by Linda Ladd
“Shut up, Nev,” Jasper said, frowning. He looked back at Claire. “Now you get that shirt off. Do it, damn it.”
Claire didn’t move. He had the gun resting flush against her forehead again. She hoped he knew how to handle it, as she didn’t want his finger to jerk the trigger by accident. She had to distract him long enough to get the stun gun in her hand. Maybe if she did what he said, he’d look at her body, the bastard. Then, and just maybe, if she was lucky, she could get him with the stun gun. She reached down and pulled up the tail of her shirt and then quickly jerked it off over her head. Jasper grabbed it and tossed it aside. He was looking at her body, all right, as if she didn’t have on the sports bra.
“Take the knife, Nev. Cut that thing off. Hurry it up. I want her completely naked. Then we’ll have some fun.” His voice had thickened with some kind of sick, perverted desire. “I’m gonna do her before we sacrifice her. You can stay and watch or you can get the hell out. I don’t give a shit. I have wanted her at my mercy since the first time I laid eyes on her. Since she acted like I didn’t know what I was doing, like I was dirt under her feet. I’ve been dreaming about this, oh, yeah. Had me some good dreams about you.”
Like hell, you’re gonna do me, Claire thought. I’d rather you pull that trigger.
Nev didn’t seem to mind watching. In fact, it seemed to ring her bells.
“Oh, I’m gonna watch, babe. Don’t see what you see in her, but I’ve always liked to watch you hurt the other girls. Turns me on big time. So slap her good. Knock her down, kick her around. You know that’s what I like. Do it now. Hit her, damn it,” Nev ranted.
Oh, God, they really were insane, or sexual sadists, or both. Despite their many crimes they were still amateurish. Otherwise, they would have tied her up and made her helpless to defend herself, right off the bat. They were careless compared to some of the other psychos she’d faced. Hadn’t honed their craft quite enough. She would have to play along, act cowed, get them to let down their guard, and then she’d send enough voltage through them to light them up like two Christmas trees. Standing very still, she let the girl cut through the straps of her sports bra and then tug it down to her waist. She didn’t try to cover herself or shrink in fear or embarrassment. She needed her hands free and down by her sides. Let him get his jollies and then he’d get some electrical jollies that he wasn’t expecting.
“Well, well, lookee at you,” Jasper said, all breathless and eager. Then he moved the gun away from her head and rubbed the barrel of it around on her bare flesh.
I’m gonna love killing you, Claire thought.
“You really are something,” Danforth muttered huskily, his eyes latched on her body. “Now get your pants off. Get it all off. And be quick about it. I am so goddamn ready for you, you just wouldn’t believe.”
Stomach lurching, Claire watched the gun barrel and his trigger finger, waiting for his aim to falter. Just an inch, that’s all she’d need. Her fingertips were already inside her pocket, and she could feel the tip of the stun gun.
Danforth kept rubbing the gun against her. “Oh, God, I think I’m gonna keep you around for a while. Know what? I think I’m in love.”
Apparently, Nev didn’t care for that sentiment and the fact that no blows had fallen and no blood had been shed. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Jasp?” Angry, she shoved Danforth’s shoulder and he stumbled slightly to one side. Then Nev pushed Claire down on her knees.
That was all Claire needed. She jerked out the keychain, got the safety off, jabbed it up against Nev’s pelvis, and held down the trigger. Nev gave out a shrill shriek and then her brain lost all control of her muscles, and she fell in a moaning, twitching, groaning heap on the ground. Claire lunged at Danforth with the stun gun, but she only got a glancing blow off his arm. He grabbed her anyway, twisting the hand with the stun gun away from him. Claire attacked him with all her strength, kicking, biting, clawing at him, but he got her around the neck again and jerked her up to standing, the gun pointing back on her right temple.
Both of them were panting hard, but she knew she could not fight his hold until he moved the gun away from her head. She couldn’t wait too long, or she would be dead. So she stood very still. Unfortunately, his next move was to shove her down on her knees and glare down angrily at her, his weapon back on her forehead.
