He smiled at her. In the lantern light, he looked like a grinning wolf.
She had to snuff out her fear. She could not back out now. The door to hell had been opened, a finger beckoned, and she had to follow it all the way inside.
She slid her toe along his thigh. “I thank you for sharing that secret with me, Leon. There’s nothing like a man who can be open and honest with a woman. I find it very. . attractive.”
He lowered his cigarette. “You do?”
“Very much so.”
“It doesn’t scramble your brain that I confessed to offing my moms?”
“Was it shocking? Yes. Do I feel as if you were justified in doing it, considering the abuse to which she subjected you for so many years?” She shrugged, though inwardly she wanted to scream. “That’s not my judgment to make.”
“You’re a believer in moral relativism, huh?” he said. “Nothing is intrinsically good or evil, you have to judge a man’s choices by his life’s circumstances. Spinoza said that.”
“You’re so smart.” She scooted closer to him, and crossed her legs Indian style. Her knees touched his ankles.
He looked down at the juncture of their bodies. Redness crept into his face.
“Here.” She took a sip from her cup, and passed it to him.
Never letting his eyes leave hers, he drank, and handed the wine back to her. She drank some more. Her mind buzzed, and the alcohol had nothing to do with it.
“Corey was never as honest with me as you’ve been,” she said. “He’s not a real man, not like you are.”
Leon sneered. “C-Note’s scared of his past, terrified of the skeletons lurking in the closet, the insects beneath the rocks. But I’m not, I can go there, I’m not scared of anything.”
“Not you, Leon. Never.”
“I’m stronger than him, always have been.”
“Yes, you are.”
Silence hung between them, as tangible as the smoke in the air. She thought about the community shelter where she worked once a week. There she had counseled many women who walked the streets, performing oral sex or other acts on men for ten bucks-sometimes less, if they were desperate-and one common thread in their heartbreaking narratives was how they’d learned by necessity to separate sex from emotion, from caring, from love, how they considered it a mere business transaction, and would go about the process, no matter how repelled they were by the john, with the mechanical indifference you might have used for washing dishes or folding laundry.
That was what she had to do now. Disassociate.
She gazed deeply into his eyes. The soul of a murdering psychopath lurked within them, cold and calculating, but she could not let that stop her.
She batted her lashes, flirtatiously.
“You’ve got pretty eyes, like freshly minted pennies,” he said. He touched her cheek with his index finger, and she resisted the natural impulse to pull away, and instead, smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
“And those dimples. . so adorable.”
She edged closer to him, knees pressing firmly against his legs. Bending forward, she placed her hands on his crotch.
A soft gasp of surprise escaped him. She felt the hardness in his slacks, and gently kneaded it.
He groaned, eyes boring into her. “Don’t do this unless you mean it. I haven’t been with a lady in a while.”
“And as I sit here with you, I realize that I’ve never been with a real man.” She squeezed him, and pleasure flared across his face. “Until today.”
“Wait a second, wait a second, wait,” he said with hushed awe. He looked at his cigarette as if finally remembering it was there, and stubbed it out on the floor. He snapped his fingers. “Wait, I get this. This is like, what they call the Stockholm syndrome. You’ve heard of that? Where the hostage-takers and the hostage start falling head over heels in love with each other. That’s what we’re doing here, I think, I’m really feeling you, like, whoa-”
She cut him short. “Honey, are you going to take off these damn handcuffs so I can get out of these clothes?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you, I got you.” He fished a tiny silver key out of his pocket. As he reached for her wrists, she held her breath.
Then, he stopped. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“Are you serious, Clair Huxtable?” he asked. “Or are you just fucking with me, playing some kind of sicko, shrink game?”
“You’re looking at the same girl who once rode her high school principal like a pony, sweetheart. What the hell do you think? Huh? I’ll tell you what I think, Leon. I think you’re scared I’m gonna lay it on you so hard you’ll forget your damn name.”
