And still, she has felt herself pulling away from him. Hiding the depth of her anxiety. She feels constantly on the verge of explosion, that she could at any moment shatter into pieces that might never again be assembled into even a facsimile of a human being. She is overcome sometimes with the feeling of wanting to rip off her own skin. The pressure inside her to run, run as far as she can go, is something she cannot express, not even to Epps.
Today, because of his thoughtfulness, this outpouring of affection, she has been given a reprieve. She has not been plagued by the constant dread, the sudden waves of panic at random moments, any time the remembrance of the new reality hits.
But even as she thinks it, a pop-up flashes on the screen that she has programmed to notify her when there is activity in certain threads in the men’s forums with certain key words.
She glances around the office to be sure Reynolds is nowhere in sight, then pulls out her own laptop to log in.
And in the “Rape Cara Lindstrom” forum, there is a new post with the most chilling keyword of all.
Get that bounty ready. We have eyes on the bitch. Bringing her down today. Watch this space.
Singh’s heart constricts. She quickly grabs a screenshot of the post, then watches the forum intently for responses.
Other users are already responding to the post, demanding details.
But less than five minutes later, the post suddenly disappears.
Ortiz, she has no doubt. She can see he has logged in to the forum under one of his aliases.
This poster, or posters, was sloppy. Unable to resist crowing.
And you jumped on them for it, did you not? As soon as you saw it. But not soon enough.
She sits back from the computer, feeling ill.
It has begun.
Someone has taken the bait. And Ortiz intends to pay these monsters to deliver Cara Lindstrom to him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wind spirals around her, blowing thick flakes of snow. The blizzard has moved in.
Everything is white. Flakes settle on her lashes, blinding her, as she watches the tent from her rock circle above it.
She knows she must find shelter soon. The rocks are some buffer against the wind, and her white parka is Arctic rated, but hardly enough to keep her alive in this weather.
But she stays, because she knows the snow will force the hunters back to the tent. It should not be long now.
And even as she thinks it, she sees a dark shape in the whiteness.
A bulky male figure, and the unmistakable silhouette of a rifle.
A rifle.
She loathes guns.
But guns make men cocky. Guns make them think they hold all the cards. She can get him if he is alone.
Where is the other?
She scans the rim, searching her snowy surroundings for any sign of camouflage. Not the smartest attire for the weather—the hunter had been easy to spot against the pure white.
There is no sign of the second hunter. And this one is so close now . . . she may never have such an opportunity again.
Her eyes search the ground, and she sees what she needs. She stoops and seizes the round rock, bigger than a baseball, hefts it in her hand. A good two pounds of lethal force. She sets her sights on the hunter . . . breathing in, breathing out, focusing. When he is angled in just the right direction, she summons the strength of her loathing, and throws the rock at his head.
It hits him with a sickening crunch, staggers him. Not a knockout blow, but he is dazed. He regains his balance, puts his hand to his temple. His fingers come away red.
Now he turns in a clumsy circle, looking around him. And when his back is to her, she takes that moment of disorientation to dart out of the rockfall and run at him. Charging him full bore. Curling into herself and slamming into his back, knocking him flat, face first into the snow with her full body weight on top of him. She feels the sick, shuddering impact of his fall.
And she is on him, scrambling up his back to sit hard on his spine, pinning his arms beneath him with her weight, trapping his rifle underneath him. She digs her knees into his spine, wraps her hands around his neck, holding his face in the snow, finding a grip to twist his head, snap his neck—
In the whiteness in front of her she sees a blue-pink thread of light.
Then she jumps a foot in the air, flying backward . . . as she is hit in the chest by twin barbed darts packing fifty thousand volts of raw pain.
The electricity rips through her, like someone burrowing inside her body to claw her muscles apart with a fork.
Her entire body convulses in muscle spasms, and for jerky, white-hot seconds, pain is all there is.
Five agonizing seconds later, the pain is gone.
What remains is far more terrifying. Total neuromuscular incapacitation.
She knows she’s been tased. She forces herself to think through the disorientation. She has to get up. She has to force herself to move before they can get to her.
Get up.
But her body will not obey the command.
She hears the crunching of heavy footsteps on ice.
Just feet away, the hunter who shot her bends to help his fallen comrade up.
Then the boots plow deliberately through the snow and stop beside her. A dark figure looms above as he gloats.
“Well, looky here. We got ourselves the prime bitch.”
She feels fingers in her hair, and her head being yanked up. He backhands her, a vicious blow against her jaw.
“Easy now,” the other says. “‘Undamaged,’ the man said.”
The hunter tightens his grip on her hair, leers into her face. “Just means we have to clean up after ourselves. Let’s get her to the tent.”
Cara feels blinding rage, and summons all the will she has. This will not happen. Not while she has breath.
And then there is a hideous cracking, like the world splintering open . . .
