Fragile

by Shiloh Walker

“Be careful. Love you.”

  A delighted thrill pulsed through her, and a grin spread across her face. “I love you, too.” Then she disconnected and tossed the phone onto the console.

  He loves me.

  That sexy, smart, considerate guy loved her.

  THE drive took a good forty-five minutes. As she turned down her street, she saw Danielle’s car in her driveway. She glanced longingly toward her house, thought of a glass of wine.

  But the nagging reminder of common sense sent her across the street instead. Inside the lined leather of her boots, her toes were frozen. As she rang Danielle’s doorbell, she wiggled them and waited.

  A minute passed, and no answer. She rang the doorbell again and glanced back at Danielle’s car. It sat there, covered with a fine blanket of snow. Devon glanced down the street. Nolan and Shara DeVille lived next to Danielle, and they usually got home about the time Danielle did. No snow blanketed their cars; they were still too warm for the flakes do anything but melt as they landed.

  A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold raced down Devon’s spine. Slowly, she backed away one step, then another. Paranoia at it’s finest, she thought as she reached for her cell phone.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she glanced toward one of the windows. It was Danielle’s bedroom. The lights were on, and Devon stared as the curtains fluttered. Just a slight movement, but enough to let light spill out through the pane of glass and let Devon see a swath of red: a bloody handprint, the fingers smeared.

  Her throat closed up on her. The skin on the back of her neck started to crawl. There was a quiet snick, and she glanced at the front door, watched as it opened to reveal Danielle.

  But she wasn’t alone. Curtis Wilder stood behind her, holding the woman upright as he smiled at Devon. Danielle’s face was battered, covered with blood, and her eyes were wide and terrified. Curtis held a gun in his hand, the muzzle pressed to Danielle’s temple. “Come on in, Devon. You’re crashing the party, but that’s fine.”

  Icy fear made her movements stiff, jerky; she felt like a damn marionette as she took one step toward the porch, followed by another. She tried to keep the phone in her hand hidden, but Curtis saw it. He stroked Danielle’s face with the gun and said, “Drop it, bitch. Otherwise, I’ll drop her.”

  Her voice shook as Devon said, “You don’t want to hurt her. She isn’t the one who took your son away.”

  A queer light lit his eyes. “No. That was you. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hurt her.” He shoved Danielle away from him, off to the side like she was just so much trash, and she collapsed, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

  Leveling the gun at Devon, he said again, “Drop the phone.” When she hesitated, he shrugged, shifted his aim to Danielle. “Me and your pretty friend here had a lot of fun. I’ve been here with her all day. She could probably use a doctor.” A cold smile curled his lips, and he added, “Actually, I’m pretty damn convinced she could use a doctor. But if you don’t drop that phone, she isn’t going to need one. Corpses don’t need much more than burying.”

  She dropped the phone, and it hit the ground.

  Headlights splashed beams of light across the yard, and hope, for two seconds, leaped to life. Two seconds, because she watched as Curtis shifted, lowering the gun so that the driver of the car would see nothing more than a man in the door and Devon on the front porch.

  Too far away to see what Devon saw.

  He’d kill Danielle without blinking an eye. And then he’d come after Devon. Whether he got her tonight or not, the man didn’t care. He’d just keeping coming until he did.

  “Come inside and join us, Devon.”

  On stiff legs, she stepped inside, edging past him, trying not to touch him. The door banged shut. Something beeped off to the side, and she turned her head, watched with dread as Curtis reset the alarm system.

  He smiled. “Nice system. Took a few minutes to get around it, but I managed. Not quite as good as the one your boyfriend did at your place.”

  That one small hope died, even as it tried to flare to life.

  As he reached out to stroke the muzzle of the gun down her cheek, she cringed away. Devon sank her teeth into her lip to keep from whimpering as he shifted and grabbed a fistful of her hair in his free hand, yanking.

