Heaven's Prey

by Janet Sketchley

  Harry clucked his tongue. “You’ve done a number on these knots.”

  Ruth’s thin socks protected her ankles from his touch, but when her feet were free he grabbed her wrists to work on the knots there. Each brush of his fingers burned her skin. She lay rigid, dreading the contact but needing his help. Finally the cord fell away.

  With a sharp jerk on her arm, Harry pulled her to her feet. Her legs wobbled. She would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.

  “You can’t have been very comfortable last night.” His voice held no regret. He marched her into the living room and shoved her onto the couch. Wincing, Ruth inspected the ugly bruises forming on her aching wrists and ankles. She tried to rub them, but it hurt too much.

  Harry sat beside her and surveyed his handiwork unsmilingly. He wore a dark blue designer tee shirt, his jeans from the night before, and black socks. His hair, still damp, licked at his collar.

  Ruth studied him, trying to reconcile this hard-faced, cruel-lipped man with the handsome, charismatic race driver she’d seen so many times on television. A bit taller than average and well built, this was a man to turn heads wherever he went. His glamorous career gave him fame, wealth, and adoring fans. He’d had it all, and yet something had driven him to violence.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What are you staring at?”

  “I was just wondering why.” Ruth felt for words. “You had everything going for you. Why throw it all away? Why do such terrible things?”

  Harry’s face darkened. He stood and stalked to the window. He twitched the curtain enough to glance outside. “It’s still raining. For all I care, it can rain until I’m gone. There’ll be plenty of sunshine waiting for me in my new home.”

  “If you couldn’t control yourself long enough to get out of Canada, how do you expect to stay off the radar?” The white-hot darts of pain in her hands and feet dulled Ruth’s instinct for caution. Dimly, she sensed she was on dangerous ground. She stiffened, but he didn’t react.

  “The people there are dark-skinned. My, uh, preference is for young blond women. I’ll be fine.” He roamed the room, seeming to give his full attention to the seascapes on the walls.

  Ruth drew a ragged breath and braced against the agony of returning circulation. “So you’ll still be a prisoner, but not in jail.”

  Her captor whirled to face her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This thing that has hold of you—you’re a slave to it. As if you were addicted to crack or something. You can’t escape by running away.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. Why couldn’t she shut up?

  Harry stepped toward her, his face a dull red and his fists tight.

  Ruth pressed herself into the couch, pinned by the fury in his eyes. Every muscle drew tight, waiting for him to strike.

  Chapter 7

  Harry glared at the woman huddled in front of him. “Shut up. Aren’t you in enough trouble already?”

  Wide, dark eyes stared from her panic-white face. The way she cradled her wrists told him the bonds had hurt her. Let it hurt. He’d give her more pain than that before he was done.

  He should have gone with his first instinct and thrown her from the car. He’d thought she was dull, stupid, but now her words messed with his head. He planted his fists on his hips and stared her down.

  Harry knew only too well he couldn’t free himself. One chance look at the right type of blonde, and that same compulsion brewed, claiming his body and mind without warning.

  He was helpless against it, swept along, caught up in the savage, exhilarating whirlwind of destruction. He no longer felt horror at the atrocities he’d committed. The excitement of each encounter overshadowed everything else.

  So his unwanted captive was right. Sure, he was an addict. A slave, she said. Did that make him better or worse than someone like the drug lord, Sinclare, cold and self-controlled? What did it matter anyway?

  Fingers shaking, he lit a cigarette, drew hard on the smoke. There’d been a time it mattered. A time he tried to quit.

  He remembered standing over the body of his fourth victim, shaking as he came down off the high, watching the bruises darken, the trickles of blood cease. He’d posed her like an image he’d seen on the Internet.

  To match what he’d seen. Call him stupid, but he’d never connected the porn with raping these women hard enough to kill them. He’d tried before to stop the violence, but he’d never thought about its source until that moment.

