“My stepfather was a member.”
“Is he one of the ones you want to torment?”
He laughed behind the mask. “Oh, no, he’s dead. Jed sent him straight to hell years ago. Right around the time I sent my mother there.”
Jed. She focused on the name, thinking frantically, wondering if she’d heard it before. Some clue to who he was could help her in this psychological battle.
She’d taken psychology in school and her first thought was to wonder if there really was a Jed. If her tormentor had been that badly abused as a child, maybe this Jed didn’t even exist—maybe he never had. Abuse had certainly caused split-personality disorder in some cases.
“There is one other reason I chose you. I suspected your disappearance would get attention, which it did. I’m taking her for the same reason—attention. She’ll get even more of it. Granville is about to tear itself apart in utter terror.” The man casually reached down and fluffed the nearly flat pillow beneath her head, carelessly adding, “But I’m also taking her because she might have seen me when I followed you as you left school Monday night.”
As she’d left the school . . . meaning, several blocks before she’d reached the Boro where he’d grabbed her. The man had stalked her a long way.
The rest of what he’d said sunk in, too. A girl who might have seen him as she’d left the nearly deserted school? There weren’t many possibilities about who that could be, and the most obvious one became immediately clear. He wasn’t talking about some random girl. He meant one of her classmates, someone who’d been with her at the meeting last Monday. Maybe one of her new friends.
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
A sly chuckle emerged from his mouth and she realized she’d been a fool to act like she might be worried about this other unnamed girl. Thinking quickly, she added, “Don’t bother on my account. I mean. If she saw you, you’d know by now, right?”
His noncommittal shrug said she hadn’t mollified him.
“Besides, I kinda like it as it is. I never had anybody give me as much attention as you do. My mom sure didn’t.”
Clapping his hands together in delight, he chortled, “Oh, you are jealous! Isn’t that just the cutest thing?”
No, actually, the cutest thing she could think of would be looking up and seeing a sharp spike being plunged into his eyeball. But she merely forced a tiny smile.
He bent down and patted her hip. Vonnie couldn’t help tensing, even though, so far, he’d limited his abuse to beating her, not raping her. If he’d once been a member of that club, however, she knew it would probably be only a matter of time. She honestly had no idea what he was waiting for.
Don’t question it; just be thankful.
“Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, sweet one. I doubt she will be here for long. I suspect she’s not going to be quite as adept at entertaining me as you have been.”
She stared up at him, not asking what he meant. She already knew.
Because he was twisted and because he liked her terrified, he explained anyway.
“So I’ll probably have to kill her much sooner than I’m going to kill you.”
Chapter 10
Saturday, 3:15 p.m.
The paramedics who had responded to Julia’s 911 call had insisted on taking Lexie to the small local hospital to be checked out. She had tried to refuse, but Aidan had overridden her protests. Her throat was bruised and swollen, her back scraped and abraded from rubbing against the brick wall. No way was he letting her just leave the scene, despite this “new information” she’d discovered, not until he was sure her windpipe hadn’t been seriously damaged and she wasn’t going to suffocate the next time she lay down.
He’d wanted to ride with her in the ambulance, but had instead remained behind to talk to the two cops who’d responded to the 911 call. They were young, not entirely poisoned by their idiot boss, and had taken the situation with the seriousness it demanded. Lexie’s attacker, who was well known to them, was taken off in handcuffs and they’d said they would be by the hospital to take her statement once she’d been looked at.
That was how it should have gone, anyway. But when he got to the hospital a short time later, having driven over in the rental car she’d asked him to retrieve, he realized things hadn’t gone as planned. Because as he reached the curtained area in the emergency room, where he’d been directed by a nurse, he heard the irritated voice of someone who had to be Chief Dunston.
“Just can’t keep your nose out of trouble, can you? Had to go down there where you don’t belong and try to stir up trouble.”
Shaking with anger, Aidan grabbed the curtain and flung it aside. “What’s going on?”
The police chief spun around, startled and more than a bit irritated. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who found this woman being attacked and nearly killed on a public street in your supposedly safe town,” he snarled, pushing past the chief. Seeing Lexie’s pale face, he put a hand over hers. “You okay?”
She nodded, squeezing his fingers. “The doctor says I’ll be all right. I’ll just have this supersexy voice thing going on for a while.”
It was supersexy. It also sounded superpainful.
And he really wanted to hurt someone superbad for that.
The chief was the closest target. Aidan whirled around to face the man, and jabbed an index finger toward him. “Instead of berating the victims of crime, or just ignoring their existence altogether like you have all the girls who’ve gone missing, why don’t you try doing the job you’re being paid to do for once?”
Dunston stuck out a belligerent jaw. “You can’t talk to me like that. I want your name.”
“You can have it,” he snapped, “and you can have the name of my attorney as well. I’m quite sure he would be happy to represent Ms. Nolan should she decide to pursue a complaint of harassment and negligence against you and your whole department.”
“It’s not negligence that she gets herself attacked while consorting with criminals!”
