A dull throbbing in her lower abdomen, and a soreness between her legs, reminded her of other stuff.
She’d been lying on one arm and it had gone to sleep. Donna rubbed the sensation back into it, then rolled over, reaching for Kyle.
The other side of the bed was empty.
Donna sat up. There were no tell-tale shower sounds from the bathroom.
She got up as quickly as her grogginess would allow her and felt a tide of nausea sweep in. Pausing for a moment to collect herself, she padded naked to the bathroom door.
It was ajar. She pushed it open.
‘Kyle?’
No reply. She stepped inside.
He was gone.
Donna went back into the bedroom, alarm rising in her. Then she saw the folded piece of paper, tucked into the frame of the mirror on the dresser.
Lying in his arms after their final bout of lovemaking in the night, when both of them had realized they’d reached the limit of their endurance, Donna had murmured: ‘Just out of interest, where did you hide the painting?’
‘Just around.’ Had he hesitated before replying? She snuggled against him.
‘You can tell me. It doesn’t matter now, does it?’
‘Why’s it important?’
‘I’m just curious, is all.’
‘Just around,’ he repeated. ‘A locker I found at a bus station.’
‘The Amtrak station by the river?’
‘Yeah. That’s the one.’
He was lying. There was no such place.
She needed to know where he’d hidden the painting because in all likelihood it was still there. Donna didn’t know what game Kyle was playing, but he’d surely have to own up in the morning when her contact called her to set up a rendezvous in order to check the painting out. Was Kyle intending to skip out on her and run off with the picture himself? In which case, why hadn’t he done so already? Why come all the wait out here to Alabama with her only to go back the following day? Was it just for the sex with her?
Now, alone in the motel room at sunrise, Donna snatched the folded note from the mirror with trembling fingers. She opened it. In surprisingly neat script, Kyle had written:
Dear Donna
Please forgive me for running out on you like this, and for tricking you. But please, read this note all the way through before you judge me.
That wrapped object in the rucksack isn’t the painting after all. It’s a decoy. You see, I had my doubts about you. I thought you might try to doublecross me, and run off with the painting on your own.
I realize now I was wrong, and I bitterly regret doing what I did. Last night I went out to the store on my own to see if you’d take the package and drive away. I was testing you. You didn’t, and I’m truly ashamed that I doubted you.
Donna, honey, please understand you mean the world to me. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. I want to make this work between us. I was a fool to think you’d betray me, and I’ll never make that mistake again.
I’ve gone to get the painting. The real one this time, cross my heart. I hid it in the chalet back at your home. There wasn’t time to sneak out and hide it somewhere else, so I wrapped it up and stuck it under the floorboards down there. The same place we’ve spent so many wonderful hours together. I figured the cops wouldn’t have any reason to go searching there because Blair got killed up at the house.
That’s how I know that girl, Madison, never saw me leaving the house. Because I never left. Only later, with you, went we went back to my motel. And she didn’t say she’d seen you. So she was making it all up.
So I’ll rent a car from the motel and should be back just about in time for breakfast. (I’ve taken your house keys – sorry – but left the ones for the Mercedes.) Then, if you want, we can meet this guy of yours and get the painting valued, then collect on the money. If you want to. If you don’t want anything more to do with me after the way I’ve deceived you – well, it’ll break my heart, but I understand. That’s why I’ve left your car.
Donna, please don’t call me. If you do, I won’t answer the phone. Not because I don’t want to talk with you. But because I need to do this, without interruption, without you trying to persuade me it’s too risky for me to go back. Because I need to do this myself. I need to make good.
I’ll see you, I hope, around nine a.m., back at the motel.
Whatever happens, please remember that I love you.
Yours,
Kyle
Donna read the note through a second time. Then she flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Despite herself, she smiled.
The chalet. Of course. It was obvious.
Maddeningly, the painting had been right under her nose the last ten days.
She sat bolt upright, checked the clock by the bed. Six forty-three.
