Break the Night

by Stuart, Anne

  She struggled against his hand, but he kept it on the bare skin at the back of her neck, holding her down, and eventually she gave in. She could feel the warmth of his flesh on her cold, clammy skin, and a dangerous, answering heat filled her.

  And then he moved, pulling away from her and disappearing into the kitchen. She leaned back in the chair, taking deep breaths, telling herself she had no need to panic, no need to run, wishing she believed it.

  When he came back, he was carrying two tall glasses. He pressed one into her hand, ignoring her sound of protest. “Drink it,” he ordered. “You need it.”

  She obeyed him, not interested in a battle. It was tequila, and she’d always hated tequila. But it burned, nicely, and calmed the racing of her heart. “Do you have any more nasty surprises?” she asked, in a rusty-sounding voice.

  He sank down opposite her. “Not at the moment,” he said. “For what it’s worth, the police are aware of the similarity in your names. I imagine they didn’t want to worry you by telling you.”

  “They think it’s a coincidence?” She took another tentative sip of the tequila, watching as he tossed his back without so much as a shudder.

  He shook his head. “They don’t believe in coincidences. Neither do I.”

  She shivered. “At least you didn’t put that in the article. I suppose I should be grateful you had that much restraint.”

  “Don’t waste your emotions. It’s in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a two-part article. Tomorrow they’re running pictures of your masks. Look at it this way—it’ll be great publicity.”

  “Great publicity,” she echoed numbly, taking another sip. “Do you want me to thank you?”

  “You can double the asking price for your masks,” he pointed out in an unconcerned voice. “At least you’ll derive some benefit.”

  “It’ll pay for my funeral,” she said, draining the glass.

  “He’s not after you.”

  Her laughter was totally devoid of humor. “You don’t think so? I’m glad you’re so certain.”

  “Listen, if he wanted to kill you, he could have found you months ago. We’re dealing with a very smart man. With luck, he has no interest in you other than your masks. As long as you keep making them, I don’t think you’ll be in any danger.”

  She just stared at him. “And what if you’re wrong?”

  He obviously hadn’t considered that possibility. He looked across at her, staring for a moment, and whatever he saw was so horrifying that his face turned pale. The glass shattered in his hand, and he stared at her, unmoving, for a long, silent moment. “You were already in danger,” he said flatly.

  “Why? Because a madman likes my masks?” She could see something in his eyes, something that troubled her.

  “That’s only one reason,” he said, rising from the sofa, brushing his hand against his jeans, brushing the shards of glass free. “For another, you’re a single woman living in an area of the city that’s been plagued by a serial killer.”

  “What makes you think I’m a single woman?” she countered, her eyes wary, as he advanced on her.

  “I’m a reporter, Ms. Stride. I do my homework. You live on Sunrise Avenue in an old white building you share with a couple of actors. You’ve lived there for almost three years, and in that time you’ve had two live-in companions, both for relatively short periods of time. The first was an actor named Freddy Peeples, better known as Franz Peters. The second was a struggling screenwriter whose name presently escapes me. You have lousy taste in men.”

  He was trying to intimidate her, with his presence, his knowledge, his nearness, but she wasn’t easily cowed. “Maybe they have lousy taste in women,” she shot back.

  He glanced down at her body with a casual, sexual summing-up that should have been insulting. Obviously he didn’t find her the slightest bit attractive. Obviously he recognized that others might. “I wouldn’t say that,” was all he said. “Suffice it to say, you live alone. You come out alone at night to visit a strange man who has a strong connection to the Ripper case, and I’m willing to bet you didn’t even tell anyone where you were going.”

  She was no longer feeling defiant. She was beginning, just beginning, to feel scared. “I’m not that stupid,” she said, cursing herself because she knew it wasn’t true.

  “Who did you tell?” He came up to her, leaning over her as she sat in the chair, and she scuttled back, trying to move away from him, but with his hands on either arm of the overstuffed old chair she had no place to escape to.

