At $250 an hour, four hours minimum, Sadie worked only two nights a week and made more money each month than her waitress-mom saw all year. And had her mama stood up for her when she told her about the rape, maybe Sadie would have sent her enough so she wouldn’t have to work twelve-hour days, six days a week.
But her mama called her a whore and didn’t believe her. So Sadie had no qualms about keeping all her whore-tainted money to herself.
Now, five years later, going to college, escorting old men part-time, and living in a beautiful condo, Sadie had it made. She figured three more years and she’d retire with enough money that she wouldn’t have to work if she didn’t want to. Bridget, who was over forty, was training her to take over the business, and Sadie thought that might be a fine way to retire. Fifteen percent of her girls’ business, taking clients only when she wanted to, living in a mansion and being married to a successful businessman. Yep, what a life!
She normally didn’t work Wednesdays, but Bridget had called and said Judge Vernon Watson had recommended her to a friend who was visiting on business and would only be in town tonight. Sadie liked Vern, who paid her $1,500 once a month for nothing more than dinner and a show, then a blow job in his chambers. Because Vern had recommended Mr. Barker, she agreed to work.
Rule Number One: Never let your client know where you live. So Sadie met him in the bar of his hotel, the Adam’s Mark, an exclusive hotel near downtown.
She couldn’t help but be surprised—Vern was well into his sixties, but his friend was only about forty. And he dressed like a northerner thought a cowboy would dress. But he was pleasant looking—not drop-dead gorgeous, but nice looking—and younger than most of her clients.
She smiled and extended her hand. “Mr. Barker, I’m Sadie Pierce.”
He smiled in return, took her hand, and kissed it. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said with a slight drawl, though it wasn’t a Texas accent.
She didn’t think twice as he took her arm and led her to the front of the hotel, where he hailed a taxi.
Conversation at dinner was typical, a little on the quiet side. Barker seemed to be people-watching, noticing everyone who came in. While that would annoy most dates, it didn’t bother Sadie. She, after all, was paid to cater to his needs.
In the taxi, he said, “I know I promised you a show, Miss Sadie, but you are just so dang beautiful I was wondering if you’d mind if we just went back to my room.”
He was actually kind of cute when he asked. As if she would mind. That was her job, one she performed quite well.
“Not at all, Mr. Barker.”
It was odd how he never told her to call him Rex. All her dates had her address them by their first name. It made the men believe she was there because she enjoyed their company, not because they were paying her. But he wasn’t a regular, and he probably hadn’t hired an escort often.
In his room, she asked to freshen up. “Right through the bedroom,” he told her. “What can I fix you to drink?”
Rule Number Two: Never drink alcohol while working.
“Perrier or mineral water, whatever you have.”
“Wine? Something stronger?”
“Sweetheart, you’re man enough to turn me on without an artificial stimulant.” Always make them seem like they are in charge.
He seemed unsure, so she smiled, leaned up, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Three minutes and I’ll be ready for whatever you have planned.”
He smiled. A trickle of fear slid down her spine. She blinked, and whatever it was she’d seen or sensed was gone.
She ignored Rule Number Three: Trust your instincts.
Winking at him, she turned and waltzed into the bathroom.
After taking care of business, she pulled her makeup from her small purse and noticed that the message light was flashing on her phone. Normally she’d ignore her messages while working, but the caller ID showed Bridget’s number—three messages, all from her. Sadie hoped nothing was wrong as she punched in her password and listened.
“Please please please, Sadie, get out as soon as you can. I don’t trust this guy. I just talked to the judge and he didn’t recommend anyone. I’m sorry I didn’t check it out first, but I just assumed—it’s all my fault. I’m so worried—remember that warning from the cops I told you about?” She paused, breathless. “Just tell him your mother died and you have to go and he’ll get a full refund. Okay? Please call me as soon as you can. Please.”
Sadie’s heart beat frantically. She’d never heard Bridget so scared. Bridget, the classiest, calmest, most proper woman she knew.
She glanced at her surroundings. Bathroom. No way out. She was on the edge of panic as she shakingly put her phone back. Would the lie work? She didn’t see any other way. She couldn’t very well just walk out.
But he’d lied about Vern. They’d even talked about the judge over dinner, and Barker made it sound like they were close friends. That really burned Sadie. Some men—like her stepfather and this bastard Barker—thought they could manipulate women into doing what they wanted because women were stupid.
Sadie was anything but stupid.
Temper up, ready to tell Mr. Barker—if that was in fact his name—that the gig was up and she was leaving, she swung open the bathroom door and strode across the bedroom into the living room of the suite. “Mr. Barker? I’m sorry, but—”
A big hand clamped down around her mouth and she struggled. “You were taking a little too long in there,” a voice low and rough said in her ear, sounding nothing like the semi-drawl Barker had used earlier.
She struggled, realizing she very well might be in a fight for her life. The warning about some serial killer who might be coming after prostitutes flashed in the back of her mind.
She’d never thought it would happen to her.
Some of her escorts got a little rough, and she had no qualms about using her self-defense skills on them. But this was different. Barker used raw strength to subdue her.
