Killing Bliss (34 page)

Her mind a muddle of alcohol, incoherent thoughts, and paralyzing fear, she stared at the dark blur of trees the expensive car purred past on its way to... Gus and Addy.

Addy would have a plan by now. Addy always had a plan. And Gus? She closed her eyes. Gus wouldn't have let Bliss get this far. But they weren't here. She was, and she was as brain-dead as ever. There was no use praying for an idea, because there wasn't anyone up there who gave a damn, and for the first time in her life, her face and her sex were no help at all. All she had were her scrambled thoughts and a lack of time.

Bliss maneuvered her Lexus up a hill and around a bend in the road.

Then she remembered.

Just ahead was a lake, sitting low in a valley surrounded by tall hemlock and cedar. To bypass it, the road they were on curved up and arced around it. At the top there was a viewpoint stop consisting of a few parking spots and public washrooms. The drop was at least eighty feet, maybe more.

Enough.

It had to be enough, because from that point on, the road's descent took them into the lower hills that formed the frame for Star Lake. After that, her only option would be to grab the steering wheel and drive them both into the path of an oncoming semi.

When they neared the top of the curve, she put her hand to her mouth and tugged on Bliss's leather jacket. "I'm not feeling well. Pull over."

"Not surprised, you smell like a goddamn winery." He glanced at her, scowled. "I'm not stopping. I don't give a shit how sick you are."

"Yeah? In that case I'll make sure to throw up on those shiny new shoes of yours and not mine." She clutched her stomach.

"Shit." He looked out the window at the narrow curving road for a place to pull over.

"There's a rest stop at the top of the hill," she said quickly, swallowing hard. "I can hold it 'til then." She bent over and again put her hand over her mouth.

"You fuckin' well better."

A minute or two later, he made a left and drove through the trees that shielded the viewpoint area from the road. The parking lot was empty.

"Get out and get done with it." His eyes darted around the dark lot, stopped on the run-down washrooms lit by a single bulb over the door. "While you're at it, I'll take a leak. You sure as hell aren't going anywhere from here." He jangled her car keys in her face, then closed his fist around them.

Beauty opened her door at the same time Bliss did, and while he hiked his collar up against the rain and strode off toward the men's room, she walked the few steps to the low guardrail installed to protect careless tourists from the steep cliff beyond it. She clambered over the railing; there were maybe three or four feet of solid ground before the drop. She took a step toward the edge and craned her neck to peer over; her movement sent a clatter of stones into the darkness below. It was like looking into a tar pit.

With no moonlight, and a sky dulled by heavy clouds, she couldn't see the lake, but a spatter of lights far below from the handful of cabins surrounding it confirmed she was in the right place. In the years since she'd been here, the trees had grown to new heights, further obscuring the view, and a tangle of brush and thorns had grown in patches on the cliffs side.

Despite the rough growth, the drop was steep and deep—and as chances went, it was all she had. Dizzy now, she stepped closer to the edge. The rain made the ground slippery and treacherous, and when she almost lost her footing, she gasped and steadied herself.

In position, she shoved some wet tendrils of hair behind her ear, pressed her hand against the too-rapid beat of her heart, and waited for Bliss to come out of the men's room.

One good push and he'd be gone. Out of my life. Out of all our lives. Forever. I can do this. I can.

When a door banged inside the restroom, she glanced back to see Bliss exiting the men's room, doing up his zipper.

He hadn't wasted any time, nor would she. She leaned over as if vomiting, and dry retched, careful to keep herself at an angle where she could see Bliss out of the corner of her eye. He stopped on the other side of the guardrail. Exactly where she wanted him.

He cursed, let out a noisy breath. "What the hell are you doing out there? Get back over the rail. You stupid or something?"

She ignored him, stayed bent over, feigned a stumble that almost took her over the edge.

"Jesus," he said, before stepping over the rail. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

She fell back toward the guardrail, and he stood in front of her, his back to the cliff. A shadow, he was only a shadow against the gray sky.

Her heart pounded and her throat tightened. She had him where she wanted him, an arm's length away. All she had to do was give him a shove—one quick shove.

Why couldn't she move?

Do it, Beauty. Do it.

The voice screeched in her head, urging, demanding, and she wanted to obey, to move... anything.

Her fingers fused to the metal guardrail behind her, she stared at Bliss, frozen in place. She saw his eyes widen, then narrow. He knew. Animal that he was, his instincts were sharper than hers.

He laughed, a sharp, mean bark of a laugh. "Lost your nerve, slut?" He shook his head. "No surprise. You never did have anything more goin' for you than big tits and a pretty face." He didn't move, set his gaze to crawl over her, slowly, sickeningly. His tone lower, harder, he added, "Trying to get rid of me wasn't one of your better ideas. But to show you what kind of guy I am, I'm goin' to let you make it up to me. How about you and me rehearsing that little show I'm plannin' for Vanelleto? Kind of a dry run."

When he reached for her, she brought both hands from behind her and shoved at his chest. Too little, too late. Bliss caught her arm, swung her around, putting her back to the cliff. Using one hand, he imprisoned her, his grip a vise, his fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arm like sharp, savage teeth.

"You bitch." He hit her in the face with his free hand, and she staggered backward. Still holding her, he closed his fist, hit her again, again, hammering at her jaw, her temple. Her head bucked, loosened on her shoulders, as her neck swiveled and jerked with every merciless blow. Blood coursed from her nose. She couldn't get a breath.

Her consciousness was reduced to flashing lights and wild shooting pains. She clawed at his face, gouged at his flesh, heard him curse before he hit her again. She tasted her own blood, felt a stone in her mouth—a tooth.

