But he hadn’t come. Hadn’t been where he’d promised.
She continued, snapping him back to the present. “I can smell him,” she breathed, her voice tinged with the terror of reliving this nightmare over and over. “I can hear him…”
Fury had him seeing red. “Who was it?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. I never knew. Unrecognizable. I’ve always assumed it was a stranger. Someone passing through San Julio.”
Vic growled a curse. He was enraged that someone had hurt her like that, scared her so badly she’d run away from everything she’d ever loved.
Her face collapsed in an expression of pain. “I never see his face…couldn’t open my eyes…could only hear his voice. It was strange and eerie and high…” The depth of sadness in her eyes seeped into him.
“Go on,” he made himself say.
“This time something had changed.”
Vic wanted the man who’d done this to her—to them—to suffer as much as Delaney had. But now was not the time for his fury. Now was the time to hold her, comfort her. Love her. He took her hand in his. “How?” he asked softly. “Tell me.”
She pulled her hand away from him, leaning forward over her thighs, her back rising and falling with her heavy, sobbing breaths. “I don’t know if I was sleeping or awake, but I was outside, on the ground. And instead of only feeling his weight on top of me the way I usually do, he was talking to me about blood, and I f-felt…I f-felt something wet and sleek under me. So I ran. I was coming to you along the horse trail, through the cattle and horses.” She looked up. “He was like a ghost this time, chasing me, but I couldn’t see him.” Her breath hitched again. “I had to still be dreaming, because I could see you, but I couldn’t reach you. Esperanza was behind you,” she said. “She kept pointing at me, saying ‘Chupacabra.’”
Delaney was lost in the nightmare as she retold it. He could hear the haunted fear in her voice. See her lips quiver. Her eyes closed and she whipped her head back and forth as if reliving it at this very moment.
“You were supposed to be there!” Her eyes flew open and she looked at him, pain radiating from her whole being. “But you weren’t there. You’re never there,” she whispered hoarsely.
He felt her accusation like a knife in the heart. Wanted to hide in shame. He’d broken his promise to her. He hadn’t shown up at the Chain Tree, and she still felt the betrayal. But there was so much more to her nightmare. A living nightmare she was still suffering from today.
That man and what he’d done to her…
She gripped Vic’s arm. “There’s another animal.” She let her eyes drift closed again and looked as if she were summoning a vision. “I can almost see it. It’s huge. And sliced down the center. Too big to be a goat…”
He lifted her chin with his fingers, brushing away her tears. He didn’t care if there was a dead animal out there. Hell, he didn’t even care if she’d been the one to kill it. He had to hear it all. He needed to know what happened that night. He needed to know how to protect her and make it better.
Though God knew how.
“Delaney,” he said, hesitating, afraid he’d hear more accusation in her answer. He made himself speak. “That night. When we were going to elope. Did he—”
She steeled her face, wiping away a stray tear, and shook her head emphatically. “Don’t say it.”
“I need to know, Delaney. The man in your nightmares. The one who chases you.” He sucked in a breath, then forced the words out of his mouth. “Did he rape you?”
The stoic expression on her face crumpled. “I…I…” She stuttered to a stop, then slowly nodded her head. “Yes.”
He pulled her up and wrapped her in his arms, holding her until her breathing matched his, his heart breaking in a million pieces. His insides coiled in a mass of fury, sadness, and guilt. He shuddered as he thought of what she’d been through. How she’d suffered all these years. His guilt magnified. Racked his body.
He closed his eyes, but all he could see was the blood she’d been covered with when he’d found her, as if it was the mark of the pain she’d endured for the last twelve years. If it took every last ounce of strength he had, he’d find a way to help her fight her demons.
And win.
Chapter Fourteen
Vic stood behind the bar at El Charro, looking angrily at the clock. Last night he’d done everything he could. Cleaned Delaney up, tried to get her to tell him more, but she’d refused, so he’d taken her home as she’d asked. He’d woken Red, made him nail her window shut and promise to sleep outside her door. Then Vic had gone home and hadn’t slept a wink.
Today, he still couldn’t get any of it off his mind. He needed to talk to Delaney. To help her. Somehow. He turned to Ray and set down the thick-bottomed beer glass in his hand. “I have to go see her. Eva’s with Zach for another hour.” He started to move from behind the bar, but Ray stopped him.
“She shows up at your place in the middle of the night, covered in blood, and the next day, she’s off to work as if it never happened?” Ray shook his head, his brows pinching together. “That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
“She was scared,” Vic said, the expression on Delaney’s face when she got out of his truck and headed up her parent’s front porch steps branded in his mind. He couldn’t shake the fear in her voice as she’d told him about her nightmare. About being raped.
He swallowed, guilt flooding him. He should have been there, he thought for the millionth time since last night. Every bad thing he’d ever thought about her over the years jabbed his conscience like devils with pitchforks. If only he’d known…
Ray knocked back the last of his beer. “Sounds to me like she’s the one.”
The One. Yeah, the notion had been floating through Vic’s head since he’d laid eyes on Delaney West again. She was perfect, if you didn’t count the sleepwalking. And the blood. And all the turmoil that lurked in her subconscious.
