Her fingers slipped, and he sliced her upper arm. Not expecting the new pain, she cried out with a curse.
That energized him. “Aha, finally, gotcha, you bitch. You’re mine now. I’ll fillet you like a slab of raw beef.”
“Stop…calling me…a bitch.” Her bloodied fingers slid off his wrist.
He struck again, the blade slicing across her collar bone. She roared at him, pain and anger intermingling. “Fuck you, slime-ball, you’ll pay for that one.”
Still struggling with her, he forced a high, shrieky laugh. “But I have the blade, and you’re going to lose.”
Then she heard the cavalry. Theo’s body jerked, so she knew he heard it, too. The deep rumble escaping the chrome stacks on Michael’s big-assed truck, as the vehicle came to a screeching halt in the driveway. Two seconds later, the front door slammed open, accompanied by the crack of broken plaster. Heavy boots pounded down the hallway, followed by a loud grunt as a body ricocheted off furniture. Michael cursed.
Austin shouted. “Wallis, Wallis, we’re here, baby, we’re here.”
Theo jerked toward the voices. That was all the time Wallis needed.
With a wrenching twist, she jabbed her good knee up and into his rib cage, then snatched the knife from his hand. Blood flowed from her palm, but the pain didn’t even register. She swapped the handle in her bloody grip, blade pointing down.
Theo grabbed her slippery wrist and yanked it toward his body. Once again, she let his momentum work for her—as he pulled, she drove the razor-sharp blade point into the soft, exposed base of his throat, right through the jugular notch, with as much force as she could put behind it.
The pain in her leg exploded, forcing Wallis to push off, roll away from the dethroned killer. She left him to writhe like a headless snake. Listened to him choke and gag as the air escaping his lungs mixed with his own blood and bubbled through the slice in his neck. Listened as his worthless life gurgled away.
Strong hands lifted her, carried her out of the room. The agony broke through the retreating supply of adrenaline; she sobbed helplessly against Michael’s shoulder. As he turned to carry her away from the kill zone, she saw Austin step over a still-twitching Theodore Carroll as the murderer bled out, his vital fluid soaking the antique French Aubusson carpet. She gave a thought for the poor carpet. Damn, that stain will never come out.
Austin went around to the laptop, addressed the web cam. “Glennon, buddy, we’re here. We have her. It’s over. We owe you, man, we seriously owe you.” He nodded at whatever Glennon said, then closed the lid of the computer.
With great care, Michael placed Wallis on her bed, stabilized her smashed leg cast with a rampart of pillows along each side. As gentle as he was, she cried out in agony every time her body moved.
Austin kissed her forehead, wrapped yards of rolled gauze over the deep slices in the palm of her left hand, taped gauze pads over the other wounds. “Baby, hang in there just a bit longer. The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. The EMTs will give you something for the pain.”
Wallis hung in there, the ambulance arrived, then the EMTs delivered her from the pain.
She remembered a kiss against her cheek, another on her forehead, before blessed darkness took her.
Epilogue
In the days following the attack, the crime scene had been processed and released, the bright yellow tape removed. The investigation was wrapped up, reports filed. The front and office doors had been replaced, the damaged walls repaired and restored. The Aubusson carpet had been a total loss, but once the insurance adjuster saw it, he signed off on the claim. After he finished vomiting.
The physical therapist finally left. Exhausted after the torturous workout, Wallis slouched, in shorts and a sweaty tank top, propped up on a gold-tapestried sofa in the living room. A pillow supported her new purple cast. Another pillow lay against her bandaged hip, where the surgeons had removed a block of healthy bone to rebuild her shattered leg.
Austin helped her into a dry T-shirt, covered her to the waist with a light blanket. Michael delivered a tall glass of cold milk, placed it on the end table next to her. Next to the plate of Vienna Finger cookies, her favorite.
“Calcium for bone growth, in the form of ice cold milk. Also good for dunking cookies.”
She sighed. “You guys really are spoiling me. It’s gonna be tough to go back to work.”
Austin sat at the end of the sofa, near her feet. “Yeah, well, no rush there. Those bone grafts need time to knit properly. No trudging over hill and dale, up and down mountains, for a while.”
“I know.” She rearranged the blanket that didn’t need rearranging. “Did either of you hear from Glennon yet?”
Michael pulled up a chair. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“It needs to be over, so I can sleep without nightmares.” Especially the vision of the bat coming down on her leg, crushing cast and bones. Remembering the incredible pain, over and over. Reliving the certainty that she would die, alone, by a blade in the hand of a raving fucking lunatic.
With a raised eyebrow, Michael checked with Austin, who nodded.
“Okay. Your hunches were right on the money. We don’t know how you pulled it together, but you gave Glennon a solid theory. So far, he’s tracked down five clusters of abductions and homicides that fit your scenario, in addition to the four women we assumed he killed in our jurisdiction. By our count, that’s nineteen women. Nineteen women that Theo Carroll kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Spread all over the Northeast. The DNA results should eventually bear this out.”
Wallis held up her finger. “Twenty-one women. At least, that’s my theory.”
Both men stared at her.
“I was able to backtrack his history. His nanny drowned in the pool at his parent’s house, when he was ten. He admitted that his prom date was number two—his nanny must have been the first, numero uno. We should let his hometown authorities know, so they can look into those deaths. The investigators wouldn’t have been looking for homicides.”
Austin cleared his voice. “Onward, then. Using the information on the rental application, all of which proved true, by the way, Glennon extrapolated that data. He followed Carroll’s job history, tracked the psycho’s whereabouts. In every case, he’d been a bona fide math and science tutor in those districts for the period of time in question.”
