Apprentice in Death (In Death 43)

“No such thing as second best.” Smug, she tipped her fizzy side to side. “That’s just a wuss term for loser. It’s first, or it’s nothing.”

“So making strikes like this puts you in first, makes you elite.”

“Could you do it?”

“Can’t say.” Now Eve shrugged. “Never tried. Then again, I’m not interested in killing somebody a mile away while they skate around on an ice rink.”

“You couldn’t, and that’s bottom line. I’m guessing you can barely hit the mark at anything over ten yards with your sidearm, much less handle a long-range weapon with any accuracy. You’d’ve missed by that mile, zipped some asshole bopping down Fifty-Second Street.”

“But then I wouldn’t have, what is it, about ten years of training, instruction, practice. Wouldn’t have a former Army sniper and SWAT officer indulging my hobby.”

“Hobby, my ass!” Teeth bared, Willow shoved forward. “And it takes more than training, instruction, takes more than practice. All that’s important, sure, but it takes talent, it takes

innate skill.”

“So you were born to kill.”

Easing back, Willow smiled again. “I was born to hit what I aim at.”

“Why aim at her?” Eve tapped Ellissa Wyman.

“Why not her?”

“Just random, just because?” Eve angled her head, shook it. “I don’t think so. Come on, Willow, she was a type, just the type you can’t stand. Out there showing off, day after day, like it mattered she could do a few spins and jumps on a pair of blades. Like being pretty made her somebody.”

“Now she’s just a body.”

“How did it feel to make her just a body? To cut off her life with one pull of the trigger with her out there in her show-off red suit? I think it got you off. It got you juiced so your aim was off with the main target, with Michaelson.”

“Bullshit.” Insult, rage, a wash of disgust skimmed over Willow’s face. “He went down the way I wanted him to go down. Gut shot, bleeding out on the ice. Feeling it, knowing it.”

“You wanted him to suffer?”

“He did, didn’t he? I don’t miss, got that? Do you got that? I gave him time for pain, time to know he’d never get up again. If the old bastard had put us first, my father would still have his eyes and hands.”

“Then he wouldn’t need you to do his work. He wouldn’t need you.”

“I’m his. I’m his first. His only.”

“You wouldn’t have been his only if Susann hadn’t run into traffic.”

“She was an idiot.”

Eve widened her eyes. “You killed all these people over an idiot?”

In her default gesture, Willow shrugged, looked up at the ceiling.

“I know you must have loved her.” Peabody infused her voice with just enough pity. “To do all this, I know you must have loved her, thought the world of her.”

“Oh please.” Derision dripped through the two words. “She could barely remember how to put her own shoes on every morning. Totally loserville. Sooner or later my old man would’ve walked away from that. Winners walk away. But he didn’t get the chance.”

“These people are dead because your father couldn’t walk away a winner.” Eve considered it. “Maybe that’s part of it. You killed Wyman fast, aimed so Michaelson could suffer, then—what about Alan Markum?”

“Don’t know him.”

“Your third.” Eve nudged the photo closer.

“Right. Didn’t like his face. Laughing and smiling while he stumbled around the ice with the bitch. I could’ve taken her out, too. Two for one, but I didn’t want to push my father right off. We’d agreed on three.”