Contents
Acknowledgments
About the book…
Chapter one
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
About the Author...
Titles from R. E. Bradshaw Books
Rainey Bell Thriller Series:
The Rainey Season (2013)
Rainey’s Christmas Miracle (2011) (Short Story-ebook only)
Rainey Nights (2011) 24th Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
Rainey Days (2010)
The Adventures of Decky and Charlie Series:
Out on the Panhandle (2012)
Out on the Sound (2010)
Molly: House on Fire (2012)
25th Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
Before It Stains (2011)
Waking Up Gray (2011)
Sweet Carolina Girls (2010)
The Girl Back Home (2010)
The Rainey Season
By R. E. Bradshaw
© 2013 by R. E. Bradshaw. All Rights Reserved.
R. E. Bradshaw Books/April 2013
ISBN-13: 978-0-9883520-4-9
Website: http://www.rebradshawbooks.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebradshawbooks
Twitter @rebradshawbooks
Blog: http://rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com
For information contact [email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author and publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
In no particular order
To the readers that keep asking for more, thank you.
Donna W, thank you for being a real sweetheart and for your service to our country.
Wen, thanks for the grammar lessons.
Hooah, Dutch. Thanks for your service and nswering my questions.
Judge Kate, you rock!
Curtie, thanks for the handholding, talking me off the ledge, and reminding me to just write.
Michelle, the three a.m. conversations are lifesavers.
D. Jackson Leigh, my friend, you are a generous soul and a true southern lady. Thank you so very much. I owe you big time.
Toni, thanks for the smiles. Go Duke!
Beta Readers, thank you for your time and helpful suggestions.
Lynne, my sister soul, I got your back. Thanks for having mine.
Jon, you know why. Kendra, you too.
Deb—Always.
About the book…
This is the third in the award winning Rainey Bell Thriller series, following Lambda Literary Award Finalist Rainey Nights. Each book is stand-alone. It does help to read them in order, but it is not necessary. In The Rainey Season, former FBI behavioral analyst Rainey Bell has settled into her life as a wife and mother with Katie Myers and the triplets. Consulting and private investigative work occupy the time not taken up with the one-year-olds crawling around her ankles. As always, her eye is on the security of her family, because Rainey knows is out there and that it is probably watching her. Rainey may be paranoid, but she’s generally right. If it feels wrong, it usually is.
REB
“Sadism: The wish to inflict pain on others is not the essence of sadism. One central impulse: to have complete mastery over another person, to make her a helpless object of our will, to become the absolute ruler over her, to become her God, to do with her as one pleases. To humiliate her, to enslave her, are means to this end, and the most radical aim is to make her suffer, since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on her, to force her to undergo suffering without her being able to defend herself. The pleasure in the complete domination over another person is the very essence of the sadistic drive.”
The writings of James Mitchell “Mike” DeBardeleben, convicted serial sadist.
“For such offenders, sex and suffering are one and the same. This perversion, or paraphilia, is surprisingly unusual, even among sexual criminals. But those who harbor it are the most dangerous of all aberrant offenders. They are the great white sharks of deviant crime, marked by their wildly complex fantasy worlds, unequaled criminal cunning, paranoia, insatiable sexual hunger, and enormous capacity for destruction.”
~ Roy Hazelwood, Former FBI Behavioral Analyst
Chapter One
When she was a child and afraid of the dark, her father dedicated himself to alleviating that fear. He was an avid spelunker and took her along on his less dangerous cave crawls. Even with perpetual night awaiting her, she happily followed him into the bowels of the earth. Helmet headlamps and handheld flashlights offered the security she needed to get through the absence of light underground.
On one trip, when she was ten years old, her father stopped in an area of the cave that was just tall enough for him to stand. He turned to face her, gripping her shoulders with his strong hands.
“Bladen, I’m going to teach you something, something you should know. It will help you with your fear of the dark.”
Bladen’s entire body tightened in panic. “You’re not going to turn off the lights are you?”
Her father smiled. “Only for a moment and I promise to turn them right back on, but I need you to understand that you can still see in the dark. You have to trust me.”
Bladen did trust him. He had never given her reason not to. Still, she could only nod her head, too scared to respond verbally.
“Okay, just close your eyes.”
Bladen did as she was told. Even with her eyelids squeezed tightly together, she knew the instant the headlamps were extinguished.
She heard her father’s soothing voice saying, “Breathe slow and deep. Calm yourself. I’m right here and the light is a button push away from being back on. Are you okay?”
Bladen could only nod.
“I feel you moving, so I’m assuming you’re nodding your head,” he said with a chuckle.
Keeping her eyes shut, as if not verifying the lights were out would keep the fear away, Bladen whispered, “I’m okay.”