Aidan’s jaw clenched so tight he thought he might crack a tooth. “Again, I remind you, a public street. Broad daylight. Your supposedly ‘peaceful’ town. Several witnesses who saw her nearly strangled to death. How do you think accusing the victim will play on Larry King Live?”
Steam almost flew out of the man’s ears. But like all bullies, the idea of being made to look like a fool on a bigger stage than the one on which he already stood was too much for him to bear. Casting one final frustrated stare at Lexie, he said, “You’ll be hearing from one of my officers. Don’t leave town.”
She managed a cheeky smile. “I’m not going anywhere.” The words were hoarse and she had to be smiling through a lot of discomfort.
The chief spun around, his footsteps so hard, they heard him throughout his entire march across the ER. Once the sound had died out, Aidan released his tight grip on Lexie’s hand, but didn’t let go entirely. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up sooner.”
“It’s all right. He was here only a couple of minutes.” She moved her eyebrows up and down. “I notice you never did give him your name.”
“No, I guess I didn’t. Forgot all about it.”
Snickering, she swung her legs over the side of the thin, gurney-type ER bed and rose to her feet. That was when he realized she was fully dressed, ready to go. She scooped up a small tube of ointment and some medical papers and said, “Let’s roll.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Clean bill of health, I swear.” She raised two fingers in a Scout’s promise. “The doctor already cleared me. I was just waiting for you to pick me up.”
“Don’t they have to wheel you out?”
But he was talking to air. Lexie had left the examination room, heading toward the exit. Sighing, glad the incident in the alley hadn’t robbed her of her independent streak, but also wishing she’d let somebody take care of her for a while, he strode after her.
He flinch
ed when he saw the rips on the back of her shirt—and the white bandages underneath. Damn that man.
“Would you hold on?” he asked, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. He did it carefully, not knowing where else bruises might be hiding on her body. “Where are we going?”
“I was talking to Walter on the phone,” she told him. “Right before Dunston showed up.”
He rolled his eyes. “Ignoring that whole no-cell-phones-in-the-hospital rule, are we?”
“No, Mr. Smarty-Psychic, I used the one in the room.” Looking a little sheepish, she admitted, “I can’t find mine. I think I dropped it in the alley.”
Knowing her relationship with her boss was a close one, he had to ask, “How did Walter react to what happened?”
She nibbled the corner of her lip, not quite meeting his eyes, which was when he knew she hadn’t told him. She’d called the man she considered her closest friend from a hospital bed, and hadn’t mentioned she’d nearly been murdered.
Then he thought about that friend, what he’d been going through, and admitted, “I guess he wouldn’t have handled it very well. And there’s nothing he could have done.”
Lexie’s mouth fell open, as if she’d expected him to criticize her decision. In truth, though, he understood it and probably would have done the same in her situation. It sounded like this editor of hers was a good man, with a lot of problems. Not wanting people you care about to worry about you when there’s nothing they can do was human nature.
“Thanks for understanding.”
“So why’d you call him?”
She glanced around, seeing a few patients and staff members milling around. Nodding toward the exit, she said, “Why don’t we talk in the car?”
He nodded his agreement, put an arm on her elbow—funny, how easy it was to touch her now—and led her out the doors of the stuffy, medicinal-smelling hospital into the bright sunshine. It was one of those beautiful Georgia fall days, clear and warm, the air free of the haze that usually hung around during the long, brutally hot summers. Lexie’s smile seemed a little more relaxed out here, as if just the change in scenery was helping her to recover. Obviously the woman strongly disliked hospitals.
“Wait here and let me pull up, okay? The car’s right over there.”
“Look, I’m fine, Aidan.”
He’d had enough of the bravado. She might have desperately needed to get out of the hospital—in fact, he suspected the way she’d hurried up to do so had as much to do with needing to feel in control and strong again as it did with getting back to work. But the woman had limitations. Everyone did.
He put both hands on her shoulders. “Lexie, you are fine.”
“I know . . .”
“You’re fine physically,” he said, cutting her off. “I believe you. But you were attacked. You can’t ignore that. You have to deal with it.”
She stared up at him, her beautiful green eyes a little bloodshot from her ordeal. And those bruises on her throat, God, just the sight of them—ugly and dark against her creamy skin—made him want to drive over to the police station and beat that animal all over again.
“I will,” she said, her lips trembling, her whole body tight as if she was holding on to her control by a thread. “However, right now I just need to work, okay? I need to. I’ll deal with all of this later—I swear. When I’m a little more pulled together.”
She wanted to postpone the crash, the fear, the moment when she allowed herself to acknowledge that she could have died today, could easily have been strangled to death and dumped in that alley, her vibrant life cut off in its prime. Just another violent statistic.
He got that. He’d been around enough crime victims, and enough grieving family members, to understand the sentiment. Putting off “dealing with” things was a reaction as normal and human as reaching for a light switch to banish the darkness.