  A soft, pitiful moan escaped Danielle’s lips. Devon watched as Danielle forced her hands underneath her body, trying to force herself upright, but she collapsed back onto the floor. Her bright green eyes were hardly visible because of the bruising and swelling. Her lip was split open, nearly twice the normal size.

  Around her neck there was a series of dark, splotchy marks—a necklace of bruises. The bastard had choked her. Fury and terror simmered inside Devon’s belly, and she jerked away from him, but he wouldn’t let go. His hand tightened on the knot of the hair, and then Curtis shoved her, sent her sprawling onto the floor.

  She slammed out her hands just in time and shoved to her feet. He let her, but the second she was standing, he backhanded her. Years and years of self-defense classes sprang into place, and she lifted an arm, trying to block him. All it did was make him laugh as he countered.

  He struck again, catching her in the mouth. The metallic taste of blood hit her tongue. She went flying backward, crashing into a wooden table. Devon might have screamed. Pain exploded through her, and there were a couple of terrified seconds when she couldn’t get her arms and legs to move.

  The sound of his footsteps, soft, almost silent, sent adrenaline rushing through her, numbing the pain and lending her the desperate energy to move. Shoving to her hands and knees, she spied something from the corner of her eye: a bookend, red, shaped like a heart, and heavy. Closing her hand around it, Devon lurched to her feet as Curtis drew near. He glanced at the bookend and smirked. “You planning on hitting me with that, bitch?”

  Sidling away, she fought to keep some distance between them. “What do you want?”

  He shrugged. It was a careless, negligent move, but it didn’t match the hot fury that lit his eyes. “I want nosy little bitches like you to leave me and my boy alone. How I raise him is my business.” He jabbed a thumb toward his chest.

  “And you think hurting me is going to help get him back?”

  Curtis sneered. “They aren’t going to give him back. You think I’m stupid? That bitch lawyer did a good job seeing to that. And my son? That whiny little prick ran his mouth the minute he had a chance.”

  “Whiny little prick.”

  “If that’s how you feel about Tim, then what does it matter if he doesn’t live with you?” As she spoke, she backed her way along the hallway, circling away from Danielle. In the back of her mind, she had some dim hope that Danielle could manage to call for help, but it was a very dim one. Devon had seen people beaten nearly to death before, and Danielle was pretty close to that point.

  In a silky voice, Curtis replied, “Because he’s mine, bitch. My kid, mine to do whatever in the hell I want to. Try to raise him to be a real man, and all he does is sit and write that stupid poetry shit or ridiculous stories. Finally shows a little bit of spine, defends himself, and what happens? Gets arrested for assault, and we get saddled with you. Punk can’t do jack shit right.”

  By this time, she’d sidestepped her way to the stairs; she could go up, or into the kitchen. Danielle’s kitchen was a cook’s dream, big island, lots of shiny pots, pans—and lots of shiny knives. Her mind rejected that outright. Even if she could manage to get her hands on a knife, he’d get it away from her.

  She shifted toward the stairs instead, backing her way up one at a time. “So what are you going to do?” she demanded, her voice rising a little. She hated the panicked, terrified sound of it, but it was taking everything she had just to keep from bolting. Running blindly from a guy like Curtis seemed like a dumb thing to do. Screw false bravado; he already knew she was scared, anyway.

  “You and me, we’re going to have a little party. I’m going to show you what women a
re good for, going to teach you not to interfere with a man and his kid.”

  Devon reached the landing and started to circle around, through the bathroom, through the connecting door to Danielle’s bedroom. “And when you’re done? You plan on killing me? Don’t you think people will check out my cases and work and find you?”

  He smirked. “They already know about me, bitch. That lawyer saw to that, with her fucking background checks. But they’ll come looking for a man that ain’t around any longer. I disappeared once. I can do it again.”

  “You weren’t wanted for murder last time. Cops tend to look for people they suspect of murder.”

  Curtis smiled. “They’ll have a hard time convicting me of murder if they can’t find me . . . or you. When I’m done with you, your own mama won’t recognize you—and I plan on putting you someplace where nobody will ever find you.”

  Oh, God.

