Every single little detail! Oh, my God.
“Doesn’t seem like he’s got a whole lot to go home to.” He had said those words with such feeling that the sentiment had genuinely tugged at her heart.
“You lying, murdering bastard,” she groaned. “You used me, didn’t you? You’ve been using me all along to get at Jeff. There’s only one person who would do that, so I know who you really are now. God, why didn’t I see it before?”
She closed her eyes and forced a scream through her clenched teeth. The scream lasted but a second; in the next she was running for the house. Half crazed by fear and certain knowledge, she dashed madly into the bedroom and fell upon the bed, reaching frantically for her purse. She dumped everything in her bag out on the bed and grabbed for her phone. She fumbled with the phone, paused and screamed again, then forced herself to calm down enough to find the number.
It was Jeff’s number. She had to call him before she did anything else; she had to warn him. Then, and only then, she would call 911—her fear and shame would allow for nothing else. She only hoped that Jeff was alone and alright.
“Come on…come on,” she breathed, waiting for Jeff to pick up. The call rang several times and went to voicemail. “Damn it!” she moaned, hitting disconnect, then redial. She was in such a state that it never occurred to her to leave a message. All she could think about was hearing his voice and telling him directly what she had discovered.
Where are you? God, please, let him be okay.
Again, the call went to voicemail. Janice hit redial the third time as she scooted off the bed. While the phone rang and she prayed that Jeff would answer, she shoved her keys and wallet into her purse and stepped into a pair of slip on flats. She didn’t want to take the time to put anything else on, so her robe would have to do. At least it covered her, more or less.
When the call again went to voice-mail, she killed the connection and dropped the phone into her purse. “Damn it, I tried,” she murmured, fearing the worst. I’ll head over to his house and keep trying to get him, and call 911 on the way, too.
She had taken only two steps toward the door when she looked up from her purse and stopped cold, her breath bursting out of her mouth in a gasp.
He stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. His clothes were wet and rain glistened on his bald head. His face was solemn, but there was a deadly glint in his eyes. She started shaking again.
“Tried what, Janice?” he said in a voice as cold as a tomb. She said nothing, eyeing him fearfully, her bottom lip trembling. “Give me your phone.” When she made no move, he said, “Give me your fucking phone and right now, you meddlesome goddamn bitch.”
She jerked, as if his words were a physical blow, and began fumbling with her purse. She shrieked when he lunged at her, grabbing her by one arm. He ripped the purse impatiently from her hands and roughly shoved her away. She stumbled, crying out again, and almost fell down. Ignoring her, he dug around until he found her phone and began punching at it with his thumb. When he found what he was looking for, he grunted and shoved the phone in a back pocket of his jeans. Then he tossed her purse aside as if there was something dead inside it.
“So that’s who you called. Looks like you didn’t get him, so that means there’s time.” He took a menacing step toward her. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You know, I had decided to let you live—can you believe that shit? One, two days at the most, and I would’ve been gone and you would’ve been just some broken-hearted bitch with an itch between her legs and no one around to scratch it.”
Janice visibly winced, unconsciously pulling the front of her robe tighter around her. “You lied to me,” she whispered, a tremble in her voice.
He advanced another step, looking faintly amused. “Which lie are you talking about? I mean, shit, there’s been so many you’ve swallowed.”
“Who you are.” Janice had backed up to the bed and could go no further.
He shrugged, still looking amused. “Let’s say I thought it would give the whole thing away too soon if I told you my first name. So how’d you figure it out?”
“When I found Angela Taylor’s driver’s license.” That some of Angela’s clothes and underwear were undoubtedly out in her shed still made Janice feel sick to her stomach.
He made a clucking sound as he shook his head. “I always thought that keeping those damn things was a mistake, now I know it.” His eyes hardened and narrowed. “And just so you know, Ray is my middle name, the same as my daddy. Franklin Ray Walker, a man I never knew, but he’s the one who gave me the name Damon.”
Janice’s whole body seemed to slump in resignation; a look that was almost calm spread across her tear streaked face. “Don’t hurt Jeff,” she murmured.
Damon grunted a laugh. “Don’t hurt him? Fuck, I’m going to do more than hurt him, you can believe that. I thought for sure the fucker had done it for me Friday night, but he managed to survive. So I decided to fuck with his head some more before giving the bastard what he’s got coming.” He stood directly in front of Janice now; he was looking at her curiously. “You should be on your fucking knees right now, begging me for your very ass, and all I hear coming out of your mouth is something about him?”
Janice took a deep breath, gathering all the strength and contempt she could find within herself. When she spoke, she practically spat the words at Damon. “You’d have to be a human being to understand it.”
Damon moved so fast that it was as if he didn’t move at all; Janice never really saw the back of his hand coming. One second she was on her feet; the next something exploded against her cheek and temple. Her head snapped to one side and she sprawled on her back on the bed as if she had taken a bullet, instead of a slap. There was a ringing in one ear, her eyes refusing to focus, and she felt herself sliding toward a blackness that seemed to be reaching out for her. It was just black, empty and nothing, and so vast that it had to be more than mere darkness.
