The Ultimate Romantic Suspense Set (8 romantic suspense novels from 8 bestselling authors for 99c)

by Lee Taylor

  Pushing the shower curtain back, I turn on the water full blast and strip off my clothes. I pour another glass, filling it almost to the brim this time. Why mess around? By the time half of it drifts down my throat I’m starting to chill from the first couple shots. Real smooth.

  The pillow…I couldn’t…he turned me over and….

  The room steams up just the way I like it, so that I can’t really tell I’m in a cheap motel room. I’m just here, in this moment, taking in air.

  I can’t go back to that place. Just can’t. Speck standing not more than two feet away from me. Alive. Smiling at me. Walking under my blue sky. A killer. How can that be? Where’s the dark pit that he’s been living in for the past twenty years? Why didn’t he squint in the sunlight? Where were his open sores? His scars from his many beatings? The deformed foot, leg or hand?

  All these years I’ve clung to the vision of him suffering through each day like some exiled villain living in a bug-infested dungeon. Now you know the truth… Okay, so this is the eighties and there are no more dungeons, but at the very least, I thought the man would be confined to his cell and have minimal human contact. That’s what you needed to believe…

  What sick bit of fate brought us back together? That smile. That same twisted smile.

  Wiping off the steam on the mirror, I have a conversation with the woman staring back at me. She’s my mirror friend. The older, wizened woman I confide in: hair slicked back in an unattractive style, dark circles under her eyes, broken blood vessels on her nose, tiny lines that torture her forehead and surround her mouth, no smile, no sparkle, none of the magic in her eyes that she used to have every time she thought of the future. She’s just my mirror friend now. Somebody to confide in. Somebody who listens, like my mother used to listen. “Why is that bastard still alive? Why is he allowed out of his cell? What kind of justice system do we have in this country?”

  As usual, I get no answers so I go on. “I don’t want to go back. I’ll just leave tonight, after my bath, after another drink. I’ll call Mike from the City. From New York City. I need a vacation. A nice long vacation.”

  I can hear the kids fighting out in the pool. A woman yells at them to stop. I slip into the tub. The water shelters my body from the day. The Jack Daniel’s shelters my mind. I feel real again. Whole.

  Another glass of Jack and then maybe another. I lose count. Soon the kids’ voices outside become a song. If I slide under the water their chants overpower every other sound and become a mermaid’s serenade. Shhh!

  Such a soothing melody.

  Divine.

  “Carly, Carly open the goddamn door.”

  A harsh male voice resonates from under my enchanted sea.

  “Carly! Carly!”

  There it is again, some kind of sea monster interrupting my calm. I come up gasping for air. It fills my lungs as if they had been empty. It’s a strange feeling. Had I been under that long? I start to cough. Water sprays from my mouth. How strange.

  It’s Mike pounding on my door. But why? “Go away, Mike. Leave me to my song. I’m on vacation.”

  I slip back under the water.

  He continues with his battery. Always the nuisance. Always the thorn pricking at my thoughts.

  I sit up. “Coming,” I yell, but the word drowns in my throat as the coughing starts again.

  Somehow I make it out of the tub and to the door, but why is he so insistent? What does the little shit want now?

  “Go away,” I say while standing in front of the door.

  “Let me in, Carly. Open the goddamn door.”

  Who does he think he is pounding on my door like this? Causing a scene. Acting like a spoiled brat.

  “Shhh! Somebody’s going to call the police on you. Go away,” I whisper.

  Water drips from my body and pools around my feet as I try to turn the knob. Suddenly, I realize that I’m naked, but it’s too late. The door bursts open. Evening sunlight pours in and Mike takes me into his arms.

  The room starts to spin as darkness drapes itself across my eyes. I’m back in South Chicago. Speck is throwing something off the bridge. Once again I’m tangled up between the past and the present. I want to let it go, to sleep, but Mike keeps talking to me, trying to get me to concentrate on his words, walking me around the room like I’m in some sort of drug fog. At least he has the decency to find my robe and wrap it around me.

