“I shouldn’t even be here,” he pointed out to her. “But I can’t help myself where you are concerned.” He pulled her into his arms, Strong-Reliable-Man style, and let his MEMBER press against her thigh so she’d know he had other stuff on his mind. He’d already heard what he needed to know.
It worked. She reached for his waistband and said, “I don’t want to talk about the case. This guy is a sick bastard.”
He felt himself get even harder. He repeated, “Sick bastard.” He pulled away and said in his sexy voice, “Do you know what I am? What I’ve been all day? All my life, practically?”
Dannie looked at him through her lashes. “No.”
“A lonely bastard. Who was missing you.”
He looked at his watch, saw it was half past midnight, and decided not to waste any more time with preliminaries. He ripped off her panties and slammed himself into her, backing her onto the bed. He felt incredibly alive. Incredibly powerful. Three days before the real victim. To let off steam. His hands caressed Dannie’s shoulders, moved up her neck. He was a steam engine tonight!
Dannie was panting in ecstasy.
“Do you like me, Dannie?” he asked, using his sexy voice a little more.
“You know I do.” Her nails were clinging to his ass. He started to make a checklist for later: Nails.
“A lot?” he asked.
“A whole lot.” Her tongue skimmed his ear and she nipped at the lobe.
Teeth.
“Am I a good boy?”
Dannie laughed. “Yes. A very good boy.” Her hand went between their legs. “And a big boy.”
“Be careful, Dannie,” he cautioned. “You’re making me feel silly.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun, big boy.”
“Good boy,” he corrected.
“Good boy.”
“Say it again.”
Dannie reached over her head and grabbed the headboard with both hands—
Headboard. Nightstand.
—pushing against it to take him deeper. “You’re a very good—ooooh—boy.”
Now he was so silly. Now the silliness took over.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m a bad boy.” He jammed himself into her and his hands closed around her neck.
Dannie started to laugh again.
“Don’t laugh at me, you lying bitch.” His hands tightened.
What started out as a groan of pleasure became a primeval call for help. Her eyes got huge with surprise and her body convulsed around him frantically,
“You lied to me, you stupid faker bitch. You lied and said I was a good boy. You lied and said you liked me. And then you called me a sick bastard.”
The sillies were so strong. He could feel them in his hands around her neck. He was letting off some steam now!
“Why are you trying to get away, Dannie?” His hands constricted more and more around her neck as he drove himself into her. “I thought you liked me.” He tightened his hands, pounding into her. “I thought I was a good boy.”
She was pulling and pushing against him now like a wild animal.
“You don’t even know me. You only think you do. I’m not what you think I am at all.”
Her struggling got more intense. She arched against him.
“You stupid bitch. You stupid lying bitch.” He got his thumbs on her throat and pushed.
“Don’t you even know who I am now? Don’t you NOW? I AM NOT A GOOD BOY.”
She arched up to him a final desperate time. As her throat rattled he came hard and fast, surging into her.
He lay on top of her, panting like a train, for five minutes.
It had been the best ever. He’d never felt anything like that before, never let off so much steam. He thought she came, too, just before she died. That was how good he was, letting her die in pleasure. He would have stayed inside her longer but he had a lot to do and her breath was starting to smell funny.
Besides, what if rigor mortis set in? That would be hard luck, wouldn’t it, to get his dick stuck inside a dead lady? His engine caught in her tunnel?
Hard luck!
He laughed about that as he hauled her into the shower. He cleaned off her nails and teeth. He wiped the headboard and nightstand and vacuumed the sheets with his Dustbuster. He did a good job. He checked out the window and calculated he still had a few hours until dawn. Finally he put on the plastic shower cap from the bathroom and lay down in the bed. He should really try to get some shut-eye. From here on out, there wouldn’t be time for sleeping. After this, it was work work work.
Chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-CHOO CHOO! Full steam ahead!
CHAPTER 79
Rosalind only has 3 days left!!!
Rosalind woke up abruptly, swimming against the current of unconsciousness. Something was digging into her thigh. What was—
The scissors. She remembered the scissors. From the manicure set.
Then she tasted cheesy popcorn in her mouth and remembered everything. Remembered his strange visit the night before. He had seemed distracted. Remembered how lucky she had been that he had not seen the open drawer.
She would not be so lucky again.
How many pills had he given her? She’d tried to count through the popcorn but couldn’t. Two? Three?
He could be back at any moment.
She lurched to her feet and almost fell on her face as her knees buckled.
Be strong, Rosalind, she told herself. She leaned against the arm of the chair until a wave of queasiness passed. She turned to look at the seat. It was filthy, filled with crumbs and—
Don’t think about that!
—scissors. She bent at the knees and leaned backward until her fingers touched the cushion, scrounging around through crumbs, where were they, where—
Her fingers found them. Slid into the tiny holes. This time she would make them work.
She sat on the edge of the chair, concentrating on keeping her breathing even, and pictured what her hands were doing behind her. Her fingers were even more numb than they had been before, and just making the blades open and close was an effort. The first try cut only air. The second and third pierced the tape and her palms, making her cry out in pain. Finally on the fourth try she felt the tiny blades catch at something and hold. She pushed them together and heard snip and almost started to cry.