But he’d caused those things and he aimed to fix them. Somehow. The rest? The rest was perfect. She was beautiful, strong, smart. The love of his life.
“Without a doubt,” Vic affirmed. “She is the One. Always has been.”
Ray frowned at him. “I meant she sounds like the one who’s been killing all the livestock. Including your steer.”
Vic’s anger flared. He’d found the steer just as the sun had come up. Slaughtered and drained of its blood, halfway between his house and the property line. On the beaten-down horse trail that led right to the West ranch. The path Delaney would have taken to get to his barn last night. The same one in her nightmare.
“There’s no way in hell she’s capable of killing,” he snapped.
Ray lifted an eyebrow. “You sure about that? From everything you said, it fits. All the deaths had happened at night. Not that hard to kill a sleeping herd animal. Just sneak up on them and—” He made a slicing motion with his hand.
Vic had processed through the events of the night before with Ray. Combed over every detail of what Delaney had said. About the man chasing her.
He swallowed. Fought the rage flaring in him. He’d kept the fact that she’d been raped to himself, but had told Ray how she’d been covered in blood.
But he couldn’t believe she’d mutilate a fly, let alone a steer. “She sleepwalks.” And sometimes did things she wouldn’t have done if she’d been awake and aware. “But that doesn’t make her a killer.”
“Explains why she was out at night, but how do you explain the blood?”
He’d been wrestling with that problem all day long. “It had to have already been dead. She probably tripped over it, or…something.”
“Then who killed it?”
“Some sick fuck who should be strung up by his balls,” he said vehemently.
Like the man who’d raped her.<
br />
Ray’s brows rose briefly, but he didn’t comment.
There had to be a connection between the rape and the mutilations. It was the only thing that made sense. Vic ran the towel in his hand around the rim of another beer glass as he thought. Delaney had clearly been targeted by this so-called chupacabra since her return to San Julio. Everything from Esperanza’s warning to Delaney’s newest nightmare pointed to it. And there was only one explanation for that. The rapist and the chupacabra were the same man.
The fact that Delaney was once again the bastard’s innocent victim made Vic’s stomach roil. And his own part in it made his heart shrivel. Not just how he’d acted back then, but how he’d acted since she’d come back. He couldn’t believe he’d suggested that deal to her like he had, with such low motives. He should have stopped and listened to her instead of throwing accusations. Should have taken things slower.
Ray would have stopped. Questioned. Analyzed. Ray analyzed everything to death, while Vic solved problems as he plowed ahead.
Which was what he intended to do right now. He had to make it up to her. And he would—by finding the scumbag and tearing him limb from limb.
But first he needed to make sure she was safe from the bastard. At night as well as during the day. Red sleeping in the hallway in front of her door wasn’t good enough. And no way would he let her go back to that damned cabin. He reached for another glass. “We need to figure out how to stop her sleepwalking—”
“We?”
Vic glared at Ray. “Bro. What’s your problem?”
“She walked out on you once.” Ray looked at him with brotherly concern. “I don’t want to see you hurt. She’ll do it again.”
Vic swallowed back a retort. Ray didn’t know the whole story—the one Vic was only just beginning to understand himself. Delaney had felt she had to leave. She’d seen no other choice. “No, she won’t.” And he almost believed it.
Ray cupped his hand on his chin. “Wow. You slept with her, didn’t you?”
Vic’s brain immediately shot to visions of ropes and slow, torturous sexual arousal. Even with the turmoil, that night had been life altering. Like coming home.
Ray groaned. “Man, that was so stupid.”
“We were going to get married—”
“More than a decade ago!” Ray shook his head. “Unbelievable. Are you ever going to grow up and think with your head instead of your dick?”
Vic ignored the slam. “It’s like she never left. I can’t explain it.”
“Try.”
“She needs me. Like…” He paused, trying to figure out what he was trying to say. “Like she’s been looking for a way to come back to me all these years.”
“Vic, that makes no sense.”
He picked up his towel and another clean glass to dry. Ray was right. To someone on the outside, the thought probably did make no sense at all. But he’d seen her face. Heard her nightmare. Seen the hazy, guarded look in her eyes.
Knew her secret.
Ray’s face grew even more sober. “You have a son to think about now.”
Like he could forget. Ray sat on a barstool, his suit impeccable, his face grim. He had an upstanding, don’t-mess-with-me sensibility about him. Vic knew he had the same look, but while his brother’s appearance was that of a tough but smart intellectual, Vic knew he always looked like he’d kick someone’s ass if they got in his way. Like he felt tempted to kick his brother’s ass right now. “You think I don’t know that?”
“You said she sleepwalks.” Ray leaned forward, putting on his diplomatic principal face. “Seems to me she could have done it and not even known.”
That very thought had crossed Vic’s mind about a thousand times since last night. “I suppose it’s possible,” he finally said, “but that isn’t what happened.”
“Is that the evidence talking,” Ray said, “or lust? Come on. You said yourself, she had blood all over her—”
“Shut up!” Vic ground out, looking around at the spattering of customers. “Jesus, you wanna get her arrested?”
“Arrested for what? You said you buried the steer.”
