Or unless I wasn’t his target. If Ty was this guy’s focus, then any girl Ty paid attention to would become a focus too. If he stopped paying attention to me, maybe I’d stop being a target. I could wander around the cemetery all night, while our guy was on the other side of town, raping someone else.
Like Carmen.
If any girl Ty paid attention to became the target, then Carmen was the one in danger tonight, not me.
There was a sound behind me, and I stopped and glanced over my shoulder.
Nothing there.
Or nothing I could see.
That meant either ghost, or someone who didn’t want to be seen.
Detective Fuentes was here somewhere; maybe he’d just wanted to let me know he was keeping an eye on me.
I kept moving forward, keeping an ear out.
We had chosen this place deliberately, both for its convenient location and for its many, many hiding places. And also because the guy we were looking for had used it once before, successfully. According to Ty, he was probably comfortable here, and it held good memories for him.
Somehow, the thought of that was more chilling than the fact that I was walking alone through a cemetery at night, looking for a rapist.
There was another sound behind me, closer this time.
I swung on my heel and gasped as a tall figure loomed up in front of me.
“YOU SHOULDN’T be here alone,” Stan said, and I let my breath out on another unconvincing laugh.
“I’m fine. Really.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t a good place at night. It’s haunted, you know.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’ll walk you through and out on the other side.”
“You really don’t have to...”
“It’s my job,” Stan said seriously. “To serve and protect paradise.”
Like the logos on the squad cars. It was probably part of their oath, as well.
I glanced around, but there was no way around it that I could see. If he didn’t know what was going on—and Fuentes wasn’t supposed to have told him anything about it—he really was just doing his job. Making a fuss would only make him wonder why I was so determined to walk around in a graveyard alone at night.
It would probably be better to let him escort me through the cemetery, and then sneak back in through one of the other entrances once he was gone.
And Detective Fuentes was lying in wait somewhere. Maybe he’d see us and intercept Stan before he ruined everything. Nobody was likely to approach me while I was accompanied by a uniformed cop. If this took too long, the guy we were after might decide I was a lost cause again, and find someone else to rape.
If he was here, and wasn’t busy watching Ty and Carmen, biding his time before he snatched a girl none of us were worried about.
“Did Connor show you all the graves the other night?” Stan asked after we had walked a couple of yards.
“Most of them, I think. The ones he thought I’d find interesting.”
I looked around, distracted. Where the hell was Fuentes? Why didn’t he come out of hiding and order Stan off of me so we could get back to the program?
“He isn’t local, though,” Stan said, “so he probably doesn’t know all the stories.”
“Probably not.” There was no sign of Fuentes. But it was a big cemetery, and he might not have noticed me—noticed us—yet. I turned my attention back to Stan. “Did you grow up here?”
He nodded. “Saltwater Conch.” There was pride in his voice.
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.
“Saltwater Conchs are natives of Key West. Freshwater Conchs have lived here for at least seven years.”
“What about the people who’ve arrived within the last seven years?”
“They’re nobody,” Stan said with a shrug.
Uh-huh. “Why conchs?”
“White,” Stan said. “The native Bahamians called the white settlers ‘conchs.’ ”
“After the big shells with the pink insides?”
He nodded.
“That’s interesting. So do you like living here?”
“It’s home,” Stan said.
“It’s a beautiful place. I’m glad I got to see it.” I might even be back, although probably not for spring break. Once was enough.
“It’s nicer when the streets aren’t crawling with drunk college kids,” Stan said.
Probably. Although I was one of those college kids, so he could have been a little more polite.
“I bet they—we—bring in a lot of revenue, though.”
That’s what Stan had said, wasn’t it? In Captain Tony’s the other night? That the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce and the local businesses hadn’t been willing to consider canceling spring break because of the money. That a few rapes were worth it if it kept the revenue coming in.
Stan shrugged, and we walked forward in silence again, the only sound our footsteps scuffing along the ground. We were probably getting close to the middle of the cemetery by now. Ty had told me it was almost 20 acres, with a hundred thousand burials: many more than the current population of Key West. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, other than our own breathing.
“Water?” Stan held out a bottle without looking at me.
“Thanks.” I took it and was about to screw off the cap when I realized what I was doing. “You know, never mind. I had a lot to drink at Captain Crow’s. I need a bathroom more than I need water right now.”
I tried to hand it back while I looked around. Dammit, Fuentes, where are you?
Stan didn’t take it. “Then you need to rehydrate,” he said.
My heart gave a slow, hard thud, and then another. I tried to keep my voice steady. “I really don’t, you know.”
He stopped. “Drink the water, Cassie.”
“That’s what you said last time, too. Isn’t it?”
He smiled, and the light glinted on his teeth. “You weren’t supposed to remember that.”
I tightened my hand on the bottle and felt the plastic crinkle. “I didn’t, really. I thought it might have been a dream.”
“No,” Stan said. “Not a dream.”
