Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  And time to focus on all the realities she’d totally ignored while indulging in a first real embrace with the man of her dreams.

  Chapter Nine

  Saturday, 12:25 p.m.

  “Do you feel better now, dearest?”

  Vonnie didn’t answer right away, not wanting him to realize how alert and aware she was of what was going on around her. After having left her alone since last night, the monster had returned an hour ago—she’d heard a car pull up outside. Now that he wasn’t drugging her, she was much more aware of what was going on, and was able to prepare herself for his arrival.

  He’d come in, offering her another energy drink through a straw. Then, apparently convinced by her apathy and listlessness that she wasn’t much of a threat, he’d cut the tape away from her entire mouth, ripping it off her cheeks. Judging by the pain, he’d taken some skin along with it. But she hadn’t cared. She could breathe—really breathe—at last. The air was dank and stale, reeking, but she drew in deep mouthfuls of it, absolutely delighted, though careful not to show just how panicked the taped mouth had made her. Because then he’d just put it back on.

  “Ahh, feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked, a smile in his high-pitched voice to match the one on his awful, cheerful king mask.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she muttered, knowing he expected gratitude.

  He patted her head, like she was some kind of dog. “You should have told me yesterday was your birthday,” he said, reproaching her. “I might have taken it off then, as a special gift from me to you.”

  Her birthday. Her last one, she had no doubt.

  He reached for a bowl of water and a rag and began wiping the blood off her cheeks. Working carefully, he acted like he actually gave a damn whether he hurt her or not, which was funny since he’d caused every one of her injuries.

  “Poor little girl,” he cooed.

  The man was insane. One minute murderous, the next nurturing. But always underneath the surface was utter insanity.

  His mood seemed good—as good as a psychotic killer’s mood could be, she supposed. Since his return, he’d been chuckling and muttering about how grand a time he’d had at the football game. How much fun it had been, how entertaining. And how much she’d been missed.

  Yeah, sure. Her own mother probably wouldn’t notice she was gone until the first of the month when she came scratching for Vonnie’s paycheck so she could pay the rent.

  She couldn’t contain the bitterness, thinking that her eighteenth birthday had arrived, and she wouldn’t be able to finally flip her mother the finger and move into a place of her own.

  “I think I’ll sit with you awhile,” he said once he’d finished cleaning the blood off her cheeks. “If you’re good, I might let you get up and use the potty. You must really need it.”

  If she had anything left in her that could feel embarrassment, maybe she would have, since he knew she’d been chained flat on her back for days and was just taunting her. Funny, though, embarrassment was long gone. Survival was the only thing that remained.

  She didn’t reveal those thoughts. The fact that he wasn’t leaving the small cell right away didn’t terrify her, it gave her hope. Having had a couple of days to heal, to clear her mind, Vonnie knew the only way to escape death was to trick him into making some kind of mistake.

  If he unchained her so she could use the makeshift toilet, maybe she could find some kind of a weapon. He couldn’t do that from the other side of the door. And he wouldn’t do it if he thought she didn’t appreciate it, so she mustered up a weak smile and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, shall we talk a little?”

  She tensed. Since figuring out what he’d meant about her “pleasing” him, she hadn’t been sure if she should let him know she remembered. Would that heighten his concerns, make him worry she might be able to identify him later? Hell, maybe if he pulled down his pants she’d have a clue. Then again, one disgusting prick looked like any other. On the night he’d been referring to, she’d been forced to endure the sight of a whole lot of them. Just like now, the faces of the monsters had been hidden; the vile men had worn black hoods. And nothing else.

  “Have you ever heard of Snow White and Rose Red?”

  She almost sighed in relief. Fairy tales. Okay, she could deal with his damned fairy tales. He could invent a story about Santa Claus cannibalizing his elves and it would be a whole lot better than thinking about that other night—the night she’d become a member of the club.

  “Well, have you heard about those evil girls, Vonnie?”

  Hearing the tone that said he was growing irritated, she cleared her throat. “No.”

  He tsked. “Well, it’s not as popular a story as some. Though I’ve always liked it.”

  Probably because he was about to tell her his version of the tale, in which two girls got gang raped and gutted at a biker bar.

  “My mother used to read it to me sometimes when I was lying right there in that spot and my stepfather was raping me. Oh, she did like to read bedtime stories.”

  Vonnie hated this man. She loathed him with every fiber of her being. But something inside her twisted a little, a purely instinctive, human reaction to whatever must have happened to him as a boy to turn him into the adult monster he had become.

  “Do you know what made me think of it?”

  “What?”

  His dark brown eyes sparkled behind the mask and she had the feeling if he removed it, she’d see a smile as wide as the phony plastic one. “I’m going to have my own version of it!” He clapped his hands together. “Right here in my secret hideaway. My own Rose Red”—he playfully pointed a finger at her—“and a Snow White who will be joining us very shortly.”

  Oh God. She didn’t have to think about it, she knew exactly what he meant. He was going to kidnap another girl, bring somebody else into the pit with her. She gagged, unable to help it, and almost lost the liquid she’d been so happy to get a short time ago.

