It was a reminder they hadn’t appreciated.
But his parents hadn’t physically abused or neglected him. Oh, there had been that time in the backyard when his father had just finished working out with Tom, pitcher of his Little League team, and had ordered John out into the grass for a little game of catch. The problem was John, five, maybe six years old, was uncoordinated as hell and, worse, he’d had no interest in baseball or any other sport. His father had been unusually patient for the first ten or fifteen pitches, even though John had dropped, missed, or—worst of all—avoided the majority of them.
But then he had lost his patience… and his temper. After berating him and calling him a coward, among other names, for dodging some of the balls, his father had fired off a fast one. There was no way John ever could have caught it—no way even Tom, watching from the patio, could have. But then, his father hadn’t meant for him to catch it. He had been throwing at a target with the intention of hitting it, and he had succeeded.
John had walked with a limp for weeks afterward.
He could have accepted his father’s challenge. He could have practiced, could have worked out with Tom, could have done his damnedest to turn himself into the best jock the Smith family had ever seen. By junior high, he’d had the size for any sport that might interest him; he’d been quick on his feet, and, from his experience as Janie’s occasional running partner, he’d known he had strength and endurance.
But he had chosen instead to avoid sports altogether. Going one step farther, he had chosen as his sole physical activity an activity sure to anger his father—surfing—and he had excelled at it. It was a worthless talent in the old man’s eyes and just further proof that John was neither the son he wanted nor the son he deserved.
What had D.J.’s choices been? he wondered. What had happened to her to lead her best friend to describe her the way Teryl had? If she had been sexually abused as a child, it wouldn’t be uncommon for her to remain sexually active as a teenager and as an adult. After all, Teryl had said that her friend had always been a perfect little vamp. Inappropriately seductive behavior in young children was a prime indication of sexual abuse.
On the other hand, a repressive, unloving, unaffectionate upbringing could bring about the same behavior. Maybe her parents had cared no more for her than his parents had for him, but maybe she hadn’t had anyone like Tom and Janie to love her in their stead. Maybe after nine years in such an emotionally sterile environment, she had learned to seek affection wherever she could find it—and the easiest place for a young girl to find such affection always had been and likely always would be in sexual relationships with hormonally driven young boys.
The rattle of paper and plastic signaled that Teryl was finished with dinner and gathering the wrappers together. He listened to the creak of the bedsprings as she bent to get her shoes; then she rose from the bed and carried the paper bag to the wastebasket near the door. For a moment, she simply stood there, her summery dress a splash of color in an otherwise drab room. It was the same dress she’d worn to say good-bye to the man claiming to be Tremont—simple in style, bright in color. It left her arms bare, along with a bit of her back, revealing a little creamy golden skin, but concealing more. With its wide straps, rounded neck, and damned near ankle-length hem, it was as modest as a piece of clothing could be. It flattered her. It concealed her body so thoroughly that it made her look sweet. Innocent.
It made him remember her naked.
And under the circumstances, he thought grimly, Teryl naked was a memory he definitely didn’t need.
* * *
Returning to the bed, Teryl propped the pillows against the headboard, kicked off her shoes again, and leaned back. It was warm—the air conditioner had clearly met its match in the muggy heat—the room was dimly lit, and she was full and tired. It wouldn’t take much at all for her to drift off into dreamland—a few more minutes without conversation. A few more minutes of listening to the rushing sound from the air conditioner’s ineffective fan. A few more minutes of fighting fatigue.
All in all, she thought, letting her eyes flutter shut, considering the circumstances, it hadn’t been such a bad day. They’d had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They had talked. John seemed more like the interesting, friendly man she had met Tuesday than the volatile, threatening stranger who had kidnapped her Wednesday. She had behaved, and he hadn’t done or said anything to cause her alarm.