Too dazed to move or make a sound, she felt the powerful claw-like hands that grabbed the front of her robe. She heard the material ripping, felt the robe leave her body, the blackness creeping closer. Now there was a pain in her cheek, a burning kind of awful pain that she felt all the way into the bone. It seemed to hasten the approach of the spreading blackness. It seemed so impenetrable that it was like a rapacious entity coming to claim her. Yet she wanted it and welcomed it; she still clung to enough of her wits to know what was about to happen to her. All she could do was pray that the blackness would get there first.
“I’ll tell you something I do understand, smart ass,” Damon hissed, one hand clamped over her mouth, his fingers digging brutally into her face. “You’re about to get the fucking of your whoring life…and for once, I’m going to enjoy it.”
The blackness didn’t get there in time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jeff burst into the house and rushed to the kitchen. His phone was where he had left it. He grabbed it up, trying to calm himself and slow his breathing as he scrolled to his recent calls. He was still convinced that someone had been trying to call him. If anything, he was more convinced of it now than he had been when he first left the cemetery. Moreover, he was even more convinced that the person was in danger. He still had no clear idea where the knowledge and certainty of it was coming from, but he would be willing to bet his life on it.
When he saw he had three missed calls from Janice—the last coming no more than fifteen or so minutes before—he had to sit down quickly. It felt as if his legs were about to collapse under him. It had to be her; the last missed call before those three had been early Friday morning before he left the house for work.
What in the world is going on with her? Jeff punched in her number. The call was answered after five rings, but Janice’s voice didn’t greet him. There was only the sound of heavy breathing and what sounded like a struggle.
“Janice?” Jeff shouted. “Is that you? Are you okay?”
No reply. Only
more of the heavy breathing and a lot of thrashing around that seemed to be growing more intense and desperate.
What was that? A moan? What the hell?
Jeff flinched when the scream suddenly ripped out of his phone and into his ear. It lasted, perhaps, two seconds; after that there only more of the heavy breathing and thrashing. Jeff didn’t know if it had been Janice; he couldn’t tell for sure. All he knew was that it was the scream of a hysterical and terrified woman, and one clearly in pain.
A few seconds after the first, there was another scream and it was far worse and chilling. It was an elongated scream of words that ran together, a sound that Jeff had never realized could come from a human throat. It felt as if his blood was freezing in his veins—
“HelpmeHELPMEpleaseHELPMEmakehimSTOPhurtingMEEEE!”
––and he was already on his feet before the scream stopped and the call ended. It was definitely Janice, and he knew what was happening to her and it sickened him. What kind of demented bastard would do something like to her? The guy she was seeing? That seemed the most likely possibility. Jeff, his phone gripped firmly in his hand this time, ran out of the house and jumped into his truck.
By then the rain had all but stopped, only a fine mist still seeping from the sky. As he wheeled out of the driveway, the thought crossed his mind to call 911.
“Wait,” a familiar voice said in his head.
“Why wait?” he asked automatically and without thinking, his foot hard on the gas.
“We don’t know for sure she’s home, do we?”
Jeff frowned, thinking. “No. No…I guess I don’t. I just assumed she was.”
“She can’t afford for us to assume anything. Check her house first and if she’s not there, then we’ll know what to do.”
“Yeah,” Jeff agreed, pressing harder on the gas. “That makes sense.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Janice lived about twenty minutes away to the west and north. Using back roads and side streets with which he was familiar, Jeff reached her house in just over twelve minutes. Her car was backed into the driveway and parked near the back door of the house. As his truck slowed to a stop, something about the house seemed to reach out to him. Something dark and eerie that struck him as pure evil.
He hurried to the front door, tried the knob, but the door was locked. “Janice?” he yelled, pounding on the door.
Hearing no reply or sound from within, he let the screen door slam and hurried around the side of the house to the back door. He had just drawn even with the back of her car when he stopped, his feet skidding in the wet pine needles.
In the opened door of the storage shed in back stood a tall and familiar figure. A hard knot of fear and surprise lodged in the back of Jeff’s throat.
“Damon!” he hissed in a croaking voice. Even at such a moment, it struck Jeff as it always did how little they looked alike. Damon’s features were all from his father, and though they were both tall, Damon was taller by several inches and out-weighed Jeff by all of fifty pounds, all of it hard muscle in his shoulders, chest and arms. They both had brown eyes, but Damon’s were so dark that they often seemed to Jeff to be almost black, especially when he was in one of his rages. Yet the biggest difference was Damon’s bald dome of a head. His hair was black when they were kids and had once been long and thick, but he had been shaving his head since his early twenties. Damon’s way of ridding himself of the “Taylor Taint,” as he had always called it.
His brother regarded him a long, cold moment, his arms folded across his chest. “Good to see you, too, little bro,” he drawled softly, sardonically.
Jeff hated it when he called him that. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Damon shrugged. “I live here—or I did, anyway, until the bitch threw me out.”
