“Well,” she murmured to her image in the mirror. “It’s time to go meet your fallen angel.”
She frowned, something about that name causing some bizarre sense of déjà vu, triggering some . . . something. Her forehead wrinkling, she tried to figure out what that something might be.
Almost all of the handles and their corresponding email addresses used in ads at Dom4me.com were dark and a bit devilish. She supposed it helped create a certain aura of forbidden mystery. There had been other similar names, such as DarkKnight, DarkMaster, FallenMaster, DevilishDom, etcetera.
Nikki inelegantly snorted at her reflection. “Always the cynic,” she muttered. She shook her head once, then turned on her heel and headed for the door.
Tonight, she told herself with a grin, could very well be a major turning point. It had taken a month for her to work up the nerve to meet Richard, but the night was finally here.
This meeting held the possibility of changing her life forever.
Thomas felt like a damn fool.
He’d gotten together a team of ten police officers he trusted with his life, ten overworked and underpaid men, to work a weeklong stakeout based on the premonition of some weird rich chick from Snootyville who believed herself to be a psychic. Worse yet, he couldn’t get the image of the kooky lady’s best friend (and her well-rounded rump) out of his mind.
Goddamn, he was losing it.
His men had been in place every night the past seven nights from 6:00 P.M. until closing time. They were stationed in various points around the Cleveland Flats—that, after he’d given it some thought, being the most logical place in Cleveland to look, mostly because of the bridge and the dock in Dr. Cox’s dreams.
All of the officers were in undercover clothes, their well-trained gazes on the lookout for a woman with long, flowing hair who may or may not be accompanied by a man wearing a black leather jacket.
Thomas frowned as he glanced at his watch. 9:57 P.M. It was a Tuesday night. Most places in the Flats would be closing within the next few minutes.
“Hey, buddy, I hate to be the negative one here, but it doesn’t look like our boy is gonna show.”
Thomas sighed as he ran a palm over his stubbly face. “Shit. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
James Merdino clapped him on the back. “You’ve got nothing to feel ashamed about, man. Don’t do that to yourself.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “I just want that son of a bitch so bad,” he murmured. Thomas opened his eyes, staring at nothing. “I’m letting my personal obsession cloud my judgment.”
“Hey,” James said. “Given your history with the bastard, any one of us would have felt the same.”
“It’s no excuse—”
“It’s plenty of an excuse.” James nudged him in the shoulder with his elbow. “Hell, even Ben O’Rourke gave up his night off to come out here and help. You know you are a respected cop when a bad-ass bastard like that lets you come between him and getting laid.”
Thomas snorted at that. “Getting laid. Now there’s what I should be doing.”
“You still seeing Lucy?”
“Nope.” He slid his gun into the holster, and then turned to James. “Get on the radio and call it off,” he growled, changing the subject. Thomas had never been real big on discussing his dating life. Not even with the man he called partner and best friend. “This is useless.”
James stared at him for a suspended moment before inclining his head. “Will do.” He turned to walk away.
“Hey, James,” Thomas said, recalling something he’d forgotten to ask him about. “Remember Vincent Pinoza?”
James stilled. He cocked his head, glancing back at Thomas. “Yeah. Lisa Pinoza’s husband, right?”
“Yeah. Something strange . . .”
James lifted an eyebrow.
“I can’t find your original paperwork on the interview. Did you file it somewhere?”
James narrowed his eyes in thought. “It’s hard to say. That’s four years ago now. It should be there, though.”
Thomas slowly nodded. “I must have missed something. Thanks, buddy. Sleep good tonight.”
He watched James walk away, the wheels in his mind racing. His partner was right: The paperwork had to be at the station somewhere.
There was no point in asking him about Lisa Pinoza’s affair until he found it.
Black stiletto heels clicked on the pavement as she walked into the alleyway to retrieve her car. She was a bit sad, a lot disappointed, yet somehow not surprised that her dream lover had failed to materialize.
It was so black out tonight, so dark and eerie. She should have left the café earlier rather than waiting for him to show up clear until closing time . . . .
She stilled. Something didn’t feel quite right out here tonight, she thought, her heart inexplicably pounding. Something was making the tiny hairs on her arms stand on end.
She felt watched. Trapped.
Hunted.
She picked up her pace, the stiletto heels sounding loud to her ears in an otherwise deserted alleyway. She walked faster and faster—faster!—she was almost to the car. Just a few more steps and—
“Nikki.”
She spun around, frightened. Her eyes were wide, her heartbeat thumping. She saw no one.
This felt like something out of a nightmare.
“Nikki. My love . . .”
She backed up slowly, terrified. She couldn’t see him, could only hear him. She’d never heard that voice before, so she knew he was a stranger, and yet his love for her was real, a tangible emotion transmitted in the way he spoke to her that was so thick with need and longing you could cut through it with a knife.
Oh God! Oh please someone help me! she mentally wailed. She tried to scream, tried so damn hard to scream, but she felt like a deer caught in headlights. Her voice was frozen. Someone help me!
The attack came swiftly, without notice. She had been expecting him to be in front of her, yet two strong hands seized her from behind, pulling her roughly up against a solid chest.