“Now, I need you to remember the light, Bladen. Even here, in the darkest of places, you always have light. Imagine looking out of your bedroom window on a sunny day. Do you see the sunlight?”
Bladen was amazed, because she did see it. Sunshine poured through her window, the honey-colored beams warming her face.
“I see it.”
“Good girl, that’s outstanding. Remember, no matter how dark it gets, you can always see the light. Just imagine it there.”
“I will, Daddy.”
“Now open your eyes, honey.”
Bladen opened her eyes, gripping her father’s arm tightly. The rush of fear returned with the nothingness of the dark.
Her father continued to talk to her. “You can imagine with your eyes open too. Listen to my v
oice, how it changes when I move my head. Let your mind’s eye draw the picture. Let it show you where you are, Bladen. Trust your instincts. Your mind remembers the light.”
She trusted him more than her instincts, and following his instructions was able to imagine the cavern reforming in front of her. With only darkness staring back at her, Bladen could feel what she should see, and her mind remembered.
“It’s that way,” she said, pushing her father in the direction she imagined was the way out.
Her father’s laughter echoed through the cave, when the flashlight in his hand proved her correct.
“You’re going to be all right, Bladen,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “Sometimes when the lights go out, you have to remember what it looked like when they were on. It’s not really pitch-blackness, if you can imagine the light. Never give up. No darkness lasts forever.”
Bladen learned a valuable lesson that day. Whenever things were going rough, she would close her eyes and see the light. “No darkness lasts forever,” she would remind herself.
Bladen fell back on that memory, her current situation forcing her eyes shut, searching for light, any light. There, in the corner of her mind, was her smiling father, sunlight bouncing off his now white hair. She wanted to stay safe under his watchful eyes, but the primal warnings of her limbic system screamed at her to concentrate on survival. She had two choices. Escape inside her mind, or deal with the reality of her circumstance. Her eyes flew open.
“Stay focused, Bladen. Stay engaged.” Her words bounced back from the black void. She concentrated on the reverberation for a moment, energizing her brain, giving it something to do. She listened to the darkness, hearing only the sound of rapid shaky breathing, her own.
She took a deep calming breath and released it slowly, a desperate attempt to control the panic.
“Okay, Bladen. Where are you?”
She repeated her name, sparking her mind to remember she was still there—that she still had a chance. If she lost hope, it was over.
Her father’s voice surfaced from a memory, urging her into action. “Just because you can’t see, doesn’t mean you can’t figure out where you are. What do you smell, Bladen? What can you feel? What do you hear?”
“All right. What do I smell? I smell fresh paint and wood, maybe leather when I turn around and face the other way. Oil or gas maybe, and bleach too.”
She remembered hearing her dad comment, “These freaks love their bleach. You smell bleach at a suspect’s house, you know this guy is up to no good.”
She talked her way through her senses. It helped keep her calm. She was sure her father had never meant her to use the skills he taught her to survive a situation like this, but then again, it might have been exactly what he had in mind.
“My head hurts and I think I was drugged. It’s warm in here, but the floor is cool.” She focused on the darkness in front of her, aiming a short “ha” into the abyss, listening to the sound hit a wall and return with little echo. “Small room, solid walls. The ceiling seems to be about eight feet tall,” she said. “No ambient sounds. I think I’m underground, but not a basement. It’s too quiet. Could be soundproof, though.”
Peering up, she was unable to see where the handcuffs binding her wrist were chained above her head. She was stretched out, pulled up so the balls of her feet were the only things keeping her from dangling helplessly. She felt the smooth concrete with her toes.
“The floor is slanted slightly. I think I may be in the center of the room.”
She pulled against the restraints, allowing her toes to explore more of the surface beneath her. She followed the slant down for a few inches, before discovering a round metal grate embedded in the floor. She scampered away from the drain as fast as her toes could carry her, stifling the scream trying to escape her throat. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably, as it had when she first awoke and found she was hanging naked from her wrists in this inky black space. Bladen had seen enough horror movies to know what that drain probably meant. She was sure it was where her abductor was going to wash her blood away when he was done with her.
She chastised herself for letting the fear overwhelm her. “Get a hold of yourself, Bladen. Remember what that profiler said. ‘Stay focused. Stay engaged. Do not give up.’”
There had been a series of unsolved rapes in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as the Triangle and surrounding counties during the past few years. In addition to the rapes, an article Bladen read last Friday noted women began vanishing three years ago. The first cases were prostitutes, but in the last eighteen months, coeds, young professionals, and housewives had joined the list. It did not escape Bladen’s attention that the public outcry increased with the elevation of the victims’ social standing. The new media attention sparked a proactive community response. Women’s safety symposiums were popping up all over the Triangle. At the urging of her father, Bladen attended one held at her small college, where she would graduate in May. While sitting in the audience Monday night, she never imagined that milestone would be in question by Tuesday evening. Surviving to Wednesday seemed even less likely.
