Last Girl Dancing

by Kate Aeon

  “And then you walked into my office, and — perfect. You, the perfect omega for my unfortunately flawed alpha.” She leaned her head so close to Jess’s that her breath brushed Jess’s cheek. And she whispered, “The finale was going to be private. Just for you and me, darling. Only you and I would ever have the secret — and you’d never tell.”

  Jess said, “You think?”

  Teri laughed. “I know. I took such pains to be sure.” She straddled Jess’s calves, and Jess felt lips, and then teeth, on her ass. And then a tongue licking its way up the small of her back. “Alpha and omega,” Teri said in between bites.

  Jess tried to kick, but Teri had her lower legs over the backs of Jess’s, holding them down. And Jess was still too weak to be effective.

  Teri scooted up Jess’s legs. Hands slid around to grope and squeeze her breasts, that goddamned tongue kept licking, and Jess thought, Bitch, if this room will stop spinning for a minute, I am going to rip you into pieces.

  But then Teri stopped, and sighed, and stood up. Her voice turned businesslike. “I wanted to fuck you. Wanted to spend all day and all night making you realize that you wanted me. Loved me. That I was better for you and better with you than any man could ever be. I wanted to make you beg, baby. I wanted to hear you scream. Because your sister never did. She slept through all the fun.”

  Jess’s badge and empty shoulder holster dropped to the floor in front of her face, and Jess’s empty stomach spasmed and flipped.

  Teri said, “Unfortunately for both of us, what I found when I undressed you put us on a whole different timetable. Who would have thought that you were a police detective? Or that the APD could field such a convincing stripper?”

  “You need to let me go,” Jess said.

  “Because you were wired?’ Teri nodded. “I already figured that out. I knew the police were recording us. I just didn’t know you were one of them. I wish I’d figured that out before I put you in the trunk and brought you home. The gun and badge gave me a few bad moments, I confess.”

  Jess tried to move forward or sit up, and discovered that the thing forcing her hands above her head had been the stripper’s pole to which Teri had handcuffed her.

  She focused enough to see that while her hands were cuffed, the handcuffs weren’t connected the pole. She managed a glance out of the corner of one eye and saw that the pole was bolted to the ceiling, though, as well as the floor.

  “I found your transmitter. Figured the belly-button jewel had to be the wire. Very nice. And the transmitter in the purse — well, that was clumsy, but the police have planted transmitters all over the club, too, so I knew what I was looking at. I have no idea what the range on those things is, but in case they go very far, I’ve disposed of both. You do have some rather nasty rips in the skin around your navel as a result.” Teri leaned down and gave her a cold, hard smile. “On the bright side — if you’re inclined to look at it that way — you won’t have to suffer with them for long.”

  “You kidnapped me,” Jess said. She managed to get her legs under her and struggled to a kneeling position. “So HSCU will know you’re the one they’re looking for.”

  “Oh, they’ll figure it out eventually,” Teri agreed. “Right now, I guarantee you they’re still marveling over Lenny and the thirty-five dead girls beneath my old house. I owned that place for six years before I told Lenny to live there. I suppose they’ll find Lenny’s and my shared house, where the true thirty-sixth for that square is buried. Your sister.”

  Jess glared up at Teri.

  “As for your colleagues finding you in time to help you... well, don’t count on that. Or on any justice for your death. I’m going to disappear. Become someone else, doing something else. Different job, but same hobby. Everything’s in place.”

  Hank had told them all along they had the wrong people — that the men they’d arrested had not been killers. She wished she had a chance to tell him that she was sorry she’d doubted him. She wished she had a chance to do a lot of things. If she had it to do over again, she would change her priorities. Make a place in her life for him, make sure that place stayed at the top. She would not neglect the one bit of joy and magic that had found a way into the dark spaces of her life. If she had the chance.

  But she was unlikely to have another chance.