Not that she was coming to accept the situation. Given a choice, she would rather be anywhere in the world with anyone else in the world—well, almost anyone else, she amended as Simon Tremont immediately came to mind—than here with John. She would much rather be home, living her boring little life, going about her dull routine, doing the drudge work—typing, filing, running errands—that filled her days, and watching TV at home alone, as she did most evenings. She didn’t need excitement or thrills or danger in her life, and when they reached Richmond, she intended to do whatever was in her power to remove them—and him—from her life.
Still, she wasn’t as afraid of John now as she’d been yesterday. She wasn’t so convinced that he was going to hurt her. She was pretty much convinced that he wasn’t going to kill her. She thought he was probably a decent guy—probably, at some time in his life, about as normal as any man who had been raised the way he had could be.
But she still thought he was crazy.
It was obvious he blamed himself for his brother’s death and for whatever injuries their sister had suffered in the accident. Guilt was a powerful force. It could drive a man over the edge. It could rob him of his ability to reason. If a man felt guilty enough—and she suspected that the guilt John carried was as intense, as strong and poisonous, as it could get—it could affect his mind. It could make him hate himself so much for what he’d done that he would choose to become someone else in order to deal with it.
And if you were going to take on a different identity, why not reach for the stars? Why not become a man who was universally known, universally admired? Why not choose an identity that would make people adore you rather than criticize and belittle you? When you’d lived so many years in other people’s shadows, why not choose the name that cast the biggest shadow of all?
It was too bad that her parents hadn’t gotten hold of him about thirty years ago. They could have undone whatever damage his parents had already done. They would have loved him, taught him, encouraged him, praised him. They would have made him feel like the most special little kid in the world. They would have saved him, the way they had saved D.J., Carrie and Kenny, Rico and Allison and Kathy and all the rest. God, there had been so many of them—so many unwanted kids, so many mistreated ones. She couldn’t remember all the names now… but her parents could. On their walls hung photographs of every single child who had ever come through their home, and they remembered every one. Names. Birthdates. Backgrounds. Problems. Triumphs. Successes. Losses. Deaths.
John could have been one of their successes.
Instead, he was his parents’ biggest failure, their loss, and she would bet they didn’t even realize it.
With a yawn, she switched mental gears, thinking about getting ready for bed. She should take a shower, but she could leave that until morning. She definitely had to wash her face, though, to remove her makeup, and she had to change into her T-shirt and, because it was too warm in here to cover up with even a sheet, her pinstriped shorts; this dress was all she had to wear until they got back to Richmond It was already wrinkled and in need of a quick wash and a hot iron. A night of tossing and turning would leave her—
Across the foot or so of space that separated the two beds, the springs squeaked as John moved. She heard his tennis shoes hit the floor with a slight thud and wondered drowsily what kind of abuse it had taken to get what once must have been a reasonably decent piece of carpeting into the awful shape this carpet was in.
Then he spoke her name. “Teryl.”
His voice was quiet, a testing sort of tone to see i
f she was awake. She could respond—could open her eyes, could ask what he wanted, could simply move to acknowledge that she’d heard him and wasn’t asleep—or she could just lie there, head back, eyes closed, lazy and comfortable, and if he wasn’t persistent, in another minute or two she really would be beyond responding.
“Teryl.”
This time his voice was closer. Opening her eyes, she saw him crouching between the two beds. His head was bent so that, from her position, she had a good view of his hair, more blond than brown, thick, a little on the shaggy side. When they had made love Tuesday night, she had played with his hair, had stroked it. Once, when he had suckled her nipple a little too greedily, sending a jolt of mild pain through her, she had pulled it, just enough to give him the same little jolt of pain. She had liked the texture of it, coarse and heavy. She had liked touching it.
She had liked touching him.
He had been so responsive, so generous, so hot. She had thought he was extremely talented… and passionate… and hungry. But it had never occurred to her then that he might be unbalanced. Had he hidden it well, or had she simply been blinded by lust?
She didn’t know the answer, not even when he abruptly looked up and their gazes locked. His face underwent an immediate transformation. The bleakness didn’t disappear, but it faded into the background, replaced by desire. It softened his eyes and his mouth and eased the tension that gripped his muscles while, at the same time, creating a tension all its own. It reminded her how handsome he was, how sweetly he smiled, how needful his kisses were.
