Victim of Revenge (Deep Desires)

by Liza Mitchell

  “What the fuck, have you been watching me?” It was true. It was. Painfully true. She’d told herself that Dawson had ruined her, betrayed her, men just weren’t worth it. She knew, below that, that no one measured up to Dawson, no one had even tempted her since him.

  She turned around and started collecting the photographs and case notes on his desk, gathering them into their manila folder. “I don’t want you. I certainly don’t need you. You’re going to be the one left in the office fisting your cock thinking about me.” She stared him down, daring him to stop her. Then she unlocked the door and left him alone in his office.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ____________

  DAWSON

  She was right. His cock ached so badly that he knew there was no way in fuck he could focus on anything until he took care of himself. He couldn’t think about fixing things with Carey or their own damned stalker, let alone any of his actual cases, before he eased the ache in his balls. He’d been battling his erection all day, and he’d foolishly expected that he’d get to sink his cock into her.

  He walked to the door and locked it. Something bright caught his attention. Just a flash in his peripheral vision. Her panties.

  Dawson bent over and picked them up, bringing them to his nose. He’d never been into that shit, but he’d just had his face buried in her cunt, and the smell of her arousal brought him right back to that memory from just minutes ago.

  Her hands twisting around his hair while her heel dug into his back, her moaning above him... she may have never begged, but her body screamed for his cock.

  He sat down in the plush leather chair behind his desk. Everything about his office screamed that he was a powerful man. His chair was inches taller than the ones for guests. His desk was an antique, reminiscent of some Gilded Age oil tycoon’s oversized desk. Every degree and distinction he’d ever earned hung framed on his walls. Everything about this space was meant to intimidate. And Carey had fucking turned her back, denying him outright.

  Dawson undid his pants and pulled out his cock, still holding the piece of lace to his nose. He spat into his palm.

  She may have walked away this time. But he wasn’t done. He would have her whimpering under his touch. He would have her screaming his name. He’d made others beg and plead. Carey was just a woman. He knew women.

  He ran his fist along his length, picturing her with her skirt gathered around her waist, her pussy on display for him. She was so damn wet before he’d even touched her. Turning him down, denying him, turned her on.

  He would get her onto her knees, slamming his cock into her, making her cry out. She would tell him how fucking big it was, how thick it was. How she wasn’t sure if she could take it, but she needed it. Had to have it.

  Dawson groaned, a mixture of pleasure and frustration. She wouldn’t be prancing away from him next time. She’d be fucking sore for days. She’d be sitting at her desk, unable to forget him. Touching herself thinking about him.

  His jaw tensed as his balls tightened. He sped up his stroking and dragged her panties away from his nose, bringing them between his legs. He twisted his hand when his palm ran over the ridge of his crown, again and again and again, until he came, spilling himself onto her panties, covering them in ropes of his cum.

  He should be making a fucking mess of her pussy, not some fucking strip of lace she didn’t care enough about to pick up on her way out. Now they wouldn’t smell of her. They were covered in his scent. He grinned and tossed them onto his desk. Maybe he’d give them back to her, just to see her face when she realized what he’d done with them.

  He would have to hunt her down to take a more thorough look at that case file. Carey probably thought she could solve the whole damned thing by herself—and she probably could. She was absolutely brilliant. But if someone had been stalking him, and her, then he needed to find out what the hell this guy was up to.

  Lakeside County had more than its fair share of insane crimes. For some reason people seemed to think a large city surrounded by dense woods was the perfect place for murder. But no one in his entire career really stuck out to him as particularly intelligent or brutal. He didn’t have that one case that was worth sharing whenever someone asked the craziest thing he’d ever seen. The answer was always he’s seen it all and criminals are predictable; they kill out of jealousy, betrayal, and greed. Just like ‘there are no new stories;’ there are no new crimes.