  “My friend Courtland. And I didn’t tell her I was going to see you, I told her I was going to kill you,” she shot back, still fighting. He was frightening her, and she sensed he was doing it on purpose. He wanted to scare the hell out of her.

  “Even better,” he said. “That way, if I’m caught, I can always say it was self-defense.”

  She didn’t, couldn’t, say a word, and he moved closer. “Don’t you believe me?” he asked, and she stared up at him, mesmerized by his shadowed face, by the grim, lost beauty of him.

  There was something about his eyes. Dark and tormented, they seemed to call to her across decades. She’d looked into those eyes long, long ago, in another lifetime, another world.

  And then she moved, fast, ducking under his arm, scrambling away before he could reach out to stop her. “You don’t scare me, Mr. Damien,” she said, her voice shaking, as she stood silhouetted by the cracked window.

  “Just Damien.” He straightened up, not making any effort to stalk her. “And you lie, Lizzie Stride. I scare you to death.”

  She didn’t bother denying it. She took a deep breath in a vain effort to calm herself. “Is there any way you can stop the second part of the article from running?”

  “Not even if I wanted to.” There was no guilt in his voice, in his face, only a faint regret. “But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Get out of town. Go someplace where it doesn’t rain, where the streets don’t run with blood. Go as far away from here as you can until this madman is caught. Until then, no one is safe. No one at all. And particularly not a maniac’s personal mask-maker.”

  “I can’t,” she said, still staring at him.

  “Then may God have mercy on your soul, Elizabeth Stride,” he said. And his voice sounded centuries old.

  She ran then, and he made no move to stop her. Out of his apartment. Down to the street, fumbling with the lock of her car, her hands shaking, terrified.

  SHE DROVE TOO fast on the rain-slick streets. Her tires were practically bald, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get away from that haunted building, that haunted man, as fast as she could.

  There were times when her own sheer single-minded stupidity astonished her. How could she have been so gullible, so trusting? To go storming up to that man’s apartment, when for all she knew he could be the Ripper himself? She had to have some long-buried death wish.

  Except that she didn’t. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to live. She wanted to do just what Damien had told her. She wanted to run away, from the murders, from the city. And from J. R. Damien.

  Because once she’d looked into his dark, haunted eyes, she’d been lost.

  He was right; she was crazy. Crazy to go to a stranger’s apartment when a killer was roaming loose, crazy to look in a stranger’s eyes and think she saw a glimpse of eternity.

  Maybe what she saw was her own destiny.

  She needed to get out of town. Tomorrow she was scheduled to work the late afternoon-early evening shift at the Pelican. She didn’t want to, but she needed every penny she could earn. She had friends there, people who lived hand-to-mouth, as she did, but people who would help her.

  She was going to do exactly what J. R. Damien had told her to do. Get the hell out of town. And try to get his h
aunted eyes out of her mind.

  DAMIEN WATCHED her go, running out of his decrepit, shadowed apartment, slamming the heavy metal door behind her, running as if the Ripper himself were after her. He didn’t move, just breathed in the lingering trace of her scent, the faint, flowery spice of her.

  “Hell,” he said beneath his breath, crossing to look out the cracked glass of the window.

  It took her a nerve-rackingly long time to reach the rain-soaked street. Long enough that he almost went to check on her. The elevator in his building barely worked, and why should it? Of the twenty-four apartments in the run-down old place, only five were occupied, and his was the only one on an upper floor.

  The streets were deserted as she headed for her car. It was an old Toyota, and in the dim light he couldn’t make out the color. But he would know it again when he saw it. If he saw it.

  He watched her drive away, too fast, and wondered if she would make it home safely. If he had any decency at all he would call Adamson and have him watch for her.

  But Detective Finlay Adamson wasn’t there half the time when Damien needed him, and he didn’t like any of his subordinates. Besides, there was no reason to worry—Lizzie Stride was going to make it home safely. As far as he knew, she was going to be just fine.