I’ll see you… around nine a.m., Kyle had written.
It was a three-hour round trip to the house in North Columbus and back. Assuming a few minutes to get into the chalet and recover the painting, that meant Kyle must have set off a little before six o’clock. Forty-five minutes ago. He’d be halfway there.
Donna rushed over to the dresser again. There, amongst the loose change and the remains of the snacks they’d consumed in the night, were the car keys, just as Kyle had said.
Quickly, Donna began to pull on her clothes.
Ten
The car, a four-year-old Subaru, wasn’t the fastest set of wheels Kyle had ever driven, but it was fairly inconspicuous. He kept to the speed limit, with the window wound down instead of the aircon on, just as he preferred it. Up above the sky had cleared to a brilliant cornflower blue, the rain of a few hours ago long gone but leaving a lingering clean sweetness in the air.
He felt curiously light-hearted. Yes, he was nervous about how Donna was going to react to his note. She’d probably be pissed as hell, and who could blame her? But his dread at facing the music when he returned to her was nothing compared with the joy he’d felt when, the night before, he’d returned to the motel and found the Mercedes still parked outside and Donna still in the room. She hadn’t skipped out on him, and that meant one thing. She wanted to be with him, a suspected felon on the run from the law, more than she wanted the proceeds of the painting.
Kyle turned on the radio and dialed through the channels. Country, country and more country. He wasn’t a big fan of the music, though country and western bars tended to have the horniest chicks, in his experience. Well, his days of rampant womanizing were behind him now. There was only one woman for Kyle Cantrell.
He found a classic rock station and turned up the volume. It was an old Rolling Stones song: Gimme Shelter. The eerie, hypnotic sound and angry, desolate lyrics seemed at odds with the beauty and hope of the morning around him.
Seven fifteen, said the dashboard clock. Fifteen, twenty minutes and he’d be there. He’d have to take care around the Thurgood house, of course, but he doubted there’d be a police guard in place. A quick trip down to the chalet to prize up the floorboards and extract the painting, and he’d be on his way back to Montgomery, Alabama. And Donna.
Kyle felt a momentary tug of anxiety as he took the Subaru through the leafy grandeur of Green Island Hills. The colossal houses, the pools, the golf courses… it was a world that was new to him, that he hadn’t grown up with. To be honest, he didn’t particularly hanker for it. He’d be happy being comfortably off, doing a good, honest day’s work and having a bed to sleep on at the end. But Donna was used to fine things, to the trappings of wealth, and he was determined to give her the life she wanted. It just wouldn’t be here, of course, in Columbus. Probably not even in the US.
He approached the gates of the Thurgood home, half-expecting to find a reception committee of black-and-whites. But of course there was nothing like that. Just a nondescript car parked up on the road outside the gates, probably some early-morning driver who’d decided to stop and take a stroll among the landscaped streets. On the bunch of h
ouse keys he’d borrowed from Donna, Kyle found the one that opened the electronic gates, and when they’d slid open he drove in.
Parking the Subaru at the side of the gravel forecourt, in just about the same place he used to park his pickup truck, two weeks earlier and yet a lifetime ago, Kyle got out and stood for a moment in the stillness of the morning.
Something didn’t feel right.
He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. A gentle breeze riffled the leaves in the trees hedging the perimeter of the grounds, and the summer sounds of bees and other insect life were starting to emerge from the flowerbeds. All around him the scene looked peaceful, lazy. A beautiful home and garden preparing for another languorous day basking in the sun.
He was getting paranoid. Jumpy, because of all that had happened. And who could blame him? Shrugging, Kyle got out the bunch of keys, one of which would let him into the chalet, and began walking across the gravel, not toward the front door of the house but round the side, in the direction of the grassy slope leading down to the pool.
He stopped suddenly, his heart leaping into his throat.
A girl had appeared round the corner of the house, straight ahead of him. Long, dark hair, slim body.
Madison.
In her hands she held an almost-square package, the size and shape of the painting.