  But whoever had kidnapped almost a dozen people, hunted down a detective on her vacation halfway around the state, and paraded his crimes in front of them all via a livestream was particularly intelligent and brutal. Had they let him go before? Missed him in a crowd of suspects? Did he feel invincible and now he wanted to prove it?

  They certainly hadn’t caught him. Someone who kidnapped a dozen people with the intent to murder had done it before. Someone who stalked members of law enforcement for years without being noticed had done it before. If he’d been convicted of anything remotely similar, there’s no way in fuck he’d be out.

  If they could figure out what crime scene he’d sent on that flash drive, then maybe they could find him. If he slipped through the cracks the first time, his name was somewhere in that case file. Someone didn’t get this emboldened by being ignored by the cops. They’d had him, they’d talked to him, and he thought he’d gotten the best of them. Now he was playing this game. Still, there had to be something more to his motivation than bragging rights.

  Dawson was still sitting at his desk, tumbling all of these thoughts around his head, when his computer chimed and a new email from Sloane appeared in his inbox with all the files of the thumbprints Marc had matched in NGI.

  He typed out a quick response asking Sloane to forward copies of the photographs and case notes that she’d brought to his office as well. He left off the part where Carey had stormed out and taken the hard copies with her.

  He opened the attachment and began skimming through the documentation she’d sent. She was right; these victims were all over the place in age, sex, and race. But there were some things he could nail down. They were all over thirty; no young adults and no minors. All the records were from civil records, not a single criminal hit.

  A photo of an elderly African American man filled his screen. Elmer Simpleton. He had a kind smile and looked like the kind of person who would spend his retirement on his front porch talking the ear off of any person who’d listen. Birthplace was Alabama. His address history showed he’d moved north in the seventies. His prints were in NGI because he’d worked in a bank before retiring. His eyes shone even in an ID photo. And someone was using him as a pawn. Disposable. Elmer Simpleton.

  Shit. Fuck.

  Dawson realized what tied them together. The others needed to be brought into custody. But he needed the file to that case to find them. He needed those pictures to figure out the case.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ____________

  CAREY

  Carey pulled the door closed behind her and paused for a moment, exhaling slowly, trying to compose herself before she had to walk to her car. She set the file down on a chair outside Dawson’s office door and straightened her top. It had become partially untucked and disheveled during her… encounter with Dawson. She pulled it taut and fixed the neckline before she picked up her file and lifted her head.

  A young woman smiled shyly from behind a desk on the other side of the small waiting area. Secretary or personal assistant. She seemed embarrassed for Carey, but certainly not surprised. So half-dressed women leaving his office are not an uncommon sight. The lock clicked behind her back, and Carey turned to glare at the door. He just locked her out. What a way to be dismissed. Though, could she really be upset? She gave a perfunctory smile and nod to his assistant before she lifted her chin and strutted out of the offices of Lakeside County’s District Attorney… without any panties.

  Damn it.

  Tucking the file under her arm, she made her way back to the bank of elevators, avoiding eye
contact with everyone who passed. She felt as if she had a scarlet letter on her cheeks and chest. And if she could just get Dawson out of her head, her color could return to normal.

  Once inside the safely of an empty elevator, she began flipping through the photographs again. There was something nagging about the crime scene photos. The body wasn’t in any of them, nor were many people. The one of her in the background seemed to be purely by accident. The original pictures would have had a digital timestamp in the corner, not to mention the actual case number. But all of that information had been cropped out of these. The sicko wanted to get caught. He wanted to tease them, but he wasn’t about to make it easy.

  She exited the elevator and walked to her car, stopping at the coffee cart outside the courthouse to grab some caffeine. A flaming hot stimulant. That’s exactly what she needed right now. She smiled at the middle-aged man handing her the cardboard cup. He and his coffee cart had been at the foot of the courthouse steps for years. She doubted he remembered her, but she definitely remembered him. He was a godsend on all the mornings she’d had to appear in court at eight a.m.… and when she left hours later. It was never too late for coffee when you made your living burning the candle at both ends.