  He says, “This is not what I intended. If you had just let me rub your back like I wanted.”

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?” I tell him.

  “I can’t. Believe me, I wish I could.” He wipes the water from my forehead with his hand and moves my hair away from my eyes, “My life would be so simple if I could leave you, but I can’t. Not now, anyway. Not this way.”

  “You mean there’s hope for the future?”

  He spins me around and holds me by my shoulders and stares at me. “Why do you have to make everything so hard on yourself? I love you. Isn’t that enough?”

  I can’t form the words to answer him. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say and somehow I can’t remember what we’re talking about, but I like his blue eyes. “You have such wonderful eyes. Did you know that? They’re really quite wonderful. A woman could get lost in those eyes.”

  Suddenly, we’re walking again, and while we walk, he makes me drink about a gallon of water, only he doesn’t even let me pee by myself. He has to come watch, like I’m some toddler getting potty trained by an overzealous father. Okay, so maybe I did put my head down and try to fall asleep on the pot. What’s the big deal? I’ve done it before. And maybe I did vomit all over myself. I’ve done that before, too. Mike is just overreacting to a simple case of an upset stomach.

  “What’s the big deal?” I whisper into his sweet little ear, trying to tickle it with my tongue. It’s such a cute ear.

  He pushes me away. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  What a grump.

  He says, “I want you to go home as soon as you’re feeling better. Take some time off. This whole thing was a mistake. Sorry I forced you into this. As of right now, it’s over for you. Okay?” He strokes my hair and face. His hand feels good against my skin. I nod in agreement, or at least I think I’m nodding.

  • • •

  I open my eyes. The world is blurry for a moment but then comes into focus. I’m staring at a white cottage cheese ceiling. Where am I? Did I fall?

  Mike sits next to me in a straight-back chair while I lie on the bed, under the covers.

  I remember now. Stateville. A motel.

  I don’t know how much time has passed since he burst into my room, but my hair is dry and my mouth feels thick, like I’ve been sleeping all night.

  I have a real need to pee.

  Sitting up, I put my feet on the floor. My head wants no part of a vertical position.

  “Where you going?” Mike asks, as if I’m on my way somewhere. I’m wearing a long T-shirt with no underwear. Maybe he thinks I’m going out to catch a movie.

  “To the bathroom. I’m fine. I just need to go to the bathroom. Is that all right?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “I’m a big girl now. I know how to wipe.”

  He gets up. I glare at him. He sits down. “All right, but keep the door open.”

  I get out of bed. On my way to some privacy, I take a pair of panties out of my suitcase and hold them up for his approval. “Do you mind or are you hopeful?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  Eight

  July 11, 1966

  It was early evening and a man had just walked out onto Pauline’s front porch.

  “Look,” Sharon said, “that’s him.”

  Sure enough, there stood our German sailor, Wolf Dietrich. It was hard for us to contain ourselves. We stopped what we were doing with the tent to watch him. He stood on the steps for a long time, staring mostly, with his mouth hanging open, watching Bobi, Pauline’s retarded son, rock back and forth in f
ront of Sharon’s fence.

  Pauline’s fake-brick, two-story boarding house ran the length of Sharon’s side yard. It was a long, skinny brown structure with a mass of windows around each floor, including the basement. It dominated the end of the block. There was no sign hanging from a post to indicate that she rented out rooms. It was just a well-known neighborhood fact.

  A four-foot-tall chain-link fence separated the two properties and a wooden fence separated us from the front sidewalk and Bobi. Sharon’s house was a white, wooden two-story about a quarter of the size of Pauline’s.

  The sailor stood not more than thirty feet away from us on a tiny cement porch.

  “What’s he doing?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t know. Staring,” I answered, wondering why he seemed so fascinated with Bobi. We hid inside our tent and peeked out through the small side mesh window. Our heads touching.

  “Maybe he never saw a retarded person before,” Sharon said.

  “That’s impossible. He’s a sailor. He’s been everywhere in the world,” Lisa declared.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s ever seen anybody retarded before,” I snapped back.