Cold metal brushed against her wrist and she heard a “click” as handcuffs locked into place on one wrist. Her instincts screamed, “No!” She couldn’t let him gain control.
She fought back. Drawing on all her self-defense training, she used his strength against him. She kicked back and up, right into his balls, and he screamed. He pushed her down on the floor. As she stumbled, trying to get up, he pounced on her.
“Bitch!” He slapped her.
She struggled and he grabbed her arm with the handcuffs dangling from the wrist. From the corner of her eye she saw the floor lamp. She reached for it—her fingers brushed the base, but she wasn’t close enough to grab it.
Remember your training!
Training. Right. She took her free hand and went for his eyes, clawing at the one closest to her hand, grabbing onto the outer lid, and pulled.
He screamed, and released her other arm to hit her. Her head jerked to the side and she instantly knew her nose was broken.
She was scared, but she was also pissed off. He was just like her stepfather. Any woman who didn’t fall to her knees and comply with whatever sick game he had in mind was ripe to use as a punching bag.
She wasn’t going to die at the hands of some sick bastard who wanted to dominate women. She took her right hand, the one with the cuffs dangling from it, and with all her strength whacked him on the side of the head with the metal. Again. Again.
His cry of rage and pain scared her more than the threat itself. This man was not right in the head. She felt his hands on her throat, his thumbs pressed into her windpipe.
He was going to kill her.
No! She refused to die. She brought her hands up through the V his arms made and reached for his eyes again. She was gasping, her vision began to fade, but she grabbed the small bones on the outside of his eyes and squeezed. She didn’t know if the maneuver would work when Mr. Wolfe taught it to her all those years ago, but she felt the bones crack in her fingers and she held on. Barker screamed in pain and let go of he
r throat, reaching for her hands.
She whipped the handcuff again and it cut his face. His body shifted enough and she kicked and scrambled out from underneath. She didn’t worry about her purse. She ran straight for the door, jerked it open, and bolted down the hall. Screams failed to sound from her raw and bruised throat.
She ran to the staircase, unwilling to wait for the elevator. She didn’t know if he was chasing her, but she sprinted for her life down ten flights of stairs, not stopping until she burst into the lobby and into the arms of a very surprised hotel assistant manager who just happened to be walking by.
“Good God, ma’am, what happened?”
Her voice raw, blood from her broken nose clogging her throat, she sputtered, “My. Date. My date tried to kill me.” She gave the room number and the assistant manager carried her to the couch in his office while calling security to the room.
And fifteen minutes later, he was the one to tell her the man was gone.
CHAPTER
21
Rowan didn’t see John after the funeral. She didn’t understand why she felt oddly empty. After all, John had family and friends in from all over the country to pay respects to his brother. And Tess needed comfort and strength, something that John had in abundance.
But at three in the morning when Rowan woke from another nightmare, she wished he were there to hold her.
Foolish, she thought as reached under her pillow for her Glock and sat up in bed. She’d lived with her nightmares on and off for twenty-three years without relying on a man to comfort her. Why now? Why John?
She held the cold gun in her hands and stared into the darkness outside the large picture window. It was a moonless night, but the stars were so bright they seemed touchable.
Bobby, come for me. Please. I need this to be over.
Her inner strength began to melt. The carefully constructed wall that had protected her for so long crumbled at her feet. She was a trapped animal, pacing, pacing, pacing. Waiting for someone to come and shoot her. A mouse being toyed with by a cat. As soon as the mouse lost hope and cowered, the cat killed its prey.
Was that what Bobby was doing? Toying with her until she broke? Playing with her until she screamed with rage or retreated into her mind with insanity?
Did he want to turn her into their father? A hollow shell of a man, a victim of his weak mind and guilty conscience?
What if she didn’t give him what he wanted? What if she didn’t plead for mercy or beg for death? What if she simply stood there and took whatever he intended to give her?
It wasn’t John she thought of just then. It was Michael.
And Doreen and the Harpers and the florist and pretty Melissa Jane Acker.
She wouldn’t let Bobby win. Not for herself. For them. The victims of his glee, the down payment for his plans. They deserved justice. They deserved peace in the grave.
Peace would only come when Bobby was dead and buried and rotting in hell.
Sleep wasn’t going to come, she realized, as she threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side. She slipped into the running shoes that always had a place by the side of her bed and laced them in the dark.
Four in the morning. She couldn’t wake Quinn now for a run, but she’d love one as dawn crested over the Malibu mountains and lit the ocean. Five-thirty. Until then, maybe she could get some writing done. It had been weeks since she’d been able to write a word.
She quietly walked down the stairs and let herself into the den. She closed the door and booted her computer.
She wasn’t working on a fictional House of Terror. At least, she wasn’t writing the book she’d started three months ago. She’d realized after Doreen Rodriguez was killed she couldn’t write fiction anymore, at least not now. Maybe not ever. Not pretend murders and unreal evil.
But her new work was still called House of Terror. And her new work had the same crime.
Only the victims were real, the murderer real, the survivors real.