  Jess could hear a police scanner in the background. She frowned, studying Teri, wondering how soon Teri intended to kill her, and wondering how she could buy more time. Wondering if she could somehow earn herself a second chance. She couldn’t let herself think about Ginny — about what this monster had done to Ginny. Because if she didn’t focus, Teri was going to do the same thing to her.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what? Kill them all? Keep it such a secret?” Teri reached down and ran a finger down Jess’s spine. “Dance for me and I’ll tell you. We have a little time. No one is coming to get you yet.”

  “Dance?”

  “The dance is always my finale. After all the sex, after all the fun, after all the begging and pleading, my sweethearts get one last private dance. As long as they keep dancing, I let them live. When they fall... well...”

  “I have things I do, but those take a lot of time, and what I don’t have with you is a lot time. So I’m going to have to use my shortcut. Have had to use it a couple times now for different reasons.”

  She held up an enormous hypodermic syringe — big enough that Jess could see the 50cc marking at the top — and Jess saw that it was full of something cloudy and brownish.

  “It’s amazing what you can put together from things you keep at home.”

  “So you don’t want to fall. This is horrible stuff, a horrible way to die. And once I’ve injected it, it will take up to an hour to kill you. Meanwhile, it will take me a mere three minutes to vanish from the face of the planet, never to be seen again. It doesn’t matter how close your colleagues get. I’ve planned for this moment for years. I’ve practiced. I’ll have no problem leaving. But for now, you can buy yourself a little more life. A few more minutes. As long as you keep dancing.”

  The leather handcuffs were too tight to slip out of. Jess had tried folding her thumbs into the palms of her hands to make her hands no wider around than her wrists, but Teri had strapped the cuffs on tight enough that nothing short of amputation was going to get her out of them without a key.

  “So start dancing, sweetheart. Remember, your hands are my hands. The pole? Well, that’s me.”

  Jess got to her feet, still wobbly and sick. Discovered that Teri had put her in shoes so high they were crippling.

  But... dance or die.

  The pain in her feet drove straight up her legs; she felt as if she were standing on nails.

  Teri had walked away while Jess was getting up — she’d moved off the little stage in the round and down to a lone theater chair bolted to the floor in front. If Teri came within range, the stiletto heels were sharp enough to make a good weapon — but with Jess’s arms cuffed around the pole so that her hands hung useless in front of it, she had no way to get leverage for a balanced kick. Balancing put her in a position of weakness. She’d have one attack. No matter what the outcome of her attack, she would lose her balance and fall to the floor, leaving her wide open for Teri’s follow-up, the poison-filled needle.

  So Jess bought time. She swung her hips a little. Balancing. Desperate.

  In the background, the music Teri chose played — Elvis Presley singing the suddenly creepy “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Beneath that, the usual chatter on the police band. Nothing over the scanner indicated that she’d been missed or that help might be on the way. Jess kept moving.

  And Teri said. “But you asked... how did I do it? Let’s see. Until I went public, I called dancers I wanted into my office when I’d scheduled them for a two-day weekend or when they were getting ready to go on tour. I’d use various pretexts — having heard about a movie part, having a feature spot opening up in the schedule, discussing a rumor that they
were whoring on the side. Anything that worked. They’d come in, I’d give them a cup of coffee, dump them into my trunk, roll them to my van, and they would disappear from the world.” She smiled. “Nothing could have been easier. And no one ever suspected a thing. Taking women you work with works just fine when no one realizes they’re missing for months. Or more. When I decided I wanted to move out of the area, though, I decided I didn’t want to leave without making a splash. That would be... dull. Taking chances at getting caught is part of the fun. So I made nice to Lenny just long enough that he and I could play the same games we played when I was fifteen. This time, though, instead of getting pictures, I just saved hair, and used condoms.” She winked. “Unlubricated, of course. You claim an allergy to chemicals, men will fall all over themselves to jump through the hoops that will hang them. Oh, and skin from the inside of his cheek. He might have felt a little funny about donating that for my collection, but he was as easy to drug back then as he was last night.”