His suspicion faded, and he broke into a grin. “We’ll see about that, uh-huh, we’ll see about that, that’s right.”
Hands trembling with eagerness, he fumbled the key into each cuff, and unlocked them. He tossed them aside, the metal clattering somewhere behind them.
Thank you, God.
She examined her wrists. They had purple-black rings on them, and throbbed painfully. She massaged them-and tried to keep her gaze away from the gun on his hip.
“There you go.” He made a wild twittering gesture. “Free as a bird.”
“Thank you so much. Now, I can do what I do best.”
“Lay it on me.” He started to unbutton his shirt.
She swatted his hands away. “No, I’ll do that. You relax.”
“Okay, okay, okay, do your thing, yeah, do it, do it, do it.”
She rose to her knees and crawled onto his lap, straddling him. He licked his lips. She took his hands and placed them across her rear end, inviting him to feel the round firmness.
“Think you can hold on to these reins, cowboy?” she said.
He dug his fingers into her and squeezed, forehead glistening with sweat. He was as hard as cement. Ignoring her stomach-wrenching aversion, she sinuously ground her pelvis against him. He closed his eyes, moaned.
“Thank you for calling me to the principal’s office, Mr. Sharpe,” she whispered in his ear.
Eyes closed in rapture, he clutched her as if holding on for dear life. Starting from the top and moving down, she unfastened each button of his shirt.
“Going to turn you out,” she said.
“I can’t wait, can’t wait, can’t wait, uh-huh.”
“Better not be a minute man, baby.”
His head whipped back and forth. “Not me, no way, nope, nope, nope, I stay long till the break of dawn.”
She reached the last button, right above his belt buckle. She traced her fingers up his arms and rolled the top of the shirt down, making it snug around his shoulders and biceps. Like putting him in a straitjacket.
“I can’t wait to feel you inside me,” she said.
She playfully pinched his nipple, making him flinch, while she stealthily slid her other hand around his waist.
“I can dish out pain, too, I like to bite.” He bared his teeth comically and growled. “Grrrrrr.”
She chuckled, flicked his nipple with her thumb. Her other hand closed around the butt of the gun, quietly unsnapped the strip of leather securing it in the holster.
“I like to do all kinds of freaky things, honey,” she said. “It’ll be so nice to be with a real man who can respect what I’ve got to offer.”
“I am so respecting you right now, ma cherie, like you wouldn’t believe.”
She snatched the pistol out of the holster and jammed the muzzle underneath his chin.
“That’s so good to hear,” she said, “ ’ cause if you don’t respect that I’ve got the gun now, I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
63
Summoning all of his courage-easy to do after he’d guzzled six cans of beer-Ed had resolved to rescue his daughter from Their house.
He’d been given a second chance to do right by his little girl. He had probably deserved to lose her before, but after years of saving dogs from the cruel streets and giving them a safe hav
en, proving his worth as a man, he believed God had finally deemed him fit to have his child again.
He did not know how to raise a child, but he had plenty of food, a warm home, and a loving heart. Surely that had to be enough.
He took a handful of dogs with him as he went out again into the damp darkness. The canines pranced around him in the muddy front yard, tails wagging. They seemed more excited than usual, as if they were aware of the importance of the mission at hand.
“Ed’s going to get his little girl,” he said to them. “We’re going to save her from Them.”
He’d watched Their house for hours. The white van had returned. He hoped that he would not have to fight Them, hoped that he could reason with Them somehow, but just in case They did not listen, he had his bowie knife.
Feeling light-headed from all the beers he’d drunk, he plunged into the woods. A fat moon gave the forest a ghostly glow. The rain had subsided, but the undergrowth was drenched from the hours of continuous rainfall, mud slurping at his boots and splattering his pants.