Hold on, she told herself. Hold on to yourself, Ros.
Another snip. Her wrists were looser. She could move slightly more, another snip, slightly more, ano—
The scissors slipped from her hands and fell back onto the seat. They bounced to the floor.
NO!
Rosalind closed her eyes and blocked out the pain and, using every ounce of her strength, pulled her hands apart.
She tried not to look at them. She knew her nails were outlined with dark brown crusts from where he’d “accidentally” missed during her manicure, and she could not risk throwing up or passing out now. Fingers beginning to throb with the return of blood, she dug around the edges of the recliner’s cushion to find where she had shoved the manicure kit. She found it, opened it. She could not keep her hands from shaking. Come on, she urged herself. Concentrate. Her fingertips skidded clumsily over the tiny manicure instruments. It was so hard to make them close around the thin edge of the nail file, steady, steady—
Got it.
Rosalind pushed the recliner into position underneath the rectangle and tried to stand on the arm. Her head swam for a moment and she steadied herself against the wall, tried again. Taking the nail file between her fingers she reached up toward the screws.
The pain in her shoulders was almost blinding. Don’t stop, she ordered herself. Think about something else, think about Jason, think about getting out of here—
DO NOT STOP.
Her fingers trembled as she maneuvered the end of the nail file into the grooves of the Phillips-head screws. It skittered around, cutting scribbly lines in the paint around the screw, but she did not care. Eight screws. Concentrate on the screws
, eight of them—
One out.
God, her arms ached.
Two out.
She collapsed for a few minutes after the third one because of the pain in her shoulders. After that it got easier. Five and six. Seven. Eight.
She dropped them on the seat of the recliner and pushed the panel away.
It did not move.
“Try harder,” she said, talking to herself aloud now. “Try harder, Ros. You can do this.”
She took a big breath and pushed as hard as she could. Something made a noise, but it refused to go up. She looked at the panel more closely. Maybe it didn’t go up. Maybe it came—
She got her fingers around the edges and pulled and it opened down. Opened down with a ladder.
She had not permitted herself to wonder how she would get into the hole once she opened it, and now she didn’t have to. It was a trapdoor to an attic with a ladder. She pulled the ladder down as far as it would go and climbed up it. She did not realize, or did not care, that she was sobbing.
The climb up the ten steps of the ladder seemed to take forever. Her arms, she could not keep her arms steady.
Hurry!
Finally she found herself in a cavernous space. Wherever she was being held had to be huge. There were a few moldering cardboard boxes with the words FOOD SERVICE HOT CHOCOLATE MIX on them pushed in a corner, but otherwise it was empty.
It should have been darker.
A window. There had to be a window. It took her a moment but she saw it, half-hidden behind a large cardboard drum. She ran toward it.
It was two filthy glass panes that went from the floor to the ceiling. She did not waste time trying to open them but wrapped a hand in the fabric of her nightgown and rammed it through the glass.
Fresh air, the noise of the city, gray light of early morning hit her at once, dazzling her. She looked out and saw the Las Vegas Strip in front of her. She could see the Eiffel Tower and maybe a corner of the Bellagio. Just blocks away. Heaven and hell separated by only blocks.
She looked down. She was up at the roof level, high above the ground. Below her was an asphalt parking lot. If she jumped she would definitely break her legs, and possibly die. Not now, she thought. Not when I am so close.
She looked out at the traffic passing by on the street, not much because it was so early. She looked at the cars in the lot and realized she recognized several of them.
She knew exactly where she was. She was safe. There was someone there to save her. She leaned out as far as she could. She opened her mouth to scream.
His face popped down from the roof in front of her. He said, “Hi, Ros! Going somewhere?” and shoved a rag in her mouth.
CHAPTER 80
He swung his body through the broken window from where he’d been hanging off the roof, purposely kicking her knees out from under her. She fell to the ground.
“Weren’t expecting me, were you, Ros?” He chuckled to himself as he walked toward her. She was sprawled on the floor, struggling to get to her feet. “Thought I’d pay you a surprise visit. You sure look surprised, Ros. You should see the look on your face right now.”
Rosalind gagged against the rag as he moved closer, rubbing his hands together. “It’s neat up here, isn’t it, Ros?” he asked, coming closer. “Really neat.”
She was crawling backward on her knees.
“Yes, I knew you’d like it up here.”
If she could get to the trapdoor, if she could get down the ladder, she would run into the hallway. She didn’t care about nail guns now. She just wanted to be away from him. She was sobbing, struggling to breathe.
“So where did you think you were going, Ros? Going for a walk? A walk with Johnnie?” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pint bottle of Johnnie Walker red label.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “Don’t you want it?”
“N-n-n—” she said through the rag.
He looked at the bottle. He looked at her. “You didn’t want to go for a walk with Johnnie? Then what were you doing, Ros? You weren’t running away from me, were you?”
Her back was against the other side of the attic now. There was nowhere for her to go. His face bent down to hers. He ripped the rag from her mouth. “Answer me, Ros.”