  Carey glanced around the parking lot and took a sip of her drink before crossing the street and climbing into her car. She dialed Canter’s number and left him a message that she wouldn’t be returning to the office that afternoon as she continued to examine the photos. There was something about them that kept nagging her. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.

  Then she saw it. The stump carved into a throne. It was barely in the corner of one of the pictures. To anyone else, it might have just looked like a tree that someone had attempted to cut down and botched the job horribly, leaving part of the tree intact. Well, that’s exactly what it was, or maybe a storm had destroyed the tree decades ago. But to any local kid who’d spent any time drinking in the woods—so every local kid—that was the throne. She’d been crowned queen of some drinking contest half a dozen times and sat on that throne with a can of some trash beer, overlooking her subjects, demanding delivery of more drinks and hits off of a joint until the night was over.

  She started her car and rolled out of the parking spot. Her coffee cart man watched her leave, and she nodded her head, smiling at the thought that maybe he did remember her. Dawson came plowing down the courthouse steps, phone pressed to his ear, his eyes darting around the parking lot. She glared at him, almost willing him to make eye contact simply so she could reject him again. He didn’t notice her and instead jogged out into the parking lot behind her car.

  Whatever.

  Carey picked up her phone to tell Sloane that she’d at least recognized the crime scene. Maybe if she could go there and jog her memory, she could actually figure out the crime. The county didn’t use to catalog crimes by their location, especially if it was out in the forest. Then it would just be coordinates with convoluted directions on what two-tracks or ATV trail to follow. The location was deep in the state forest. Deep. Almost any local kid could probably get you there with his eyes closed, and Carey wondered if she still knew the way.

  She pulled out onto the main road as she dialed the number to the forensics office building, her old office building. Honestly, if Marc was running prints and analyzing evidence, he probably had her old job. She’d seen Sloane’s face when she talked about the other man. Maybe seeing Carey today would bring the other woman to her senses.

  Trees flashed by her car as she followed the lake. One would think more bodies would wash up on the shore, but in all of her years, she’d only had one or two scenes on the beach. Maybe the criminals who dumped bodies in the water were better at it than those who went to the woods. The county used to get so many bodies dumped in the woods, people would joke that Lakeside was a destination spot for killers.

  Carey slowed her speed just a bit when she knew her turn off was coming up. Or at least it should be coming up. She looked in her rearview. A lone car was behind her. They could pass if her change in speed was an issue. By now they were in the middle of nowhere, and most cars went fifteen miles over the speed limit rather than her five under.

  The road she was looking for was just a break in the tree line, probably more of a service entrance into the forest. Maybe it actually led to somewhere, but more likely decades of local hunters, hikers, and underage drinkers had turned a small path into a road. She turned quickly when she saw the opening just beyond a sharp curve.

  She glanced in her rearview again, more out of habit than anything else, and noticed that the car traveling behind had slowed when they passed the clearing too. A chill ran down her back. She was too far away to see the driver. Why did the driver matter? They were probably just going slowly because they had to break for your turn. Carey continued down the two-track, flowing curves and random turns, deeper into the state forest. She kept checking behind her periodically, though visibility was almost non-existent because of the brush and her serpentine route.

  Carey rolled into the clearing and turned off her car. Why couldn’t she remember a crime scene that took place here? Maybe the case had been clear-cut and straightforward, nothing notable to remember? She was sure that a body in this spot would have been memorable.

  She grabbed the file from the car and stood in the middle of the copse. The ground was worn to dirt. There was a fire pit in the very center. The throne-tree still stood off to the side. She knew that just a little farther up the dirt road there was a field where kids would park and camp when they came out here to party—which they obviously still did because the fire pit was a sea of cigarette butts and half burned beer cans.

