by Kay Hooper
This time a muffled wail escaped her, and her feet and hands jerked as she fought the restraints.
Hands on his belt, he paused. “Now, Audrey—do you really want another shot?”
He could see the delicious indecision in her eyes and savored it. Did she want to be largely insensitive to what was happening to her, but also completely helpless to stop any of it? Or was she willing to risk the terror, pain, and humiliation for the slim chance that she could exert some control over the outcome?
Her eyes closed briefly, and with a sob she went limp, acquiescing.
“That’s my girl,” he said, smiling as he began to unbuckle his belt.
The time he spent with Audrey was always energizing but draining as well, and he had to plan for regular breaks for himself to eat or nap or just rest for a while.
It was, he had discovered, another way to draw out the experience, to savor it.
It did seem to take a lot out of Audrey, however.
He left the room after their most recent session of love-making to take a quick shower, returning clean, dry, and naked; once Audrey had been scrubbed clean initially, he preferred to be naked.
She seemed to be sleeping when he padded silently back in, but when he pulled the tape from her mouth, she flinched and her eyes opened. Eternally wet eyes, pleading eyes, now sunken a bit and surrounded by darkening circles of faintly bruised flesh.
Odd, that. He never struck her face, and yet those circles always appeared toward the end.
As if her eyes were dying first.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t hurt me anymore. Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise I won’t tell anyone. Please—”
“Now, Audrey, we’ve discussed this. You’re not going to tell anyone, we both know that. You don’t have to promise me that. And we’ve discussed your punishment and the need for it.”
“But I’m not Audrey. I’m not the one who abandon—”
He reached out a hand swiftly, almost completely encircling her delicate throat. He applied just a little pressure, tightened his fingers only until she began to choke.
He had learned to know and respect his own strength.
“Hush, Audrey,” he said gently.
Her eyes grew huge and her naked body jerked. He waited until he was certain she understood, then removed his hand.
She gasped for air and coughed.
“Now, look what you’ve made me do,” he scolded. “I’ve bruised your throat. So sorry, sweetheart.”
She had to try twice before she could whisper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to be bad.”
“I know you didn’t. Hush, now. Be still while I clean you up.”
Jordan met them at Venture Florist and was just getting out of his cruiser when they pulled up. “I checked with the deputies who followed up on those flowers Marie Goode found at her door,” he told them. “Since two of our local grocery stores sell flowers in bunches like that, and those seemed the most anonymous places to buy flowers, the guys started there. And they found virtually identical arrangements at both stores, with cards identical to the one with the flowers. None of the clerks they’ve talked to so far remembers ringing up roses anytime in the last few days.”
“And there were no prints on the card,” Marc said. He looked at Paris, brows raised.
“All I can tell you is what I saw. I’m pretty sure this is the florist, but I’ll know for sure once I’m inside. There was an odd arrangement to the right of the register, obviously for Halloween. I hope,” she added as they stepped inside.
Dani could see what her sister meant. The small florist shop, filled to bursting with real and silk arrangements and various stuffed animals and vases and other accessories, looked perfectly normal and innocuous.
Except for the tasteful display to the right of the register, which contained, along with bright orange flowers, grinning skulls and black widow spiders.
“This is the place,” Paris said.
Miss Patty, who had owned the shop for as long as anybody could remember, emerged from the back room to greet them. “May I help—Why, hello, Sheriff. What can I do for you?” Her clear blue eyes, the single memorable feature in a face as softly wrinkled as old tissue paper, moved alertly from face to face, and she added, “Oh, dear. I expect it’s about the murders, then?”
Feeling rather absurdly as though he were talking back to his grammar-school teacher, Marc said, “Miss Patty, you aren’t supposed to know about the murders.”
“Heavens, Sheriff, everybody knows about them.”
Jordan asked, “Then how come nobody’s talking?”
Miss Patty smiled at him. “Everybody’s talking, Deputy,” she said gently. “Just not to you.”
“Or to the media?” Marc asked intently.
“Of course not to them. Out of respect to the families. And then, of course, nobody wants reporters and TV crews showing up around here. That wouldn’t help you to solve the murders, and it surely would make our lives harder. Now,” she continued briskly, “how can I help you?”
“Miss Patty, do you remember selling a dozen roses to—”
Dani.
Once again, she was aware of a stillness inside her, a waiting, a listening. To him. To his voice.
They can’t help you. They can’t protect you. He can’t protect you. Because you’re going to come to me. Just like in your dream. It’s inevitable. You belong to me, Dani.
“—so I’m afraid I really can’t help you, Sheriff. He paid cash, and he was a very ordinary-looking man. I doubt I’d know him again if he walked in the door right now.”
