Authors: J. D. Robb
Remember, she ordered herself. Remember everything in case, just in case she lived through this.
They had her strapped on some sort of board, tied and taped down. Rope around her waist, her belly. Sometimes they choked her with another until she passed out.
Plastic – she thought – under the makeshift table. She could hear it swish and crinkle under their feet when they hurt her.
A window. She could just see a window, barred, and a big brown couch where they sometimes had sex. And a screen – they watched porn and game shows on it.
An apartment. Maybe street-level, she thought because she could hear traffic when they went out or came in through the door.
A white ceiling – dingy white, be specific, Jayla – dingy white ceiling with those round lights inside it.
They never turned the lights off.
They brought in takeaway food – never deliveries, at least not when she’d been conscious. A lot of beer and jug wine. And once, at least once, she’d smelled Zoner.
She could describe them perfectly.
All she had to do was get away, and she could describe them both perfectly right down to the matching tattoos.
Little hearts with
D
and
E
inside, etched in blue and red over their own hearts.
People would be looking for her, she could comfort herself with that. She had people who cared about her, and would be looking for her.
But how would they find her?
Why hadn’t she called a cab? Why hadn’t she used her
head
and called a cab when she’d walked out of that stupid party? Why had she gone in the first place? Why hadn’t she stayed home and watched vids with Kari?
She began to weep again, struggled again. And slid into shivering sleep.
The noise woke her. For a moment she was back in her college dorm with Kari, trying to sleep while a party went on in the next room. She tried to roll over – and the grinding pain brought her back.
They had music on – shit-kicking country music with some woman yodeling about how she was gonna hunt down her man. They sang along, top of their lungs, while they set up some sort of folding table.
The woman danced around it, rubbed her ass into the man’s crotch, danced away again on a giggle.
Jayla could see the plastic on the floor now.
And the body sprawled facedown on it.
Her first reaction was a kind of crazed jubilation. She wouldn’t be alone. They’d have someone else, might forget to hurt her, even for a little while.
Shame avalanched over the ugly joy, reminded her whatever they did to her, she was still human. She could still feel shame. And pity.
Together they rolled the body over, began to undress the man – no, she saw and the pity heightened. A boy. Younger than she was. Twenty, maybe twenty, and pale as glass.
He stirred a little, moaning. Darryl picked up the sap – they’d cracked at least one of her ribs with that weighted leather bag – and slapped the boy on the side of the head with it. Like you might slap a fly – absently, with a mild annoyance.
“Don’t want him waking up as yet,” Darryl said. “Need to get him situated first.”
“He’s about the whitest thing I’ve seen outside of that snow on the ground outside.” Ella-Loo snickered as she dragged off the boy’s pants.
She dumped out the contents of the pockets while Darryl finished getting him stripped down. And opened the wallet.
“Got less than twenty on him. Shit, and no wrist unit or nothing. Name’s Reed Aaron Mulligan.”
Jayla repeated the name over and over in her head. She’d remember Reed Aaron Mulligan. About twenty, on the skinny side, milk-white skin and some freckles, reddish-blond hair with a sorry-looking goatee on his soft boy’s face.
“Key swipe, few loose credits, nice little pocketknife. One of those – what-do-you-call-thems?”
Darryl glanced over. “Multi-tool. Lemme see.” He took it from her, examined it. “It is a nice one,” he said and slipped it into his own pocket.
“Boots’re pretty new, and the coat, too.”
Christmas presents, Jayla imagined. From his parents. His parents would be looking for him soon.
“Too small for you,” Ella-Loo said to Darryl, and standing, tried on the coat. “It’s warm.”
“Not pretty enough for you, baby.”
“I bet we can get something for it, and the boots.” She tossed them, and his pants toward the couch, then studied Reed Aaron Mulligan with her hands on her hips.
“Pecker’s nothing to write home about, but we get some Erotica in him, get the wood going on him, he’ll do all right.”
She turned to Jayla then, smiled that hot, feral smile. “He’s going to rape the shit out of you.”