  Jess, dancing on feet that were in agony, stumbled. The music segued to Boyz II Men singing “End of the Road.” Jess righted herself, finding Teri’s sound track creepier by the minute. She watched Teri glance at the hypodermic she held. That had been too close.

  “Nice save,” Teri said. “And I gave Jason Hemly a bunch of freebies at both his place and mine. His so I could plant pictures and mementos, mine so I could save condoms. Same thing with Wayne Alton. That’s the only thing I have ever loved about men. If you’ll do anything they can imagine, and you’ll do it for free, they’ll come back as long as you’ll let them and never think to ask why. I had keys to their places, full access — and every once in a while, just to be sure they didn’t get the silly idea that they should change their locks, I’d show up by surprise, call them to come home, and be naked and ready when they’d get home.” She laughed. “I still have their keys. Isn’t it great what a trip around the world will get you?”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Oh, come on. It was brilliant. And it was funny. Don’t tell me you people hadn’t been going insane trying to figure out why your serial-killer victims had three different DNA samples in them. Getting all excited when my paid witnesses told you what they saw. When you found evidence.”

  Jess kept dancing. She used the power of silence — let it hang there.

  And after a moment, sure enough, Teri said, “I’m surprised your question wasn’t ‘Why?’ actually. I would think the thing you’d really want to know would be what changed me, twisted me, turned me into a killer.”

  “No,” Jess said. “I couldn’t be less interested in that.”

  And for an instant, Teri’s composure cracked. Then she said, “Liar. You have to be wondering what forces could drive a woman to kill seventy-seven other women. Well, including you.” She laughed. “Plus Lenny, of course, but I consider his death a public service. So, your real question is why, isn’t it?” And she smiled with evident self-satisfaction.

  Jess swallowed her fear. “No.” She kept moving, though no one could call what she was doing dancing. She was simply not falling down.

  Teri’s eyebrows went up.

  Through her pain, maintaining her balance as best she could, Jess said, “Nothing drove you to kill all those women. You chose to be the piece of shit who did that. That’s all.”

  “That’s not true,” Teri said. “My stepfather molested me. Studies show that women who are sexually abused—”

  Jess cut her off. “I’m sure you’ve found ways to rationalize it to yourself. But no matter what happened to you, worse things have happened to other people — people who didn’t use personal pain and tragedy as an excuse to destroy others.” She swallowed against pain and nausea, and she kept moving. No help was coming. The pain in her feet was becoming more than she could ignore. She was going to fall. She had... minutes. Maybe less.

  Jess needed the bitch to move into range before she fell over and couldn’t get back up. She was going to have one really lousy shot at saving herself, and she had to get it while she was still on her feet. She said, “You’re common sidewalk shit, that’s all. You used what happened to you as an excuse — but you would have been the same disgusting animal if nothing at all had happened to you. Shit, through and through.”

  “I’m a goddess,” Teri said, walking toward Jess and the stage with that damned hypodermic in her left hand — and with Jess’s gun in her right. “And now you’re going to worship me.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jim and Hank and Charlie found the house. Big stone walls. Gates leading to the front walk and the driveway — the driveway gate was open. One small break, Hank thought.

  Hank got out of the car. He touched things Teri would have touched: the gate, the mailbox. And he felt the mind of the killer wrap around him. This was her lair — this was a place of death, and he could see it, smell it, hear it, feel it. Could taste it like poison on his tongue. Could hear the obscene laughter of a gloating killer everywhere: in the shadows and the way the light fell through the ancient live oaks and glinted off the koi in the fishpond. The killer’s plans shivered beneath his skin; the images bored into his brain. Now that he was on the property, he could feel where Teri had taken her other victims. And he could feel where she would take Jess.

  What he didn’t know was how much time remained. If any.

