Out of Sight

by Stella Cameron

  A jagged yellow pulse, just one, surprised her. Had she seen it before? He sat beside her and she kept looking at him, waiting for the pulse again. It didn’t come. Perhaps she had imagined it.

  She stopped reading him. Getting out of here without hurting him was the only thing she wanted—that and making sure he didn’t keep pursuing her.

  “It’s been hard,” he told her quietly. “Sometimes the biggest disappointments come from people you thought you trusted.”

  Poppy felt trapped. She crossed her feet, fiddled with her fingers in her lap.

  Ward sighed. “My folks sent word for me to put in an appearance. That’s where I went.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I’ve embarrassed them.”

  Impulsively, she took his hand in both of hers. “I don’t see how. You haven’t done anything wrong. They should be proud of you.”

  He smiled slightly. “You would say that because it’s the way you think. You don’t know my folks. They don’t want to see me again unless I’m elected to the senate. They figure that if I am, it’ll prove they don’t have to be embarrassed anymore.”

  Appalled, Poppy moved closer to him. She inclined her head and felt tears of sympathy well in her eyes. “You probably misunderstood, you know. Sometimes we hear what we expect to hear. Are your folks pretty tough on you, usually?”

  “They always have been.”

  “There, you see. They couldn’t have been as blunt as you think.”

  He put a palm against her cheek, threaded his fingers into her hair. “I don’t care about them. No, I don’t mean that. I won’t let myself go into mourning over this. Either they’ll come around or they won’t. If I’ve got you on my side I don’t need anyone else.”

  Her stomach took a dive and she glanced away.

  “You are on my side?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “This is for you.” He put a square black box into her hand. “Open it.”

  Horrified, she did as he asked and almost fainted with relief when she looked down on a gold pin set with large diamonds. W. W. “I…I …”

  “Put it on. You know how much your support means to me.”

  “This pin would buy a lot of campaign pamphlets,” she said and immediately regretted her words. “I mean, it’s too much. Gorgeous but outrageous.” There had to be four or five carats of stunning white diamonds in the thing.

  Ward took the box from her, removed the pin and attached it to the neck of her dress.

  She looked down at it, amazed and uncertain what to do.

  “Remember the little gold ones we gave out at the meeting?”

  “Yes,” she said. “One of those would have been fine.”

  He laughed. “‘Win With Ward’? I knew you’d think that’s what yours meant. Wrong. ‘Ward’s Woman.’” He held her hand again, kissed her fingers. “The only woman I’ll ever want in my life.”

  “I’m not what you need, not good enough.” She hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean you need a woman from a different background than mine.” Preferably someone who wasn’t paranormal, not that he knew about that apparently.

  Ward laughed. He was irresistible when he laughed. “You need a course in self-esteem, my darling. Better yet, you need me. You are incredible. With you I can do anything. I’ll do it for both of us.”

  Coming had been a mistake but she had hoped she could make him understand. “Please, Ward, wait—”

  He kissed her softly, cutting off what she’d been about to say, but the kiss was light, quick and undemanding.

  From a pocket he took another box, this one navy-blue velvet. She tried to latch on to some hope because it wasn’t square.

  “If you don’t like these, I’ll have someone come in and bring you more to choose from.”

  Her hope dwindled.

  This time Ward opened the box and the glitter from inside sent shafts of light in all directions. Rings, an engagement ring and two wedding rings. One for her and one for him.

  Poppy had never seen a canary diamond as large as this one. Huge, princess cut, the band was studded with deep-set white and canary diamonds. It was a beautiful thing. The woman’s wedding band was plain platinum, as was the man’s.

  “You like them,” he said quietly with a smile in his voice. “You don’t know how relieved I am.”

  She couldn’t speak. With her fist to her mouth, she couldn’t stop tears from falling. She hated doing this to anyone who was sincere.

  Ward removed the engagement ring, took her by the finger and began to slide it on. “Marry me quickly, darling. I can’t wait for you any longer.”

  Poppy jerked her hand back and put it behind her back. “Ward. I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. I love you.”

  “And you deserve someone to love you back.”

  She took off running and glanced back only once when she heard him behind her. Driven by a kind of mad need to escape, she closed and locked the door behind her. Her throat burned and she heard her own sobs.

  A last look at Ward showed his face twisted with confusion.

  And she saw the single, crooked yellow pulse—just once—again.

  32

  “What is this?” Sykes called to Nat who paced back and forth outside the morgue. Gray had been summoned to come, too, and they both needed to be at Millet’s.

  “The shit’s hit the fan,” Nat said succinctly when they reached him. “Must have. Look at that lot.”

  Sykes and Gray followed the direction of Nat’s finger. Every coroner’s van and medic vehicle in town must be parked beside the building.

  “What the hell,” Gray said. “What happened that we didn’t hear about?”

  “Come on,” Nat said, walking into the building. He stopped just inside the door, and Sykes hopped sideways to avoid walking into him. “Will you look at all this?”

  The corridor teemed with activity, technicians in scrubs, boots and rubber aprons hurrying to and fro but oddly, no talking.