  Just outside the clearing was a steep cliff where dumb, drunk kids would play chicken, seeing who could ‘walk the tightrope’ along its ledge, or guys would wrestle right up to the edge while onlookers cheered. She shook her head; it was a miracle they all survived.

  Opening the file, she took out the first photograph—the one with the tree stump in the foreground—and walked around the circle, trying to determine where the picture had been taken. Maybe laying out the crime scene would jog her memory. That first photo was of a discarded, unsmoked cigarette, soggy from morning dew or a rainstorm. She set the photo on the ground where the original piece of evidence would have been found.

  The next picture was of a shoe print. She clicked her tongue, her gaze bouncing between the photo and the clearing. There wasn’t much in the picture to judge where it would have been. Generally, after each piece of evidence had been marked with their yellow flags and photographed, the entire scene would be photographed as well. Conveniently, those pictures were missing.

  A low hum came rumbling through the woods. A car engine? Who else would be coming out here right now? It was probably an ATV miles away. Sounds carried throughout the woods, and noises could be deceiving. Although, no one knew she was here. There was no telling when Sloane would check her voicemail, she’d purposely dodged Dawson when she left the courthouse, and she’d left Canter completely in the dark about the entire day.

  Carey jogged over to her car and snatched her cell phone off the passenger seat. No service. Big fucking surprise.

  Rationally speaking, if she ran into anyone out here, it would be some high school kids smoking weed, right? Right.

  She went back to the picture. Circling the clearing. The physical evidence must have been a bitch because there was nothing really in these pictures. Some rope. More boot prints. A hoodie. That could not belong to their perp. There’s no way he’d leave something like that covered in his DNA at the scene. All right, this one was interesting. The soil was disturbed—signs of a struggle—and it looked like there were marks from a woman’s heel, like a stiletto.

  The woods erupted in noise when a dozen birds shot up from the underbrush and took to the sky. Carey jumped, clutching the file to her chest. She stood frozen, waiting for more noise. Like the crunching of leaves that came from the woods behind her. She too
k two cautious steps toward her car. This is ridiculous. If someone was sneaking through the woods, she was definitely trapped by their car. She could drive forward into the field, but then she’d just be trapped in the field. Unless she could lure them into the open area in their car, then she could slip back down the two-track.

  Maintaining her calm facade, her eyes flitted from her file to the fire pit as she made her way around the circle to her car. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. Turning around and facing the spook would let them know she was aware of them—taking away the only advantage she had—and it would make them real, because right now they were just phantom noises in the woods.

  As soon as she made it to her car, she reached behind her and opened the passenger door. The click of the door handle echoed through the woods, and she waited, holding her breath. The sound of the intruder’s feet rose to a chaos of running and stomping through fallen leaves that covered the forest floor. She jerked her head toward the sound, trying to see what—who—was trying to catch her.

  As if in a daze, she stood with the door half open, listening to the ruckus as it grew closer. Get in the damned car. Dumb white girls die first. But this insane curiosity kept her feet rooted to the spot. Now that safety was within her reach, her fear seemed to settle down, taking any sense of self-preservation with it.

  “Oh, you cock-sucking asshole! Are you fucking kidding me?” She was completely blinded by rage as she threw the folder into her car and stalked toward her attacker. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You couldn’t give me a call, tell me, ‘Hey Carey, I’m going to follow you into the woods and scare the ever-loving piss out of you later’?”

  Dawson stood on the side of the two-track at the edge of the clearing. He opened his mouth to speak, but immediately closed it when she drew an open palm back and lunged forward to slap him. She slammed her foot down—probably to get more momentum? What the hell did she know? She’d never hit anyone before, and clearly her body didn’t know what the hell it was doing. Her heel drove into the mud and she tipped to the side. Her hand missed its target by a solid twelve inches, and in a flash, Dawson reached out and grabbed her, taking a wrist in each hand and preventing her from falling. Only to spin her around and pin her hands in front of her, crossed at the wrists.