Chapter Nineteen
At that very moment, and not even thirty yards from the barn where Claire was being held captive, Will Novak killed the truck’s motor and stared at Mary Lou Picard’s house. The sky was just starting to go gray, settling pearly light all around the edges of the horizon. Storm clouds and the impending downpour of rain caused the dark shadows to hug the ground and deepen the green tableau of the thick swamp surrounding the house. His window was down and it was eerily quiet, with only a couple of early morning birds chirping and flitting around, very high up in the pecan trees shading the front porch and pecking around in the dusty underbrush that surrounded the house. Otherwise, it was silent. Mary Lou’s compact car was sitting beside the house, so she was home, probably upstairs asleep. More troubling, Claire’s car was sitting there, too. With no sign of Claire. And she sure as hell was not upstairs sleeping.
Where the hell was she? He quickly punched in Claire’s number again but got no answer. Then he got really worried. He tried Black’s number, and Black picked up on the first ring. “Novak? Where’s Claire?”
“She’s not with you?”
“Hell no. I can’t get her on her phone. Where is she? She’s been gone all night, for God’s sake!”
“She was headed home the last time I saw her.”
“Oh, God. Last time she called she said she was at the Picards. You know where that is?”
“That’s where I am now. Don’t worry, I’ll find her. I’m sitting right here beside her car. She can’t have gone far.”
Novak hung up with Black telling him that he was on his way down. He couldn’t waste any more time standing around and chatting. He had a bad feeling, and he always trusted his bad feelings. He opened the car door and got out. Adonis’s dog, the pup he’d given to her that she’d named Toby, was running back and forth across Claire’s front seat. Whining and crying and sniffing his nose at the crack in the window. So where was Claire?
He opened her passenger door, and the dog jumped out and took off down through the backyard. Novak followed, but that’s when Novak smelled it. The foul stench of rotting human flesh. He forgot the dog and ran up on the front porch. The front door was wide open, and he pulled out his .45. He cleared the first floor in a matter of seconds and found nothing but empty rooms and the heavy, stomach-turning odor of death. Something dead was rotting inside the house. Then he took the steps two at a time to check out the upstairs. That’s when he heard a faint buzzing sound from the end of the hallway. He found Mary Lou Picard in the master bedroom. Murdered in her bed, probably when she was asleep, and apparently dead for a while. The first bluebottle flies had found their way inside, feeding on her flesh and laying their eggs. Becky Picard was in her room, bloody from multiple stab wounds, naked, her wrists tied to the bedpost.
That’s when he heard the scream. Very faint, very distant. He left the corpses where they lay and ran out through the front door. There was a barn right behind the house, and Toby was sniffing at the door and whining. Inside, he could hear voices, loud, male, and shrill with anger. And a woman, yelling in panic. He headed there at a run, found the door locked, and forced it open with one brutal kick. Weapon out front and held steady with both hands, he saw Claire first, on her back, trying to fight off the man lying on top of her and tearing at her jeans. She was kicking and yelling and hitting him with her fists and clawing him with her nails.
The man jumped off her when he heard the door crash inward, and Novak realized that he was that guy from the dorm, the security guard. Nev Collins lay on the ground near Claire, writhing around and groaning. Claire scrambled away from Danforth, grabbing her shirt and jerking it down over
her head. Then he saw the gun in Jasper Danforth’s hand. Novak dove for cover behind the barn door and fired off a couple of quick rounds at Danforth, who had jumped to his feet. The blasts of the .45 were deafening, and the smell of cordite and smoke hung heavy inside barn as Danforth returned fire. Then the guy sprinted toward the back of the barn, like the coward he was, fleeing at full speed.
Novak yelled at Claire. “You okay?”
“Get him! Get him, Novak!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “Don’t let him get away!”