“I—I—”
“Shut up!” He slapped her across the face with the wet fabric. He stood up and tossed the bottle to one side. “Don’t lie. Don’t try to fake me out. You were going to betray me, weren’t you? After all the care I’ve taken of you, you were going to betray me.” He defied her to deny it. “Why does this always happen to me? Every time! I do everything they ask just like I did everything you asked. I brought you your favorite food. I brought you hairpins. I made you pretty. And all you could think about was getting away from me. About hurting my feelings.” He shook his head. “You said you liked me, Ros.”
“I do.” She was shivering uncontrollably.
“THEN WHY THE HELL WERE YOU RUNNING AWAY?” His leg bent back and he launched a hard kick at the Johnnie Walker bottle. It slammed against the wall behind Rosalind and shattered, splattering whiskey everywhere.
He stared at his feet. “Look what you made me do, Ros. You made me get my shoes dirty.” He looked at her and smiled. “I’m afraid you’ll have to clean them. The way you cleaned the mark off the back of the chair.” He chuckled to himself. “You thought I didn’t know. You thought I didn’t know you were lying to me. YOU THOUGHT I WAS A STUPID LITTLE SHIT, DIDN’T YOU, ROS?”
“No-o-o.” She could not keep her voice steady. This was worse than anything before.
“STOP LYING! Why are you trying to make me so silly? I get so silly when people lie to me. Why? Did you really think you could hide, Rosalind? Hide what you were thinking from me? Me, who knows you so well? ME, WHO’S SO GOOD AT HIDE-AND-SEEK?”
He reached down and dragged her up by the neck of her nightgown so she was standing in front of him.
“Why did you lie to me, Rosalind? Why did you try to run away?”
She tried to form words but he was holding her throat.
“WRONG ANSWER!” He eased up the pressure. His voice was level, sane. A parent to a bad child. “You shouldn’t have done that. No, you really shouldn’t have. I did not want to have to do this, but you made me. I trusted you and you betrayed me and now you have to be punished.”
In one motion he hauled her to the trapdoor ladder and shoved her down. She landed on her knees at the bottom.
“Get into your chair, Rosalind,” he said evenly as he climbed down.
She scampered into it.
“Good.” He stood and looked around the room. “You really made a mess down here, Ros. We’ll have to clean that up later. But first, it’s story time!”
He went to his desk and opened the drawer. Rosalind was sure he was going to come back with the remains of the manicure set, but instead he brought out the large leather volume she had seen him looking at once. He tossed it into her lap.
The cover had the words FAMILY REMEMBRANCES embossed in gold on it. Rosalind’s eyes filled with tears.
He saw it and nodded. “You remember when I bought that, don’t you? When we were all in Italy together that time? You even helped me pick it out. Betcha didn’t know I was saving a page in it for you!”
He started flipping through it and Rosalind saw pages and pages of newspaper clippings. “You can see how it’s organized. Article from the day of disappearance on this side,” he said, tapping a left-hand page with an article from the North Florida Intelligencer on it. “Then over here”—he touched the right-hand side—“the obituary. And maybe some pictures if I like them.
“There’s other stuff, mostly about me, in here too,” he explained as he riffled through the pages. He seemed to be looking for something.
Finally, near the back, he stopped. “Here it is. This is your section so far.” On the left-hand page was an article from the day she disappeared from the Las Vegas Review Journal. “I always li
ke to take the ones from the local papers. They’re the best,” he explained. The page opposite was empty. “This is where your obituary goes. I’m hoping they’ll do a really big picture of you. And maybe one of me and Jason standing together at the funeral. Don’t forget that I am one of his guardians.”
The dull ache of horror Rosalind had been feeling galvanized into something far worse. Whatever happened, Jason could not fall into the hands of this madman.
“You had forgotten, hadn’t you?” Loverboy said, hugging himself. “Oh boy, that’s good. I’m so glad I remembered to remind you. You should really see your face, Ros. You look like shit.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Sheesh. Why does everyone always ask that? Why why why? Are you some kind of philosopher? What does it matter? I can and I am. Now look at this.” He slipped an envelope out from the back of the album and sifted through it until he found what he was looking for. “This is the collage I made for you.” He held it up at eye level and peered around at it, an artist admiring his work. “Do you see what I have in mind?”
Rosalind’s eyes went to the six white chalk outlines of body parts. She had to force herself to keep breathing. “Are you—”
“I had a plan all set, but I thought it would be more fun to let you participate,” he explained, interrupting her. “So here’s what we’re going to do. Since you like games so much, we’re going to play one right now. It’s called Loverboy Says. You’ll notice I didn’t bind your hands or feet. That’s so you’ll have the maximum range of motion for the game. It works just like Simon Says. If you move any part of your body without me telling you to, without me saying ‘Loverboy Says,’ I cut it off. Got it?” He turned to put the collage on the desk, and turned back with an enormous knife in his hands.
“Now smile,” he commanded.
Rosalind struggled to pull the corners of her mouth up and he slapped her hard across the face and shouted, “I DID NOT SAY, ‘LOVERBOY SAYS,’ YOU IGNORANT SHIT!” He brought the knife to her lips. “I should cut these off, shouldn’t I?”
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 72