  Adrenaline-fueled panic tried to take over, and Devon battled it back through sheer will. She’d been hurt before and lived through it. She’d been younger, stupider, but the man who had hurt her when she was a child wasn’t the same make as the guy in front of her.

  Both of them had been predators—that was a certain fact—but Curtis wasn’t just a predator. He was a killer. And if she didn’t do something—

  He echoed her every move, still watching her with that amused smile on his lips. “Are you going to scream? Or maybe I should ask if you’ll try. Your friend tried to scream for nearly half the day before she finally gave up. Every time she opened that mouth to scream, she paid for it.”

  Her mouth was trembling; Devon could feel herself quivering as the terror inside her worked to find some release. Yeah, she could just imagine Curtis going to work on Danielle every time she tried to call for help. The memory of her friend’s battered, bruised face and the knowledge of what he planned on doing to both of them finally gave Devon the courage to move.

  He planned on killing her anyway; trying to get away now, what was that going to cost her?

  Letting the tears flood her eyes, she whimpered, “Please don’t hurt me. I swear, I just thought I was doing what was best . . .”

  “Oh, so you’re going to try begging, huh?” He rolled his eyes, distracted just a second by her tears. She swung out, fast and hard. Curtis saw her swinging, but this time, he didn’t react quickly enough. She managed to hit him on the temple with the sharp corner of the bookend. Without waiting to see if she’d done him a lick of damage, she whirled around, running for the stairs.

  She reached the bottom before he caught her.

  He pounced, taking her to the ground under him, and he flipped her over like she was a rag doll. A big, mean hand closed around her neck when she opened her mouth to scream, closing down, cutting her air off before she managed a strangled, “Hel—”

  “Stupid little bitch,” he whispered, leaning down and putting his face into hers. Blood trickled from his temple to splash hot onto her face. “I’m going to make you hurt for that.”

  He squeezed and squeezed, and Devon clawed and tore at his fingers, but his grip was merciless. Darkness danced in around her, and as she swayed closer and closer into unconsciousness, she heard the sound of cloth ripping.

  LUKE lowered the phone back into its cradle with a softly muttered curse. Devon wasn’t answering her cell phone. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember Danielle’s number, didn’t even know that he’d ever known it.

  Shooting a glance at the clock readout on the phone, he started to stand up and get back to work. A few more charts to finish up, and he’d be out of here.

  Half a heartbeat later, he stopped. He was probably going to end up looking like an idiot, and Devon would no doubt would be irritated.

  But that didn’t keep him from calling the police.

  CRUEL fingers pinched her through the thin silk of her bra. Devon shrank back in revulsion and wished he’d just kept on strangling her, instead of letting her get enough air so she woke up.

  Now he had a piece of duct tape over her mouth, and she had to fight the urge to puke as he tore her skirt off. “You’re a skinny little bitch. That man you got sniffing around after you, he either likes them skinny as a damn stick, or you give a damn good blow job.” Dipping his head, Curtis pressed his mouth to her cheek and licked her. “You give a good blow, bitch? You want to show me? Maybe if I like it enough, I won’t hurt you too bad for hitting me.”

  She gagged, swallowed. Behind the makeshift gag, if she puked, she’d choke. Saliva pooled in her mouth, and she couldn’t swallow fast enough, but every time she did, the urge to vomit got stronger and stronger.

  Curtis lifted his head and looked at her face. Her disgust and fear must have shown, because he laughed as he shoved a hand between her thighs. “I’ll take that as a no. Eh, it’s okay. Don’t really want to take that tape off, because if I do, and you try to scream . . .” He smiled and stroked his fingers across the abraded, tender skin at her neck. “I’d hate for you to faint again on me. I want to see your face as I—”

  In lieu of finishing the sentence, he shoved a hand between her thighs, fingers rough and cruel.

  Moaning in her throat, she averted her head. From where they lay in the hallway, Devon could see Danielle; he’d gagged her, as well. Must have done it when Devon passed out. The other woman’s eyes were still closed, her hands and feet bound together with the same duct tape that had been used to cover both of their mouths.