  Bobi was severely retarded, at least that’s what Sharon’s mother said, and no one ever questioned it or made fun of him. Bobi was just somebody we were used to. Somebody in the neighborhood. We never knew how old he was, maybe in his early twenties, and we never knew if Bobi was his real name; he couldn’t speak. He was just there, every day, rocking back and forth, one leg in front of the other, staring at his fingers until his mother, Pauline, brought him in for the night. Bobi had a ritual. He would twist his fingers getting them all tangled up with each other, then shake them loose and pound on his forehead, almost as if he were mad at his brain. Maybe he was.

  “Look, he’s going over to Bobi,” Sharon whispered, sounding frightened for the sailor as he descended the stairs and walked up to Bobi. Nobody but Pauline ever approached Bobi. We were afraid to get too close to him. Sometimes he’d spit.

  The sailor talked to him, bending over a little to get his attention. Bobi looked straight at him and grabbed for his pack of cigarettes. They started playing a game—tossing the pack of cigarettes back and forth. They did this for a long time. Bobi actually caught the pack a few times and then somehow managed to throw it back. We were dumbstruck over Bobi’s reaction to this stranger. Pauline came out on the porch to watch. She was a large Croatian woman, who always wore a cotton print housedress, silk stockings that she rolled in a knot just below her knees and a fine brown hair net to keep her curly, short hair in place. Pauline didn’t talk much, at least not to us kids, but no matter how ornery Bobi was to her, she always had a kind word or gesture for her son.

  Pauline seemed as amazed at the whole event as we were. She watched with a sweet look of pleasure on her face. The sailor stopped soon after he saw Pauline. Bobi began to groan like he wanted more. Pauline and the sailor said something to one another, ignoring Bobi’s screams and shook hands. The sailor took off down the street and Bobi pounded on his forehead groaning louder than I had ever heard him before. Pauline took him inside.

  “Wow. Did you see that?” Sharon asked, as we slid down and sat on the floor of the tent.

  “Yeah, he actually got Bobi to play with him,” Lisa said.

  “He must be some kind of miracle worker,” I announced.

  “Nobody ever got that close to Bobi before, let alone play catch with him. How did he do that?” Sharon asked with a stunned look on her face.

  “I don’t know, but I bet he can do just about anything. We ought to follow him and see where he goes,” I said.

  Just then, Sharon’s mother called us in for dinner. Sharon tried to argue, but Lisa was too hungry and took off before we had a chance to convince her to eat later. Lisa did not like to miss a meal, no matter what, and following some guy on an empty stomach was a little too much for us to ask of her.

  Dinner consisted of White Castle hamburgers, a pink birthday cake and Neapolitan ice cream, my least favorite, but I ate it anyway. The three of us sat by ourselves in Sharon’s kitchen, while the rest of her family ate in the dining room, which was fine with us.

  “Open your presents,” Sharon demanded after she scooped out about a ton of ice cream and passed it over to me.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled taking a bite of the chocolate, careful not to mix it up with the strawberry—the flavor I hated the most—the flavor that dominated my plate.

  My first present was hidden in a small square box wrapped in last Sunday’s comics. Wrapping paper cost extra money and I was glad that all the money was spent on my gifts rather than the paper.

  I ripped it open as quickly as I could and found the prettiest box of soft blue floral stationery with matching envelopes I had ever seen. It was the sheer kind of stationery, the kind for sending overseas.

  “Do you like it? The woman in the store said it’s thin enough to send to England and it won’t cost any more. We made sure of that,” Lisa said.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful. Thank you,” I said, then the three of us squealed and hugged.

  The other box contained a scented pen, to which we all squealed and hugged some more. They couldn’t have given me better presents. Now I was sure to get an answer from Ringo. After all, how could he refuse such a wonderful combination?

  We cleaned up the kitchen and went out front to look for Wolf. He wasn’t there, so we went back to our tent. Sharon had brought out the homemade Ouija board. We were anxious to know if Wolf would be our Beatles connection.