Obviously not. I wondered how it had escaped me before how big he was. It was probably because he’d never stood so close, and had never leaned over me before. I’d seen him from a distance, on the beach and outside the cemetery, but in the bar, he’d been sitting down.
I cleared my throat and thought about screaming. Fuentes might be near enough to hear me, although twenty acres is a bit of ground to cover. And if I screamed, Stan would probably shut me up right away. In a way that might leave me with no second chance to scream.
No, better to keep him talking for as long as I could. Maybe Fuentes would find us.
Unless Stan knew exactly what was going on, and had already dealt with Fuentes.
A chill ran down my spine. Fuentes could be lying unconscious behind a tomb right now.
Or worse, dead.
He might be in no position to come to my aid.
I could ask, but if Stan didn’t know what was going on, and had only taken the bait we’d dangled in front of him, I certainly didn’t want to tip him that Fuentes was nearby.
“So...” I said instead, “it was you?”
“Of course.”
“All of them? All the girls?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Because they come here,” Stan said, “to my town, and they foul it up. They drink, and they puke, and they whore.”
“Couldn’t you just arrest them? Raping them doesn’t solve anything.”
“They ask for it,” Stan said. “With their drinking and whoring ways.”
I blinked. “I don’t have drinking and whoring ways.” I had the least whoring ways of anyone I knew. “The others didn’t either. They were virgins. All of them.”
Elizabeth and Jeanine and the poor battered girl in the hospital, whate
ver her name was.
“They shouldn’t be out here,” Stan said, “putting themselves on display.”
“I didn’t put myself on display!”
“That was last year,” Stan said. “This year is different.”
My heart was knocking against my ribs, and it was hard to keep the conversation going when I was so scared. Ghosts are one thing, insanity another. And this guy clearly wasn’t quite right in the head. He was standing here, calmly and reasonably explaining to me why it made sense that he’d raped five girls. My voice shook when I asked, “What’s different this year?”
“Last year I chose the sluts,” Stan said. “The ones who were asking for it. Like Carmen.”
Carmen? “You raped Carmen?”
He chuckled. “Didn’t know that, did you?”
I shook my head. “She’s not here on spring break. She’s a local. A Conch, like you. Why...?”
“She needed to learn a lesson,” Stan said. “She was out there drinking and whoring, too. Spreading her legs for the college boys, but not giving any of us the time of day.”
‘Us’ being the locals, I assumed. The Conchs.
“And it worked, too. She stopped being a slut after that.”
“So you decided the same lesson would work for other girls.”
He nodded. “It worked fine last year. Nobody paid any attention. But this year, Ricky Fuentes called in the FBI.”
His face darkened and his fists clenched. Big fists, disproportionately large for his skinny frame. “A fucking FBI agent, straight out of college. Younger than me. And he takes charge and stands up there and says the guy we’re looking for is young and white and can’t get a date, and we all have to listen to him.”
I could see why that would be galling. Especially if Stan had wanted a date—with Carmen, say. Carmen, who wouldn’t give him the time of day.
“So this year...”
“This year I waited,” Stan said. “I watched the FBI agent, and I waited. On Saturday, he didn’t do nothing. Just sat around and watched. But on Sunday he talked to you. And I could tell he liked you.”
So I’d been right. Stan had focused on me—on us blondes—because of Ty. Because Ty had focused on me. Nice to know I was right, even now.
For all the good it would do me.
C’mon, Fuentes!
I didn’t look around, didn’t dare do anything to tip Stan off that we might not be alone, but I broadcast my thoughts as far and as wide as I could.
“But he walked you home,” Stan said, “so I couldn’t get at you. Walked right by me and grinned, like he fucking knew!”
That’s right: Ty had said hello to all the cops we’d passed that first night. I hadn’t noticed Stan then, not until the next morning on the beach.
“So you picked someone else instead.”
“Another blonde in a pink dress,” Stan said. “Figured that’d rattle the bastard.”
And it had, although Ty had hidden it well. “And the second night, he walked me through the cemetery. And you picked another girl and brought her here.”
“I was here already,” Stan said, “remember?”
Of course. He’d been standing outside the cemetery when I walked past on my way to Captain Crow’s. But when Ty and I came back, he’d been gone.
“I almost grabbed you then,” he told me. “You stopped to talk to me. But that fucking couple came out of the cemetery, and you ran off.”
God. So close...
I swallowed. “And then the next night...?” He’d sat next to me at the bar, drinking his Coke and planning to rape me. And I’d had no idea.
“You left Captain Tony’s alone,” Stan said, his fists opening and closing.
I tightened my grip on the water bottle and sent out another silent hail. Fuentes! Wake up, dammit!
“I thought finally my luck had changed. You started walking with me, and I got the water into you. I was gonna leave you on his fucking doorstep!”
So that was why Ty had found us going in the opposite direction of my hotel. We were headed toward Richardson’s.
“But then he caught up, and I had to pretend I’d found you like that and hope you didn’t remember anything. And he won again!”
“So you went and found another girl.”
