Sooner or Later Read Free

changed his clothing, putting on the neat white button-down shirt, the Brooks Brothers tweed jacket, the soft beige cords and tasseled loafers. He combed back his hair and felt he must look pretty good. He couldn’t check because no mirrors were allowed in case they smashed them and used the shards as weapons.
    An attendant had already packed his bag. He hefted it, smiling at its weight. The old lady had kept him supplied with enough clothes for a proper social life even though one did not exist. He took a last glance around as he left the place that had been his home for so many long years. There was no glimpse of emotion in his stone-dark eyes. But he would not forget.
    Once again the guards escorted him, unhandcuffed this time, down the green windowless corridors to the administration building. In the front office a middle-aged secretary handed him his papers and a plastic wallet containing the three hundred and twenty-five dollars.
    She slid the receipt across the table, looked up at him and said, “Sign here please, Mr. Duveen.”
    His dark eyes burned into hers, sly with sensuality. It was as if he were looking at her naked, and she blushed, instinctively clutching her hand to the collar of her white blouse to cover herself.
    Duveen’s lips twitched at the corners, just enough so she knew he knew what she was feeling. Then he signed boldly,
Buck Duveen.
He pocketed the money and the papers, and said mockingly, “You don’t have to worry, honey, I like ’em younger and sexier than you.” Whistling “Dixie” again, he strode out the door and into the waiting Yukon wagon.
    Two guards rode shotgun with him as far as the station, just so he wouldn’t hijack the driver and steal the Yukon, he guessed. As though he would be that dumb. They had always underestimated him here, but now the world was about to find out what a clever man he really was. Especially those nearest and dearest to him.
    He’d had a long time to figure out what he would do. There had been many long nights when he’d plannedand plotted and dreamed of how it would feel. He could almost taste it, like the slick sharp flavor of good bourbon on his tongue. Revenge was going to be so sweet, so very very sweet.

         2
    E LLIE P ARRISH D UVEEN BACKED THE TAXICAB-YELLOW Wrangler out of the garage of the tiny Santa Monica house she called home, and headed down the hill toward Main Street. Like the Jeep, her house was old and decrepit. Since the last big earthquake, none of the walls quite met at the corners and the bedroom floor trembled when she walked across it, but it did have a view of the ocean, and getting up in the morning was so much easier with the sun glittering on the waves just two blocks away. Besides, it was cheap. Something that mattered very much to her.
    Main Street was at a standstill and she fretted behind the wheel, checking her serviceable steel watch anxiously. As usual, she was running late. Keeping an eye on the traffic, and without the benefit of a mirror, she dusted powder onto her freckled nose, swept black mascara onto her copper lashes, and added a slick of deep mocha lipstick. Years of being late had made her an expert at the quick traffic-light fix-up. A spritz of Eau d’Issey, a quick flick through her red hair with a brush, and she was readyto face the day. Taking a sip of coffee from the paper Starbucks cup, she put the car into gear as the traffic moved off again. Life, she decided, was just one big rush, and no matter how hard she tried, she was always just a couple of beats behind.
    Ellie was twenty-nine years old, with her mother’s misty blue-gray eyes and curly red hair worn long and flowing down to her shoulder blades, except when she was at the cafe she owned in Santa Monica, and then she skewered it beneath a black baseball cap with
Elite’s Place
inscribed on it in green silk.
    She was tall and slender, though not model-thin, with long legs and embarrassingly large feet that her grandmother