For the first time, she was writing true crime.
A huge weight lifted from her heart.
It was seven when John knocked on Rowan’s door. Quinn Peterson answered immediately, expecting him.
“Collins talk to you?” Peterson asked as he locked the door and reset the alarm, his voice rough from lack of sleep.
“Yep.” John glanced around the room, not realizing he was looking for Rowan until he didn’t see her. “Where’s Rowan?”
Peterson nodded toward the closed den door. “She’s been in there since four this morning.”
John frowned. He didn’t like Rowan’s habit of locking herself in her den. “Have you checked on her?”
The agent nodded as he led John into the kitchen. “I was sleeping on the couch and the sound of the computer woke me. She said she was writing and wanted to go running at six. But when I went in then, she hadn’t moved and told me to give her ten minutes. But then Roger called, and—” he ended with a shrug.
“You told her?”
“Oh, yeah. She’d strangle me if I kept any news from her. I told her everything we know about Bobby and the woman in Dallas.” He handed John a cup of hot, black coffee and refilled his own mug.
“And her reaction?”
“At first angry, then pleased that the woman got away. Almost emboldened. Then she went back to writing.”
“I’m going to talk to her.” I need to see her.
“Did Collins ask you about going to the safe house?”
John nodded. “I agreed.”
“Good.”
“I don’t think Rowan is going to feel the same.”
John walked down the hall and stood outside the den. Faintly, he heard fingers tapping on the keyboard in spurts of speed.
He hadn’t wanted to agree with Roger Collins’s request that he escort Rowan to a safe house while the manhunt for Bobby MacIntosh raged. He wanted—needed—to be there when they caught Bobby. The bastard who’d killed Michael. The bastard who had been tormenting Rowan until she almost broke.
He almost wanted Bobby to break into the house so he had an excuse to kill him.
But he didn’t want to endanger Rowan. Keeping her safe had become more important than anything else. Keeping her alive until Bobby was caught or killed, then keeping her by his side. How, he wasn’t sure. These feelings were new to him, confusing. Disconcerting.
He couldn’t just walk away with a kiss and goodbye.
She had become important to him in a short period of time. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself. He trusted no one else to protect her, no one else to ensure her safety. So he agreed to escort her to the safe house and stay with her until MacIntosh was caught. It was one of the hardest decisions in his life, but he felt it was right. Keep her safe.
After the fiasco in Dallas, MacIntosh would be enraged. More likely to make mistakes. So it was only a matter of time.
The prostitute was under twenty-four-hour protection as well, Collins told John, in case MacIntosh went after her to finish the job. Apparently, she’d taken extensive self-defense training and had been warned by a friend that the man she knew as Rex Barker might be dangerous.
That knowledge probably saved her life.
John stared at the door, dreading talking to Rowan about the safe house, but the clock was ticking. It had to be done. He knocked once on the door and opened it.
Rowan sat at her computer, hands poised above the keyboard as she glanced over her shoulder. She caught his eye, and John saw a side of Rowan he’d never seen. A spark in her eyes, a light in her face—something was different. Maybe it was the slight smile on her lips—was she happy to see him?
He’d missed her. The realization hit him with an almost physical force and he would have taken a step back if he hadn’t stopped himself.
Yesterday, he’d seen her in the back of the church and wanted her at his side. For comfort. Had she been with him, the entire day would have been a little easier. But she’d left at the end of
the service, and he had too many obligations to follow her.
It left a hole in his heart. Something he desperately wanted to fix now. Seeing her this morning almost made up for being apart the night before.
She’d said something, but he’d missed it.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, feeling like a lovestruck teenager.
“Is the girl okay? Sadie Pierce?” Rowan swiveled the chair to look at him. She wore gray sweats and a faded blue T-shirt, her hair pulled back, and she had on no makeup, but Rowan couldn’t have looked more appealing to him.
What was wrong with him? He didn’t form romantic attachments, especially with women he worked with. Or protected. That wasn’t his M.O., and he didn’t want to start now.
“She’s under protection,” he said. “Spent the night in the hospital and was released, minor injuries. She’s resilient.”
Rowan closed her eyes and smiled. “Good. I can’t tell you how happy I am that she got away.” She paused, looked pointedly at him. “Roger told you about the medical bag. The book. The book Bobby stole from my shelf.”
John nodded. “There’s no word on Bobby.”
“I’d hoped. Roger pulled out all the stops.” Her voice held a tremor.
He shook his head. “The cops are out full-force in Dallas; L.A. transportation hubs are looking for him. It’ll be hard for him to get back here undetected.”
“But not impossible,” she murmured.
“No, not impossible. He’s proven to be pretty smart, so unless he does something stupid, he’ll be here. For you, Rowan. We have to protect you.”
“You are. There are two unmarked sedans on the highway, and Quinn is holed up in my living room. We’re ready for him.”
“We need to do more.”
“What?”
“I spoke with Collins this morning.”
Her body stiffened. She was still raw over Roger lying to her. John didn’t blame her. He’d had a hard time being civil to Collins over the phone.
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