Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  Jules tossed her floor-length apron into the hamper near the back door of 101’s huge kitchen and snatched her purse from its locker. It had been a long night, and her feet ached, but the tips had been good. She might actually have enough for her rent this month, along with a Costco-size box of ramen noodles.

  Sometimes she thought if it weren’t for the meals she boxed up here at 101—steaks that hadn’t been cooked perfectly, a dressed salad that was supposed to have its vinaigrette on the side, a piece of salmon that was “just too dry”—she might just starve. She turned on her cell phone and headed out, passing several waitresses, the sous-chef, and a line cook having a final cigarette in the damp night air.

  Making her way to her car, she listened to her messages and saw that Rhonda Hammersley had called just before five. “Ms. Farentino,” her message said, “we’re offering you the position at Blue Rock Academy according to the terms discussed with Reverend Lynch this afternoon. Please call me back and let me know that you’ll accept. You can reach me on my cell till eleven-thirty tonight. Otherwise you can leave a message. Thank you.”

  Jules was floored.

  It was really going to happen; she was being hired. Suddenly her palms were sweaty, and she wondered if she could pull off her plan.

  She replayed the message, and then, looking at her watch, noting that it was already eleven-twenty, she placed the call.

  Rhonda Hammersley picked up on the second ring.

  “This is Julia Farentino. I got your message and, yes, I accept. Thanks!”

  “Good!” Hammersley sounded genuinely pleased. Within minutes, the deal was done, at least preliminarily.

  Jules was to drive down to the school by the end of the week, meet with Lynch, and sign all the appropriate documents. She’d have a few days to settle into quarters and meet the staff and students before starting work the following Monday.

  Jules did an about-face, walking back into the restaurant where she found Tony, the manager, in his small office. She let him know that she needed some time off for a “family emergency” but didn’t elaborate. Tony gave her the what-are-we-gonna-do-without-you? routine, but she worked it out with Dora, another waitress, who wanted more hours. Dora would be willing to cover her shifts for the next few weeks.

  Anticipation fluttered in her chest as she drove home. By the end of the week, she would see Shay. She only hoped that her sister wouldn’t give her up and ruin the entire ruse.

  Nona checked her watch. Twelve fifty-three in the morning. She’d pretended to fall asleep earlier, waiting for her stupid new roommate to finally turn out the light. Shaylee Stillman didn’t play by the rules and refused to obey the lights-out order at eleven. She’d gotten away with it. Probably because there were some kids who had to stay up later to get all their homework done. Lights-out was the one rule that could be bent a bit, especially if you stayed awake in the name of education.

  Now the dorm was quiet aside from the soft hum of the furnace blowing warm air through the building. No one was talking in the hallway, no footsteps passed by their door on the way to the bathroom.

  She sneaked a peek at the sprinkler head. She wasn’t even certain that all of her actions were being followed, though that was the rumor. But who knew for sure? Tim Takasumi, the TA who worked with a lot of the electronic equipment for the school, had made it sound like there were cameras in the sprinkler heads in each room, but she’d never seen one, and she wasn’t sure she could trust Tim. He was beyond geeky and really bought into the whole Blue Rock Academy rah-rah routine.

  It would be just like Tim to start a rumor about hidden cameras to keep the myths about this place going. Rather than leave the program, Tim had stayed on after “graduation” and was working on some sort of accelerated college program via the Internet with the professors here. That’s what the TAs did; they stuck around. Nona figured that they were part of some kind of secret group; she’d overheard Missy Albright whispering to Eric Rolfe about a meeting late at night in some freakin’ shelter of some kind. Whatever that was.

  Not that Nona could be bothered with whatever cult was happening. She didn’t care if the kids involved were dropping acid or drinking blood. She had more important things to think about.

  Specifically, her boyfriend. No, make that her first real boyfriend. She didn’t count the creep back home who had hit her so hard he’d knocked out one of her teeth; that hadn’t been love. She knew that now. And, boy, were things heating up. She was still a few months shy of sixteen and in love!