  The dead girl couldn’t hear him, but he’d stared into her empty blue eyes as he spoke the words. “This stops here. No more porn, no more of this. I swear it.”

  He almost went mad that first night. Withdrawal stole his sleep, and television talk shows couldn’t keep his mind off his crimes.

  Prowling his darkened apartment, he grabbed his phone and found Eddie in his contact list. They had a week’s hiatus in the racing schedule, and while Harry had come home to Toronto to claim this latest girl, one he’d been planning for since the race here a few weeks earlier, Eddie had decided to play tourist and bring his kids to see the sights. They were booked in at a hotel near the airport.

  Harry checked his watch. Four o’clock in the morning. He couldn’t call this early—he wanted his friend in a helpful frame of mind. He threw the phone on the couch and went back to pacing.

  When Harry did call later, the receiver shrilled eight times before a groggy voice came on the line. “This better be important. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Sorry. It’s Harry. I’ve been up for hours. Couldn’t sleep.” He had stretched breakfast and his morning run as long as he could. “Listen—do you want any of my magazines or videos?”

  “Huh?”

  Harry’s gut twisted. “I’m getting rid of them. Do you want them, or do I trash the lot?”

  Eddie’s voice sharpened as the offer sunk in. “Are you crazy? What do you want to give it up for? It’s powerful stuff.”

  If he only knew. Harry fought to keep the desperation out of his voice. “It’s addictive. I don’t like things that start to control me.”

  There was silence on the line. Harry listened to the traffic sounds from the street below.

  “Buddy, just because some sicko out there goes for the same sort of entertainment we do is no reason to give up your private thrills.”

  Harry froze, knuckles aching from his grip on the phone. “What are you talking about?”

  “I figured you must’ve read about that girl they found last week in Virginia. The paper didn’t give a lot of details, but what they did say could’ve come straight out of some of our own stock.”

  Harry forced a laugh. “Yeah, that’s it. It got me thinking.”

  “Come off it, Harry. She wasn’t killed too far from our test site, must have been a couple months ago they say. We were probably there at the time, too. Hey, you don’t think I did it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks. For the record, I didn’t. And you’re not a suspect, either. Relax.” Eddie’s voice dropped to a persuasive whine. “Lots of guys indulge in a bit of harmless fantasy. Don’t throw it away because some jerk crosses the line into reality.”

  “Maybe. Still, I want out. Since you’re in town, I thought I’d ask you first. If you don’t want the stuff, say so.”

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, count me in. You’ve got some great things in your collection. I’m sure I can find a taker for the duplicates. I’ll get everything from you at the next track, okay? I don’t want the kids seeing it. Della would cut off my access rights for sure. Gotta go—they’re waking up. We’re doing the zoo today.”

  There was a click, and Harry stood listening to dead air. Swearing, he ended the call and threw down the phone. The stuff haunted him, and now he had to wait for Eddie to take it off his hands. What had possessed him to call, anyway? He should have tossed the magazines and DVDs in the dumpster behind the building and deleted the videos from his laptop.

  He pulled an extra suitcase from the clos
et and began to fill it with all the pornography he could find. Better get it out of his sight now. Taking this much with him was risky. He hadn’t been searched at the US border for a long time, but he’d rather not be found with this. The images were legal—no children—but violent. Definitely non-consensual, and in the best stuff the girls looked only just of age. Word would get out. And ruin his career.

  He dropped a well-worn magazine on the pile. The pages flopped open, and he reached to close them, fighting the thrill that shot through his body. The glossy photos mesmerized him. Without thinking, he turned one page, then another.

  A tortured sigh broke from his lips. Dragging one hand through his hair, he faced the truth. He was hooked. There was no breaking free. He opened a video on his laptop and allowed its images to flood his mind.

  When he met Eddie at the next track, in Wisconsin, Harry was sheepishly apologetic.

  “Couldn’t stay away from it after all?” Eddie slapped him on the back. “I thought the offer was too good to be true. No hard feelings.”