Thing was, when she flipped that switch on and allowed light to shine on the dark places of her mind, she was going to have to face them. All of them. It would be neither easy nor pretty. Facing your own death was a momentous thing. She just hadn’t yet realized how momentous.
“Okay,” he said, mentally vowing to be there with her when it happened. “But humor me, would you? Wait here while I get the car? I’ll be right back.”
“Thanks,” she whispered. She lifted a hand to his face and ran her thumb along his bottom lip. “I wasn’t unconscious, right? I didn’t imagine what happened between us?”
“Well, you dreamed it,” he told her. “But no, you didn’t imagine it.”
She lifted her face to his and persisted. “I didn’t dream that kiss, though.”
“No, you didn’t dream that.” The kisses of Lexie’s dreams had been far more intense than the one they’d shared on the street. But not as important. Reality made it incredibly important.
“Whew,” she said, still gazing up at him, lovely and sexy, despite the bruises and the weariness and the tangled hair and torn shirt. Just lovely.
Knowing what she wanted, he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her again, as carefully as he had before. This time, he gave in to his deep need to taste her and swept his tongue between her lips. She sighed, turning her head and kissing him back, their tongues tangling, warm and lazy like this slow Georgia afternoon.
She tasted familiar and so damn sweet. They embraced as if they had always done this, had always been like this, and Aidan simply didn’t allow himself to question it or second-guess it. Maybe things had started strangely, maybe it had taken a shared dream to make them realize they wanted each other, but right now he didn’t care. He just wanted to keep standing here kissing her in the sunshine, both because he liked it and to protest the darkness that had drawn them together.
Good things had to end, however. Finally, thinking of the place and her physical condition, he ended the kiss. “Wait here.”
She sighed. “If you insist.”
“I do,” he said, already turning to stride across the lot toward the rental vehicle.
The car was small, not easily accommodating his tall form, but it would do to get her home. Then he’d get Mick and Julia to bring over his SUV. While he’d headed to the hospital, the others had gone back to his house to go through the files and recordings he’d studied yesterday. With so many sets of eyes and ears, hopefully they’d find something he’d missed.
Pulling up, he was about to get out to help her, but she was already climbing in the other side. He waited until she buckled herself in, seeing how careful she was not to let the seat belt brush against her throat. Clenching his hands on the steering wheel, he had to look straight ahead, not wanting her to see how affected he was by her every pained movement.
“It doesn’t hurt that much,” she murmured.
Okay, so apparently he hadn’t hidden his reaction well enough.
“Did they give you any pain pills?” he asked.
“A prescription. But seriously, I don’t even know if I’ll need to fill it.”
“Fill it, then decide if you need to use them.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, cocky and amused. If not for the Kathleen Turner voice, someone might not even realize she’d almost had the life choked out of her a few hours ago.
Aidan forced himself to let go of those dark thoughts and drove out of the parking lot onto the main road. He’d only driven to her home once, but remembered the way. It wasn’t like Granville was big enough to ever really get lost in.
Unless you were a teenage girl from the wrong side of town.
They didn’t speak; he wasn’t sure what was on her mind. Them? The dream? The reality?
“I called Walter for an address,” she said, answering the question he’d asked inside.
The case . . . her story. That’s what was on her mind. Work. It figured.
He liked her for that. Liked her a lot. He also knew she needed to focus on something—anything—else.
“You’re such a romantic. Whose address?” he asked, not hiding his
amusement.
“I’m very romantic,” she retorted. “You wait and see: When this is over, I’ll outromance the queen of hearts.”
He frowned, mumbling, “Wasn’t she a psychotic, head-lopping megalomaniac?”
“Don’t make me hit you before I’ve even seen you naked.”
Shifting in his seat, remembering they had absolutely seen each other naked in every way except in reality, he had to say, “You know, I don’t quite know what to make of all this. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
“Like what?”
“Like you. How you make me feel. I don’t know what to do with you. I’m not usually so . . .”
“Peppy?” she asked, sounding mischievous. Because peppy he was not. No more than she was perky.
“Oh, here we go with the adjectives again. Let’s just ban words from our vocabulary that start with P and end with Y, all right?”
She tapped a finger on her cheek. “Like play?”
He thought about it, conceding, “Okay, that one can stay.”
“Party? Pretty? Paltry?”
“They gave you a sample pack of that pain medication, didn’t they?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
She grinned. “Not a bit. But even if they had, I could outdo you in any word game.”
“My luck to go up against a writer.”
Laughing softly, she said, “Since you think I’m medicated, can I ask you something else, and then later we’ll chalk it up to the medicine I didn’t have?”
He had a feeling he knew what she wanted to ask.
“Last night. Has anything like that happened to you before? I mean, I can certainly see you inspiring them, but do you routinely go around inviting yourself into women’s wet dreams?”
He choked on a mouthful of air. “Uh, no.”
“Never?”
“Never. I was just as surprised as you were. Thought it was all my own dream until I realized it couldn’t be.”
She thought it over, then nodded. “Good. I have to say, it certainly beats beer and pizza for a first date.”
Cold Sight Page 19