  Nine

  September 9, 1987

  A knock on the motel door wakes me sometime around eight in the morning. “Maid,” a woman yells.

  “Go away,” I answer, rolling over, pulling the blankets over my head.

  Then, in what seems like two seconds later, there’s another knock on the door. “I don’t need you today. Go away,” I argue, but she knocks again.

  Anger takes over. I throw the blankets off and get up. Why can’t they hire people who can understand basic English? Is that so damn hard to do?

  My little toe catches the foot of the nightstand. “Shit.” The pain rushes up my leg. The maid knocks again. Persistent. I hobble to the door and grabbing onto the doorknob I swing the door open ready to pounce on the annoying maid.

  It’s a man.

  The sun is in my eyes. All I can see are feet and an outline of a body. I close the door a little, feeling highly vulnerable. Do men clean the rooms now? But he’s wearing dress shoes. Must be the manager or some kind of front desk man.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says.

  “Well, you did. What kind of place is this that I can’t sleep past eight o’clock? I don’t need the room cleaned. I’m leaving today and I believe check-out is twelve-thirty. Now, go away and leave me alone,” I say closing the door. He grabs hold of the door.

  “Carly, it’s me, Captain Bob.”

  “Who?”

  “Captain Bob from Stateville.” I let the door swing open, confused as to why the Captain, dressed in street clothes, is standing in my doorway. “When you didn’t come in today I thought I’d drop by and have a talk with you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About four. I want to ask you something. Can I come in? It’ll only take a minute.” Before I can react, he moves me aside and walks into my room.

  I want him to leave so I can go back to sleep. He probably wants to be in the movie or something. Wants me to send him to Hollywood as the next De Niro, use my connections.

  “I don’t know any important Hollywood people. I can’t make you a star,” I say sarcastically.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s about Richard Speck.”

  It’s as if he punched me in the stomach and took the air out of my lungs. Why would he come to me about Speck?

  “Did he escape?”

  “No,” he says with a smirk on his face. “I don’t think he’d want to do that. You’ve got the wrong idea about Speck
; most people do.”

  Captain Bob sits down on a chair next to a small round table by the window. I pick up my jeans off the bed and go into the bathroom.

  “Give me a minute,” I tell him and close the bathroom door so I can wash my face, brush my teeth and take a pee.

  What the hell does this guy want? Why does he think I want to know anything about Speck? I hate Speck. I want to go home and forget everything about him…go to New York City. Maybe move there. Start over. Get a job as a bartender. I’d make a terrific bartender. All the JD I can hold. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It’s all Mike’s fault, wanting me to be somebody, have a normal life. Who gives a rat’s ass about a normal life? Not me, that’s for sure.

  I walk out of the bathroom with a renewed glow, happy now about my bartending future. Have to get rid of this creep in a hurry. Come up with some excuse. I start packing, hoping he’ll get the message.

  “I’m on my way to New York. Sorry we can’t really talk, but I have to leave. Non-refundable tickets,” I tell him without looking his way, wondering if I could really get on a plane tonight.

  “That’s too bad. After what happened yesterday, I thought you’d be the one who could stop the bastard.”

  “Nothing happened yesterday.” I look over at him. He just glares back. Granite. “Oh you mean when I got sick? That was nothing. Breakfast didn’t agree with me.”

  “So, it wasn’t seeing Speck that caused it?”

  “No. Why should he have anything to do with me? Was that Speck? Didn’t even recognize him. I thought he was a painter from the last picture I worked on. Richard Speck. How about that.” I shake my head for effect. “Huh! What do ya know.”

  “Yeah, he’s made quite a life for himself in prison.”

  “You don’t say.”

  I’m getting into the packing now, opening drawers, grabbing things off the nightstand, stuffing everything and anything that’s not nailed down into my suitcase. Wanting him to stop talking. Needing him to leave. Wishing I never let him in.

  Captain Bob continues, “I thought maybe since you people were in the movies you’d be interested in how a convicted murderer lives in our state institutions, that’s all.”