  “You’re going to have company, sweetie.” He rose from the chair, folding it and putting it against the wall. “I’ve never had two guests at once, so it might take a little getting used to for all of us. We’ll have to muddle through together.”

  Vonnie couldn’t deny it—part of her felt a sudden rush of relief that soon she would no longer be alone in this awful nightmare. She’d have an ally. But a much bigger part wanted to scream in terror, to beg that unknown, faceless girl to run and hide while she still could.

  “Won’t that be fun?”

  Hot tears rose in her eyes. Though she blinked rapidly, she couldn’t stop them. They slid from the corners and streamed down her cheeks, wetting the rough pillow on which she lay.

  “Oh, dear!” he said, rushing back over. “You’re crying. What is it?”

  Vonnie shook her head, asking him questions she hadn’t asked for several days. “Why? Why are you doing this? Why me? Why her?”

  He stood above her, motionless, and she almost bit her tongue for speaking so coherently. Vonnie held her breath, counting the seconds, wondering if he was going to storm out and return with handfuls of white capsules, blue tablets, and little yellow pills. All of which would land in her empty stomach and send her flying, rendering her as useless as a butterfly riding a breeze.

  Finally, he shrugged. “That’s easy to explain.”

  She didn’t ask him to, wasn’t about to remind him that she could follow a conversation.

  “I took you because of a little party you attended a couple of years ago.”

  The club.

  Confirmation, though she hadn’t really needed it. She’d known. Last night, after the possibility had occurred to her, she’d begun to think about the other girls who’d gone missing over the past few years. She didn’t know them all, but she’d known a few.

  They’d been guests of the club, too. That was the connection.

  Most girls brought to “entertain” there did it for the money. They knew what they were doing. Maybe t
hey didn’t quite realize how bad it was going to get, or how many men would be attending, but they knew. Most of them were prepared.

  Vonnie hadn’t known, and she hadn’t been prepared.

  She tried to get the thoughts to leave her mind. Both of that long, ugly night, and of the harsh sense of betrayal that had changed her forever. Before then, she’d known her mom was unreliable and weak, but she’d always believed the woman’s “I love you’s,” and her “I’d change, baby, it’s just I need the stuff,” protestations.

  After that, she had never believed another word that came out of Berna Jackson’s mouth. She’d grown up overnight, lost any sense of the girl she’d once been after the brutal trick that had been played on her. She supposed that’s what she got for trusting someone so twisted. But God, what fifteen-year-old girl would suspect her own mother of selling her into a nightmare?

  “Ah,” her attacker said, sounding almost sympathetic, “I see you’ve put it together.”

  She swallowed, then slowly nodded. Forcing the flood of images away, knowing she didn’t have the time or the emotional strength to deal with them now, she asked, “Is that the only reason?” He’d chosen her to be his victim because she’d once been a victim of others?

  “Isn’t it a good enough one? The members of that club have been very nervous lately, which makes me happy. They did something bad to someone I cared about. I’m punishing them.”

  He cared about someone? Seemed impossible to believe. “So why not kidnap and murder them?” she spat, unable to help it.

  He chuckled. “I considered it, believe me. But I do like girls ever so much more than men. And, as you should have realized by now, sometimes the psychological torment of not knowing what is going to happen—or when—is more frightening than anything else.”

  He was right about that. Wasn’t that why he’d been playing this game with her?

  “Do you know that club has been active here in Granville for over a hundred years?”

  She shook her head, a little surprised but mostly not. Evil seemed to thrive in some places and the weird old house where she’d been taken that night had throbbed with it.

  “My stepfather was a member.”

  “Is he one of the ones you want to torment?”

  He laughed behind the mask. “Oh, no, he’s dead. Jed sent him straight to hell years ago. Right around the time I sent my mother there.”

  Jed. She focused on the name, thinking frantically, wondering if she’d heard it before. Some clue to who he was could help her in this psychological battle.

  She’d taken psychology in school and her first thought was to wonder if there really was a Jed. If her tormentor had been that badly abused as a child, maybe this Jed didn’t even exist—maybe he never had. Abuse had certainly caused split-personality disorder in some cases.

  “There is one other reason I chose you. I suspected your disappearance would get attention, which it did. I’m taking her for the same reason—attention. She’ll get even more of it. Granville is about to tear itself apart in utter terror.” The man casually reached down and fluffed the nearly flat pillow beneath her head, carelessly adding, “But I’m also taking her because she might have seen me when I followed you as you left school Monday night.”

  As she’d left the school . . . meaning, several blocks before she’d reached the Boro where he’d grabbed her. The man had stalked her a long way.

  The rest of what he’d said sunk in. A girl who might have seen him as she’d left the nearly deserted school? There weren’t many possibilities about who that could be. He wasn’t talking about some random girl. He meant one of her classmates, someone who’d been with her at the meeting last Monday. Maybe one of her new friends.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered.

  A sly chuckle emerged from his mouth and she realized she’d been a fool to act like she might be worried about this other unnamed girl. Thinking quickly, she added, “Don’t bother on my account. I mean. If she saw you, you’d know by now, right?”

  His noncommittal shrug said she hadn’t mollified him.