And she falls.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Roarke jolted awake with his heart pounding, his body roiling with a feeling of overwhelming sickness.
Falling . . .
He sat straight up, looking around him. He was on the gently rocking train, surrounded by passengers. A woman with a small boy glanced at him surreptitiously from a nearby seat, and he could only hope he hadn’t shouted in his sleep.
He had to take deep, slow breaths to fight down the nausea.
Motion sickness? Or was it something from an uneasy dream?
He could remember nothing . . . when he closed his eyes there was only whiteness.
When the dizziness was past, he looked out the window. The train was just sliding past San Diego’s harbor, home to an active naval fleet.
Almost there.
Roarke sat still, racked with an unease that he couldn’t define. But then he stood to gather his overnight bag.
The new San Diego Central Courthouse on Union Street was a towering, all-modern, rectangular edifice of white concrete, framing sail-like metal panels that captured the changing sunlight.
Several dozen protesters lined the building’s steps, lifting signs.
RAPISTS DESERVE PRISON
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE
And some even more pointed:
JUDGE BLACKWELL: THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING
Many of the protesters wore the now ubiquitous pink knitted pussy hats. An idea that had in theory seemed quaint and silly had turned out to be a genius move, a female banner of the new resistance. The pinkness was unmissable and unmistakably feminine. It was a rallying symbol for fifty-one percent of the US population. The no-longer-sleeping majority.
So Janovy was right about one thing: this trial was on the radar.
In the lobby, Roarke went through security, which included relinquishing his cell phone.
As it turned out, he’d managed to make it there in time for at least some of the main event—the testimony of the accused.
Upstairs, he took a seat in the courtroom and saw
a middle-aged white man in a robe on the bench and a clean-cut young white man on the witness stand.
Taylor Morton could have been popped from the same mold as the young men of the KAT house. Morton’s haircut, his suit, his shoes, his physique—all of these said that his parents could more than afford to buy justice. The well-heeled couple in the first row probably were the parents, right up front, supporting their baby boy.
The defense spoke smoothly. “Mr. Morton, you’ve testified that you’d been drinking that night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you explain to the court the drinking habits of your teammates?”
The prosecutor was on her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Irrelevant.”
“Goes to state of mind, Your Honor,” the defense attorney countered.
“I’ll allow it,” Blackwell said.
Morton answered dutifully. “The team set no limits on drinking. It felt like that was just being part of the family.”
“Can you describe the team’s typical behavior at parties?
“Your Honor—”
“Overruled.”
“I witnessed countless times that the guys I looked up to would go to parties, meet girls, and take the girls they had just met back with them. There were always girls coming back to the house to keep the party going.”
Roarke felt contempt. No way not to see where this was going. “I was drunk, she was drunk, everyone was drunk, we all did it, everyone does it.”
He tried to listen to the testimony through the pounding in his head. Morton had met the plaintiff in the bar line. They danced. She was obviously into it. They kissed. It got heavier and she wanted to go “someplace private.” It was all her idea, of course. He offered his room and they left together. Back in his room they started making out.
He claimed he’d asked for and gotten verbal consent. He insisted that the plaintiff was fully conscious and responsive throughout the “encounter.” She was moaning, she had her arms around him. At no time did he think she was not willingly participating. He was completely shocked when the police arrived the next day to arrest him.
To listen to him, you’d think he was fresh off the farm, seduced and then accused by a worldly and predatory woman. But it didn’t have to make sense. Because, after all, it was his word against hers. All he had to do was establish reasonable doubt. Deny, deny, deny.
And it worked. Even when the jury convicted, there was no guarantee of any reasonable sentence.
Because thirty years ago this judge had been this boy. Looked like him, had the same kind of parents, went to the same kind of school, belonged to the same kind of fraternity.
If Roarke was feeling anger, then what would it be like to be one of these young women?
No wonder they were taking matters into their own hands. No wonder Bitch was taking its protests to the streets. Anything to force attention on the repeated, continuing injustices that sent the same message over and over again.
That ninety-eight percent of the time, you can rape and get away with it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The rest of the day was prep.
Jade had been doing recon, figuring her strategy. UCSB daywear was casual. But the parties were slutfests. That was the whole point. From the flyers she’d seen, from the Instagram and Facebook and Twitter posts she’d been cruising, this was going to be an all-out lingerie party. Valentine Bros and Hos.
Yeah. Original.
When Kris and Jade walked the Loop earlier in the day, they’d passed a party shop with some of the sluttiest getups Jade had ever seen, and that was saying a lot.
The party shop had been full of sorority girls shopping for the big night, giggling and playing with fetish equipment they had next to no clue how to use. Pink feathers on a stick. A riding crop that might work on a My Little Pony . . . or a unicorn.
Like any guy wants to be tickled with pink feathers or lightly lashed by a fake riding crop.
