Dexter's Final Cut (Dexter 7)

“Damn straight.”

“Did you kill him?” I said.

“Shit, yeah. I hope so.”

“How do you feel?”

She took another deep breath and then let it out. “Relieved,” she said.

I nodded. “QED,” I said. She blinked at me. “I think it’s Latin,” I explained. “It means, ‘I have proved it.’ ”

“Proved what?”

“There’s a killer in everybody,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up her glass and took a sip. “Maybe,” she said. “But you seem pretty comfy with the one in you.”

And I was, of course. But I was not at all comfy with having her guess it, so I was relieved that the subject seemed to be closed for now when Jackie put her empty glass on the table and stood up.

“Bedtime,” she said. She stretched and yawned, looking like some kind of golden cat. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Where do guard dogs sleep?” she said. “At the foot of the bed?”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “That way I can watch the door and the balcony.”

She blinked. “The balcony?”

“Anyone can get in from the roof,” I said. “All you need is twenty feet of nylon rope and a screwdriver.”

Jackie looked a little bit stunned. “You mean he might— What’s the screwdriver for?”

“I don’t know if he might,” I said. “I know he could. Anybody could: just drop down from the roof, with the rope. The screwdriver is to jimmy open the sliding glass door. A ten-year-old could do it.”

“Jesus,” she said. She stared at me, but she wasn’t actually seeing me. “I really fucking hate this,” she said. And then she shook herself slightly, focused on me for a moment, and said again, “Hate it …” She stood very still, looking at me, breathing in, then out, watching me for some sign that I didn’t know how to give her, and then she shook her head, turned away, and went slowly off to bed.

ELEVEN

I FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY AND COMPLETELY, AND WHEN I OPENED my eyes it seemed like no time had passed, but the first orange gleam of light was hammering its way in through the balcony door, so either it was morning or a UFO was landing on the chaise longue.

I blinked and decided it was probably morning. UFOs wouldn’t dare land in Miami—somebody would chop them up and haul them off to sell for scrap metal. I started to stretch and sit up, but froze midway as I realized there was a strange whirring sound coming from Jackie’s bedroom. It did not seem particularly sinister, but I had no idea what it was. As the bodyguard, it seemed incumbent upon me to investigate, so I stood up quietly, took the Glock from the coffee table beside me, and tiptoed to Jackie’s door. I turned the handle silently, pushed the door open, and peeked in.

Jackie sat on a stationary bicycle, pedaling vigorously, and already a light sheen of sweat covered her face. That is, on a lesser human being it would have been sweat; on her it was glow. She wore a skintight leotard that did nothing to make her ugly, and there were earbuds plugged into the sides of her head, and as she looked up and saw me she pried one of them out. “Good morning,” she called out, a little too loudly. “I’ll just be about half an hour—you want to order some breakfast?”

Of course I did; the finely tuned machine that is Dexter requires frequent fuel. But I managed to conceal my unseemly eagerness, and simply gave her a nod and a cheery, “Okay!”

“Great!” she called back. “Wheat toast, grapefruit juice, and some Greek yogurt, please.” And she put her head back down, plugged the earbud back into her ear, and pedaled faster.

I left her on her bicycle trip to nowhere and went to call room service. I tried very hard to admire Jackie for her spartan breakfast order, but it didn’t work. To me, the whole point of eating is lost if you don’t actually eat something, and it seemed to me that toast and grapefruit juice didn’t quite qualify. It was really no more than an upscale version of bread and water, and was not nearly enough to sustain life as I had come to know it.

But at least I felt no compulsion to follow her lead, and I did not. I ordered a ham-and-cheese omelet, rye toast with jam, orange juice, and a fruit bowl. And, of course, the largest pot of dark Miami coffee they could muster in their high-priced kitchen.

Breakfast arrived a mere ten minutes later, and I had the garçon set it up on the balcony. I let him out, put the chain back on the door, and went back outside. The sun had clawed its way aggressively up the horizon, but its heat was not yet as brutal as it would soon be, and there was a light breeze coming off the Bay, so the balcony seemed like an ideal setting. I sat and sipped coffee while I waited for Jackie, looking out over the water and thinking that there was a great deal to be said for my new career as a bodyguard. True, it was potentially dangerous, and the hours were rather long. But on the plus side, I was living like a millionaire without paying higher taxes, and I got to hang out with a Real Live Hollywood Star and eat haute cuisine. Of course, Rita’s food was far from being swill, but it had to be said that she was not truly a five-star gourmet chef, and not a famous and beautiful celebrity, either, and comparing her to Jackie was really no contest. It was an unkind thought, but since no one else could hear it, I didn’t bother to pretend I hadn’t thought it.

Instead, I thought about it some more. It was really nothing but a pleasant mental game, a goofy and nearly human fantasy, but it passed the time. I tried to imagine swapping my drab little existence for the life of a Celebrity Bodyguard. I pictured Me as part of an Entourage, the hawk-eyed presence at Jackie’s shoulder, ever vigilant on the Red Carpets of the world. Dexter the Human Shield, Living It Large in Hollywood, Cannes, and all the great cities of the world. Breakfast on the balcony in Maui and Singapore and Bali. It would not be hard to get used to living like that, and if I had to give up scrabbling for a mortgage on a new house, and do without all the shrieks and squeals and door-slamming that went with family life, what had I really lost except shattered eardrums and frequent headaches? Of course, there was Lily Anne, the living extension of all that is Me, my DNA shipment into the future. And I had, after all, promised to lead Cody and Astor into a safe, well-planned Dark Future. My path was already laid out, and I

was completely satisfied with it. Really I was. I did not need to enhance it with private jets and crème brûlée every night and a golden-haired goddess leading me through an existence of pure, diamond-studded pleasure. No matter how much I liked it.

The glass door slid open, interrupting my pleasant daydream, and Jackie stepped out into the sunlight. “Good morning,” she said, and sat beside me. Her hair was damp, and she smelled of shampoo and the same very faint perfume I had noticed yesterday.

“Good morning,” I said. “Coffee?”