  “And I kinda like it as it is. I never had anybody give me as much attention as you do.”

  Clapping his hands together in delight, he chortled, “Oh, you’re jealous! Isn’t that just the cutest thing?”

  No, actually, the cutest thing she could think of would be looking up and seeing a sharp spike being plunged into his eyeball. But she merely forced a tiny smile.

  He bent down and patted her hip. Vonnie tensed, even though, so far, he’d limited his abuse to beating her, not raping her. If he’d once been a member of that club, however, she knew it would probably be only a matter of time. She had no idea what he was waiting for.

  Don’t question it; just be thankful.

  “Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, sweet one. I doubt she will be here for long. I suspect she’s not going to be quite as adept at entertaining me as you have been.”

  She stared up at him, not asking what he meant. She already knew.

  Because he was twisted and because he liked her terrified, he explained, anyway.

  “So I’ll probably have to kill her much sooner than I’m going to kill you.”

  Saturday, 3:15 p.m.

  The paramedics who had responded to Julia’s 911 call took Lexie to the small local hospital to be checked out. She had tried to refuse, but Aidan had overridden her protests. Her throat was bruised and swollen, her back scraped and abraded from rubbing against the brick wall. No way was he letting her just leave the scene, despite this “new information” she’d discovered, not until he was sure her windpipe hadn’t been seriously damaged.

  He’d wanted to ride with her in the ambulance, but had instead remained behind to talk to the two cops who’d responded to the 911 call. Lexie’s attacker was well known to them, and was taken off in handcuffs. They would go by the hospital to take Lexie’s statement later.

  That was how it should have gone, anyway. But when he got to the hospital a short time later, having driven over in the rental car she’d asked him to retrieve, he realized things hadn’t gone as planned. Because as he reached the curtained area in the emergency room, where he’d been directed by a nurse, he heard the irritated voice of someone who had to be Chief Dunston.

  “Just can’t keep your nose out of trouble, can you?”

  Shaking with anger, Aidan grabbed the curtain and flung it aside. “What’s going on?”

  The police chief spun around, startled and more than a bit irritated. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the man who found this woman being attacked and nearly killed on a public street in your supposedly safe town,” Seeing Lexie’s pale face, he put a hand over hers. “You okay?”

  She nodded, squeezing his fingers. “The doctor says I’ll be all right. I’ll just have this super-sexy voice thing going on for a while.”

  It was super-sexy. It also sounded super-painful.

  And he really wanted to hurt someone super-bad for that.

  The chief was the closest target. Aidan whirled around to face the man, and jabbed an index finger toward him. “Instead of berating the victims of crime, or just ignoring their existence altogether like you have all the girls who’ve gone missing, why don’t you try doing the job you’re being paid to do for once?”

  Dunston stuck out a belligerent jaw. “You can’t talk to me like that. I want your name.”

  “You can have it,” he snapped, “and you can have the name of my attorney as well. I’m quite sure he would be happy to represent Ms. Nolan should she decide to pursue a complaint of harassment and negligence against you and your whole department.”

  “It’s not negligence that she gets herself attacked while consorting with criminals!”

  Aidan’s jaw clenched so tight he thought he might crack a tooth. “Again, I remind you, a public street. Broad daylight. Your supposedly ‘peaceful’ town. Several witnesses who saw her nearly strangled to death. How do you think accusi
ng the victim will play on CNN?”

  Steam almost flew out of the man’s ears. But like all bullies, the idea of being made to look like a fool on a massive scale was too much for him to bear. Casting one final frustrated stare at Lexie, he said, “You’ll be hearing from one of my officers. Don’t leave town.”

  She managed a cheeky smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The chief spun around, his footsteps so hard, they heard him throughout his entire march across the ER. Once the sound had died out, Aidan released his tight grip on Lexie’s hand, but didn’t let go entirely. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up sooner.”

  “It’s all right. He was only here a couple of minutes.” She moved her brows up and down. “I notice you never did give him your name.”

  “No, I guess I didn’t. Forgot all about it.”

  Snickering, she swung her legs over the side of the thin gurney-type ER-room bed and rose to her feet. That was when he realized she was fully dressed, ready to go. She scooped some medical papers and said, “Let’s roll.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Clean bill of health, I swear.” She raised two fingers in a Scout’s promise. “The doctor already cleared me. I was just waiting for you to pick me up.”

  “Don’t they have to wheel you out?”

  But he was talking to air. Lexie had left the examination room, heading toward the exit. Sighing, glad the incident in the alley hadn’t robbed her of her independent streak, but also wishing she’d let somebody take care of her for a while, he strode after her.

  He flinched when he saw the rips on the back of her shirt—and the white bandages underneath. Damn that man.

  “Would you hold on?” he asked, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. He did it carefully, not knowing where else bruises might be hiding on her body. “Where are we going?”

  “I was talking to Walter on the phone,” she told him. “Right before Dunston showed up.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ignoring that whole no-cell-phones-in-the-hospital rule, are we?”

  “No, Mr. Smarty-Psychic, I used the one in the room.” Looking a little sheepish, she admitted, “I can’t find mine. I think I dropped it in the alley.”