Jeff’s eyebrows rose. “You’re the one Janice has been seeing?”
Damon smiled, a small, knowing smile that was all nasty. “You got it, little bro. I was two days out of the joint when I met her and found out she worked for you. I’ve been banging her brains loose ever since. So, tell me, how does that grab you?”
Jeff wasn’t sure how to react to or answer that, but it wasn’t important. All that mattered at the moment was Janice. “Where is she, Damon? Is she okay?”
“Couldn’t tell you. A little while after she got back from taking you home she got a call and left with a couple of her girlfriends. The last thing she said was that she didn’t want to see my ass here when she got back.” He shrugged indifferently. “All I can see is she figured out what I was up to. I was just getting my shit together to leave.”
“Jeff, he’s lying, and you know it.”
“Janice doesn’t have any close female friends, Damon, so you better try again. Where the hell is she?”
Damon’s face hardened. “Fuck you, Jeff. You want the bitch, then you look for her. But, first, me and you have a little something to settle.”
“We’ve got nothing to settle and nothing to say to each other,” Jeff told him flatly. “I called 911 on my way over here, so unless you want to talk to the cops, I suggest you hit the road while you still can.”
Damon laughed with genuine amusement. “The hell you called 911. Unless I miss my guess, and I rarely ever do, I’d say the cops are about the last fuckers on earth you’d call right now. So you better try again, little bro.” His face went hard again, his eyes suddenly as hot as two fires. “On the other hand, though, it really wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if you had called the fucking law. You didn’t waste a second calling them before.”
“She’s here, Jeff. She’s close by—I can feel it.”
“What other choice did I have?” Jeff demanded. “You come busting through my front door, you had blood up both arms and all over your shirt—how the hell was I to know that you hadn’t killed someone, instead of just sending five people to the ER?”
“That didn’t fucking matter!” Damon uncrossed his arms and pointed a rigid finger at Jeff. “I came to you for help and you turned me in. Got on the phone when my back was turned and told the fuckers right where to find me. Goddamn fucking NARC!”
“What else was I supposed to do? You scared the shit out of me—not to mention how badly you scared the living hell out of my wife.”
“Fuck your goddamn wife!” Damon roared. “What the fuck did she have to do with it or any goddamned thing else, I’d like to know! It was between me and you!”
“I had to protect my wife and my home,” Jeff said with as much calm and composure as he could manage.
Damon glared at Jeff, his face twisted and ugly with rage and contempt. “The one time I came to you and asked you to be a brother, and what did you do?” His voice was deadly calm. “You threw me to the fucking wolves—and for what? Some whore that was sucking your dick and letting you fuck her?”
“Jeff, she’s here and I think she’s alive. I just can’t find her. Something’s in the way and I can’t get through it. I’m trying, but I’m not very good at this yet.”
“I swear, Damon,” Jeff said, both a sadness and a weariness in his voice, “every time we talk about anything, you sound more and more like your old man.”
Damon’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Watch your mouth, asshole,” he warned.
“Exactly the way Mom described him to me time after time, beginning when I was about twelve or thirteen.”
“Yeah, I heard you and the fucking Witch talking about him. I heard the Witch and the Warlock talking about him, too, like he was nothing but trash. I even heard the Witch tell the old fuck one night how she packed me and her up and was about to leave when she got the call that my daddy was dead.”
“After what she told me—after you left that last time—about the way he constantly slapped her around and beat her I can’t say I blame her for wanting to leave.”
“No, being the pussy-whipped fucker you are, I guess you can’t at that. But my daddy was no pussy-whipped milk-sop. He didn’t take shit off nobody—especially a bitch�
��and he knew how to keep his bitch in her place because he was a man’s man.”
“Yeah,” Jeff agreed sourly, “that he was. Quite a role model you picked out.”
Damon’s face took on a dangerous set and his eyes gleamed with deadly intent. Jeff recognized the signs and tensed, his hand inching toward the pocket of his jacket, his fingers finding the plastic tab of the zipper.
“Jeff, she’s not in the house, but the feeling’s getting a little stronger now. I’m certain she’s here somewhere, and I’m certain she’s hurt. I think she’s in a bad way.”
“Before I stomp your ass to damn death,” Damon said, his voice as calm as the eye of a hurricane. “I want you to hear something and hear it straight from me.”
“What?” Jeff asked, his fingers working at the zipper.
“Did you lose your shit when you got that call from your bitch’s phone?”
Jeff flinched as if he had been slapped. “You got her phone?”
“Had her phone. Can’t really say for sure where it is now.”
“How did you get it?” Jeff asked softly, suspiciously.
“How?” Damon countered as if speaking to a complete idiot. “Let me show you how.” With that he ducked out of sight inside the shed.
Jeff used the few seconds he was gone to unzip his jacket pocket and thrust his hand inside. When Damon reappeared, he drew back one hand and hurled at Jeff what he had been holding. Instinctively, Jeff lurched to one side. For just a moment his hand slipped out of his jacket pocket.
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