“It was her own fault,” Stan said. “I didn’t have another dose of Special K on me, so I had to give her Roach instead. She didn’t go under fast enough.”
He might as well have been talking Greek, but I nodded like I understood. If I had the chance, I’d ask someone to explain later. At a guess, whatever Roach was, it didn’t make someone as docile as whatever Special K was, and so the girl had fought. And in Stan’s book, that made it her fault that he’d had to beat her into submission.
“But you didn’t leave her in front of Richardson’s.”
“She wasn’t you!” Stan snarled. “Now drink the goddamn water!”
“I don’t want to drink the water.”
His hand moved, I assumed toward the gun on his belt. I hurled the bottle at him as hard as I could, and took off running.
I didn’t expect it to do any damage. It was just a soft plastic bottle, the kind that crinkled when I squeezed it. But I’d left the top mostly unscrewed, and when the bottle hit him in the chest, the top came off and water splashed everywhere. It distracted him for long enough that I was able to duck behind a box tomb, still close enough that I could hear him cursing.
I thought about moving on, but if I did, there was a good chance he’d see me scrambling across the ground, or at least that he’d hear me. I figured I was safer where I was, flat in the dirt in the shadow of the stone box.
That was until I realized that not only did he have a gun hanging from his belt, he had a flashlight, too.
The beam spilled across the grass a couple of yards in front of me, and I could hear him move, still muttering.
The flashlight beam came closer, and I heard his boots thump on the ground. I’m not sure he was even trying to move quietly. There was no point, since I could tell where he was by the light.
I held my breath and pushed my shoulder and hip against the cold stone of the box tomb as the light outlined the stone directly in front of me. Up one side, across the top, and down the other. Shades of The Sound of Music—that scene in the abbey where Rolf has the flashlight and the Von Trapp family is hiding.
“Come out, come out,” Stan said with a giggle, “wherever you are.”
Sounded like he was enjoying this a lot more than I was.
I made myself as small as I could when the beam reached the stone I was hiding behind. It passed in front of me, up the side of the box tomb, and skimmed over the top, along my back, before heading down the opposite side.
I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t make a sound. Don’t make a sound. Don’t...
“Found you!” He sounded gleeful, like a little kid playing hide-and-seek, leaning over the tomb and shining the light directly onto my head.
I screamed and tried to scramble away, but he vaulted the tomb—jumped right over it—and threw himself on top of me. I tried to scream again, but it’s hard to do when someone who weighs seventy pounds more than you is sitting on your back.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Stan said conversationally, “since you spilled my water.”
Oh, God.
“No.” I rocked back and forth, trying to dislodge him, but he didn’t budge. I felt him fumble with something, and the next second, something cold poked at the back of my head.
“Stop,” Stan said, “or I’ll shoot you.”
It’s amazing the incentive a loaded gun pointed at your head can be. I stopped struggling, and lay still. Dammit, Fuentes...
“Don’t worry.” Stan chuckled. “This won’t hurt a bit. Just lay back and think about Connor.”
Sure. That’d help.
Although I would probably think about Ty. I already was.
God, he was going to be devast
ated tomorrow, wasn’t he? And it was my own stupid fault. I hadn’t caught on fast enough. If I had, I never would have allowed myself to be alone with Stan in a deserted place like this.
“Hands behind you,” Stan said, grabbing my arms, and I felt the cold metal of a pair of handcuffs circle my wrists.
Great. That’d help in my getaway.
“OK. Up and over.” He raised himself up far enough that he could flip me from my stomach onto my back. My cuffed hands were uncomfortable at the small of my back, but at least the ground was spongy and soft. It could have been worse, I guess. I could have been lying on pavement.
“Did you cuff all the others, too?” I asked breathlessly.
He chuckled. “Of course not. The others wanted it. They did everything I said to do. That’s why they were out there drinking in the first place, dressed like hookers.”
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“Sure you do. You wanted it on Sunday night. I saw the way you looked at Connor.”
“I wanted it from him,” I said. “I don’t want it from you.”
His face darkened. “You should have gotten it from him while you had the chance. After this, he isn’t gonna want you no more.”
He dropped his hands and began fumbling with my zipper. I began screaming. And out of the darkness stepped a shadow that said, “Stan Laszlo, you are under arrest.”
I SPENT Friday morning poolside, working on my tan. It was my last full day in Key West, and I’d neglected the tanning over the past couple of days.
That, and I just couldn’t think of anything else to do. I had seen all of Key West I wanted to see; in fact, if it hadn’t been for Ty—and Mackenzie and Quinn—I would have changed my ticket and gone home early.
Enrique Fuentes had come to my rescue just in time the night before, and had bundled me into a cab bound for the hotel, after calling Carmen and Ty to tell them what had gone down. I had stayed up for a while, hoping that Ty might stop by after they had finished talking to Stan, but either Stan had had more to say than I’d realized, or Ty hadn’t wanted to stop by.
Part of me was worried I wouldn’t see him again.
So when I looked up from my book just before noon and saw him standing in front of me, the relief was considerable.
Before You Page 12