  Her boyfriend had vowed that he loved her, that he needed her, and he knew just where to sweep his fingertips to leave her quivering. When she thought of what his lips and tongue and fingers could do, touching her in places that she’d never even dreamed about, she started melting inside. She had to close her mind to all that now. She couldn’t start breathing fast or thinking about him and what they would do, not until she’d gotten out of the dorm.

  For now, she had to concentrate.

  She’d been certain she’d be a virgin until sometime in college, if she went on to school, but all that had changed a few months ago, right after Lauren Conway disappeared. Nona had been getting noticed, and she liked it. The feelings had scared her at first, as she remembered the first time he’d kissed the crook of her neck, letting his teeth nibble and even bite her. That had scared her a little at first. But soon, quicksilver heat melted away any fears, and she’d found she’d liked it; the rougher he was, the more exciting.

  That didn’t make her a slut, did it? Or some kind of sex freak?

  Of course, it didn’t mean that she had low self-esteem or any of that psychological garbage that Dr. Williams and Reverend Lynch were always spouting. It just meant she liked life exciting. On the edge. When he stood behind her, rubbing his cock up and down her spine and buttocks while his hands massaged her breasts and he held the back of her neck in his teeth …

  Oh, God, she was going to do it! Everything!

  Until now, she’d not allowed him to penetrate her with his dick, probably because of some holdover from her “good girl” days when she’d wanted to only please her father. She didn’t want to become a “slut” or a “dirty whore” like her mother. At least, that was what her father had said. All Nona knew was that her mother had taken off when she was young, leaving her father to raise her alone, and her father had nothing but horrible things to say about her mother.

  But then, Peggy Vickers had never called or written or sent a birthday card or Christmas wishes to her only daughter. Nona knew she’d been foolish enough to think that each year would be different, that she would hear from her mom.

  Which made her think that her father was probably right.

  But she didn’t believe that there was “bad blood” running through her veins or that she’d better be careful or she’d end up a “filthy tramp just like your mother.”

  Tonight she intended to ignore all her father’s warnings. He’d sent her here, hadn’t he? When Catholic school hadn’t stopped her from sneaking out and smoking and drinking and experimenting with meth and Ecstasy and a few pills. The shoplifting had been the straw that broke her father’s back, and he’d found the means, probably borrowed from Grandma, to send his wayward daughter here.

  It was Blue Rock or foster care or juvenile detention, he’d sworn, and she’d agreed to this quasi-reform school in the sticks. Wouldn’t Daddy Dear be surprised to know how his plan had backfired? Despite all his attempts to keep his daughter a lily-white virgin, he’d sent her to Blue Rock, where she fit in with delinquents just like her.

  And she’d found the perfect boyfriend.

  Tonight, she thought, considering her all-too-burdensome virginity, she might just give in. What was she clinging to? That old Catholic rhetoric about being chaste?

  What a crock!

  In the dark, she reached under her bed, grabbing her jeans and a long-sleeved sweater. She didn’t want to bother with her bra, as it was about as far from sexy as you could get, but she s
napped it on because she didn’t want her breasts to be flopping around as she ran to the stable, where she was supposed to meet him. She could ditch the bra before they actually started making out….

  She smiled in the dark as she located her down jacket with the Blue Rock Academy logo emblazoned upon it, then silently slipped her arms through the sleeves. Wouldn’t “tough” Shaylee be surprised if she knew. Nona had read the disbelief in Shaylee’s eyes when Nona had intimated that she had a boyfriend. Shaylee thought she’d been lying.

  As if she thought it would be impossible for any boy, make that any man, to show interest in Nona.

  Just showed what an idiot her new roommate was. At the door, she checked Shaylee’s bed. She was shifting around again, always restless, but the girl didn’t wake up.

  Just before she left, Nona slipped Shaylee’s Oregon Ducks baseball cap off its hook and tucked her hair inside it. She’d done it before, using it for a disguise in case she got caught by any cameras or roving teachers. Ha-ha to Shay.