She screamed long and loud, a piercing sound that carried into the night. Finally—finally!—she could scream.
A heavy hand roughly slapped over her mouth, her scream cut off as she struggled with her attacker.
Him? Her dream lover? Oh please no—no!
One moment she had been struggling with him in a darkened alley and—she blinked—where was she now? Frightened, she looked around. She felt groggy and disoriented. She was in pain . . . oh God oh God it hurts so much!
He was going to rape her. Oh no—noooo!
She was naked, tied up, her body obscenely splayed out. Hemp rope held her outstretched hands bound to two slabs of wood shaped like a cross. He stood before her broken body, his penis stiff, the knife in his hand gleaming.
“I love you so much, Nikki. Your heart will belong to me. Forever.”
He rasped out those words as he plunged his erection into her, the knife in his hand promising that something even more horrific than this brutal rape was still to come.
She wanted to scream—oh please someone save me!—but she was gagged. In that moment she knew she was going to die. She was only thirty-four and she was going to die.
Oh God—noooo!
Kim gasped as she bolted upright in bed, sweat pouring off her soaked forehead in rivulets as she abruptly awoke from the worst, most intense vision she’d had yet. Her breasts heaved from under the drenched cotton of her nightgown, her nipples hard against the saturated material as the chilled AC hit them.
It took her a long moment to orient herself, to realize where she was and to come to terms with the fact that she was nowhere close to where she needed to be. “Nikki,” she breathed out, her blue eyes wide. “Oh God . . .!”
Kim threw the blankets off of her body and raced toward her closet to throw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. The police didn’t believe her, she knew. There was no sense in going to them now, no time to grow angry over
their lack of intervention.
Saving her best friend would be up to her, she realized, horror stabbing her in the gut. She raced down the back stairs of the colonial brick mansion, stopping only long enough to grab a butcher knife from the kitchen.
Nikki. Oh God . . .
“Last call. We’re closing in fifteen minutes.”
Nikki sighed as she glanced around the eatery a final time, the bartender’s words reminding her of the hour. It was 10:15 P.M. and Richard still hadn’t showed. By now she knew that he wouldn’t.
The café was supposed to have closed fifteen minutes ago, but due to some cocktail party in honor of one of the people running in an upcoming election, it was staying open a half hour past its scheduled time. She took a deep breath, attempting to quell the pang of disappointment lancing through her.
Either Richard wasn’t real or he had shown up earlier, saw her, and decided he wasn’t interested. Either way, nothing was going to come of the month she had spent getting to know her fantasy D/s lover.
Nikki smiled a bit sadly. Then she motioned for the waiter, ready to pay her tab.
Thomas paced back and forth in the kitchen of his apartment, his muscles taut, his instincts screaming. Something was not right. Something was not as it should be.
He glanced at his watch. 10:29 P.M.
He had made it home in just under ten minutes. He could make it back to the Flats in just under five if he raced.
But it wasn’t like the Flats was a small area. There was a ton of ground to cover. Several bridges, the docks . . .
A building by the docks. A building with an alleyway on one side of it.
He kept trying to assure himself that he was being obsessive, that nothing out of the ordinary was going down in Cleveland tonight, but it wasn’t working. That schoolteacher kept creeping back into his mind. She had seemed so sincere, so troubled by the fact that she had these “visions” rather than embracing them as proof of some unseen ability.
Thomas based most of his better decisions on instinct—was it too much to believe that maybe the schoolteacher had that same ability, only on a different, possibly even advanced level? And so what if she was wrong. Would it hurt to go back one last time and do a security check over the Flats?
“Shit!”
Thomas swore under his breath as he grabbed his keys and stomped out the front door. His mind wouldn’t rest until he’d done a final check. Might as well get it over and done with.
Chapter 9
Tuesday, July 15 10:31 P·M·
Nikki rubbed her hands up and down her arms to ward off the chill bumps as she slowly walked toward the alley. “Quit freaking yourself out,” she muttered to herself.
Okay, so she hadn’t remembered where she’d parked the Mercedes. Worse things have happened to better people, she decided.
Still, it was weird. She could have sworn she’d parked her car behind the bistro, but when she’d come outside it hadn’t been there. At first she’d been angry, assuming it had been stolen, but then she’d spotted it in the little alleyway separating the eatery from another establishment.
The tiny parking lot had been jammed full when she’d arrived, cars spilling over into the adjacent alley. She’d been nervous when she’d arrived, her mind preoccupied with thoughts of Richard.
It was possible she’d parked her car in the alleyway and simply hadn’t been paying much attention. Lord knows she’d done that at the mall a time or two—thinking she’d parked in one spot, only to find it five aisles over.
Conceding that she was freaking herself out over nothing, she walked faster toward the Mercedes, her stiletto heels clicking against the pavement. The car was there. The keys were in her hand. What thief would steal her car, then chance being caught by bringing it back? Get real Dr. Moron!
Still, Nikki had always valued gut instinct, and hers was telling her to stay alert. Her heartbeat racing, she kept her eyes wide open and her ears in tune with her surroundings as she clutched her keys so tightly her knuckles turned white.