  Teri might have had an hour and a half alone with Jess. She’d probably had less; he had to hope she hadn’t caught any breaks in traffic on her way home. How much of a hurry was she in to kill Jess and leave?

  Hank jumped back into the car and pointed Charlie down the brick drive to the left. “That’s the way she went,” he said. It was a blind left — trees and azalea bushes and a lot of fat Christmas-tree pines blocked the view of what lay ahead. After they’d made the turn, though, the driveway straightened out, and terminated in an attractive little wooden cottage that lacked either a garage door or any windows, but that featured a van blazoned with Goldcastle advertising backed against the doorway.

  “Ram it,” Hank yelled. “Teri keeps the door barred when she has someone in there with her. The only way we’re getting in there in time is by going through a wall.”

  Jim shouted, “Do it!”

  “What the hell — it’s only a pension,” Charlie said, and — the next instant the front of the Crown Vic smashed into the front of the van, and the rear end of the van crashed through the front wall of the building. Hank was moving before the car came to a complete stop, yanking off his seat belt, kicking his door open, jumping free, running for the van and the hole it had made. He went up and over the still-sliding van, threw himself onto his belly to squeeze under the hole in the wall, and dropped to the ground to one side before the police cruiser’s other door had even had a chance to slam.

  Charlie would be right behind him. But Hank’s gut insisted that every second was going to count.

  The van came to rest with its rear end angled against the front of the stage.

  Hank caught a flash of Jess — warm blonde hair and stark-naked body — handcuffed to a stripper’s pole. Falling. Struggling back to her feet. Still alive.

  And a woman with long black hair, skin-tight jeans, and a lacy white blouse, holding a syringe in one hand and pointing a gun at Hank with the other.

  That would be Teri, he thought, as his world narrowed down to the gun and what he would have to do to control it.

  He heard the brunette say, “I recognize you. You’re the one she’s been fucking.” The gun barrel moved from him to Jess. Teri’s voice stayed calm. “Don’t move or I’ll kill her now.”

  Hank judged distances and angles between himself and the gun. A diversion would help — of course, Charlie or Jim bursting through the wall and shooting the murdering bitch would help a hell of a lot more.

  Without warning, Jess kicked high, her long leg arcing through the air with incredible speed, connecting with the gun and the hand, and

  —muzzle flash—

  —explosion�
��

  —the brunette staggered—

  —the inertia from the kick or possibly the impact from a bullet cost Jess her balance and she went down hard onto the stage —

  —and Hank launched himself across the wreckage of the wall and whatever had been in the place before the van and the cop car landed there, and sprang onto the stage in one vault, bellowing to get Teri to focus on him and draw her fire away from Jess, because he had no time to think, to weigh, to measure; he had time only to act. Behind him, he heard Charlie shout, “Drop the gun and put your hands in the air.”

  And Teri swung the gun around, shot Charlie, no hesitation, and Hank heard a cry of pain. Charlie. Hit.

  Jim yelled, “Get down!” Only Hank couldn’t get down to clear the shot for Jim. The bitch’s gun pointed dead at him.

  He threw himself into a flying tackle. His body remembered that same move once before, hitting his team member on the battlefield, and again he felt the weight of one body toppling, heard screaming again and couldn’t tell if it was then or now, him or someone else. He felt like he was two places at once — once as a grenade went off and the pain fought with the shouts of the other three Rangers running in to get him out, get him to safety. And the other — this moment, facing a killer with a gun and a huge, gleaming needle.

  He ripped the gun away from her, flung it toward the stage and Jess, rolled away to clear a shot for Jim.

  Teri lunged at him. Screaming. That massive hypodermic syringe in her hand.

  Coming straight at him, her teeth bared in a feral grin.

  And Jess shouted, “Mine,” and Hank felt the bullet go over him, and Teri jammed the needle into his right shoulder at the same instant that her face disappeared in a circle of blood.

  Teri flopped, dead, on top of him.

  Hank pulled away from her and she toppled back, and he felt the syringe yank out of him.