So Novak left her there, jerking up the moaning girl and securing her hands behind her back. He headed at a run for the back door in pursuit of Danforth. It stood wide, and he stopped for cover at one side, years of training alerting him to a possible ambush. Outside, Novak could hear the man thrashing through the brush and dead leaves. He eased out cautiously and then started out after him. Novak couldn’t see him, but he could sure hear him. Sounded like he was a good fifteen or twenty yards ahead and moving fast. It wouldn’t take much for Novak to catch him and shoot him in the back, if he had to. But he wanted some answers first. He wanted to know if Danforth had killed Adonis, and if he had, Novak was gonna seek justice, right then and there. Anybody who could burn an innocent kid to death deserved to die, too, and this guy was gonna get what was coming to him.
Somewhere ahead, Danforth was still tearing headlong through the swamp in total panic-stricken flight, splashing through water now, not even stopping any longer to fire back at Novak. About thirty yards behind the barn, Danforth hit a small clearing where the cypress trees were flooded about a foot up the trunks and the ground was low and soggy from bayou runoff. A scum of algae covered the surface like a thick green pile rug. Novak stopped at the edge of the water, beaded his weapon on the Danforth’s back. “Give it up, Danforth. I got you, dead to rights.”
Danforth didn’t even slow down, splashing wildly through the knee-deep shallows, angling back through the swamp toward Adonis’s smoldering barn. Even where they were, the acrid smell of the fire hung heavy in the air and smoke clung to the tree limbs and rolled across the ground. Then, suddenly, the panicked man just stopped, right in the middle of the standing water. Then he went down very slowly to his knees and keeled over, face first. He didn’t move after that, and Novak waited a second longer, looking around. Then he waded out to where the guy was floating facedown in the water.
That’s when he saw the arrow that protruded from Danforth’s back. He pulled up the body and saw that Danforth’s eyes were wide open, the pupils fixed and staring. He was stone-cold dead, just like that. The arrow must have pierced his heart. Novak crouched down, trying to see who got him with the bow. He kept his weapon up, ready to fire as he searched the bushes and trees. Then he saw a small figure about twenty yards distant, half hidden behind a veil of Spanish moss. He trained his gun right on him. Nobody moved.
The smoke cleared in a slight wind, and for the very first instant, Novak couldn’t quite believe his eyes. But he was seeing true. It was her. It was Adonis, alive and on her feet, standing out there looking straight at him, half obliterated by the thick ground fog crawling like a deadly snake along the surface of the swamp. She had a big compound bow in one hand, but now it was hanging down at her side.
Novak stood back up and started walking toward her, almost disbelieving that it could really be Adonis, alive and well. When he got a little closer, he caught sight of the other girl. She was sitting on the ground, her back braced up against a tree. She was filthy, clothes torn and bloody. She looked disoriented and sick, but Novak recognized her right off. It was Andrea Quinn, all right. Beaten and bedraggled and barely conscious, but it was her. No doubt about it.
As Novak came closer to the two girls, Adonis took a couple of steps back away from him. He stopped where he was and waited. She looked different now. More alert. She was just staring at him, but she seemed okay. Not hurt, but maybe ready to run if he made any kind of sudden move.
“Oh, God, Adonis, I thought you were dead. I thought you died in that fire. Where’ve you been? Where did you find Andrea?”
Adonis moved her eyes to the dead man, still floating in the shallow water, his body covered with the velvet algae. “I got her away from them. Then I came back and killed that devil dead. I had to. I waited until he got close enough, and then I shot him through the heart with my bow.” She was speaking more clearly now, more like she had before she had been abducted. He couldn’t believe it. She sounded almost like a different person.
Then she said, “There’s another demon. A girl. Lilith. She’s mean and awful, and I am gonna kill her, too. I need to find her and kill her before she hurts anybody else.”
All that was said slowly but articulately, no stammering as before. “She’s not gonna hurt you, Adonis. She’s back there in Mary Lou’s barn. Claire’s got her. She’s gonna go to jail for the things she did to you.”