She walked quickly toward the car, faster and faster, her breasts bobbing up and down as she moved. Almost there . . . almost—
“Nikki.”
She stopped abruptly, whirling around to face the direction her name had been spoken from. She swallowed against the invisible lump in her throat, her heart beating so hard it felt like a rock in her chest.
No one. She saw no one.
“Nikki. My love . . .”
Her eyes widened. Panic, ice-cold fear, engulfed her.
In that moment of dawning, chilling awareness, she understood what she had done. She backed up slowly, perspiration dotting her forehead, as the realization that she had spent the last month exchanging emails with a madman caused her to feel as though she might vomit.
“Richard?” she asked in a small voice. “Richard, is that you?”
She knew it was. That was probably not his name, but it was the same man.
Scream, Nikki, damn you! Scream!
She wanted to scream—dear lord in heaven how she wanted to. But when she opened her mouth this time, nothing came out. Her lips parted, closed, parted, but her vocal chords were frozen.
The attack came swiftly, without notice, from behind. She had expected him from the front—how had he gotten behind her?
His hands were on her—oh God!
The scream finally came, bubbling up from her throat and wailing out like a platitude to the heavens. “Help meeee!”
He brutally slapped a palm over her mouth, struggling with her as she tried to fight him off. He was big, so damn strong.
The keys—yes, her apartment key ... !
She struck out at him blindly, trying to jab the key in her hand into his thigh. She was so hysterical and frightened that she had no idea whether or not the key had made contact. All she knew was that Richard was bellowing, that he had released her—
Oh God—run! Run Nikki! Run!
She fell to the ground instead, the jarring action of his abrupt release causing her to plummet. She cried out as she fell, pain ripping through her as her knees banged against concrete.
“Bastard! Fucking sick bastard!”
Nikki blinked. She had thought those words . . . but she hadn’t said them.
“Kim,” she whispered, her heartbeat racing like mad. “Oh my God.”
Nikki wrenched herself up off of the ground, crying out from pain as she did so. She maneuvered her body around with some difficulty, only to find the most horrific sight imaginable.
A man in a black leather jacket and ski mask—Richard!—pulling a butcher knife out of his wounded arm . . . and stalking toward Kim with it. Kim, whose leg lay battered beneath her, the ankle either sprained or broken.
“No!” Nikki wailed. “Nooooo!”
Richard stilled, his head twisting to the left to regard her. Intense, chillingly blue eyes clashed with her wide green ones.
“It’s me you want, fucker!” Nikki screamed, anger, fear, revulsion, and a million other emotions ripping through her. She clutched the key in her hand tightly, holding it like a talisman. “You spent an entire month planning this moment! Come and get me, coward!”
A police siren pierced the night, the loud wail sounding to Nikki’s ears like a trumpet sent from the gods. She cried out, tears of relief stinging the backs of her eyes, as she watched Richard take one last thorough look at her before disappearing into the shadows.
Nikki limped toward Kim, her breathing labored, her arms outstretched, her entire body shaking. She needed to hug her, needed to know she was all right.
“I’m so sorry,” Nikki said shakily.
One police car turned into two. Two into three. Then four and five. She ignored them all as officers scurried from their patrol cars and surrounded them on all sides. Her only thought was to get to Kim.
“Oh, Kimmie,” she cried out, her voice sounding guttural, as if tampering down on barely controlled hysteria. “I’m so damn sorry.”
Kim tentativ
ely smiled, a black eye quickly forming from where she’d apparently been struck. “Hey,” she said, her voice a quiver, “all in a day’s work. We schoolteachers are used to stuff like this. Happens all the time.”
Nikki half laughed and half cried. She hobbled the rest of the way to Kim, then fell down to her knees, no longer able to stand. The pain was jarring, numbing. She ignored it. “How did you know?” she asked weakly, dizziness assaulting her. “The dreams? Oh God—”
“Are you two all right?”
Nikki’s head shot up, the sudden movement making her so dizzy she felt nauseous. She turned a wild green gaze up to the owner of the masculine, gravelly voice. She could hardly see him, headlights from police cars all but blinding her. On all fours, her hair hanging in limp clumps every which way, her eyes crazed, she looked more injured-animal than human in that moment.
“It’s okay, Dr. Adenike,” the gravelly voice gently assured her. “You and your friend are safe. Officers are tracking your attacker as we speak.” His voice was very deep, very rusty, and very soothing. Not to mention very familiar. Why couldn’t she place it? “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“B-But—the man . . . R—Richard . . .”
“You’re okay,” he repeated. The gravelly voice drew closer. She squinted, trying to see him in spite of the headlights. She was certain she knew that voice, but couldn’t place it with a face. “Lucifer is long gone.”
“Lucifer?” she heard Kim call out. “L-Lucifer?”
Nikki blinked. Now why was that name familiar? She knew she was in shock, realized her thinking process was slowed and surreal from the adrenaline rush and crash. But she should know that name. . . .
Memories assailed her. TV news reports. Dead women. Raped. Tortured. Missing organs. A man they trusted.
Lucifer.
Oh. My . . .
Lucifer—FallenAngel—Lucifer.
Jaid Black Page 7