Regardless of his illusions—his delusions—his desire was real. She had experienced it for herself two nights ago. She had felt the evidence of it last night when he had pinned her to the bed and gotten hard. She felt it again now—felt it deep inside—with no more than his look.
Maybe he had lost touch with reality, but he wanted her. If she gave him any indication that she felt the same need, he would be stripped naked and in bed with her in a heartbeat.
Maybe she was the crazy one. She didn’t know him, didn’t trust him, didn’t believe him. She thought the damage his parents had done to him, combined with the guilt and grief he had suffered over his brother’s death, had cost him his sanity. She thought he—and she and Simon Tremont and Rebecca and Candace Baker and anyone else affiliated with Simon—would be safer with John locked up and medicated in some soothing, peaceful sanitarium.
But damned if her breasts weren’t starting to ache, if her nipples weren’t growing hard. Damned if the muscles in her belly weren’t tensing, quivering in expectation. Damned if she wasn’t hot and getting hotter.
She was crazy.
She made the first move—nothing overtly sexual, nothing brash or bold, nothing that she couldn’t back down from. She simply lifted her hand from her lap and reached out to touch his hand. His skin was warm, his fingers curled in a loose fist. His hands were big, his fingers long and tanned, his palms callused. Though he’d been reasonably gentle Tuesday night—considering that they had both been too frantic to take care—the calluses had given a rough texture to his caresses, especially on the tender skin of her breasts and inner thighs. With no more than a simple caress across her nipples, he had created such wonderfully pleasurable sensations.
There had been such a long time in her life without sexual pleasure. After she’d found out about Gregory’s wife and broken up with him, she’d had dates but no sex. No one had appealed to her in that way. No one had made her knees weak. No one had made her want to be wicked—not even Gregory, if she was honest. She had believed she was in love with him, had wanted to marry him, but their lovemaking had lacked fire. There had been no passion, no sparks. They had made love because they wanted to or because it was convenient or because that was what couples did, but they had never done it because they had needed it.
John had needed it two nights ago.
She had needed it. She still did.
She had longed to be wicked in New Orleans, but this—wanting him now, wanting him when she was his prisoner… This was wicked. It was perverted.
And she wanted it anyway.
Still holding his gaze, she began unfolding his fingers, undoing his fist, intending to bring his hand, palm flat, fingers molded around, to her breast. She had reached his third finger before she realized that he wasn’t simply clenching his fist. He was holding something. She looked down to see what it was, but her fingertips identified it long before her gaze reached it.
Her desire died an instant death as fear washed over her. She snatched her hand back from his and tried in an awkward rush to scoot away, but he was too quick for her. He grabbed her, one arm around her hips, and pulled her back, holding her forcibly as he pulled the telephone cord into place. “I’m sorry, Teryl,” he said, his voice ragged as he began winding it around her wrists. “Just ten minutes—I swear to God, it won’t be longer than ten minutes.”
“No, no, please… I won’t try anything! Please, John!” Her voice was breathy, insubstantial. She was having trouble breathing, and her limbs seemed to have taken on lives of their own, trembling and shuddering uncontrollably. “P-please don’t do this again, John. I’ll stay right here. I promise, I won’t move from right here.”
He ignored her hopeful pleas and tied the ends securely, then disappeared into the bathroom, pausing only for a moment on the way to turn the television on. She gave the cord a tremendous jerk, which only served to tighten it around her wrists; then, calling on every ounce of strength she possessed, she grew calm—at least, as calm as she could be when she was about to hyperventilate.
Ten minutes, he had promised. In ten minutes or less, he would come out here and remove the cord. That wasn’t so long. What could happen in ten minutes?
A person could die.
A person could inflict tremendous pain on a smaller, weaker person.
Horrible nightmares could occur in less than ten minutes. Beatings. Rape. Torture.
