Authors: Ronica Black
“Once a month is leather night at the club,” Patricia said. “Adams loves it. Everyone comes in leather dress, the club is darker than usual, heavy music plays, and all the local vampire wannabes venture out of their caves to party.”
“Sounds wild.” Erin pushed her plate away, her stomach suddenly clenching with anxiety.
“Mmm, it is.” Patricia eyed her carefully. “You never partied much, did you?”
Erin pondered the question, weighing whether she wanted to share her past. But seeing as how Patricia had shared some of hers, she decided to do so as well. “Some, when I was real young, like fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” Patricia sounded surprised.
Erin sighed. “I got mixed up with some older kids, mostly because I couldn’t relate to the kids my own age. I started sneaking out at night and going to parties. This high school guy raped me and I told no one. My pain led to some drug use.”
“Jesus,” Patricia breathed out.
“So anyway, my folks eventually found out and they sent me away to a clinic for teenagers. I was scared to death in that place and I straightened up real fast, just so I could get out.” She looked down at her hands.
“I’m so sorry.” Patricia said softly.
“Oh, don’t be.” Erin said. “It’s long over and I’ve never looked back.”
They sat in silence for a while, then Patricia got up and cleared the table while Erin recuperated from sharing her tale of teenage trauma. Eventually she stood and stretched, trying to clear her mind of the tragic events of those years. She hadn’t thought about her past in a long while, and she couldn’t afford to think about it now if she wanted to walk into La Femme like she owned the place.
She maneuvered around Patricia, taking a wet dish from her hands at the sink. “Let me clean up. You cooked.”
Patricia relented and stepped back with an expression of surprised pleasure. “Just rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher,” she said, wiping her hands on a dish towel before pouring a refill of iced tea. “I’ll be on the back patio.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Erin watched her go and couldn’t help but relax a little with the physical chore before her. It didn’t take her long to finish and when she did, she and Jack joined Patricia in the backyard.
Sitting in a deck chair, her boots propped up on another one, she was leafing through some files and appeared to be enjoying the brilliant sunset. Jack bounded through the yard, barking ferociously at imaginary but nonetheless vicious adversaries. Erin smiled at the little white dog and studied Patricia. The woman was holding some surveillance photos of Adams and staring off into the distance, a faraway look on her face.
“Hey, you okay?” Erin drifted over to stand next to her. The mindless work of scrubbing the dishes had helped to clear her thoughts of the dark clouds, but now it appeared that Patricia might have some clouds of her own.
Intense blue eyes lifted. “I’m fine. A little hot, I guess.” She pulled off her boots and socks. “There’s someone else I need to talk about with you. Kristen Reece.”
She stood and walked over to the pool and sat at its edge. Easing herself into a deck chair, Erin watched as she rolled up her jeans and eased her feet into the blue-green water. The name registered. Kristen Reece was a tall, blond bartender at La Femme and had also starred in some of Adams’s lesbian movies.
“What about her?”
“We think she’s an accomplice.”
Jack ran over and dropped a ball from his mouth into her lap. Erin tossed it across the yard for him. The news about Reece didn’t come as a shock. She’d suspected as much just from what she had read.
“You think she’s the blond woman the victims were last seen with?” She looked over at Patricia and felt an odd ache at the sight of her, sitting with the pool and the brilliantly painted orange and purple sky as her backdrop.
“Maybe. She and Adams have been involved for years. Adams took her out of an abusive home and gave her work. Reece would do anything for her.”
This was all in the file, but Erin let Patricia continue, knowing that what she hadn’t yet shared must be important.
“There’s only one thing that can come between them. And if that happens, it will be a whole lot easier on us. If we can get to Reece, we’ll have Adams hook, line, and sinker.”
“So what’s the one thing?” She tossed the ball for Jack once again.
Patricia smiled and pulled her feet out of the pool. “Women.”
“Women?” Erin scoffed, more than a little nervous at what Patricia was hinting at.
Hair shimmering copper-gold in the setting sun, the detective pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “She’ll like you, Mac.”
“Wait a minute.” Erin gulped and nearly choked. Going undercover to bait Adams was one thing, but creating some strange love triangle to bait two dangerous women was a little more than she could handle.
Patricia held up a hand and smiled. “It’s simple. When you go in Saturday night, go after Reece.”
“What about Adams?” Erin rubbed her hands on her jeans to dry them.
“It’ll infuriate her.”
“Why?”
“Because she’ll want you for herself.”
Erin pondered for a moment. “And what will Reece do?”
“Well, let’s hope she fights for you and gets pissed off in the process.”
Erin couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It sounded like two dogs fighting over a scrap rather than two grown women. “So you’re hoping that I’ll provoke a fight between the two, start to crack the fierce loyalty?”
“Yes.” Patricia got to her feet. “You up for it?”
Erin chewed on her bottom lip. Was she? She looked down at her hands and considered her fear of failing. She weighed it against the stigma of quitting and decided to give it her best shot.
What’s a couple of dogs anyhow?
“Sure,” she said. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
Patricia did a small double take, and they both laughed, sharing a moment of nervous humor. “Okay, let’s go over the final plan.” She sat down across from Erin and picked up a spiral notebook and a pen. “Saturday night at eight o’clock, we meet at Katherine Chandler’s residence.”
“Which is where, by the way?”
“I’m taking you there tomorrow morning. Are you packed?”
“Mostly.” She didn’t require much and it would take less than an hour to gather her necessities.
“Good.” Patricia continued, reading from her notebook. “J.R. wires us and we follow you to the club. You enter first and head over to the bar, where you approach Reece. I enter several minutes later and shadow you.” She looked up at Erin. “Play hard to get with Adams. It’ll intrigue her to no end.”