She stopped as abruptly as Kyle had, and at the same instant.
They stared at one another in shock.
Then she began running. Not back the way she’d come, down toward the chalet, but sideways across the front of the house to the front door.
Kyle was a split-second too slow off the mark and the girl had a head start. She reached the door as he scrambled across the gravel – he had boots on, not sneakers, and they weren’t ideal for running in – and he saw her stab a key expertly into the lock, twist it and push the door open. Blair must have given her her own keys to his house.
Kyle launched himself at the door when he was a few paces away, the momentum slamming his shoulder hard against it. It was good, solid oak, and although it jolted in its frame, it held. He still had the house keys in his hand and almost before he realized what he was doing he stuck the front-door one into the lock, feeling resistance but overcoming it and driving the key home. He’d managed to stop her locking the door from the inside and leaving the key in the lock.
Kyle turned the knob and flung the door open, half-expecting it to collide with the girl. But when he barged through into the marbled lobby she wasn’t there. He raced through the lobby, his bootsteps echoing, until he came to the great sweeping staircase. He stopped and peered up. Surely she couldn’t have gotten up there so fast? No, she must be downstairs still.
‘Looking for me?’
Kyle whirled. The girl was ten paces behind him, and had evidently emerged from one of the rooms off the lobby. Her hands were empty. Instead she stood with arms folded, feet apart, her weight slightly over on one leg.
She gazed directly at him, her eyes huge.
‘Where is it?’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t you just like to know,’ she smiled. She unfolded her arms and put her hands on her hips, tilting so that her weight was on the other leg. It was a provocative, challenging pose. Kyle noticed she was wearing a white T-shirt and a tiny denim skirt. Sneakers with no socks. Her bare legs were impossibly long and tan, her ankles tiny.
He took a step toward her. ‘Tell me where it is.’
‘How much is it worth to you, Kyle?’
‘No games.’ He advanced another step. He’d never threatened a woman before, didn’t want to now. But he wasn’t in the mood for any shit either.
‘What’ll you do if I don’t tell you?’
‘God damn it. I don’t have time for this.’ Another step forward.
Still smiling, still holding his gaze, the girl took her bottom lip between the tips of her teeth. ‘I’ll give you the painting on one condition.’
He waited. When she didn’t continue, he said, ‘What’s that?’
‘That you fuck me.’
‘Jesus.’ Kyle swept a hand through his hair, noting with detached surprise how short it was now since Donna had cut it. ‘I said I don’t have time for this crap.’
‘I mean it, Kyle.’ Her eyes widened, the smile fading a little.
He stared at her.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘I saw the way you were looking at me that day by the pool. At my tits. I saw the hardon you were trying to hide. You wanted to fuck me then. Well, now’s your chance.’
Kyle’s heart began to quicken. What the hell was going on?
Never breaking eye contact, Madison hooked her thumbs into the band of her miniskirt and pushed it far enough down over her hips and thighs that gravity did the rest. She stepped out of it. Underneath she was wearing tiny red panties. As she turned her hip a fraction he realized it was a thong.
‘I know you were disappointed that day,’ she murmured. ‘Disappointed that you got to see my tits but that I kept my panties on. Well, now you get to see the rest.’
‘Madison, wait –’ Kyle began, putting out a hand, but already she was peeling down the wisp of red silk, wiggling her hips exaggeratedly. She kicked the thong off the end of one sneakered foot and stood before him once more, hands on hips again.
Kyle couldn’t help but stare. Between her thighs her mound was smooth except for a thin strip of black hair running vertically up, bisecting the triangle. Smiling again, the girl laid a palm on her flat, smooth brown belly and began to slide it slowly downward, her extended middle finger leading.
Kyle felt the throbbing heat in his groin, the blood surging and filling his cock.
No, damn it.
He forced himself to look away. ‘Just put your panties back on and give me the painting. This isn’t going to happen.’
‘Look at me.’