He had, and even with his Bobcat, it had taken him three hours. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was reporting the incident. He didn’t want an extra ounce of attention focused on Delaney.
“Besides,” he said, going back to the evidence, “there was blood on her shirt, but what happened to the rest of it? There wasn’t any pooled around the animal. You telling me she drained over four quarts of blood from a half-ton steer into a bucket, all while she’s freaking sleepwalking?” He snorted.
No. The only thing that made sense was that the man who’d raped Delaney when she was eighteen had resurfaced to terrorize her. God only knew what the sick fuck was doing with the animal blood, except it seemed last night as though Delaney had been covered in plenty.
Was the rapist afraid she’d remember who he was? Was he trying to scare her into silence? Or was this an out-and-out threat—a glimpse of what he might do to her next if she talked?
Vic couldn’t wait another second. He had to speak to her about it. He felt certain Esperanza was right that Laney was in danger from this bastard. He couldn’t think straight until he saw her again. Heard her voice. Felt her in his arms. And promised her that he’d keep her safe this time.
The phone rang, startling him. He let Mary Jane answer it as Ray’s gaze remained steady on him.
Ray went on quietly. “She was on your property. Maybe her subconscious is paying you back for standing her up. One and one equal two, bro. A dead steer for being stood up at the altar, so to speak.”
“If it was just the sheep and the steer, you might”—Vic said with emphasis—“have a leg to stand on. But the goats weren’t mine. They were her dad’s, so the payback theory doesn’t fly. Jasper lost piglets. McDuff lost a goat, as well. And it was the damn Chain Tree, not the altar,” he added in a surly tone.
“No!” Mary Jane’s shrill voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. She slammed the phone down and spun around, all color drained from her sun-damaged face.
What the—?
Vic’s heart slammed against his ribcage. He raced to her side, ripped the phone from her hand. “Who is this? What’s wrong?” he barked into the handset.
“Vic, it’s Derek.”
The deputy’s voice broke on that one simple sentence.
Vic’s stomach lurched. Zach? Delaney? “What? Just tell me,” he snapped.
“Jasper Locke is dead. His uncle found him a little while ago.” Braido said.
His friend’s words circled in endless motion in Vic’s mind. “How?” he managed to ask.
“Murder, Vic. There wasn’t an ounce of blood left in him. He’d been drained.” Braido sucked in a deep breath, then said, “But it gets worse. His body was covered in blood. Human blood.”
Vic rocked back on his heels. Maybe the local legends were right. Maybe San Julio really was cursed.
…
In the guest cabin, surrounded by the tight walls and her tense parents, Delaney felt a growing sense of panic. She had spent most of the day at the vet clinic, helping Doc Clinton with his patients. She’d thought about trying to process everything with Carmen, and had even taken her friend to lunch. But since she couldn’t bring herself to reveal all the horrible details, talking with Carmen hadn’t been much help. Nothing could wipe away the feel of blood on her skin or the scent in her nostrils, but she couldn’t tell any of that to her friend.
Then she’d come home to the horrible news.
Jasper was gone. Dead. Slaughtered.
His blood drained.
She put her head in her hands, fighting the fear invading her to the roots of her hair. No one would understand what was happening to her. No one could. No one except Vic. B
ut he had Zach and she wasn’t going to expose the boy to danger—and she seemed surrounded by danger.
“I put on a new double-sided lock,” her daddy said. “Waited in line at Grit’s Hardware until Chris Locke could make me some extra keys.”
Earlier she’d convinced her parents to lock her in the cabin for the night and come back to let her out in the morning. It felt like her last resort. Her plan of tying herself up hadn’t gone anywhere, and she couldn’t expect her father to sleep in the hallway every night. Maybe being locked in the cabin would work. Keep her safe. Keep others safe. Give her time to rack her brain and try to remember what had been happening.
Her father gripped the brass device as if that proved she’d be safe. “We’ll be back in the morning to let you out. You’ll be fine.” Delaney knew she wouldn’t be fine. But having her parents lock her in and hold onto the key until morning was the best she could do. For tonight, anyway. Tomorrow, who knew? Maybe she’d leave San Julio. Again.
“I still can’t believe Jasper’s dead.” She paced, afraid to voice her thoughts, but more afraid not to. “What if I’m the chupacabra? Esperanza said—”
Her mother charged forward. “That woman is not to be listened to. There’s no way you’re capable of killing animals, and certainly not a man. And a friend, to boot!”
Delaney laid her hands on top of her mother’s, bringing them down in front of her. “How can you be sure it’s not me?” she asked. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Anger and resentment bubbled inside her. She was exhausted from never really sleeping. Maybe she’d snapped and just didn’t know it yet. One of her therapists had suggested she had post-traumatic stress disorder because of the rape. If that were true, how could anybody be sure she wasn’t the one who’d killed the animals, or even Jasper?
She knew she could kill a goat. She’d never liked the sport, hunting, but she’d been good at it. She’d proven her skill over and over when her daddy had taken her and Alan on his hunting trips. And she’d helped butcher enough animals on the ranch to know how to drain an animal of its blood.
Sacrifice of Passion (Deadly Legends) Page 14