It made him wonder how he would clothe his little girl. He would have to go to her old bedroom and see what pieces of clothing she had left behind when her mother had taken her away from him. He hoped everything still fit her. The possibility of having to purchase new dresses and blouses and shoes and whatever else little girls liked to wear frightened him so much he had to stop thinking about it, because if he did, he would go back inside his house and convince himself that it really wasn’t his little girl trapped in Their home. It was a ghost, as he’d first thought, and he was simply losing his mind.
Suddenly, the dogs went rigid.
“What is it?” he asked. Peering into the undergrowth ahead, he listened closely for sounds. He heard only the plink and plop of rainwater ticking onto leaves and bark. “Someone out there?”
One of the dogs with him, the perceptive black Lab that had a knack for tagging along, bolted ahead in a dark streak. The other canines followed.
“Hey, wait for Ed,” he said.
The dogs ignored him. They disappeared in the shadows.
He ran after them as fast as he could with the cane, breath wheezing from his parched lips, legs aching dully from when he’d run through the woods earlier.
He pushed through a thick wall of shrubs. Ahead, under the leafy boughs of a maple, the dogs had gathered around something. They chuffed in excitement, tails swishing through the grass.
He lumbered closer. And dropped his cane in shock.
It was the little girl from the window.
Somehow, she had escaped Them on her own.
The Lab pressed close to the child, licked her face. Petting the dog behind the ears, the girl looked up at Ed, her eyes bright as bells.
“My name is Jada Webb,” she said slowly. She pointed behind her. “I ran away from that house back there. My Mom and I are in trouble. Can you help us, please, mister?”
Ed blinked slowly. Her words had whispered like a soft breeze around his thoughts, and failed to stir comprehension.
Instead, his gaze was fixed on her pajamas.
A colorful cartoon image of a dog was on the front of her shirt. Her fluffy pink shoes were fashioned to look like little dogs, too.
His breath caught in his throat. Her clothing was the truest sign imaginable of her identity.
“Laura,” he said in a voice cracked with emotion, speaking the name he thought he had forgotten. “Oh, Laura, my sweet baby.”
The girl frowned. “Mister, my name is-”
With a cry of joy, he hooked his hands underneath her arms and plucked her off the ground. He swept her to his chest and hugged her.
“You’ve come home to me at last,” he said. “Oh, thank you, God, thank you.”
His daughter squirmed and kicked in his embrace, sending one of her fuzzy slippers hurtling into the bushes. A thin whine escaped her. He muffled her mouth with his hand.
“There, there, hush now, Laura, hush,” he said. He buried his nose in her hair, and the sweet smell of her made his heart kick. “Don’t you remember Ed? Ed’s your daddy, sweetheart. Let’s go home with Ed now. You’ll love Ed’s house, he has lots and lots of nice, friendly dogs.”
Laura cried, but that was okay. It had been so long since they had seen each other, so many long, lonely years, that she couldn’t help but shed wonderful tears of joy.
Warm tears streamed down his cheeks, gathered in his beard.
He was crying, too.
64
Halfway through his drive, Corey had pulled off the highway and found a Wal-Mart that was open around the clock. They didn’t sell guns, unfortunately. The only useful weapon he could buy was a Buck hunting knife.
He paid cash for the blade, a compact flashlight, batteries, and a metro area map, and hurried back to the car.
The map spread on the passenger seat, he plotted the rest of his route. His BlackBerry had a GPS mapping feature, but he was reluctant to turn on the phone for fear of inviting an FBI trace.
Near the end of his trip, the rainfall tapered off. As the storm clouds dispersed, the moon came through, casting a bone-pale sheen.
Driving through a wooded area sparsely populated with old, ramshackle homes nestled deep within trees, he spotted an ornate, stacked-stone sign coming up on the right side of the road: ARCHER LAKE. Another nearby sign tempted: FROM THE 300S. NEW HOME SITES AVAILABLE!
His pulse quickened. This was definitely the subdivision he remembered.
He hung a right. The community was steeped in darkness, the street lamps shut off. The three contemporary models they had toured last fall were on his immediate right. They were shuttered and dark, with no indications of recent activity.