  “I’ve never seen more than a couple of people here,” Gray said. “Have we had a disaster or something?”

  They advanced, staying close together, until a door on the right opened to spit out Blades. Sykes frowned. The man actually seemed agitated.

  “You three,” Blades said. “Come with me.”

  “Good evening to you, too, Dr. Death,” Gray muttered.

  Nat glared at him. “Inappropriate.”

  “How do you know?” Gray came back. “So there’s a lot of people around. Doesn’t have to mean the sky’s falling.”

  Blades swept through a swinging door, and Sykes barely caught it before it would have hit him in the face.

  “Nice,” Gray whispered, to no one in particularly.

  Nat actually gave a lopsided grin. “Some things never change,” he said.

  This wasn’t the usual autopsy room Blades used. It was much larger with two rows of steel tables.

  Most tables bore a sheet-covered body—or partially sheet-covered in some cases.

  “Oh, shit,” Nat said.

  “Is that your word of the day?” Sykes said, but his insides clenched. Blades hadn’t called them just to see how the place looked when it was crowded.

  “They started arriving late last night,” Blades said. He went to a far corner and stood with one rubber-booted foot crossed over the other.

  “You’ve got a lot of help.” Gray nodded to the people at work in the room.

  “This takes more than one pathologist, if we want the job done before the stench gets a lot worse.”

  “Where did they come from?” Sykes asked. He engaged his third eye and realized there were no drifting shadows of people passing. “That’s not normal,” he muttered.

  Blades looked at him sharply. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “They showed up in different places all over the Quarter. Mostly just dropped in the street. We’ve got twelve so far.”

/>   Sykes worked his jaw.

  “Anything to link them together?” Nat asked.

  “Take a tour first,” Blades suggested. “Get familiar with our corpses.”

  “Fun,” Sykes muttered, but he started down one row of tables at once, pulling sheets from any faces that were covered. “So? Or do I have to look at the whole bodies?”

  “We’ll get to that. The faces will do for now.”

  Sykes looked up and caught Nat’s eye. The detective stood between two tables and went back to looking from the face on the left to the face on the right before moving to the next two.

  Settling in to get the job done, Sykes found himself starting to compare the victims.

  “I’m damned,” Gray said. “Do you see what I see?”

  “What do you see?” Blades asked.

  Gray didn’t answer. He raised his brows and looked to Sykes and Nat.

  They returned to the corner they had left and Blades joined them.

  “It’s strange,” Nat said. “They all look so similar.”

  Blades nodded. “They’re ordinary. Not one of them stands out. You wouldn’t look at them twice. The first ones who came in—right after the woman—they were distinctive and we know who they were.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Not one of these people has been reported missing.”

  Nat inclined his head. “If you don’t know who they are, how do you know if someone’s looking for them?”

  “In the last twelve hours we’ve had one missing person report and it turned out the woman who made the call killed her husband and set fire to his car with his body in it. There haven’t been any other calls.”

  “So what are you thinking?” Sykes had very bad feelings.

  “Take a look at this.” He pulled two sheets down from male bodies to expose the genitals.

  “My God,” Gray said. Sykes took a quick look and turned away.

  “Do they all look as if they were mangled in a big sharpener of some kind?”

  “Yep. And the women are the same as Sonia. Deliberately lacerated inside.”

  Sykes crossed his arms and tried not to feel sick. “So what do you think it means, Doc?”

  “Embran,” Blades said. “Mass attack this time.”

  Sykes nodded. “That’s what I think, too. And they want us to know they’re here, so they devise another of their sick killing methods.”

  “We’re running more tests,” Blades said. “If my hunch is right, Embran are killing Embran. What I don’t know is why. Unless they think they can throw us off by having these…these…” He waved a hand. “These whatever they are left lying around.”

  Sykes looked at the rows of bodies. “You mean they may be Embran?”

  “I mean they may have been Embran. They don’t know much about the way the human body works. They might as well be nothing now.”

  “Just a minute.” Sykes turned back and took another look at one of the last two bodies he’d seen. He stared at the face. “Look at this one.”

  “What is it?” Blades moved fast to look at the body with Sykes.

  “We’re going to have to check with Poppy and Liam about the man they identified on the tape. I think this is the one who killed the singer.”

  33

  Ward Bienville wore a white terry robe and sat in a black wingback chair facing away from the door.

  He had been here twice before and sworn never to return.

  Anything capable of enslaving a man could make him weak.

  Need could change a man’s mind.

  Now he needed—badly—to give in to his lust for violence.

  The room wasn’t large. Black and purple with a small soaking pool on one side, he considered it all a joke, designed to look as some fool thought a room of its kind should. They didn’t know it could have been empty and served just as well—as long as there was no question of interruption.

  He was an inventive, imaginative man.

  A rap sounded at the door and he smiled. “Come, Ilsa.”

  The door opened, closed and the lock snapped shut. “You’ve disappointed me, Craig.” He wasn’t Craig and she probably wasn’t Ilsa but it didn’t matter, anonymity did.

  He didn’t answer her.

  “I don’t like to be ignored,” she said. “And I don’t like sulking.”

