Strip by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

blocks, and then pulled into the driveway. “There’s somebody in the house. I saw the front curtain move.”
    “Yeah, it’s the fucking geniuses.” As the car moved up the driveway toward the house, the Gaffney brothers, the big Russian, Corona, and Guzman all stepped out of the front door to stand on the front steps and wait. Their suits looked dusty, and one of the Gaffneys had a long rip at his knee so the paper-white skin showed. “Look at them,” Kapak said. “Jesus, I’m actually paying these people.”
    “You need me for anything?”
    Kapak leaned in to say, “No. I won’t need you until midnight. Go ahead.”
    “Thanks.”
    Kapak shut the car door and walked stiffly toward the front of the house. Spence backed out of the driveway, turned, and drove to the freeway entrance, merged with the traffic, and pulled into the left lane. The freeway was still clear and fast moving into the Valley. He switched to the Ventura Freeway, got off at Coldwater, and found the apartment building where he had left the girl two hours ago. He parked the Town Car, walked to the entrance, and looked at the names beside the buzzers at the door. When he saw “K. Noonan” he decided that it must be the right one. It was the only K, and she was the one who had volunteered her name, so maybe she hadn’t lied. He pressed the button, heard a click and a sudden sense of space like the other end of a telephone call, then her voice. “Who is it?”
    “Spence, the guy who drove you home this morning.”
    “Well, don’t advertise to the neighbors that I came home in the morning. When I buzz you in, come to the second floor landing. I’ll meet you.”
    He heard the buzz and the click, and he tugged the door open and went up the stairs to find her barefooted and leaning against the wall wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she had a puzzled smile. Her long hair was wet from a shower, hanging in loose strings that dampened her T-shirt.
    “Hi, Kira.”
    “Forget something?”
    “I tried, but I couldn’t.”
    “What?”
    “You”
    She put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh. “Oh my God. That is so cheesy. How can you say something like that?” She stopped, shook her head in disbelief, then laughed again. She turned and walked down the second-floor hall, and Spence followed her. He noticed how much shorter she was now that she was barefoot. She stopped in front of a door that was open six inches.
    He pushed the door open for her and she looked up at him. “Did I say that was my apartment?” She walked on along the hall while Spence quickly reached for the door and pulled it back the way he’d found it. But as he turned to follow her, she doubled back, slipped inside the door, and closed it.
    When Spence knocked lightly, she opened the door and pulled him inside. Her apartment was decorated with framed photographs of Kira and a changing group of men and women about her age in various places, always outdoors. They were on a mountain just at the tree line near some wind-tortured pines, in the stands at a baseball stadium, on a big sailboat ducking low to avoid the boom. She stood three feet from him while he glanced around him. She folded her arms and said, “Please don’t tell me that your boss wants to see me again.”
    “No. He’s busy right now. He’s got his mind on other things.”
    “Good, because I won’t.”
    “Good.” He stood there, making no move to leave.
    “Then what do you have on your mind?”
    He took one step and gathered her into his arms. He kissed her with a certainty that overwhelmed her tentative first attempt at resistance. She was already off-balance, clinging to him to keep from falling backward. “I thought you weren’t interested in your boss’s leftovers.”
    “You’re not a leftover.” His hands moved down her back to the bottom seam of her T-shirt and abruptly lifted it so the T-shirt came off and left her arms in the air above her