He grabbed the front of her cotton shirt, and she heard it tear, but it held together long enough for him to pull her flush to his body. Seizing a handful of her hair, he yanked her head back and thrust his hand between them, tore at her bra, closed a hand painfully around her naked breast, his hot breath against her neck now the hard rasping pant of an animal.

Beauty's world faded from gray to black, the void behind her blacker still. She didn't care. Years of hurt, rage, and powerlessness exploded, filled her, fueled her—freed her—and all of it went core deep into the rigid bone and taut muscles of the knee she rammed, with the strength of a mad woman, a doomed woman, into his miserable hardening cock.

"Fuck..." Stunned, he let her go. She kneed him again before he doubled over.

"You rotten, low-life bastard. You'll never touch me again. You got that? Never." she screamed. "And there's no money; there never was. Gus is going to kill you, you fucking freak, and I'm going to cheer him on." Her punished head spinning, insane with colliding images, she clenched her eyes closed against the pain, blinded in one eye by a curtain of blood, the other refusing to stay open.

She was aware of rain on her face, coldness on her naked breasts. The smell of wet earth, or was it blood?

But where was Bliss? She needed to see. Had to see. She brushed the blood from her eye, forced it open to look down, her mind reeling from Bliss's savage blows to her face and head.

He was crawling...

No.

His powerful hand snapped closed around her ankle.

"Stupid, dumb whore." he shouted.

As if she were a rag doll, or a bag of garbage, he flipped her into the abyss.

* * *

Addy went directly to the shower, but instead of her usual splash and dash, she braced her hands on the wall, and let a stream of hot water course over her tight muscles and fevered brain. She made the water hot enough to burn, intending it to outpace the heat in her aroused body, the turmoil in her mind.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face.

You up there, you got nothing better to do than mess up my life? You could have sent Harding to some nice librarian somewhere, or better yet, one of the lady professors at that school of his. Why me? A woman who thinks synonym is something you'd find in a pie recipe—if I could read the damn recipe. And why now, when my life is a shambles, my friends are plotting murder, and someone is probably changing the sheets in my jail cell as we speak? It's not fair, you hear me. It's just not fair.

Her rant over, she thumped her head on the shower wall, punched the shower control to off, and shoved open the cubicle door, no closer to feeling better than when she went in. She felt edgy, dangerously exposed, as if her nutshell-sized world was under threat from a ball hammer.

The sky outside her glazed bathroom window was dark with rain and offered no hint of morning. She toweled her hair roughly and let out a harried, impatient breath when she counted the hours she had to wait before Gus arrived, then Beauty. Hours to think about the stunning idea of spending "forever" with the man she'd left behind in Cabin Six. Her thoughts made her heart ache, and her stomach cramped painfully, longingly.

She draped the towel around her neck, and holding both ends, stared unseeingly at the mirror in the medicine cabinet over her sink and said the word aloud, softly—"Forever, forever... and ever and ever." Putting her index finger on the steamy bathroom mirror, she laboriously printed the word.

FEREVAR.

Studying the letters she'd etched on the glass as upright and evenly spaced as the bamboo stakes she'd put in the back flower garden, she suddenly glared, erased them with an angry sweep of her hand.

If she couldn't spell the word, not much point in considering the reality of it with a man like Cade Harding. Impossible. Like she'd told him. No point kidding herself. She'd never been a dreamer and now wasn't the time to start.

After drying herself roughly, she donned clean jeans and a red shirt—no way was she going to sleep tonight—and combed her shag of hair straight back from her forehead. It would mess itself up in its own good time.

She paced for a bit, then went to her makeshift drafting table, pulled out a couple of design magazines, and started to slowly turn the pages, attempt to lose herself, as she usually did, in the beautiful pictures, ideas for Star Lake.

Too bad she couldn't stop her head from lifting, her eyes from their constant checking, first the open door between her apartment and the office, then out the night-dark window, looking for any sign of the coming day.

After a time, she glanced at the clock and sighed. Barely fifteen minutes had passed.

It was going to be a long, long night.

* * *

From his vantage point hidden behind the trees, Grover watched Bliss pull out of the viewpoint parking area. When the red car was out of sight, he pulled into the parking lot and turned his car motor off.

The rain was coming in earnest now, and it was too black to see anything, but his curiosity drew him to the guardrail. Clumsily, he climbed over it, took a couple of tentative steps toward the edge.

Listened.

All he heard was rain beating on the leaves of the dwarf trees and scrub that clung to the side of the cliff and a few leaves rustling when wind gusted up from below.

But he had to be sure. This one hadn't known much of anything, far too concerned with herself to be even dimly aware of what was going on around her. But she'd belonged to Gus, and who knew what he'd filled her head with.

He looked around; the place was as deserted as a tomb.

"Beauty," he called down, "are you all right? Can I help you?"

He cocked an ear, shivered when the breeze carried the chill of night and rain through his light coat.

"Beauty?" he said again. "Are you there?" He shifted position, and the toe of his shoe sent a stone tumbling over the edge.

Still nothing. Not a sound.

Grover stepped back. Smiled. "Good," he muttered. "Very good."

It occurred to him that his whole life had changed since he'd got rid of Sandra, and had sex with Linda Curl. Before those blessed events, he'd had nothing but bad luck. Now everything fell into place.

Bliss getting rid of Beauty was yet another stroke of good fortune. He'd seen it all, of course—the stupid girl's effort to push Bliss off the cliff, Bliss's inept attempt at rape. For a moment, he'd thought of killing them both, but that would have left him alone to deal with Vanelleto.

The idea settled badly in his stomach.

No. Vanelleto was Bliss's job. So he'd let him live. The vain, selfish idiot had work to do.

He climbed back over the guardrail, and headed for his car, light-headed with relief. Beauty had not survived the fall.