But she was alone. John was in the other room, and he had no reason to hurt her. Why would he beat her, when he already felt guilty over the minor bruises he’d caused her? Rape? If he had simply dropped the wire moments ago, she would have submitted to him willingly. Submitted? Hell, she’d been intending to seduce him. And as for torture, she couldn’t believe he was capable. From her brothers and sisters, she knew more than she wanted about people who were capable of it. John wasn’t one of them.
But that didn’t slow her heart rate. It didn’t calm her trembling. It didn’t make her breathe easier. It didn’t ease this monstrous fear. It didn’t wake her from this nightmare.
Nightmares had been a fairly common occurrence in the Weaver household. As a kid, she’d had a few of her own—disjointed, hazy, meaningless frights that had yanked her from her sleep. Her night terrors hadn’t been her own, though. They had been born of the stories that D.J. had told her and of other kids’ histories that she’d learned in bits and pieces. She was too sensitive by far, D.J. had always said, if she could empathize so completely with them that she shared their dreams.
But it had been Teryl D.J. had turned to when she’d had her own bad dreams. The rest of the kids—Teryl included—had wanted one of their parents, usually their mother, who had held them and rocked them and sung them to sleep. But D.J. had wanted Teryl, at least until she’d turned fourteen or fifteen and had been too tough to cry on anyone’s shoulder. Before then, though, she had regularly climbed into Teryl’s bed, and Teryl had held her and patted her and sung all the soft, soothing songs her mother had sung to her.
Now she hummed one of those tunes, seeking solace but finding nothing beyond the urge to scream for help, for rescue, to scream and scream and scream. But screaming was a bad idea. It might not bring anyone to her aid, and it would surely anger John. If he was capable of tying her to the bed when he obviously didn’t want to, who knew what he could do when he was angry?
The tear that slid down her cheek was hot, and it left a cool, damp trail.
I
t seemed as if, while she hummed her mother’s songs and cried, hours passed before John returned from the bathroom to release her, but in reality she guessed he had probably kept his ten-minute promise. Crouching beside the bed once more to undo the knots in the thin cord, he looked forbidding, full of self-reproach, distant.
She hoped he stayed that way.
Loosening the last knot, he eased the cord enough to slide over her hands, freed it from the bedframe, and wheeled to his feet. As soon as he started off, she slid back into the corner, away from the dim light of the lamp, away from him, curling into the smallest space she could fit herself, and she watched as he got ready for bed. The mattress from the other bed hit the floor, rattling the door, making the television sway unsteadily on its rickety stand. He stripped the bed down to the bottom sheet and left the rest of the linens on the springs, along with the extra pillow. After turning off the lamp that sat on the dresser, he stood stiffly, his back to her, then asked, “Are you going to sleep like that?”
She didn’t answer. She simply scooted until her back was against the wall; when she could retreat no farther, she pulled the second pillow over and hugged it to her chest.
After a moment, he turned off the other light, then made his way through the dark to his bed. She listened to him remove his shoes and then his jeans, and she wished with every fiber of her being that she had never heard of John Smith. Or New Orleans.
Or even Simon Tremont.
* * *
Lorna Weaver stood at the kitchen counter, a baby on one hip, a bowl of pancake batter in front of her, and an electric griddle heating on the center island. Blueberry muffins were cooling on a wire rack, bacon was draining on paper towels, and the coffee, she knew from the aroma, was just about finished. Any moment now, Philip would herd in the rest of the kids, get them seated on benches, booster seats, and in high chairs around the long table, and the chaos that was a typical breakfast in the Weaver household would be under way.
For the moment, though, she was alone with baby Kesha and D.J., and she could use a hand, but she wasn’t likely to get it from D.J. If Teryl were here, she would take Kesha, would sing to her and dance her around the room, and, if the baby cried, she would dry her tears, the way she had dried thousands of tears from countless babies in her life. Or, if she didn’t take the baby, she would be happy to cook the pancakes, turning them out in uniform size, color, and texture, buttering them as they came off the griddle, dishing them onto the waiting plates.
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