  Harry threw himself into race preparations. He prized each moment behind the wheel, knowing his addiction would cost him the sport he loved. The evil lurking within him had won.

  His brilliance on the track had won him international attention by now. Not one but two of the top European Formula One teams were hinting at possibilities. What he wouldn’t give for a chance at the World Championship.

  But he’d already claimed another victim. He expressed regrets to both teams, claiming loyalty to the North American circuits. His luck couldn’t hold much longer. Someone, soon, would connect him with his crimes.

  Any race could be his last.

  Every driver lived with that knowledge, but not the way Harry did now. They didn’t think much about death on the track, but it could happen. He didn’t worry about that. It was part of the job.

  The dread of discovery tormented him, and he thought more and more of suicide. To crash on the track, die doing what he loved... He pushed the limits farther each race, flirting with death but unable to deliberately cut the wheel hard into the wall.

  One day a chance contact between two cars sent Harry’s hurtling toward the painted concrete barrier. With seconds to impact, darkness slithered into his soul, terror like he’d never experienced. Hell was real. He knew with crystal certainty. And there was no escape.

  The car hit. Wheels snapped off the chassis and launched high into the air. The side panel ripped away against his own sponsor’s ad on the wall.

  The rescue team helped him from the wreckage very much alive, nursing only an injured ankle. They didn’t ask why he was shaking.

  ~~~

  Ruth huddled on the couch. A back spasm shot her upright. She held in a gasp, but her eyes watered from the sharp pain. She braced her feet on the floor, hands on the seat, and pushed her hips into the upholstery for support. Flexing her ankles and wrists turned the sting from Harry’s bonds to rings of fire.

  Why hadn’t he hit her? Her words had clearly upset him. Where had they come from? This thing that has hold of you... you can’t escape.

  Could she reach his conscience? Did he have one? She’d prayed for his salvation. Could God use her words? She moistened dry lips and spoke the words before her fear could muzzle them. “You can never set yourself free. It’ll follow you to your grave and into hell itself, and you still won’t be free.”

  Harry’s eyes sharpened. He seemed to pull out of his thoughts and focus on his surroundings. Anger hardened his face, eclipsing a brief glimpse of... hopelessness? Deep inside, did he sense the truth of her words? Had they touched him?

  “There’s—” Ruth wanted to tell him about Jesus, the only one who could help him, but the words stuck in her throat.

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Shut up. Who made you my counsellor?”

  He stalked into the kitchen, swearing. A moment later, iron control once more in place, he stuck his head through the doorway. “Get in here. I don’t want you trying to escape. Not that you’d get very far.”

  Ruth gingerly tested her weight on still-tingling feet. Father, please help him repent. He can’t even see his need without your help. She hobbled into the kitchen and sank onto one of the apple green chairs, careful to keep the table between them.

  Harry filled a small electric kettle and plugged it into the outlet on the stove, then dug out a jar of instant coffee and some plastic containers of dry cereal. The refrigerator yielded a carton of long-life milk.

  “Our love nest belongs to a businessman from Halifax,” Harry said as he filled two bowls with cereal. “The part that doesn’t get told is he’s in the import business. Drugs. There’s a secluded little cove near here, and he has a few midnight visitors. A zodiac’s coming for me early Sunday morning. From there I transfer to a freighter heading south.”

  Sunday. Today was Thursday. Would he keep her alive a few more days in some weird need for company, or for an audience? Next time he slept, she’d get loose. She’d run.

  Why was he telling her this, anyway? To get his mind off what she’d said in the living room? Or was it the latest twist in his cat-and-mouse game?

  What he said about the boat made sense. Smuggling was nothing new to the isolated coves and inlets along the shores of Nova Scotia and New England. Years ago, the same beaches had welcomed the rumrunners of Prohibition days and the loot from pirate ships.

  Now the late-night cargoes were illicit drugs. And one escaped convict. The Coast Guard couldn’t be everywhere. Harry would be off to some foreign haven with nobody the wiser. And she— Don’t let me go there, Lord.