  No one would consider Nona capable of breaking the rules, least of all anyone on the staff. She had them all believing that she was buying into their regimented Christian doctrine and was a conscientious student. To that end, Nona had ended up with the dubious privilege of babysitting Shaylee Stillman, a wacko if ever there was one. It was bad enough that Nona’s mom had gone out for cigarettes and never returned, but Shaylee’s stepfather had been murdered or some such shit. No wonder she was a loner!

  God, Nona hated the new girl. Okay, she felt a little sorry for her, being the new kid on campus who people just pretended to like, but that was about it. Shaylee Stillman didn’t inspire friendship.

  Always acting so tough, with her tattoos and bad attitude. Rumor had it she was smarter than most, but Nona had yet to see it.

  In the shadowy darkness, she saw the lump that was her new roommate, head under the covers, breathing regularly, finally asleep.

  Okay, it was now or never!

  Without making a noise, Nona slipped out the door and sneaked down the dimly lit hall. Nerves thrumming, heart a wildly beating drum, afraid that at any second someone on the floor would open a door and catch her, she eased to the staircase.

  According to the dorm gossip, this was probably the route Lauren Conway had taken the night she escaped from the school. Nona was certain that was what had happened. She left and disappeared, end of story. All of the talk about her being killed, or accidentally dying, or reports of people seeing her ghost, were just hype, a means to keep everyone else in line. If she’d really died, where the hell was her body?

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Lauren had just not wanted to return home, that she was looking for a way to escape whatever problems she had in Arizona or wherever it was that she was from. All that talk about her “wanting” to be here to become a TA was a lie. No one ever came here voluntarily. So she had disappeared and was probably in Mexico somewhere with dyed hair, tropical sunshine, and a pissant job and loving it. No more studying, no more parents with all their rules, no more lame Blue Rock Academy.

  Using the beam of her wilderness flashlight, Nona slunk through the creepy basement and tried to ignore the fact that spiders and rats probably nested in the cracks and crevices. The place smelled of dust and mildew, and the constant drip from a sink near the stairs grated on her nerves.

  Cautiously, she found the window she’d learned didn’t latch. Supposedly it had been fixed months ago, but the repairs had been half-assed, and it hadn’t taken long for one of the students to jimmy it loose again. Probably that awful Crystal Ricci girl with the tail of a dragon tattooed around her neck. Oh, yeah, like that was attractive! What a lowlife.

  The trunk that people had used as a step had been removed, but nearby, just around the corner, was an old writing desk that had been discarded. It took no effort to move the small table and climb atop. With the tiny screwdriver that was hidden in a niche over the windowsill, she quickly popped the faulty lock and—voilà—the window creaked open.

  Cold air immediately rushed inside, the snap of winter invading the musty basement as Nona crammed her flashlight into the pocket of her jacket. With gritted teeth, she gripped the sill, stuck her feet out, and propelled herself through the window to freedom.

  Well, relative freedom.

  Once outside, she crept over the deep, crusted snow to the path. From there she scurried ahead, keeping to the shadows, though the moon and stars were already cloaked with a thick layer of clouds. More snow was predicted, and she was sick to death of it.

  She reached into her inside pocket for her cell phone, the one she’d gotten on the Blue Rock black market. Each week, when the van went into town for supplies, a few of the TAs were allowed to go on the shopping spree, and one of them was running a banner business in contraband. She’d ordered and received one of those prepaid cell phones, and it was a lifesaver.

  Except it wasn’t in her pocket.

  But it had to be. She was always so careful with it. If it was ever found, she’d be in big, big trouble. She patted down each of her pockets, then turned them inside out. Damn! It must’ve fallen out of her pocket, like it nearly had on the way to the barns when she was running to catch up with her friends.