An involuntary chill traveled up her spine. “But why here?”
“Honestly? Serendipity. He told the teachers at the last school that he wanted the summer off, maybe do some research, some writing, somewhere around the Adirondacks. I don’t know if anyone will ever discover what tripped his psychological trigger, but our own profiler made some fairly frightening suggestions so far, based on the torture and abuse of Carroll’s victims. Then there’s the scary stuff the computer forensic specialist found on Carroll’s hard drive. He was definitely a totally sick ticket.”
“Okay, but why me?”
“First off, except for your eye color, you fit the profile, which we think was just his luck. What we did not share with our crewmates was the reason that he spied on us the other night. The other, really interesting, night.” Michael rolled his eyes.
Austin nodded. “Yeah. We found footprints, and the remains of an Oreo cookie in the landscaping outside your bedroom window.”
She felt her face heat up, and not in a good way. “Oh, shit. Do you think that’s what set him off?”
Michael nodded. “Between us, I’d consider it a strong possibility. For his plan to work, he needed to get Austin and me out of the house. Doing the fourth victim broke his pattern, screwed with his usual plans. You would have been a victim of opportunity. He rushed, he made mistakes—thank goodness.”
With a deep sigh, Wallis’s head fell against the sofa back.
Austin rubbed the top of her foot. “We love you, sweetness. And, in case we didn’t say it, we’re so proud of you. You got the fucker, you took him out.”
“And I love you guys, from the b
ottom of my heart. If you hadn’t shown up—”
Michael took a cookie, but didn’t eat it. “If we hadn’t shown up, you still would have finished him off. We just mopped up. It’s behind us, baby. Let it go.”
She nodded. “I think I can, now that I have the rest of the story. He’s dead, which means he’ll never torture and kill more innocent women. I’ll tell you what, though, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable renting the cottage again. Since I’ll be out of commission for a while, I’m seriously thinking about getting a big-assed dog—a sweet dog that looks tough. Maybe we could think about getting a puppy, after the cast comes off, so I can at least walk around the property with the little critter. Y’know, like doing extra physical therapy.”
Wallis saw Michael nod at Austin.
“Now what? Something you guys aren’t telling me?”
Austin cleared his throat. Several times. “Instead of a puppy…would you consider a baby? Maybe?”
Wallis’s cookie dropped to the floor. “Say again.”
“When we first got together, you said wanted to put off having a family because of our training, then because of the hazards of our jobs. And we supported your decision. We deal with death and destruction every day, but it hadn’t really touched us before, not up front and personal. I think we’ve learned how fragile our own lives can be.”
Wallis could barely form the words. “You both agree? You’re both serious? This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to what happened with mister-asshole-with-a-knife? Y’know, everyone feeling mortal?”
It was Michael’s turn at throat-clearing. “Yeah, we both agree, and yeah, we’re serious. Not out of fear—but because of our devotion for each other. To, well, kinda celebrate our special relationship.”
As Wallis gazed at her two men, the tears began to flow down her cheeks. She could act as tough as she wanted, but there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop the cascade running down her face.
Austin took up the cause. “We have the perfect house, the perfect land. Our families would be so thrilled they’d shout from the mountain tops, it’s about damned time. The only problem we have is that we both can’t marry you, so neither one of us will. At least, not officially. Could you be content as an unwed mother? At least a couple of times over?”
She sniffled. “What about me going back to work?”
Austin switched, worked on her other foot. “We bring in three good salaries, for chrissakes. We should be able to afford a nanny. You could return to work whenever you’re ready. You just say the word.”
Michael rose, brushed the tears from her cheek, kissed her forehead. “Baby, I know we’ve given you loads to think about. You don’t need to decide—”
“Yes.”
They both stared at her, eyebrows raised.
“Yes. I decided. I love both of you so damned much. Yes, and yes, and yes.”
~ABOUT THE AUTHOR~
Danica St. Como, a Jersey girl born and bred, now loves to write at her farm in central upstate New York, surrounded by any number of Whippets. She puts her pen to several romance sub-genres: contemporary, MFM and MMF ménage a trois, MM pairings, erotic historical, paranormal -- all hot, all steamy, and all sexually explicit.
St. Como is a member of the Romance Writers of America and the Central New York Romance Writers chapter of the RWA. Readers can contact her at [email protected]
Visit Danica at:
www.danicastcomo.com
Cunja by Donnette Smith
News reporter, Priscilla Hart, is guilty of using her charm to con Detective Logan Payne out of privileged information for a homicide story she’s covering. But when the killer attacks her, she’s forced to turn to the same man she swindled and beg him for protection.
Helping Priscilla is the last thing on Logan’s mind. He’s more interested in getting her to confess she fabricated the assault to get closer to her sources again. But as the case heats up, he finds himself torn between giving in to the his smoldering desire for the attractive reporter and distancing himself so he can focus on the biggest murder investigation of his career.
The predator’s trail leads to the unearthing of a mysterious medallion and an ancient Cajun spell known as Cunja. As the clock of doom winds down, Logan discovers the woman he loves stands at the center of a sadistic voodoo priest’s plan and saving her is only the tip of the iceberg.
The Sweater Curse by Leanne Dyck
Aspiring knitwear designer Gwen Bjarnson is stuck in Purgatory. To escape, she must re-examine her life, journey through her past and right a wrong.
But which wrong?
Young and in love, she works to establish her career, except fate has different plans. One rash act and she loses everything. Never resting, always seeking, and yearning for what she can no longer have, Gwen faces the truth: if she remains, others are destined to die. How will she solve the mystery before it is too late?
Contents
Title page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
~ABOUT THE AUTHOR~
Blade Dance Page 7