  In defeat, Devon closed her own eyes.

  Luke . . .

  “Look at me, bitch.” His fingers cupped her chin and jerked her face around to meet his, but Devon didn’t open her eyes.

  She didn’t want to see him as he . . . as he . . . He shoved up, fisted a hand in her hair, hauling her off the floor. “Look at me, fucking whore.”

  When she ignored his second, and third, and fourth order, he shoved her against the wall and closed his hand around her neck. The need for air overcame the need to escape into her own personal oblivion, and as he choked her again, Devon opened her eyes, closed her fingers around his wrist and jerked, scratched, fought against him.

  Panting, he leaned into her. “That’s better.” He loosened his hold on her neck just a little, and she sucked in air through her abused throat, but just as her breathing leveled back out, he tightened his fingers again.

  He kept playing that little game until her throat felt like fire, and even breathing was agony. Eventually, it became harder and harder to struggle back into awareness or even to try to breathe. She was only dimly aware as he dropped her to the floor again. From the corner of her eye, she saw the red bookend again, thought of reaching for it.

  Luke . . .

  There was a crash.

  Luke.

  Dimly, almost dreamily, she turned her head toward the sound. Luke? The dreamlike state persisted, and she felt like she was moving through quicksand as she lifted her head, tried to focus.

  Curtis was on the floor beside her, facedown. Blood flowed.

  “Luke,” she tried to whisper, but no sound came out.

  Red and blue lights splashed through the small windows that lined the front door. But by the time the cops broke down the door, Devon was already unconscious.

  TWELVE

  Two Weeks Later

  STANDING at the window, Devon stared at the For Sale sign in Danielle’s front yard. The other woman had lived through the attack, and after spending ten days in the hospital, Danielle had been released three days ago.

  But she hadn’t come home.

  Devon couldn’t blame her. Every time she looked across the street at Danielle’s place, fear, nausea, and a disconnected sense of disbelief overtook her.

  Curtis Wilder was dead.

  Luke had tried to keep her from reading the details, but she’d had Noelle get her a copy of the police report, detailing how her attacker had been found lying on the floor next to Devon’s unconscious body, the back of his head bashed in.

  His blood and bits of his
hair had been found on the marble bookend lying by his body. The exact details of how he’d died were a mystery to Devon, to the cops, to Luke. She didn’t remember killing him, didn’t think she could have, not at that point.

  But nobody else had been on the premises when the cops arrived. Luke arrived less than three minutes later, and as they’d loaded Devon onto a stretcher, he’d been by her side.

  Most of the night was a blissful blur, but she still couldn’t go to sleep without seeing Curtis’s face.

  “You ought to be sitting down. Resting.”

  She looked over her shoulder at Luke. The past two weeks had been hell on him; Devon was pretty sure they were just as awful for him, in a way, as they were for her. He’d lost weight, and although he smiled at her, it always seemed strained.

  “I’m fine,” she said quietly, resting her head against the window. The cool chill of it felt good. She hardly ever felt anything anymore. Not hunger, not pain. Her bruises were fading, but she still looked like she’d gone a few rounds with a heavyweight boxer.

  Physically, the pain was there—sort of, and she was aware of it—sort of. But it wasn’t like she really felt it, more like she was experiencing somebody else’s pain.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Devon shook her head.

  “You hardly ate anything at lunch.”

  She shrugged. “I’m tired of soup.” For a while, it was all she’d been able to get down through her throat. Now that she could actually swallow without pain, there was no reason she couldn’t eat.

  She just didn’t want to.

  “We could go out to eat. Do some Christmas shopping.” He tried to smile, and it fell flat. “Only have three more days.”

  She cringed inwardly. Out. Around people. Shaking her head, she whispered, “No.”

  “Devon . . .”

  Looking back at him, she waited. Luke stared at her, and in the misty gray of his eyes, she saw the hell he was going through, and distantly, she hurt for him.