Jayla wanted to close her eyes, just close them and go away again, but she made herself meet those hard eyes. Made herself stare back into them until Ella-Loo picked up the sap, slapped her once, twice in the crotch.
The pain burst in her center, radiated everywhere.
“There’s a taste for you.” Angling her head, as if considering, she slapped each of Jayla’s breasts in turn.
As Jayla’s body arched and fell, Ella-Loo watched the bruises bloom.
“I never tried any sex stuff with any of them. It gets me hot.”
“Me too.”
She glanced over, saw the gleam in Darryl’s eyes, the way his hand was working between his legs.
“Not yet, baby. Not yet. Let’s get our new friend here situated, like you said. We’re going to want to soften him up a little.”
Jayla crawled into herself, into the tight, dark space where the pain pushed around the edges. After a while, she couldn’t say how long, she heard the awful, almost inhuman high-pitched sound, one she’d heard herself make.
And knew they’d begun to soften up Reed Aaron Mulligan.
Eve read over DeWinter’s very preliminary report, again.
Too early to be conclusive – and that just burned her ass – but DeWinter believed, and Morris concurred – that a number of Melvin Little’s injuries had been inflicted prior to his fall. Some as much as twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior.
She waded through the science-speak, the ass-burning probables, possibles, and pulled out the meat.
Sharp-bladed instrument nicked bone, blunt object on oldest wound, back of skull. Femur fracture due to forceful downward strike.
Maybe by a tire iron, Eve thought as she paced and read, paced and read.
Numerous bones in the right hand crushed.
Further testing to continue at oh-seven-hundred.
She took heart from Morris’s postscript.
Garnet’s not ready to commit, and she’s correct. But he’s one of yours. The local autopsy was badly botched here. This victim suffered multiple wounds – stabbing, beating, striking – at least a day prior to TOD. It would be a considerable coincidence for him to have fought with or been attacked by someone other than your unsubs.
“Coincidence is bollocks,” she muttered.
“As you’ve said.” Smoothly, subtly, Roarke angled himself between her and what he believed was now – another – empty coffeepot. “You – all of you – have done all you can do tonight.”
“Santiago and Carmichael —”
“Will certainly contact you if they hit on anything. But as it’s past midnight there, it’s likely they’ll need to pick it up in the morning.”
“What time is it here?”
“If it’s past midnight there, it’s past one here. It’s an hour difference.”
“That drives me stupid crazy.”
“It does.” Banner dragged his hands through his hair, kept them gripped there as if it was the only way to keep his head upright. His eyes had the hazed and dazed look of a sleepwalker. “Step across some state line and you gain an hour, lose an hour. It’s confusing.”
She jabbed a finger at him in solidarity. “See?” she said to Roarke.
“I see that our Central Time deputy needs sleep, and so do the rest of you.”
She considered feeding everybody a departmentally approved energy boost, then realized the futility. Plus she hated the way boosters made her feel. They’d all work better with a few hours down.
“Okay, we’ll call it. Meet back here at oh-six-hundred.”
“I hear that. Sorry,” Banner added. “Brain’s gone soft on me. I can’t remember how to get to my bunk.”
“Where’d they put you?” Peabody rubbed her eyes as she rose.
“Ah…”
“The Park Room,” Roarke told her.
“We know where that is, right?”
McNab nodded, got to his feet, wrapped an arm around Peabody as she leaned against him. “Yeah, it’s right down from us. We’ll guide you in.”
“ ’Preciate it.” He glanced back at the board, zeroed in on Melvin Little. “He’s got more than me now. I’m not going to forget it.”
When he followed Peabody and McNab out, Eve eyed the coffeepot.
“Absolutely not.”
“You don’t get to say —”
“I do, and I’d expect you to do the same for me. Your blood must be three-quarters caffeine by now. You’re vibrating with it.”
“I’m a little wired,” she admitted.
“And if there was a single stone left for you to turn over tonight, I’d get you another pot myself, and join you.”
Maybe he would, she thought, maybe he’d just tranq her and be done. But he was right. She’d turned every stone available. Maybe she’d have a different perspective on what she’d found under one in the morning.