He stared off, at the doorways leading from the lobby. Which room? She hadn’t had time to hide the picture properly. If he ransacked the rooms one by one, he’d find it sooner or later.
‘Look at me.’ Her tone was sharper, urgent.
Against his will, Kyle looked.
Madison’s hand was between her legs now, her middle finger crooked. He could see it between the swollen shaved folds of her labia, probing. Still she was staring at his face.
‘I told you to fuck me.’
‘No.’
‘You want to.’
‘No.’
‘She’ll never know.’
‘What?’
‘Donna. Your girlfriend. She’ll never know. A quick fuck, then I’ll give you the picture and you get out. Go back to her. She’ll never have to know.’
‘I’ll… know.’ He found his voice catching in his throat.
‘But if you don’t, you’ll forever be wondering, Kyle,’ she hissed. Her eyes blazed. Between her legs her finger was working frantically. Kyle thought he caught a faint tang of her sex-smell in the air. ‘You’ll keep thinking what it might have been like. Keep thinking about the time a hot, sexy babe offered her pussy to you, offered you the chance of an anonymous no-strings fuck, and you passed on it.’
Kyle swallowed, his mouth dry. The blood pounded in his temples, and his erection strained his jeans to bursting.
Don’t look. Don’t listen. Think of Donna. And find that painting.
He tore away, hobbling a little because of the tightness in the front of his jeans, and looked through the nearest doorway. It was the living room, the one where Donna had first interviewed him weeks earlier. Kyle glanced around him, at the coffee tables, the bookshelves. He stooped to peer under the couches and armchairs.
And Madison stepped in front of him, her pantieless lower half inches from his face.
‘I told you to fuck me, Kyle,’ she said from above him, her voice commanding now. ‘I’m not going to ask again.’
With a cry he grabbed her round the thighs and pressed his face against her mound, feeling the soft bristle of her pubic strip against his cheek.
His tongue darted into the cleft of her labia, not entering far because his arms were squeezing her thighs together, but finding her salty and moist.
‘Uh-uh,’ she said, her hands gripping his hair. ‘I didn’t say eat me out. I said fuck me. I want your cock.’
He rose, towering above her, noticing she was shorter than Donna – the thought of her sent a stab of guilt and shame through him that inflamed him further – and he was shocked when Madison’s hand cracked across his face.
‘I said fuck me, god damn it,’ she snarled. ‘What are you waiting for? Get that cock inside me!’
He stared down at her, his cheek stinging from the slap, his body pounding with shame and lust and anger. Madison reached down with one hand and grabbed the bulge of his crotch, hard. With her other hand she slapped his face again.
‘Fucking do it!’ she shouted.
Behind her was a couch, the couch, Kyle noticed distantly, that Donna had curled up on when she’d been interviewing him. With a roar of confusion and desire Kyle pushed the girl so that her ass bumped against the armrest of the couch and she flopped back onto it. She spread her legs wide as she did so, and Kyle wrenched down his jeans and shorts.
He mounted her and slid in, deep and hard, marveling at her exquisite tightness, and she let out a long shuddering scream that reverberated round the huge high-ceilinged room. Bracing his arms on the soft leather of the couch, Kyle pistoned his hips, alternately withdrawing almost to the tip and driving his full length in. The slick silken walls of her vagina undulated around his cock, producing a sensation of such intense pleasure that he felt dizzy, helpless.
Madison wound her arms round his neck and dug her nails into his scalp through his recently cut hair and, lifting her head off the couch, sank her teeth into his shoulder. The pain was sharp and sudden and made him catch his breath, a flare of anger stoking his urgency, and he thrust harder, the movements shorter, pounding into her splayed body as if to jolt it off the couch.
‘Fuck me,’ she snarled in his ear. ‘Fuck me harder than that.’ She bit his earlobe and Kyle roared through his clenched teeth. Sound and sensation blurred and melded into one and dimly he registered her shouting close to his ear, the noise deafening and inflaming him to an awesome height of need.
Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) Page 11