  Ruth wiggled her toes. The circulation in her feet was almost back to normal. All she needed was a chance to get out the door.

  Her captor deposited the cereal bowls on the table, then turned to the whistling kettle. “I’m not waiting on you out of kindness. You’re not getting near any sharp knives or boiling water. You might get ideas.”

  Ruth sighed. She had ideas. She needed an opportunity.

  She stared wistfully at the steaming mug of black coffee he set on the table beside his own bowl.

  “Coffee counts as boiling water,” he said, noting the direction of her gaze. “Now eat. Keep your strength up for later. I like a challenge.”

  Ruth’s mouth went dry, but she needed food. There might be a chance to escape, and right now she was so hungry her hands shook. Mid-morning already. She usually ate by seven-thirty.

  Silently and without drawing attention to herself, she thanked God for the food and for protecting her so far. Tantalized by the sharp coffee aroma, she choked down a spoonful of crisp rice cereal.

  Harry attacked his overflowing bowl, and Ruth made herself eat faster. Who knew how long he’d give her?

  Between mouthfuls, he kept talking. “The guy who owns this cottage is connected with the ones who got me out of prison. It’s a safe place to hide until I meet the boat.”

  He reached for his coffee. “Waiting is so boring, don’t you think? I’m glad to have you here to entertain me.”

  He paused, locking her eyes over the rim of his mug. “Of course, I’ll be alone again before Sunday, but maybe there’ll be a movie on or something.”

  Cat and mouse. Ruth met his gaze. She couldn’t let him drive her into fear—it would pull her in like quicksand. She grit her teeth and fought back. God is with me, and He can save me. Somehow.

  When she could trust her voice, she changed the subject. “How did you ever meet up with these people?”

  Harry’s mocking grin told her beating the fear once didn’t matter. He’d be the ultimate victor. He tipped his chair back from the table. Hands clasped behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling.

  “When I was racing, one of the pit crew used to smuggle drugs across the Canada/US border. I caught him taking some out of my car. He knew where my sister lived, what school her boys attended. Wouldn’t it be a shame, he asked me, if anything were to happen to them?”

  He fell silent, seemingly
absorbed in watching a lone spider setting up housekeeping in the corner above the door.

  “So you went along with it?”

  “I didn’t have much choice. I had my own reasons by then to avoid the police. Any investigation of him could have snagged me. And I couldn’t put Carol and her kids in danger. They’d been through enough already.”

  Harry’s chair dropped back onto all four legs. “I kept quiet and played ball. The people who use the stuff—they make their own choices. Why should I care if they choose wrong?”

  “I see.” Ruth toyed with her spoon in the now-empty bowl.

  “In prison I heard one of Carol’s sons died of an overdose.” The words came out flat, with no inflection. He stared into his coffee. “He was thirteen.”

  Wind and rain slammed the cottage. Would the storm ever stop? Ruth swallowed hard. Would she live to see it?

  Harry took a deep breath and went on. “I can’t help wondering if those drugs would have been there for him if I’d done what I could to stop it.”

  His eyes were unfocused, face haunted, as if he saw his sister and nephews.

  Unthinking, she reached out and covered his hand with hers. The touch seemed to shock him back to the present. She pulled back and dropped her hands to her lap, out of his reach.

  “Listening isn’t what I brought you for.” His wolfish smile looked strained.

  He sprang to his feet. “It’s nearly noon. There’s got to be some local news coverage by now.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her into the living room.

  Chapter 8

  Harry dropped onto the centre cushion of the brown plaid couch and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Sit.”

  Ruth chose the rocking chair. She glanced at Harry, and a mocking smile crossed his face. “Going to have to get closer to me soon.”

  She shuddered, then pressed her lips together and stoked her anger. Only bullies and cowards taunted the weak.

  Harry winked at her and aimed the remote at television. He scanned through a slew of talk shows and cartoons before finding the opening sequence of a newscast. “Is this one of your local channels?”