He let his mind drift back to Tracy. The black-haired beauty more than likely had stayed over with Kyle, the new boyfriend of three weeks. After considering how late it had gotten, he wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble to wait for Tracy to come home. Bearing in mind what he knew about Tracy, the slut would probably not crawl through the door until morning.
Since that feeling had already started to wash over him, he knew he was getting itchy. That urge to dominate, to control every part of the act was beginning to snap at the outer banks and take hold as it usually did. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep the urge at bay.
That initial fear he always saw in the eyes of his victims kept creeping into his brain. He recognized it for what it was. The pure joy of the hunt, to subdue, to conquer, to watch the last breath go out of their bodies as they slowly took the final gulp of air they would ever take.
Now, he desperately wanted two at the same time in the same place. He hadn’t done two since… It had been a very long time.
That probably meant he was out of practice on that score. He hashed that out and began to do his mental checklist of the townhome’s layout. He hoped to Christ he wasn’t getting it confused with the one four streets over on Sedgwick Way, the one with the petite little redhead. At some point, he intended to get around to her. That thought had him glancing across to the similar design and shape of the townhouse itself. It struck him then. Both addresses had a festive front door decoration with the same shade of trim. Both had a white mailbox.
Just because he’d gone through so many homes didn’t mean he could keep them all straight. Without his notebook handy, which he used to jot down specific details, he would have to wing it tonight.
How could he have been in such a hurry that he’d gone off without bringing what he considered his bible along with him? Why did he go to such great lengths to keep painstaking facts and figures about his victims if he went spacey and left it behind? How could he maintain the source of all his hard effort if he didn’t keep the book with him at all times?
For several minutes, he fretted over it and wished he had his notes. But wishing didn’t do him any good at the moment. He’d have to remedy that for next time. Bitching about it now didn’t help while he stood in the dark on a street corner.
How is it he remembered how much money each woman had in her individual checking and savings accounts but not whether he had the correct house? Maybe he was losing his touch. It wasn’t like him to lose focus. He considered that and thought about calling it a night.
He tried to get his mind back on track by going over each woman’s stats, each bedroom, the placement of the furniture, the insides of their closets, their personal belongings. Keeping to the finite details helped the process once he got inside.
But then the difference in locations suddenly came to him, like a fog lifted. The redhead’s townhome on Sedgwick Way didn’t have a hot tub. Confident he had the right address now, he forced his attention back to his target.
Of the three roomies, Julie was the one overdrawn at the bank. He considered that fact for a moment longer and decided he was probably doing poor Julie a favor by putting an end to the financial struggle she’d been having for the past six months.
He would take care of her monetary woes tonight—along with a few other things he considered essential. He certainly had that urge to take it up a notch. The timing seemed right. The stars had lined up just so. But the idea of harmony converging and him being a part of that made him chuckle. He was more into delivering chaos bordering hell than anything harmonic. Besides, the same old thing became boring after so many years.
When Tracy’s bright yellow bug pulled into the driveway, a grin spread across his face. Oh yes. When opportunity presented itself a man would have to be an idiot not to kick in the door. Tonight, he would give the media a little something special to put on the front page of their newspapers.
As always, he had the option of adding a different spice to the punch. It would make for an interesting night.
There was no doubt about it. Julie Freeman’s life had taken a turn for the better. For the first time in months, she could almost see the light at the end of a dark tunnel. Okay, so maybe she was still having a few money problems. But she was employed now. She’d been trying to catch up on her bills. And she couldn’t believe her luck in the roommate department. She’d really hit the jackpot when she’d found Erica and Tracy. It wasn’t just the hot tub either, although who in their right mind would turn down a nice soak on a rare starlit summer evening like tonight? Certainly Julie Freeman recognized a good thing. Maybe it was all those years she’d struggled to catch a break back in her native Los Angeles that had her appreciating things now.
No more worries. Things were definitely looking up.
With her eyes closed, Julie slid farther down into the bubbling froth of the heated water. She let the stress of the day fade away. Unwinding, she moved her shoulders up and down and let her head fall back on the cement lip of the pool.
After she’d finally made the decision to relocate from the crowded, smog-infested confines of her hometown to the much friendlier city of Seattle, she’d managed to nail down a customer service job. It wasn’t much but it had taken her almost nine tough months to find anything that paid more than minimum wage.
Since last January there was no denying she’d had a tough time of it. But after all that, she’d found a position that at least paid her enough to cover the bills. Finding an affordable place to live had been an equally challenging ordeal. For the first three months in Seattle, she’d lived out of her car. But now she had two kickass roommates she’d found on Craigslist.
Erica wasn’t even around all that much and when she was here in town, she spent much of her time with her long-time boyfriend. Same with Tracy, only Tracy went through men pretty fast. Sometimes it was like a revolving door and Julie had a difficult time keeping up with all of the men Tracy brought around. For the past few weeks it had been Kyle, a guy who couldn’t string two sentences together without talking about himself.