  Panic crawled through her guts. She couldn’t lose it. She looked back at the path she’d just taken, searching for the slim phone, but didn’t spy any small black rectangle on the snow. Nothing. Not even when she swept the beam of her flashlight quickly along the edge of the bushes where she’d hidden.

  So … if it had fallen out inside, probably as she’d pushed her way through the window, she’d find it when she returned. Right?

  She tried to calm down.

  It would be okay.

  And if it was found, it couldn’t be traced to her, not unless the school was into fingerprinting.

  It wasn’t a problem.

  Just an inconvenience.

  And it was worth it.

  Anything was.

  As long as she could be with him.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Leader’s breath shuddered in the cold night air, disturbing the snowflakes that were falling steadily. He couldn’t sleep, was too keyed up. There was a snap in the air, a tension that fired his nerves.

  Outwardly, everything appeared as it always had.

  Serene. Peaceful.

  But a change was coming.

  He would see to it.

  His passion would guide him.

  If he didn’t allow it to rule him. That was the trick. Passion was a double-edged sword. Especially when it came to women.

  Shaylee Stillman’s face came to mind as he turned his gaze to the dorms and the window of her room. She was the challenge, the one he wanted. He would love to tame the mutiny he saw rising in her big hazel eyes, love to let his fingers graze the white, white skin of her side to linger at her waist. He’d surround it with a hand, his thumb poised right above her pubis, his fingers pressing hot near her spine. Making her hot inside. Making her wet.

  He licked his lips and told himself to be patient. Careful.

  His weakness was sex.

  Always had been.

  It had started with his mother, he knew now. She’d caught him with his tutor, a high school girl who had the most incredible breasts he’d ever glimpsed. Secretly, from his upstairs window, he’d watched her sunbathe in her backyard.

  Lissa Harvey.

  She’d oftentimes taken off her bikini top while the sun’s rays had been the most intense and caressed her skin, causing sweat to collect. Dark nipples had pointed upward at the sky. Perfectly round. Making him hard. Chocolate disks that were larger than he had expected. God, how he’d wanted to suckle and lick and bite at them.

  Better yet, sometimes, when she was alone and the family minivan wasn’t in the drive, she’d slip her hand under her polka-dot bottoms and, closing her eyes, pleasured herself while baking in the warm summer sun.

  He’d touched himself as well, timing h
is orgasm with hers. And he had fantasized about her in those sultry summer nights when no breeze had stirred the curtains and wasps, trapped inside, had beaten themselves to death on the windows.

  She’d turned bronze over the summer, her nipples seeming to fade as her breasts darkened. She’d been a scholar, without a boyfriend, a college-bound student with long dark hair who understood math, algebra in particular.

  He hadn’t cared about school at the time, and his mother had been worried, hiring Lissa in late July before she took off for university.

  That’s when the affair had started.

  In the musty basement with its low ceiling and tiny windows. On a futon reserved for guests, in front of the cold hearth of an unused fireplace with books and notes spread over the coffee table, they’d first kissed. First touched. First made love.

  It had been fast.

  Embarrassingly so.

  But Lissa had been patient.

  Intent on teaching as well as learning.

  It hadn’t hurt that he was good-looking, physically mature for his age, developing muscles and shaving before most of the boys in his class. They’d explored every orifice, tried new positions, worked on titillating and turning on. There in the musty old basement, on the futon his grandparents slept on when they’d visited.

  And then she’d left.

  Gone off to college.

  Never written, never called.

  Nor had she returned one phone message.

  It was as if she’d erased him from her life.

  The bitch.

  His blood boiled as he thought of her, but then again, she’d gotten hers, hadn’t she? Been found out fucking her professor, a married man with two small children. And her next lover, an engineering student, had one day opened his mail to find photos of Lissa in a compromising position with a kid. Did he realize she could be jailed for what she’d done with a minor?

  The engineering student left her and married someone else. The professor had been replaced, and Lissa, poor, poor Lissa, had been exposed for the Jezebel she was. She lost her scholarship and was forced to return home, to attend the local junior college.