“Towing company takes calls 24/7,” she said as he pulled her from the room. “That’s what they do. Maybe Carmichael and Santiago will hit something tonight.”
“They’ll contact you if they do.”
“Once DeWinter puts her stamp on Little, and the other vic in her house, the FBI’s going to angle over, or start to.”
“Does that trouble you?”
“It irks on a purely – what’s it – visceral level. But the more resources the better. They’ve got people looking into Jayla, but their focus is north. They see New York as part of the pattern, not a destination.”
She noted when they entered the bedroom, Galahad had beaten them and was now sprawled dead center in the bed.
“The more resources the better,” she repeated, sliding her hands into her pockets, trying to pace off some of the excess energy. “We wouldn’t be this far on Little without Banner, and we wouldn’t have him confirmed – and he damn well is – without DeWinter and Morris.
“And the towing angle, that’s good. Wouldn’t have that without your criminal perspective.”
“Always happy to help.” He turned her around, released her weapon harness.
She shrugged out of it. “The locals didn’t want that connection – the local connection. They wanted Jansen to have gotten his head caved in by some homicidal hitcher. It’s all over their reports.”
“Hmm.” Roarke turned her around again, unbuckled her belt.
“As for Little, smoother if that was just his bad luck.”
He tugged her sweater over her head.
“Same with Fastbinder in West Virginia. Guy takes a wrong step, does a header into a crevice. Tragic, sure, but people aren’t hammering the local law about tracking down a couple killers.”
Roarke backed her to the bed, hefted her onto the platform, nudged her to sit.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m here to help, remember.” He lifted one of her legs, pulled off her boot.
“You’re working on getting me naked.”
“The reward for the help.”
“You looking for another payment?”
“I’d planned to run an account, but under the circumstances.” He pulled off the other boot.
“I am a little wired.” She boosted up her hips as he tugged her trousers down and away. “Might as well put the caffeine to some use.”
“And if I burn it out of you, you might shut up long enough for us to both get some sleep.”
With the flat of his hand, he covered her face, gave her a gentle shove back.
And with a throaty growl, Galahad padded to the far corner of the bed, turned his back to them.
“How does he know we’re not just going to sleep?”
“Animal instinct,” Roarke supposed, pulling off his own sweater before he levered over her.
“I’ve got some of that.” Eve yanked him down, added a quick bite to the kiss. “Fast.” She used her teeth on his throat now. “Fast and hard and rough.”
She was already pulsing, already pumping. And her swift, ripe greed sparked its match in him. While she struggled to undress him, he cupped a hand between her legs, sent her careening over the first keen edge.
Nothing now, nothing but need, like a fever, like a flame, burning, climbing. Mad with it, she arched up, grinding herself against him until they both shuddered.
Still arched, she locked her legs around his hips, reached up to grip the sheets as if she’d fly away without the anchor.
“Fast,” she said again, barely breathing. “Hard. Rough.”
He drove into her, sheathed to the hilt, ripped a cry from her. And again, with the pleasure so sharp it slashed through him like a blade.
Again, and still again, with a madness that clawed up to haze his vision so she seemed suspended in smoke beneath him.
He used his hands on her, slick, quivering skin, and his mouth, while he plunged – hard, fast, rough.
She’d wanted that dark greed inside him, the animal roused, so he freed it, rode it, rode her until her strangled scream sounded in his ears, until her body shook against his. Until she seemed to melt away.
And still he rode, past reason, took more. Took all.
And with all, released.
Her ears rang with the hammering of her own heart. His knocked against her like a fist. She sensed him start to move and managed to get her limp arms around him.
“No. Just stay,” she murmured. “Just stay awhile.”
And slept.
She woke in the dark, pulled from deep and blessedly dreamless sleep by the insistent beeping of her communicator.
Disoriented, still tangled with Roarke, she tried to push up.
“Wait. Lights on, ten percent.”
At Roarke’s command, the dark lifted as he rolled away.
“My comm…”
“Still in your trousers.” He found them, fished the communicator out while she tried to scrub the fog of sleep away.
“Ah —”
“Block video,” he advised.