  And he was in a position to know.

  He headed back to the kitchen, pouring himself another glass of tequila. Didn’t they tell you never to drink alone? He couldn’t think of a better reason to drink, to try to drown out the memory of Lizzie Stride’s frightened eyes.

  It wasn’t his fault, he told himself as he tossed down a large swallow of his drink. Or maybe it was, but he was doing every damned thing possible to find out who and what the Ripper was, even if it meant endangering people like the woman who’d just had the sheer stupidity to come to his apartment in the dead of night when a killer was roaming loose.

  The sight of her had disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. She certainly wasn’t his kind of woman. He liked them sleek and sophisticated. She was an earth mother, stronger than she’d first appeared, with sleekly muscled arms revealed by the sleeveless tank top. Her jeans were old, faded, and too loose for his particular taste; her longish hair was a shapeless mass of reddish brown that was still wet from the incessant rain. She had wary green eyes and a wide, generous mouth that had refused to smile. And no wonder. He hadn’t felt like smiling, either.

  He wondered whether she worked out, whether her entire body was as hard and muscled as her tanned arms. And then he remembered she was a mask-maker, working in papier-mâché and clay, and even stone and metal. She needed to be strong. And what the hell was he doing, thinking about the rest of her body, when he needed to concentrate on whether she might, after all, be the killer? Even the most insane possibilities had to be considered, including the most unacceptable of all.

  He didn’t like her. Didn’t like her narrow waist and the swell of her breasts beneath the tank top, didn’t like her thick mane of hair, didn’t like her mouth or her eyes or anything else about her. And now he was lying to himself, he thought in disgust.

  There was something about her, something that haunted him. She’d stood in his apartment, defiant, frightened, and he’d been able to smell the faint tang of soap and sweat on her skin, the rain in her hair, the tequila on her lips, and now he wondered what her lips would have tasted like if he’d crossed the remaining distance between them and kissed her. Would he have tasted life?

  She had wonderful eyes. Huge, green, full of warmth and a tremulous kind of wariness. Her eyes had held something else, as well. Filled with knowledge, and doubt, they’d seemed to mirror decades of lost chances, a lifetime of faded dreams. He’d looked into her eyes, and for the first time in his memory he’d felt emotions, longings, impossibilities that had suddenly seemed possible.

  As he leaned back against the countertop, his hip knocked a plate into the sink, where it shattered. He stared at it blindly. He’d made a vow, one he couldn’t break now just because he felt a twinge, merely a twinge, mind you, of guilt. Of desire. He had sworn to do everything he could to find and destroy the Ripper. No matter who he was.

  No matter if he turned out to be John Ripley Damien himself.

  Chapter Three

  THE OLD WOMAN muttered under her breath, a steady litany of profanities as she stumbled through the rainswept streets. Her ancient stockings sagged on her skinny calves; the shopping bags she carried dragged on the ground. She kept a sharp lookout from beneath her greasy tangle of gray hair. They were always trying to pick her up. All the do-gooders, trying to get her help, they said. A clean bed, a shower, decent food. Didn’t they know she belonged on the streets? She could find all the food she needed in the overflowing garbage cans, and other treasures, besides. This was California; it was warm. She didn’t need a bed and a blanket; she didn’t need a shower; she didn’t need medicine. She’d had enough of medicine in the years when her family had put her in that hospital. Once they’d let her out, put her in that halfway house, she’d stopped taking the pills. Hidden them, then thrown them out. She didn’t need them. They stopped the voices in her head, the voices she needed to hear. The voices of God and the angels.

  Telling her to kill the evil ones.

  She glanced down into the contents of her shopping bag. The blood was beginning to soak through—she should have used plastic instead of paper. She chuckled to herself, then began to sing, a soft, off-key nursery rhyme.

  Jack the Ripper’s dead

  And lying on his bed.

  He cut his throat

  With sunlight soap.