The little that college guys knew, they picked up from porn. The aggressive ones want to fuck you in the ass and then the mouth. The nonaggressive ones, you could just grab them by the balls and stick a finger up their ass to get the whole thing over with ASAP. Wham, bam, next customer.
She watched the Disney princess-slash-sluts move on to the lingerie, and felt a wave of contempt.
Valentine hos, someone got that right. Dressing themselves up for rapists. How stupid could you get?
The more she thought about it, the more she thought Kris had the right idea. Shaved head, gender-neutral clothes . . .
Why should anyone play that Barbie doll game? This shit is good for a costume, no doubt. But for reals? It’s the biggest trap ever invented.
She was on the verge of just walking out of the shop. But then she spotted a glittering little number that would do just fine.
Oh yeah.
She could have some fun in that.
Chapter Thirty
Just as Roarke was feeling he had to get out of the courtroom before he punched someone, the judge adjourned.
“This court will be in recess until Tuesday.”
As Roarke stood with the rest of the spectators, he realized it was the start of the weekend.
He walked with the crowd out of the courthouse, into the downtown twilight, seething with tension.
Hundreds of lawsuits had been fought on campuses by young women all over the country, precisely because of the dismal chance of ever getting justice from the legal system. And now the secretary of education might decide to drop them all. And a judge with Blackwell’s history could be deciding cases on the highest court of the land.
Roarke still had the feeling that Janovy was playing him. But Janovy, and Singh, and for that matter, Reynolds—all of them were right. Of course Bitch was monitoring any number of hot spots in the state and in the whole country, and mobilizing for the next protest or escalation of action. The war had begun.
He stopped on the sidewalk to get his bearings, and realized he was right on the border of San Diego’s famed Gaslamp Quarter, former home to saloons, gambling halls, and bordellos. It had been revamped into a cosmopolitan playground with historic Victorian buildings crowded side by side with modern skyscrapers, celebrity restaurants, craft breweries, happening nightclubs, and a hopping street-fair culture.
He’d turned his phone off when he’d left it at security in the courthouse. He reached for it now and thumbed it on, looked down at several messages, all from Singh.
He tensed instantly, and punched on the first.
Singh’s recorded voice was tense, as well. “I did not know whether I should . . .” She seemed to choose her words carefully. “If I should disturb you with this. But I have been watching Detective Ortiz’s online accounts, his activity in the men’s rights forums. Particularly the Cara Lindstrom threads.”
He was slammed by a jolt of adrenaline and worry. He didn’t even play the message through before he was dialing her back. “I just got your message. What’s going on?”
“I believe something is happening as we speak.”
His throat was dry as dust. “Tell me.”
“You are aware that Ortiz has offered a bounty for information on Lindstrom’s whereabouts. There was a posting today in that forum—”
“Send it,” Roarke said tightly.
“I am sending it.”
Roarke clicked on the email. The short message turned his blood to ice.
Get that bounty ready. We have eyes on the bitch. Bringing her down today. Watch this space.
Bringing her down today.
Had Cara been captured?
By the kind of scum that posted in those forums? The kind that would answer a bounty offer? He was cold with fear for her.
“Where did it come from?” he asked aloud, struggling to keep his voice neutral.
“Chief, I am working on it. Ortiz is posting with a certain level of encryption. So are the—people—he is communicating with. I have not yet been able to trace the origin of the
message.”
Roarke was silent, struggling with himself.
“Chief?” Singh’s voice was laced with concern.
“I’m here.”
He could feel her presence at the other end of the connection. Calm, waiting.
His thoughts were racing, out of control. He could get to Palm Desert, Ortiz’s home, in two hours.
“Will you . . . keep monitoring Ortiz on the forums?” he asked her, through a dry throat.
“Of course,” she said gently.
He didn’t say where he was going. He was sure she knew.
He disconnected with Singh, then used his phone to search for the nearest car rental company. There was one just a few blocks away.
He turned abruptly to walk in that direction.
And saw a flash of a familiar face as someone ducked quickly into a doorway. Quickly, but not fast enough.
He was being followed.
Chapter Thirty-One
Singh disconnects, and sits. She feels slightly nauseated, and realizes the feeling is empathy, triggered by the level of pain in Roarke’s voice.
She looks over her desk at the flowers, all the gifts from Epps.
Her own happiness makes her ache for Roarke’s excruciating, insoluble dilemma. To love—and she has no doubt it is love, though she will never say it aloud—someone so tragic and lethal . . . to know there is no place on earth, no place even in his own mind, that would ever allow consummation . . .
To care for someone as she knows he does for Lindstrom, against all odds, and be helpless in the face of life-threatening danger to that person . . .
It is unbearable to contemplate.
She looks at the lineup of Epps’ gifts, every one of them thoughtful enough to stand on its own.
It gives her the shield she needs to wade back into the cesspit of the forums.
If there is a clue there to Lindstrom’s whereabouts, she will find it.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 11