Dani was vaguely surprised that nobody seemed at all aware of the voice she had heard so clearly this time. Surprised that nobody was looking at her strangely, or asking why she was breathing so unevenly, because surely she was, surely it was audible to everyone around her.
But no.
Even Paris seemed oblivious, intent on Miss Patty’s conversation with Marc.
Patient, Marc said, “Can you tell me how old he was?”
“Well, I never was very good at estimating age, and I find it’s even more difficult as I grow older. If you told me it was my ticket into heaven, the best I could say would be that he was probably a little older than you, Sheriff. About as tall. I suppose he must have worn a hat, or one of those hoodie things, because I can’t recall what color his hair was.”
She smiled apologetically. “You see, he wasn’t in here long at all. Went straight to the refrigerator case and got the roses for himself. We usually have a dozen or two ready, and that day it was red and yellow. He chose the red. He got the card, too, from one of our little cardholders here on the counter. And then he paid me in cash, wished me a good afternoon, and left.”
“Miss Patty—”
“We were getting ready for a wedding, Sheriff. Very busy in the back, and so I wasn’t really thinking about him, you understand. I am sorry. I wish I could help, I really do.”
“Thanks anyway, Miss Patty. Oh, and—if you wouldn’t mind?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Not talking about this? Of course I won’t, Sheriff. You may count on my total discretion.”
Outside, Jordan said, “So, who wants to bet me that Miss Patty isn’t on the phone in the back room right this minute not talking about our visit?”
Nobody took him up on the offer.
15
THE NAME AUDREY on a bracelet seemed to mean little, or at least didn’t appear to help them narrow their search in any way. Jordan reported three Audreys on the current tax rolls of Prophet County, all of them born in Venture, likely to be buried here, and none having living husbands or living sons.
“Not that I’d expect to find her here anyway,” Hollis said. “Unless our killer came home when he came to Venture. And somehow…that doesn’t feel likely.”
“So why did he come here?” Dani said. She rubbed the back of her neck, tired because it had been a very long day and because she hadn’t been all that
rested to begin with. “Why choose Venture as his latest hunting ground?”
“The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Paris agreed. “There has to be something that brought him here, of all places. Something Venture has that every other small town in the South lacks. And we don’t have a clue what that is.”
Marc got to his feet, saying, “All I know is that I’ve spent at least an hour longer than I should have in this room today. I need some air. Come on, Dani, I think you do too.”
Hollis looked at Paris with mock sadness. “I feel unloved.”
“And unwanted,” Paris added.
They stared at each other, this time with real frowns.
“Weird,” Hollis said. “Déjà vu.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Dani had no idea what they were talking about. She was fairly certain she wasn’t up to sparring with Marc, but she’d also had more than her fill of this conference room and the brutal exercise of trying to put together the puzzle pieces of a monster’s insane mind.
She got up and headed for the door, saying only, “If you guys come up with any bright new ideas, sing out.”
Paris waved an absent hand, her attention already fixed once again on the open file on the table in front of her.
“At least she’s not thinking about Dan or the divorce,” Marc offered quietly as they walked down the hall toward the bullpen and main reception areas of the sheriff’s department.
“The silver lining?”
“Why not?”
Dani didn’t say anything to that until they were out on the sidewalk, both turning automatically toward the distant center of town because it was a pleasant walk on a pleasant late afternoon.
On most days, at least.
“Paris said—” She stopped herself.
“What did Paris say?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
Marc nodded to a passerby who had lifted a hand in greeting, and said, “Dani, I wish you’d stop censoring your instincts and impulses around me.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You did the same thing years ago. Drove me nuts. I couldn’t decide if it was me you didn’t trust or yourself, and every time I tried to find out, you did your classic avoidance thing and managed to distract me. Somehow.”
Dani glanced at him. “Was that what I was doing?”
“Hell, you’ve known the right buttons to push with me since you were about seventeen.”
She cleared her throat. “You probably shouldn’t tell me that. I might take advantage.”
“Feel free.”
It was at least the second time he had said something like that, but more than his matter-of-fact tone made Dani choose not to go down that path with him. Here and now, at least.
She knew damn well she was too tired for that. Plus, her head was still throbbing dimly, at least in part because she was trying to shield her mind and wasn’t at all sure she could even manage the unfamiliar bit of psychic protection.
That voice. That damn voice. She never wanted to hear it again. And she was terrified it was somehow connected to some part of her deeper than her thoughts.
As if he hadn’t expected her to respond, Marc continued, “I was certain it had to do with trust. Then we had that shared experience in one of your vision dreams, and I thought I knew for certain. Because you were gone within a week.”
“It wasn’t you. I mean, it wasn’t about trust.”
“Then what was it about?”