  Jack the Ripper’s dead.

  LIZZIE WAS LATE to work, deliberately so, rushing in at the last minute, her thick hair twisted up behind her head, her regulation black pants and white shirt damp from the rain as she sped through the kitchens at the Pink Pelican. She knew they were watching her. The television news teams had picked up Damien’s articles, and everyone, everyone, knew of her connection to the ghastly murders.

  “I didn’t know if you were coming in today,” Courtland said, watching her warily as Lizzie skidded up to the waitress station.

  “Why shouldn’t I? I need the money,” she said, tying the white apron around her narrow waist.

  “Not making enough with your masks, Lizzie?” Julianne, yet another aspiring actress, sidled up to her. “I thought you had a steady customer.”

  “Bitch,” Courtland said promptly, before Lizzie could reply.

  “Takes one to know one,” Julianne said, with her customary lack of wit, swaying off toward a table filled with well-dressed customers.

  The two women watched her go. “Damnation,” Courtland said, pushing her own silver-blond hair away from her ridiculously beautiful face. “She always gets the best tables. Don’t pay her any attention, Lizzie. She’s just jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Lizzie echoed, aghast. “Of what?”

  “You and the Ripper. You know this town—any publicity is good publicity. She’d give her right arm to have some connection to our local killer.”

  “She might just do that,” Lizzie said, staring after Julianne’s lush figure. Her three customers had turned to stare at Lizzie, fascination on their bland, handsome faces. “Oh, God, she must be telling them about me.”

  “Honey, your picture is in every newspaper and on every television channel in the Los Angeles area. There’s no way you can be anonymous. If I were you, I’d go home and hide.”

  “I told you, I need the money. Courtland, I don’t suppose you—”

  “Flat broke, darling. I really wish I could help. For what it’s worth, I don’t sense that you’re in any particular danger. I read your tarot last night, and I get the feeling you have a protector. Someone who’ll watch over you, keep you safe.”

  “I only hope you’re right,” Lizzie said, controlling the urge
to glance over her shoulder. “I’m just not certain I want to stake my life on it.”

  Courtland put her perfectly manicured hand on her friend’s arm. “You’ll be safe, Lizzie. You trust me, don’t you? There’s death all around, but it doesn’t extend to you. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and I’ll do a reading for you? You can see with your own eyes that you’re going to be all right.”

  “I don’t know enough about it. I’ll just take your word for it,” Lizzie said politely. She was tolerant of her friend’s occult interests, but she didn’t believe in any of it.

  “Do that,” Courtland said cheerfully. “In the meantime, you can take the next table.”

  Lizzie followed her gaze to two middle-aged ladies who probably wouldn’t tip well. “You’re all heart,” she said wryly, and Courtland’s laugh followed her.

  DAMIEN WOKE UP with a hangover. Not from the tequila—he actually hadn’t allowed himself to drink that much. Exhaustion was killing him.

  Since the nightmares had started, the vivid, horrifying visions that tormented him, he’d avoided sleep. Only when his body demanded rest would he catnap, usually for no more than an hour at a time, just enough to keep going. Just enough to keep the monsters at bay.

  He didn’t bother washing out the coffeepot before he started brewing fresh. He leaned against the counter, staring blearily at the slowly dripping black liquid, trying to jerk his brain into some kind of order. He had that feeling again. That horrible, lost feeling that something hideous had happened and he could have stopped it.

  He should have gotten used to it by now. It had started months ago, maybe even two years ago, long before the first Ripper murder. It had started the night Ashanti Mizrak, born Betty Brinston, had died and he hadn’t done anything to save her.

  He waited until the pot held a couple of inches of coffee, then pulled the decanter away and poured himself a full mug, ignoring the sizzling steam as the coffee continued to splash down onto the burner. He didn’t bother with milk or sugar—the sugar was full of ants, and the milk was rancid. He simply poured half of the scalding stuff down his throat, shuddering.