldered the pack, took hold of the rope, and swung the grappling hook up onto the fire-escape landing. The hooks caught with a quiet thud, and she was up the rope, arm over arm, in under five seconds. She paused on the first landing to reel in the rope, scooted noiselessly up the remaining sets of stairs, raised the window, and slipped into her apartment.

The lights were off, but there were so many windows exposed to the city’s ambient glow that the space was never really dark. Everything was exactly as she’d left it: mattress on the floor in the corner. Desk and chair alongside it. Dresser and wardrobe opposite. Next to the window and fire escape, a small shrine. Several judo and jiu-jitsu gis hanging from pegs on the wall. A cinderblock-and-plank bookshelf containing a row of volumes, among them Alice Vachss’s Sex Crimes, and The Essential Abolitionist, John Vanek’s comprehensive guide to human trafficking. Everything else belonged to the shop-drill presses, grinders, lathes, and the other tools of the trade, most of it older, put in storage here on the third floor as the shop acquired newer, more efficient equipment.

She checked the mobile phone she’d left on the rug alongside the mattress to corroborate that she’d been in all night. Not that it would come to that, but she’d put away enough rapists based on cell phone metadata to know not to take the chance. No messages. Good, everything was good. Just a few small matters to take care of, and she could relax.

She opened a window on the southwest side of the loft and turned on the industrial fan facing out from it. The electric motor and loud rush of the blades brought the still space to life, and a cool breeze immediately drifted past her as air was drawn in from the fire-escape window and sucked out by the fan. She grabbed a steel bucket and placed it under a shredder, moving quickly and easily, the layout and the machinery all comfortable to her, familiar. The press of a button, and the shredder started up with a loud whine, its twin shafts spinning toward each other, the teeth of each sliding smoothly into the grooves of its counterpart. She tossed in the stolen plate. There was a brief metal shriek, and then the plate was gone, reduced to confetti-sized scraps deposited at the bottom of the bucket.

She shut off the shredder and carried the bucket over to an oxyacetylene torch next to the fan. She attached a rosebud tip, pulled on a pair of welder’s goggles, fired up the torch, and melted the license plate scraps, keeping the torch moving to make sure she didn’t go through the bottom of the pail. The contractor bag with the wig and other potentially contaminated materials went in next. She scoured everything down with the 6,000-degree flame. Billows of black smoke rose from the pail like an evil spirit, but the fan sucked it all away and expelled it, and in seconds, the contents of the pail had been reduced to an undifferentiated, glowing lump.

She killed the torch, removed the goggles, closed her eyes, and let out a long breath. Out of danger now. And nearly done.

Keeping the lights out, she stripped off everything-the gloves, the boots, the leathers, even her underwear. The riding gear got hung near the door. The underwear she threw into a small washing machine in the kitchen, along with some other laundry, running it on a hot cycle. She grabbed a yogurt drink from the refrigerator, keeping one eye closed to preserve her night vision against the interior light, chugged it, and chased it with a big glass of water. Then she took the hottest shower she could stand, washing her hair, scrubbing her body with an exfoliating cloth, standing in the billowing steam to let the heat boil the last of the night’s tension out of her. She wasn’t worried about the open windows. The Glock, always close at hand, was on the toilet tank next to her.

When she was done drying off, she went back to the shredder. The contents of the bucket had cooled, and she threw the entire thing in, bucket and all, collecting the newly made confetti in a new contractor bag. She’d get rid of the bag in some dumpster tomorrow, but even if it were found here tonight, it could no longer incriminate anyone in anything.

The first light was beginning to show in the eastern sky. She turned off the fan and closed and locked the two windows. Just one last thing to do.

She knelt on a mat in front of the shrine-a small wooden Buddha, an incense brazier, and a photograph of her and Nason, all that remained to her of when they were girls in the forest. She set the Glock on the mat next to her, lit the candle and the incense, and placed her palms together at her forehead in the traditional Sampeah, closing her eyes and dipping her head forward as she did so.

“I love you, little bird,” she whispered in Lahu. “I will never forget. I will never stop looking. And one day I will find you.”

She paused, and added in English, “I’ll learn something at the funeral. Something I can use against Weed Tyler. I’m so close, little bird. I’ve waited so long. And I know you have, too. I know.”

She maintained the pose until the incense had burned low. Then she slipped into bed and lay on her back. She would use an eyeshade soon against the morning sun, but for now it was still dark enough. She breathed slowly in and out, the sheets cool against her skin, a slight tingle in her extremities.

She closed her eyes and in her mind replayed everything about the evening. Studying Barnett’s file. Reconnaissance of the neighborhood. Buying the wig, the glasses, the yoga outfit, all for cash from stores outside the city. The ride into Marysville that night. Stripping off the leathers and putting on the makeup in a fast-food restroom. Walking into the bar, nervous as the whole thing went live. Catching his eye. The flush of excitement as he sauntered over.

Her heart began to beat harder, and she parted her lips to draw more air. She flexed her legs and brought her knees up a few inches from the mattress, the sheets sliding smoothly under her toes and the balls of her feet.

The smell of his bourbon as he got increasingly drunk, whatever self-control he had fading, his judgment occluded. The way he looked at her. Knowing what he was thinking, planning.

She shifted her weight to one shoulder, then the other. Her knees widened and one of her hands drifted down between her legs.

The way he had grabbed her shoulders and shaken her. How he had tried to pull her in and make her kiss him.

“No,” she breathed aloud, her fingers pressing, rubbing, moving. “No. I don’t want this.”

How he’d ignored her pleas and thrown her down on the grass. His weight as he straddled her.

Her fingers were moving faster now, harder, her breathing loud in her ears. She could feel the pressure building inside her. “No,” she said again. “No.”

His hand on her throat. The sound of his belt buckle.

She sat up and twisted around, her knees spread wide, her free hand gripping the bedsheet, her arm taking her weight. She rocked her hips against her fingers and moaned.

Squeezing his neck, feeling it being crushed in the figure-four of her legs.

The pressure was unbearable now. She gripped the sheet harder and spread her knees wider.

The way he’d scratched at her leg, his efforts frantic at first, then increasingly feeble. Knowing she’d stopped him. Denied him every option. Taken complete control-

And then the pressure exploded, and she cried out, the pleasure obliterating Barnett, obliterating the memories, obliterating everything.

Eventually, it began to slacken. She shuddered once as her consciousness reconstructed itself, then turned onto her back. She lay there, her heart slowing, her breathing coming back to normal, her muscles relaxing as sleep overtook her.

The sun was still below the horizon, but the loft was filling with soft gray light. She reached sluggishly for the eyeshade, not even aware of the tears streaking her face.