At the rustle of leaves in the alleyway, Julie’s eyes popped open. She brought her head up to scan the darkness beyond the pool lights. Except for the soft sway of the row of tall evergreens surrounding the backyard, she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
She settled back down in the water. It was silly to be this jumpy. But lately, no matter what she did, Julie couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that someone had been watching her. For the past couple of weeks she had the nagging suspicion someone followed along behind her wherever she went. Just the other day while she’d picked out vegetables at the marketplace, she’d felt a man standing way too close. And she knew how crazy that sounded. But when she’d gotten home, she’d even thought someone had been inside her bedroom. Her earrings were out of place. Each pair had been lined up in a different but neatly arranged way. Not the messy, unorganized place on the nightstand where she’d left them, but an almost too tidy lineup. Which was ridiculous she thought now, even silly since she’d only been living in Seattle a short time, not long enough to make that many acquaintances. Except for the people she worked with on a daily basis, no one even knew where she lived.
At the sound of a car engine, Julie tilted her head to listen, once again, on alert. But the noise sounded like Tracy’s VW bug pulling to a stop in the driveway. Julie relaxed again, letting the bubbles and the foam relax her body.
A few minutes later, Julie heard the sliding glass door open and Tracy joined her outside. She popped her head up to see Tracy carrying two glasses of white wine, one in each hand.
Julie watched as Tracy handed a goblet out to her and leaned over the steamy tub. “Here you go. Thought you might need a nightcap.”
“Thanks. Aren’t you getting in?”
“Nope, I’m having this glass of wine and heading off to bed. Tonight, I plan to get my eight hours of beauty sleep. I don’t have to be at work on Fridays until ten o’clock. Besides, I’ve decided Kyle is a
major bore. I’m sending him a text in the morning and dumping his ass.”
Julie grinned. “What gave it away?”
“He spent the entire evening tonight talking about how he wanted to move to Alaska. Alaska, Julie. I’m not moving to Alaska.”
“I should think not. You’ve only known the guy three weeks.”
“Well. Yeah. But I just spent the entire evening with a freaking windbag who wants to live in a cabin in the woods. That’s his life’s desire. Can you imagine me living in some shack in the woods?”
Julie snickered and shook her head. “That’s a deal breaker all right. Who do you have lined up?” Julie knew Tracy and knew her roommate would always have a backup. Tracy had to have a guy waiting in the wings or at least somewhere on her radar to even consider breaking up with a man this close to Friday night and the weekend.
“Oh Alaska is a deal breaker all right,” Tracy sang back in agreement while the two women tapped their glasses in complete unity. “Besides, there’s this hot-looking UPS guy who keeps asking me out. I’ve decided to let him.”
When Tracy began to shimmy out of her jeans, Julie pointed out, “I thought you weren’t coming in.”
She shrugged. “I’ve decided life is too short. I can always sleep. I’m gonna soak for a while and then swim a couple of laps. Then I’m texting that hunky UPS man and asking him out for happy hour tomorrow night.”
By this time Frank had walked to the alleyway and positioned himself where he could watch Julie and Tracy in the backyard spa. But the adrenaline was already beginning to race through him. It took another twenty minutes before the two women finally decided to crawl out of the water to go inside.
When they moved to the sliding glass door, Frank took a pair of gloves from his back pocket and slapped them on. He undid the latch on the gate to move in closer all the while keeping his eyes on the back door. He crept closer, so close that he could pick up bits and pieces of their ongoing convo.
Tracy came back outside to pick up her jeans which she’d left draped on the chair. That made her the last one inside. Frank listened for the lock to flick into place. The women were so deep in conversation that Tracy hadn’t bothered to flip the catch on the sliding glass door.
Frank shook his head, grinning. Some nights it wasn’t even a challenge. It didn’t appear Julie or Tracy had caught the evening news. Nor did either of the women seem overly concerned about Seattle’s latest serial killer.
He had to wait another fifteen minutes before he saw the lights go out in Julie’s bedroom. She would be first, he decided. It took another ten minutes for Tracy’s bedroom to go dark.
From that point, Frank inched open the unlocked patio door and walked into blackness. Since his eyes had already adjusted to the dark while in a holding pattern outside, he set his bag down on the floor, unzipped it. He removed the penlight dangling from his neck and stuffed it down inside the bag. He took off his running shoes and socks first. His shirt came off next, then his jeans. Once he’d stripped down to skin, he reached for his larger flashlight. Searching his bag, he gathered up the pre-cut nylon ropes he’d brought, pulled out his mask and grabbed the seven-inch knife.
With the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson he’d stolen last winter, he had his hands full. But not for long. He slipped the fabric of the mask over his head, adjusted the eyeholes so he could see, and headed down the hall to the bedrooms.
He reached Julie’s room first and turned the knob. Once he saw her begin to stir, he rushed over to the side of the bed to cover her mouth with his hand.
“Hello, Julie. Shhh, now don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t hurt you as long as you do what I say, okay? Nod if you understand me.”
Julie blinked at the brown eyes behind the mask. Realization dawned that he was naked and that meant he was here for only one thing.
Julie nodded.
