Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Sixty-Nine

Hawk winked at me and then whistled softly.

“My, my, if we don’t got ourselves a situation here,” he said.

“Melanie Joan has ten minutes before she bleeds out,” Samantha said. “Fifteen, tops. So it would be best if you don’t do something stupid, Hawk.”

“Always made it my habit not to do stupid,” Hawk said. “And I’s more concerned about missy here than Melanie Joan.”

Samantha said to me, “There was no reason for you to have him follow you.” She looked almost angry. “There was nothing suspicious about that phone call to Sunny.”

“She didn’t,” Hawk said. “When I got that message from her she was comin’ out here, it didn’t make no sense to me. And then, being the curious motherfucker that I am, I call out there to Hanscom, and found out there was never no plane to Hollywood.”

She pressed the tip of the razor harder against my throat. I thought I might be bleeding. She had killed two people this way. She knew how to do it. And there was nothing Hawk could do from across the room to stop it.

I saw Melanie Joan’s head fall forward. There was so much blood on her white jeans.

“You can’t just let her die,” I said to Samantha.

“Watch me,” she said.

“Whatever you do,” Hawk said, “you got to know you ain’t walkin’ out the room alive. I’ll take what you got there in your hand and fillet you like a fuckin’ fish.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Hawk,” Samantha said.

I was wondering how many minutes it had been since she’d cut Melanie Joan Hall’s wrist. And how good Samantha Heller’s math was on her bleeding out.

“See there, now,” Hawk said, his voice still soft. “You don’t know nothin’ about me.”

Then, for a moment, the room was like a still-life, the only dominant sound the harsh, shallow breathing from Melanie Joan Hall.

“Nobody else has to die, Samantha,” I said. “We can get you help.”

“Like the help my mother got?” she said.

“Let Hawk attend to Melanie Joan,” I said, “and then we can talk about this.”

“She done talkin’, missy,” Hawk said, eyes still focused on the razor.

“Hawk’s right,” Samantha said.

Then, in this sad, almost tired voice, she said, “I’m so sorry, Sunny.”

In the next moment the knife was off my throat and she was slashing it across her own, knowing how to do it one last time, and then it was ending for her the way it had ended here for her mother.