His breathing was ragged, his adrenaline pumping. Thinking quickly, he pulled his T-shirt off, over his head, and, reaching her, covered her up in it. She was a tall woman, but rather slight, so she swam in it.
“Listen to me,” Thomas said gently but forcefully. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a bit, hoping he wasn’t touching any wounds. Her eyes were wild and distant, a mixture of mental disassociation so common in victims, probably combined with the lightheadedness inherent with blood loss. “Do you hear me?”
Her teeth were chattering. “Yes,” she finally whispered, her eyes unblinking.
“I have to go down there. Run to that building over there.” He pointed out the closest one. “Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Police are there. They will help you.” Thomas had to get moving. He had to get to Nikki. “Go!” he ordered. “Run. Now. And tell them where I’ve gone!”
The senator blinked. “She saved my life,” she murmured, making chills go up and down Thomas’s spine.
There could be no mistaking which she Priscilla Harrington-Barnsworth was referring to. He could only pray Nikki hadn’t given up her own life in the process.
“Go,” Thomas said hoarsely as he ran toward the hole in the ground from which the senator had emerged. His heart was slamming in his chest. “Run!”
Nikki’s mind wasn’t registering anything clearly—an innate biological protection that kept suffering at a minimum. But she was aware of her surroundings enough to know that she needed to get loose from the knots that held her immobile and helpless.
She could hear wrestling on the floor, could hear James and Michael repeatedly slamming into each other, but she had no idea which man would emerge the victor. She had to help James, she realized. She had to get free.
The positive aspect of mental freeze was that she was no longer shaking, no longer terrified. Nikki could methodically work at the knots that held her bound without trembling. And as luck would have it, without fumbling.
She tried to concentrate as she worked them, her mind slowly coming back as every knot fell loose. By the time her hands were free and she could work at the knots on her legs, her mind had snapped totally back. Unfortunately, so had her shaking hands and thumping heartbeat. Blood dripped from the one puncture wound Michael had dealt her, so she was careful to avoid the area so as not to slick her hands with wet blood.
James, she thought in horror as the first knot at her leg came undone, he was about to get stabbed. Oh, dear God—Michael was going to win.
Thomas followed the sound of two enraged men fighting. He was thankful for the loud bursts of noise because it helped him zero in on the exact location much more quickly. Water splashed around him, a few inches high at best, as he ran down the long underground corridor leading to a joint in the sewers, gun in hand and ready to fire.
When he rounded the corner he was stunned to find James and another man he didn’t know wrestling, knocking each other back and forth into the concrete walls. Nikki—sweet lord, she was alive. Alive and freeing herself from Lucifer’s bondage knots.
But which man is Lucifer?
Thomas’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two men as he ran at top speed down the corridor. His heart was slamming in his chest. He didn’t know which man to go after. If he made the wrong choice, the real Lucifer would be able to bring Thomas down while his attention was fixated on the innocent man.
James—
Please God, he thought, don’t let Lucifer be James. He ran faster—faster than he’d thought possible.
Nikki was free a moment later. Thomas’s muscles tensed and his eyes widened when it occurred to him that she was about to assault the real Lucifer. Oh no, he thought, horrified. He didn’t want her that close. “Nikki!” he bellowed, running closer, almost reaching the corridor.
But he was too late. He heard a keening sound erupt from her throat as she flew into the air and jumped on the back of . . .
Not James. Thank you, God—not James.
Lucifer yelled, flinging Nikki off his back. She hit the concrete floor, her eyes wide with horror as she watched him raise the knife he held up into the air.
The rest happened as if in slow motion. Realizing he wouldn’t reach them in time, and knowing he had only one chance to save her, Thomas came to an immediate halt, aimed the revolver’s sights for the side of Lucifer’s head, and fired. The shot whizzed out, the familiar scent and sound of gunpowder filling the corridor.
Lucifer’s body lurched forward upon impact, the bullet through the head clean and precise. He fell to the ground a moment later, dead only seconds after he hit it.
It took Nikki a long moment to realize she was okay. By the time Thomas reached her side, his heart pounding in his ears, he could tell she was aware that it was over. In true Nikki form, she didn’t cry, didn’t lose her cool. She was trembling, her eyes were a bit wild, but she was okay.
He held his arms open. She gratefully, and shakily, went into them.
“Oh, thank God,” Nikki whispered as he rocked her back and forth in his embrace. “Next time,” she said in an attempt to lighten the mood, “don’t wait for a dramatic ending.”
Thomas gently squeezed her, not wanting to let go. “There won’t be a next time.” He tried to sound calm, together, but he realized his voice was shaking a bit. “Hell, woman, that’s the last time I leave you alone without a babysitter.”
She tried to laugh, but couldn’t. “I love you,” she whispered, gazing up into his dark, worried eyes. “Thank you.”
He pulled her close, but not too tight, knowing she had sustained a wound above the heart. “I love you, too. And you’re very, very welcome.”
“I told you,” an exhausted James said as he pulled himself up from the ground, “that I wasn’t Lucifer.”
Thomas put Nikki behind him, shielding her nudity from his partner. James looked pretty beat up. A sliced-up shoulder, a puffy black eye already turning purple. But he was alive.