He crawled down the asphalt road, tires grinding over rocks and splashing through pools of water. All of the houses he passed by were unfinished. Many of the lots were only mounds of red clay bordered by black silt fences. Through a line of pine trees on his left, he glimpsed a lake in the distance, surface streaked with moonlight.
He arrived at a three-way intersection. To his right, there were more half-finished properties. To his left, more houses, too, a couple of which appeared closer to completion than the others he had seen.
He also saw, in the moon glow, muddy tire tracks crisscrossing to the driveway of one of the homes on the left. It was a large, two-story house with a side-entry garage and an elegant brick facade. It stood in a cul-de-sac, backed by a wall of forest.
A shiver coursed down his spine. That was the safe house. Even without the evidence of the tire tracks, it just felt right to him.
Not wanting to risk driving closer, he cut off the engine.
65
Blood pounding in her ears, Simone pressed the muzzle underneath Leon’s chin. Her finger tingled on the trigger, and from Corey’s lessons on handgun security, she knew enough about guns to know that you should never point a loaded weapon at anyone unless you were willing to fire.
She was willing, God help her. Considering the sheer hell this man had put her and her family through, he deserved a bullet to the head.
But Leon was smirking. “You won’t shoot me, Clair Huxtable. You don’t have the chutzpah, you lack the cojones, you’re only some talented-tenth princess bitch in way over her pretty little bourgeois head, skinny-dipping in the Pacific with the white sharks now. If you’ve got any functioning brain cells at all you’ll put down the Glock and finish what we’ve started, I’m getting blue balls sitting here with your bubblicious ass riding my dick. Put the gun down, all right, put it down and let me give it to you raw, how about back door, you ever had that, huh, I bet not, how about I introduce you to some new experiences, how about I shove my dick in your mouth and cum in the back of your throat, let you swallow my tasty kids, how would you like that, yeah, all right, huh. .”
“Shut up,” she said, greasy revulsion slithering through her. Clutching the gun in both hands, she lowered the muzzle from his chin, to the bulge in his pants.
Almost
immediately, he gulped, quieted. For the first time, genuine fear crept into his fevered eyes. He was crazy, a psycho, but above all, still a man, more concerned about the head between his legs than the one sitting atop his shoulders.
She shoved the muzzle against him harder, and he gasped.
“Wanna bet that I won’t blow your balls off to get my daughter back?” she said. “Wanna try me? Do you?”
“You’re a crazy bitch, stupid motherfuckin’ slut-”
“Raise your hands!” she shouted.
Lips quivering, he obeyed.
She felt jittery, drunk on adrenaline. But she had never in her life been so determined.
She slid off his lap and got to her feet. She kept the gun aimed at his vital parts. Watching her, he licked his lips nervously.
“Now, you’re taking me to my baby,” she said. “Get up, and keep those hands up, too. Do it slowly.”
“Be cool, baby girl, all right? Be cool.” He stood. “No one has to get hurt.”
“Go open the door.” She pointed to the doorway with the gun.
“Okay, okay, be cool, all right, Clair Huxtable. Be cool.”
“Stop calling me Clair Huxtable. This isn’t a damn TV show. My name is Simone Webb. Dr. Simone Webb. Now get your ass to the door.”
“All right, Dr. Simone Webb, all right, you’re the boss lady.”
As he walked to the door, hands raised, heavy, rapid footsteps pounded in the hallway outside. Before Leon could reach the knob, the door flew open.
Simone drew back, finger on the trigger.
Billy staggered inside the room. His dull gaze raked over her, but didn’t appear to register the gun. He turned to Leon, face downcast.
“The girl is gone,” he said flatly.
“What?” Simone and Leon shouted in unison.
Billy’s round face reddened; he looked like a child expecting punishment. “I went to sleep. She was hiding in the closet. When I woke up, I looked in there. She was gone.”
Shock deadened Simone’s knees. “We’ve got to find her.”
Cornered Page 24