Once he told her that, Adonis stared at him for a long moment and then she just collapsed down on her knees on the soggy ground, her shoulders sagging. Novak glanced back at Andrea. She was sobbing a little and moaning in pain. She didn’t act like she knew what was going on. She was in pretty bad shape. He waded through the water and weeds and knelt down in front of her. Her face was cut up, bruised, and she was bleeding from two deep lacerations on her head. She was very small, half naked, but she had some kind of ratty old blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Danforth and Nev had beaten her brutally. There were contusions all over her body. He jerked off his shirt and put it around her shoulders. Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her back to where Adonis still sat silently on her heels, half obliterated by the mist. “C’mon, kiddo, we gotta get this girl to the hospital. It looks like she’s losing a lot of blood.”
Novak moved off a few steps and stopped and waited for Adonis to get up and follow him. Jasper Danforth still floated facedown in the water, the algae clinging to his body and turning him green. Finally Adonis slowly pushed herself to her feet, her bow still gripped in one fist. But she followed after him, limping a little bit, as he walked off toward the barn. They went in through the back door, and Novak saw that Claire was now fully in charge. Nev Collins was lying on her back, her eyes closed; both her hands were bound to a stall slat with Claire’s flex-cuffs. She did not move.
“Is she okay?” he asked Claire.
Claire nodded but didn’t say anything.
“What about you?”
Claire nodded again, but she looked a little shaky. She held her Glock tightly in her hand. She stared at the girl he held in his arms. “You found her. Is she hurt bad?”
“She’s alive, thanks to Adonis, but we need to get her outta here. They worked her over pretty bad.”
Then Claire saw Adonis where she had hung back, half hidden in the shadows. She turned to Novak and smiled. “That’s good, real good.”
Adonis just stared wordlessly at them, as if she had fallen into a daze. She probably had. She had been through some kind of horrible ordeal, but it looked as if she had saved Andrea Quinn’s life. And her own. At the moment, however, he was more concerned with Claire’s lack of reaction.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked her again. Then she began to look angry, her face flushing with color, her breathing coming out harder. He didn’t like to think about what that bastard had made her do in that barn. But he would never mention the way he’d found her, Danforth on top of her tearing at her clothes, not to her, not to Nick, not to anybody.
Claire took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got to say, I was glad to see you burst through that door. I was at a distinct disadvantage.”
“We gotta get this kid to the hospital ASAP.”
“What about Danforth?”
“Dead.”
Claire said, “I’ve already called Zee. They’re on their way. We’ll just leave Nev here for them. She’s not going anywhere. I got her again with the stun gun.”
“Call Zee back and tell him he’s got two more homicides. Mary Lou Picar
d and her daughter. And you better call Nick, too. But do it in the car. We gotta get these two girls to the hospital. I think Adonis is goin’ into shock.”
Then Novak started for the door with Andrea in his arms. Claire seemed all right now. She still had most of her clothes on and Danforth hadn’t raped her, but he had been trying to. That kind of forced humiliation wouldn’t have been easy for a woman like Claire to endure. He stopped and turned to look back at her. Claire had her arm around Adonis’s waist now, and they were following him outside. That’s when it started to rain, first only a spattering of drops that hit the leaves above them, and then the clouds suddenly unloaded and a deluge of cold water hit them, slanting sheets of rain into their faces and wetting them all to the skin, washing away some of the blood and dirt before they could even make it to the truck.
Epilogue
Well, at least Claire was alive and talking this time, Nick Black thought as he walked out of the rain and into the Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. He breathed easier when he saw her standing out in the corridor on her own two feet and looking fairly okay—no bruises, no blood, no broken bones, thank God. When he reached her, he just shook his head.
“Don’t even say it, Black. I got slapped once and might have a bruise somewhere, but that’s it. Novak didn’t get a scratch. And icing on the cake? We found Andrea Quinn, safe and sound. She’s just down the hall. She’s in pretty bad shape physically, but the doctor said she’s gonna be all right. Most of her injuries aren’t life threatening, but it’s gonna take some time. She’s gonna have a lot of emotional scars to deal with.”
“Her parents will be there for her. Thank God, she’s okay. Where has she been?”