“Be a gentleman,” Thomas winked as he watched his best friend stumble toward him, “and give Nikki your shirt.”
“Hell, I can’t get it off,” James muttered. He held up the cuffs. “Remember?”
“I remember,” he whispered.
James sighed as he came to a standstill before him. “Her clothes should be over there.” He jerked his head toward a black bag. “Bastard likes to keep them as souvenirs.”
Thomas studied his face. “I’ve got a lot of questions, you know.”
“I know.” James nodded. He sighed again. “To make a long story short, I started to suspect the sewers during the days I was researching Lucifer when I was on the run. I didn’t know if you’d believe me or not, so I took matters into my own hands.”
“I’m glad you did, bro,” Thomas murmured. “I was pretty tore up. Didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground. I don’t know if I’d have believed you or not.”
Nikki must have heard James’s comment about where her clothes were, because a second later Thomas saw a shirt going over her head out of his peripheral vision. He turned his neck to gaze at her, watching as she made a wide path around Lucifer’s body.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Nikki mumbled as she rejoined Thomas and James. “I want to go home.”
“Hospital first.”
She took Thomas’s hand, then looked up to James. “Thank you. Priscilla and I would both be dead if you hadn’t intervened when you did. Both times.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome,” James said quietly.
Thomas stared across the corridor at Lucifer’s felled body. James and Nikki turned their heads, following his line of vision.
“Please, Thomas,” Nikki whispered, taking in his rigid profile. As if she could read his thoughts and the fact that he wanted to obliterate that corpse, even dead, she said, “It’s over. You killed him. I want to go. Please. I can’t stand being down here another second.”
Thomas blinked. It was over. After all o
f these years, Amy’s murderer was dead.
And Nikki, the woman he loved, was alive. It was time to let go.
Thomas nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” he said softly, his callused hand threading through Nikki’s. James took to his other side, dragging himself along beside them. “Buddy, I’d like to give you a hug.” Thomas’s eyebrows rose. “But I’ll take you out for a beer instead.”
Chapter 30
Friday, August 22 10:59 P·M·
Between her demanding career and his, Nikki wasn’t seeing as much of Thomas as she would have liked, but the time they did get to spend together, mostly at night and on the weekends, was always special. There were a lot of loose ends Thomas had to tie up from the Lucifer case, including the methodical search of Michael’s home, which had turned out to be a regular house of horrors.
Dr. Michael Sorenson had tortured, raped, and murdered more women than the police had suspected. The combined estimate of Lucifer’s assumed kills had been around ten. Nobody, not in their worst nightmare, was prepared to find evidence that the surgeon had raped, tortured, and murdered close to thirty women. But then, the CPD hadn’t connected Michael’s earlier, “unsophisticated” murders to the murders committed at the hands of Lucifer until the diary was unearthed. For the past several years, the victims had mostly been lured via the Internet. Before the Internet had been widely used, personal ads had been his modus operandi.
Finding Michael’s painfully detailed journal enabled several Ohioan police departments to solve a multitude of their backlogged murder and/or missing-persons cases. Lisa Pinoza, it turned out, had played with Lucifer just as Priscilla had. Priscilla had pretended to be a willing submissive who wanted to meet a real offline Master. Lisa had pretended to be a single, high-powered career woman instead of a low-paid barmaid in a dead-end marriage. Lucifer had wanted to punish both of the women for their lies, symbolically leaving their hearts behind as proof they were not fit to belong to him forevermore.
God rest her soul, he succeeded in doing just that to Lisa Pinoza. Priscilla Harrington-Barnsworth, thankfully, had survived.
My heart all but stopped when I realized it was you—you, Nikki!—who answered my online ad. We were fated, my love. For months I’ve been plotting ways to bring you home to me, but the timing was always off.
Then the gods smiled upon me—and you came to me . . . .
Michael’s diary had also detailed his lengthy obsession with Nikki. It had been difficult finding out just how frequently he’d masturbated to perverse fantasies of torturing and raping her, and how many close calls there had been on her life prior to when she’d placed the online ad at Dom4me.com. Reading the chilling passages had sent goosebumps down her spine, had made her feel like vomiting. Nikki could only be grateful fate had intervened on all his previous attempts at kidnapping her.
She still didn’t quite “get” what it was Michael had seen in her to begin with, but she had her guesses. Mostly because his obsession with her, according to his diary, magnified a hundred times over upon her promotion at Cleveland General—the same promotion Michael had lost out on. It seemed surreal for Nikki to think something so simple as being beaten out at a promotion could cause her to become the focal point of a madman’s fantasy life, but there it was. His several-months-long fixation on her had begun mere days after he’d murdered Linda Hughes.
For the first two or three days after Lucifer died, Nikki walked around in a daze half the time, her rational mind searching for a logical explanation for what could have possibly turned Michael Sorenson into the monster he had been. She realized there was little rationality to be had, yet for some reason her mind struggled to find at least something tangible it could grasp onto to explain it.
Kim and Megan had told her the story of Michael’s sister and of how his mother had then tried to kill him when he’d been a boy. What Kim and Megan hadn’t known, and what Thomas later uncovered, was that Michael had escaped his mother by killing her before she could kill him.