He crawled on top of the bed so he could roll Julie over onto her stomach. He put the nine-mil down while he began to bind her hands and feet with the nylon rope. Once that was done, he went to the dresser, took a pair of her panties out, balled them up, and stuffed them into her mouth.
“Stay right there, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a flash. Don’t you move now, hear?”
He picked up the pistol from the bed and went next door to Tracy’s room knowing Julie would do exactly what he told her to do.
When he stepped into Tracy’s personal space he found her snoring softly. As he tried to straddle her though to tie her hands, it proved to be more difficult. Tracy’s arm came up swinging. The punch she threw at him barely missed his nose. It pissed him off. He flipped her over on her stomach, jerked her hair and pulled backward. “Listen to me, bitch. You do that again and I’ll make you pay. Do you understand?” Frank yelled as he tugged harder on her hair, making her head bob up and down in response.
“Get off me you stupid jerk!” Tracy screamed. With that, she came out of her daze doing her best to buck and fight back as best she could with her entire body.
Fuck this, Frank decided. He turned her over onto her back—picked up the gun and used it to bash her in the face—hard. Blood sprayed his hands, which infuriated him. When Tracy fell back, he grappled with her hands, secured them as tightly as he could. When she kicked out with her legs, he whacked her across one knee, then the other, hard enough that he heard bone crack.
He took another length of rope, wrapped it around her throat. With everything he had, he pulled tighter until she stopped struggling. He flipped her to her stomach. Unbridled rage had him entering her from the rear.
He’d told the bitch she would pay.
And Frank De Palo always kept his word.
Vivid images came to Josh in sleep. Deep red for all the blood. The black and brown gore was almost too much to bear. He saw tissue and flesh separating from bone as the man kept up a brutal attack with precision blows to the face and skull.
It didn’t matter because even in sleep, Josh knew the woman was already dead. She’d been strangled by a piece of white nylon cord the killer had brought with him. Then to be on the safe side, he’d used the gun.
A voice inside his head kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. So much that Josh’s head pounded with a steady roar. From another room Josh could make out the violence just beginning to ramp up there.
Through the fog of sleep Josh could see the deadly brown eyes of a madman—make out the rage in them as fury pumped through each slash of the knife—as easily as gasoline flowed through a hose. Because of that it didn’t take long for the other bedroom to become just as bloody as the first, just as bad as the one he’d witnessed as if he’d been right there.
Josh could almost feel each blow as the defenseless, tied-up woman lay beaten to a pulp. He’d switched weapons. Again. From somewhere the killer had picked up a softball bat. The aluminum had done its damage. Her skull appeared crushed while her assailant kept up the brutal pace shattering bone after bone throughout her body.
Even in slumber, Josh shuddered. He could smell the iron as the woman’s blood spilled and spattered the walls. He recognized the odor of death, the wrath of a truly evil man.
The scene was so intense that Kiya had to leap into his line of vision as a warning, much like she had done months earlier when she’d showed him his current path. That had been after he’d gone through the cleansing ritual at The Painted Crow. In his mind he went back to that night when the wolf had shown him the faces and smells of evil.
But Kiya had missed the mark.
This was so much worse than Josh had seen that night. Because what he’d seen then in his vision hadn’t seemed real. But with so much carnage now, so much blood to deal with, so many broken bones…
“The bones…the bones will tell,” mumbled Josh, over and over again as he slept.
Skye watched Josh’s fitful movements, let them play out until he settled. She curled into him, wrapped her arms as best she could around his body. For some time he lay there shaking, trembling
. Powerful dreams, she knew, could do that—and more—if you let them.
Every now and again, the nightmares from when she was twelve still wanted to creep in and take hold. Even though that feeling of helplessness had lessened, she could relate to Josh’s torment.
She would try to walk him through it tomorrow. But as she tried to close her eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder what his words had meant. Questions started humming through her head as sleep eluded her.
How could bones tell a gamer anything, even if he was ten percent wolf? Were he and Kiya onto some scent that only they could detect? And more importantly, why had she been excluded from the hunt? After everything she’d done, after everything she’d endured, why had the bonding between Kiya and Josh been stronger between the two of them than it ever had been with her?
Because for her, over the last couple of weeks, her visions had completely dried up. Instead, Josh was now the one who seemed troubled by images he couldn’t stop from coming. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. For the first time since she was thirteen, there were no voices inside her head keeping her up nights, no vivid colors bombarding her brain.
After all, Kiya was her spirit guide. So why had Skye suddenly been left out of it all? On some level, it hurt to be left out. On another, she could sleep without fears or disturbing images coming to her at all hours. That had to be the major bonus.
Maybe it was this shared life she now had with Josh. Maybe it was someone looking out for her. There were a hundred maybes, she decided as she tried to close her eyes and blank her mind, let sleep overtake her thoughts.
But no matter what spin she put on all of it, it still bothered her. So much that she wasn’t sure how long she could handle the feeling of being left out.
The ringing phone beside the bed pulled Josh out of images he couldn’t shake. Even as he rolled to his side to grab for the noisy device, he knew who was on the other end and why they were calling.
Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell Page 6