  Anger had swelled in him for hours and, just as he had planned, it boiled now.

  Her hands settled on the sides of his neck and she ran her fingers under the robe. She worked the muscles in his shoulders firmly, then, in one vicious move she dug into the tendons, drove her nails down and pinched with her thumbs.

  He let his head fall back and absorbed the pain, the numbing sensation that weakened his arms. And the anger grew. It simmered.

  “Mmm,” Ilsa said. “I think you’re ready to tell me how sorry you are for staying away so long. You hurt my feelings. I thought perhaps you weren’t pleased with what Ilsa can do for you. I can make you feel like no one else can. And when I have, you will stop sulking.”

  She posed as a masseuse. She was a masseuse but with a unique flair. She was massage fusion.

  “Where do you ache, my friend? Tell me where you have pain and Ilsa will use it.”

  He knew what she meant by use it. She wanted instructions and if she didn’t get them, she would decide what would happen. Tonight he would let her decide—or think she was deciding.

  “I am in your hands, bitch.”

  “Mmm-mmm, I think we shall have a spirited time. But my hands will do what needs to be done. Stand up.”

  He did so.

  “Face me.”

  Again he did as she asked. Her black hair streamed over her shoulders almost to her waist. Knowing exactly what she looked like was impossible given her theatrical makeup and the black-leather mask she wore. Her lips were the red of blood.

  Ward studied her from head to foot. And his cock responded to every inch. A leather bustier trimmed with lace pushed up overflowing and ample breasts. Her waist was small. The leather chaps she wore over a transparent thong disappeared inside boots with unbelievably high, thin heels. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, ran her pointed tongue around her lips. Her ass was naked, high and hard but her hips flared in a way that was all female.

  She approached him and undid the belt of the robe, she pushed it from his shoulders and let it fall. Her eyes settled on the abbreviated triangle of his black thong underwear, tenuously clinging to the end of his hard-on.

  Ward swung his hips and Ilsa pushed her mouth out in a pout. “Off,” she said, pointing to the thong.

  “Anything for you,” he said and stripped it away.

  “In the hammock.”

  Steps were provided and he climbed up, expertly stretching out in the string contraption.

  He saw Ilsa go to a wall where equipment hung. She chose a whip, a long whip and backed away from him.

  Ward heard the whip snap on the floor, saw it wave sinuously like a snake. Then without pause she changed her aim and the braided leather wrapped around and around his body, effectively tying him to the hammock. It hurt like hell but she knew just how hard to hit without breaking the skin.

  “Ilsa, you are a wonderful witch,” he said, knowing it would please her. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  The whip unwound from his body and she cracked it across the floor. “Whatever you want.”

  He hopped from the hammock and reached the floor. The mask didn’t matter. He didn’t care what she looked like. He walked around her, sizing up the outfit.

  The chaps closed at the back. He slid down the zipper, spun her around and whipped them off. They came free of her boots and he grinned.

  “Cute,” he said.

  Her belly, slightly rounded, her pubic hair just visible above the thong, she swung her hips then strutted in her bustier and boots.

  Ward ran his eyes over the “toys” on the wall. He liked a short cat-o’-nine-tails. An efficient tool that meted out punishment
fast.

  Another zip disposed of the bustier and a tug tore off the thong. He grinned at her. “I like the boots.”

  She tossed back her hair and he thought he saw an unfamiliar gleam in her eyes through the slits in her mask. Perhaps she was brighter than he thought. Perhaps she could feel danger.

  “You need something special,” she said and spread her legs, bent her knees. She massaged herself and showed him how damp her hands were. She beckoned him.

  It would be so easy, but it was a risk he couldn’t take. Today his pleasure would find a different release. He pointed to the ladder and the hammock. “Your turn.”

  He heard her swallow and took pleasure in her fear. Women came in two groups. A man used them both—one to look good on his arm, have the requisite children and even to love. He flinched. The other type were to be used only for sex and anything else that made a man feel good.

  Ilsa climbed slowly up to the hammock and climbed in.

  “Legs over the sides,” he told her.

  She hung her legs, displaying her sex. They were good legs and the boots turned him on until he hurt.

  Before she realized what he intended, the vicious tool was in his hand and the first strike made. Weighted at the ends, the pieces of twined leather curled rapidly around her thigh.

  Ilsa screamed, full-throated and pained.

  He expanded his lungs. Another benefit of this place was that no human sound caught the interest of passing ears. He had heard more than one of the rooms vibrate with shouts and wails, of all kinds.

  In the hammock, Ilsa lay with her arms crossed over her waist. She kept her face turned up to the ceiling.

  Ward checked his watch. “I have ten minutes,” he said, “so I must work fast. Ten minutes can seem a lifetime. Enjoy yourself.”

  The next stroke landed on her belly, wrapped over her hip.

  The next striped her arms and hands where they gripped her middle.

  The next ripped into the collarbones and upper chest.

  The next…

  Exposed concrete on the floor was deliberate. Carpet would have muffled sounds, the cracks, the smacks. Noise was important in Ilsa’s business.

  She lay on that cold concrete in a curled ball.