The only thing Nikki could figure was that each of Lucifer’s victims, herself included, were a way for him to relive his mother’s murder over and over, again and again, like a broken record that never stopped playing. A way for Michael to wield ultimate power over the woman who, in his mind, was all-powerful and godlike to him.
Nikki felt sad for the little boy Michael, who would grow up to never have a normal life, a normal thought, or a normal relationship. That he’d managed to make it through medical school and a surgeon’s long residency was proof that he’d tried, at least to her way of thinking. In the end, of course, he had failed.
But as saddened as Nikki felt for the little boy Michael, she couldn’t help but to breathe easier knowing that the adult Michael was now gone from the world, no longer able to inflict pain and suffering on others. Like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth, there was no cure for what Lucifer was.
A house divided against itself cannot stand:
Turning the detectives against each other was no small feat, my sweet submissive Nikki. But then I, your lord and Master, am no ordinary man.
Yesterday, James had been officially cleared from all charges. He was reprimanded for withholding evidence in the Lisa Pinoza murder case and as a consequence was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence from the CPD. A hearing was scheduled for the following month, at which time his future as a police officer would be determined.
Nikki decided to show up at that hearing whether or not she received an invitation. After all, were it not for James, she and Priscilla Harrington-Barnsworth would be dead.
I love you, Nikki. Tomorrow as I make love to Monica, it’ll be your face I see as I thrust inside of her, your heart I long for throughout eternity . . . .
She’s a sorry, pathetic substitute. But your Master has needs, and you are not here seeing to them as a loyal slave should. Still, this lets us prolong the inevitable just a little bit more, darling. The longer I wait, the more I crave you . . . .
Our unavoidable consummation will be beyond sublime.
In Nikki’s soul, there would always be sorrow for Monica Baker-Evans. Monica had died because Lucifer couldn’t have the victim he desired. Like a dead fish thrown Mafia-style at a marked man’s door, she had been nothing more than a warning to Nikki of what was to come. Thankfully, it hadn’t come.
You knew that woman, didn’t you? That filthy bitch who thought she was saving you from me! She will pay for her interference. Do you hear me, Nikki? If it’s the last thing I ever do I will find that woman’s name and I will punish her like the whore she is for coming between you and I. She’s tried to convince you I’m bad, hasn’t she?
All I want is for you to love me! I want you to belong to me forever, Nikki. Why can’t you understand that!
Kim and Megan were doing great and were having a fabulous time forging the mother-daughter bond Roger Cox had thwarted all those years back. In the past eleven days alone, they’d already done each other’s hair twice and given each other facials. Nikki would have laughed, but she found the situation rather adorable.
Kim was back to spending her weekdays at Eastern Academy. Classes would start back next week, so she was busy preparing for the students’ arrival. She didn’t like to talk about the Lucifer case, or about her old dreams, and Nikki couldn’t exactly say she blamed her.
Nikki didn’t like to talk about those subjects, either. Michael was dead, and it was time to move on.
The only thing about the Lucifer case Kim begrudgingly discussed at all was the enigma of Ben O’Rourke. Kim had been certain he was Lucifer until Megan had told her the horrible story about Michael Sorenson and his sister. From there it had been easy to put two and two together.
Still, there was something about Ben that Kim didn’t trust. She admitted to Nikki that she’d had a few inexplicable dreams about the hard-nosed detective with the bad-boy reputation, dreams that led her to believe he would bring trouble into her life. Therefore, she avoided him like the plague.
&nb
sp; Ben’s “disappearance” the night of Lucifer’s death had turned out to be not much of a story. His mother had taken ill, he’d rushed over to help his brother get her to the emergency room, and in all the mania, his pager hadn’t been turned on. Ben had been verbally reprimanded by the chief but, due to the nature of the emergency, thankfully not punished for taking off without permission. He was back to work now and was Thomas’s acting partner until James was reinstated—if James was ever reinstated.
She wasn’t supposed to signify much, just another lying bitch with an over-inflated sense of importance who needs to pay for her sins. Then I overheard you telling a nurse you’re friendly with that you used to be jealous of the gangly senator once upon a time. I find such information . . . intriguing.
Will you feel jealousy when you watch your Master make love to her? I smile at the thought. My cock hardens at the thought! But no worries, darling. I won’t keep her heart—only yours. For a brief moment I considered punishing you with the knowledge that her heart would belong to me forever—you did run from me after all!—but Priscilla is a lying slut who is unworthy of my eternal love. The thought of keeping her heart leaves me feeling decidedly unclean.
The senator managed to emerge from what could have been a potentially career-ending situation virtually unscathed. In fact, her online activities were completely shielded from the press. All of the publicity she garnered for being one of only two females who had ever escaped Lucifer alive (Nikki being the other one) was doing wonders for her campaign. Priscilla Harrington-Barnsworth would be reelected come November without a doubt, and probably by a landslide. Maybe Nikki would even vote for her.
Nikki smiled at her thoughts as she drove into the parking lot of her high-rise apartment complex. Nah. Probably not. But life, she concluded, does go on.
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