Former FBI agent and behavioral analyst Rainey Bell, the last speaker on the panel and the most impressive, spelled it out plainly.
“There is no right or wrong way to escape from a rapist once the attack has begun. No one knows how he or she will react under that much stress, until it’s been experienced. Fear can paralyze even the strongest of us. If you don’t freeze, fighting like hell can make the situation worse, depending on the type of attacker you are dealing with,” Bell said. “Knowledge is power, and knowledge is what we’ve tried to give you tonight. Beyond all the precautionary measures discussed, the various types of rapists and how best to respond to them, I have only one piece of advice. If you are attacked, stay focused, stay engaged. Listen to your instincts. The will to live is embedded in your DNA. Find your strength in that and do what you must to survive.”
The tall, chestnut-haired Bell paused and stepped from behind the podium. Her tone softened as her piercing green eyes swept the audience. “No amount of training or education can make you immune to sexual assault.” She lifted her shirt from her waist, revealing a white scar leading up from her navel, disappearing at the base of her sports bra. “I was a trained, armed FBI agent actively in pursuit of a serial murderer, when I was abducted by the man I sought. It can happen to anyone.”
She pulled her shirt down and walked closer to the edge of the stage. “Look down the row you are sitting on. Go on—look at the women seated next to you. Statistics advise that at least one woman on each of these rows will be raped. The underreporting of sexual assaults suggests there will be more.”
Bell took the time to let that sink in. “Be vigilant, but if you are attacked, please remember these words. Although the odds were very much against it, I am one of only two people to have survived being abducted by my assailant.”
The pretty blond panelist from the women’s shelter stood up. “I am the other,” she said.
Rainey Bell reassured the room. “There is always hope. Do not give up.”
Bladen already followed most of the precautions the panel suggested. Her father had drilled them into her head.
“Park in heavily traveled areas, no dark places, not next to any vans,” he’d make her repeat. “Be aware of your surroundings. Listen to your instincts. If it feels wrong, it usually is.”
She always remembered and followed his instructions. Yet, here she was, chained in a small room without having seen the man that abducted her.
Her last memory was of preparing to leave for an evening class, running late, and rushing her parents off the phone, promising to call back after class to talk about her graduation trip. She awoke alone in the dark, chained to the ceiling of a madman’s lair.
After the initial shock and horror, Bladen fought to gain control as each wave of terror seized her. For every moment of calm she could muster, there were many more where the
reality of her circumstances sent her into convulsions of quaking panic.
She closed her eyes, searching again for the memory of light, and repeated what had become her mantra, “Stay focused. Stay engaged.”
“Former Special Agent Rainey Bell is quite enchanting, isn’t she?” A deep voice said out of the silence.
Bladen gasped. Her eyes flew open. He was there. He had been there the entire time, watching her. She jerked away from the sound of movement, the handcuffs biting into her already bloody wrists.
Finding her voice, she screamed into the inky blackness, “Stay away from me!”
Her frantic kicks were futile. Still she swung on the chains, striking out until she had no breath remaining, her desperate trapped-animal screams fading to whimpers. Exhausted from the struggle, she hung limply from her wrists and began to lose hope.
She felt the breeze on her neck as he passed behind her, whispering, “Wasn’t that magnificent when she showed her scar?”
Bladen jerked forward with another burst of primal survival instinct, but escape was impossible.
His breath licked at her face. “I bet she screamed when he dug that scalpel into her chest, don’t you?”
Energy spent and no way to break free, Bladen closed her eyes against the breath-stealing panic, willing her mind to engage. Who was this guy? She didn’t need his name. She only wanted to know what kind of sick freak he was. Her brain supplied the desired information, as it began to play a memory of an earlier portion of Rainey Bell’s presentation on the types of rapists.
“Should you become the target of an Anger Excitation offender—the most criminally sophisticated of the rapists we’ve discussed—escape or resistance is generally out of the question. You must be clever in your defiance. You will have to match wits with him, but above all, you must attempt to avoid his rage. Injuries will increase in severity with his intensified anger. This sadist’s goal is to achieve gratification from the fear and torture of the victim. These abductions can range from hours to days, and in rare cases—weeks, months, or even years. Surviving the torture for a time is a good thing, believe it or not. The longer it takes him to tire of you, the more opportunities you have to take advantage of his mistakes and get away. These offenders are lethal. The end result is almost always murder. You must do what you can to escape. Do not give in. Do not give up.”
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