Erin swallowed back some anxiety. She needed to review all the details of this case and her target one more time, and then relax. It was just like taking a big exam. Minutes before the exam, you either knew the material or you didn’t, and there was nothing a few last minutes of cramming would help.
“Keep your contact with Adams minimal on Saturday,” Patricia said. “Just enough to let her catch your scent and get out. Then we’ll go from there.”
“Got it.” Erin studied the sky. This time Saturday night she would be getting ready to enter the club. After all she had read and been told about this case, there was only one thing she was sure of.
She was getting in way over her head.
Erin awoke slowly, clawing her way out of nightmare. Sitting up in bed, she rubbed her face and tried to get a grip on reality. It took her a moment to steady her breathing and slow her heart rate. She’d had the dream countless times before, and it was always the same. She was in that awful place, the place her folks had sent her when she was fourteen. It was deemed a behavioral health center, located at a downtown hospital, but to Erin it had been her own private hell.
The youngest one in the ward, she had also been the one with the fewest problems. The place had been crawling with disturbed teens, violent and suicidal kids as well as those messed up on drugs. That was what her problem had been. Drugs. Marijuana had been her constant companion, along with acid and speed, to bring her up when she got too down.
Her parents had found her stash one day and overreacted as they’d always done, carting her off to the hospital. Any time things didn’t appear perfect, they freaked out and overcompensated to fix the problem; anything to get life back to the perfection they worked so hard to achieve. It had been easier not to examine their home life, asking why she might have turned to drugs. Simpler to just void her out, blame it all on her and send her away to get fixed.
“Oh, Erin got mixed up in drugs. You know how kids are with peer pressure and all. You’ve got to watch them twenty-four hours a day or who knows what kind of trouble they’ll find.”
Her mother’s voice rang in her ears, explaining her behavior away as nothing more than a prank her friends had dared her to do.
She walked into the bathroom and splashed water on her sweat-soaked face and neck, washing away her mother’s plastic concern. She looked at herself long and hard in the mirror and reminded herself that she was no longer fourteen and helpless. She was safe now, and in control of her own life. She leaned on the counter to balance herself as her mind once again flashed back to the dream.
She’s sitting on the floor in the center of the room watching television. It’s nighttime and they’re running another test on her. She’s not sure what it’s for, but she’s being made to stay up all night with no sleep. There are things stuck to her head to monitor her brain activity. At least, that’s what she thinks they’re for. Suddenly, a noise comes from behind. It’s one of her counselors. His name is Rick and she thinks he’s sick. Sick Rick is what she calls him. Not sick like throwing-up sick, but sick like perverted sick. He’s smiling at her and he moves his pale, gangly body up next to her and squats down.
“Hello, Erin.” He winks at her through his thick-framed glasses and swallows. She watches his Adam’s apple bob up and down like the fishing bobber her grandfather always lets her use. She looks away and wishes she were with her grandparents. She wishes she were anywhere but here
.
Rick’s beady brown eyes sweep around the quiet ward before focusing again on her. “How are you?” he asks, sounding concerned. The tone of his voice alerts her to what he wants. He always starts out trying to sound concerned and caring, and his voice gets higher, almost whiny, and she knows what’s next. “You doing okay?” He lightly strokes her arm.
She freezes and stops breathing. Closes her eyes and wishes she could leave her body, that the molecules of her soul could somehow float out of the hospital to her grandparents’ home, where she feels safe, loved, secure.
“All this testing can be rough,” Rick continues. “How ’bout a break?”
Erin shrugs. “I’m fine, thanks.” She is always polite, even to Sick Rick.
Rick stands from his squat. “Nah, you can’t be fine. Look at you, all these wires. You need a break.”
Erin shakes her head in defiance. “But if I take a break it’ll ruin the test and they’ll make me do it again tomorrow night.”
Rick smiles once again, reaching down to lift her up by the arm. “Well then, I’ll hang out with you tomorrow night too. And the night after that and the night after that.” He lets go of her arm and reaches down to unzip his pants. She tries to run, but the wires on her head have her leashed. “Here, help me.” Rick says, taking her hand and placing it on his penis.
“No!” She pulls her hand away.
Rick’s eyes get big and he grabs her by the arm tightly. “You do it or I’ll send you to the room.”
She looks over at the room that stands in the corner of the ward. It’s tiny and its walls are covered completely with white pads. She decides her preference is for the padded room rather than Sick Rick and his dick. She draws away from him and opens her mouth to tell him, but she’s interrupted by a noise coming from one of the connecting rooms.
A door slams and a loud screaming assaults her ears. An older pimply boy named Brad is running around the ward, beating his fists against his head as he screams. Counselors give chase and Rick leans in and whispers in her ear.
“Looks like Brad will be joining you in the room.”
The screaming gets louder and louder. It’s joined by Rick’s deep evil laughter, and Erin can’t escape. She falls to her knees and cries. She cries and cries until the real tears bring her out of the nightmare.
Erin dried her face methodically with a soft towel.
“It’s over,” she said to herself, running her hands through her messy hair. No more hospital, no more Sick Rick, and no more perfection-seeking parents who refused to understand. She had her own life now, a good one, even if it didn’t really include her folks.
Forgiving them had not been an easy task and it had led more to avoidance on her part. She found it hard to sit and talk with them, to listen to how perfect her sisters’ lives were and how perfect their own lives were: her father pampering his classic cars and playing golf, her mother traveling and organizing activities with the grandkids. And then, of course, came the questions about the life she’d chosen to live. Why did she have to become a cop? It was such a masculine job and so unsafe. Why didn’t she quit and stay home and raise a family? Mark made plenty of money to support that.