Dani wondered vaguely why this seemed easier to talk about as they walked slowly along, not looking at each other. Was that it? Or had everything up to now just made this possible?
“Some things have to happen just the way they happen, Dani. And when they happen.” Miranda shrugged. “No matter what we see or what we dream, the universe has a plan.”
“Dani?”
Was it just a matter of timing? She hesitated, then said, “It was about…those monsters I see. Evil people doing terrible things. Horrible events I can’t stop. I…didn’t want to be that girl, not to you.”
“That girl?”
“Cassandra.” She heard a shaky laugh escape her. “The voice of doom. I never see good things, remember, Marc? I never see happy things. Happy endings. I just see monsters.”
“Dani—”
“Paris said that’s why I left Venture. That I thought I could take the monsters away with me. All the monsters. So the people I left behind here would be…safe. But that’s not what happened. Your mother still died of the cancer I saw—we saw—take her. And other monsters I saw, like Danny, stayed here. I guess some were always here and always will be. But…”
Marc waited.
“But then I came back. And I’m afraid…I brought this monster here. Somehow. I brought this evil to Venture.”
Marc stopped and turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. “Bullshit.”
She heard another unsteady laugh escape and hoped it didn’t sound as out of control as she felt. “Yeah, that’s all I needed to hear, one good, resounding bullshit. That’ll fix everything.”
He was smiling faintly. His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Listen to me. You are not Cassandra. Not the voice of doom. And you did not bring monsters to Venture when you came back here or take them away when you left. The monsters just are, Dani. Part of life. The darkness most of us try to keep at bay. The difference is that sometimes you can see them coming, that’s all.”
“And what good is that if I can’t change what I see?” she asked, even as a part of her wondered if that was, for some reason she had yet to fathom, actually happening this time. If she was changing what she had seen, had maybe already changed it.
If she was even making things worse than she had seen.
“The monsters keep winning, Marc.”
“Dani—”
“What if this one wins too?”
Saturday, October 11
Roxanne really did like dogs but knew her brother had been right in advising her not to wake the neighborhood with her postmidnight visit, so she took care to be as quiet as possible as she moved toward the abandoned textile mill.
Defunct. The word is defunct.
“And every time you say it,” she whispered, “it sounds weirder. But never mind that. Take a gander at the neighborhood and tell me if you sense anything wrong.”
Okay, hang on a minute.
She waited in the shadows of what had once been a small gas station of the cozy type seldom seen these days, wondering again why this seemingly prosperous little town could boast so many abandoned buildings. So many defunct businesses. And why it didn’t seem to bother anyone to leave the structures standing as is rather than tear them down or repurpose them.
She wasn’t quite as suspicious by nature as Gabriel was, but anomalies nagged at her, and this was the biggest one she’d seen in Venture.
Well, barring the serial-killer thing.
I’m not getting anything. In fact, it’s damn quiet for a Friday night.
“Saturday morning now,” Roxanne pointed out softly as she moved from the shadows and continued on her way.
Either way, it’s a bit strange, if you ask me.
“We’ve both seen most of what there is to see of this town, Gabe, and I didn’t notice any nightclubs or bars.” She continued to whisper, her voice hardly more than a breath of sound.
They have a multiplex at that mall out by the highway. I guess everybody’s there.
“Postmidnight shows? I sort of doubt it, but maybe they’re having a film festival or something. Anyway, if that’s where they are, let ’em stay there. I don’t need anybody’s headlights—”
Speaking of. Duck.
She took cover on one side of a tall hedge, just seconds before a quiet car passed her position and turned at the next corner.
Roxanne waited in the shadows through a slow count of ten, then continued on her way. There were streetlights in the area—sort of. Technically, she supposed, s
ince the lights were clearly industrial and likely belonged to the region’s power company. But these lights tended to be beside or behind the homes rather than out on the streets, as they were closer to downtown.
So there was plenty of darkness for her to skulk in.
Investigate. Plenty of darkness to investigate in.
“Neither of us is very grammatical.” Roxanne paused briefly to get her bearings, then made the final turn that would take her to the hulking building that had once housed a textile mill.
Never mind grammar. You really need to be careful now, Rox. Remember who you’re hunting. What you’re hunting.
“I know.”
Just look for signs, that’s all. Find something, and we call in the cavalry. Right?
“Stop worrying. I’m not at all anxious to run into this monster, believe me. Not that I’m his type.”
Judging by the victims here, that’s not a problem for him anymore. He’s making these women into the woman he wants them to be.
“He’s sticking to the same body type, though. I’m way too tall.” She found the main entrance to the mill—on the other side of a padlocked gate. “Damn. This place has two big steel doors and absolutely no windows; why put a fence around it too?”
Old security. Like everything else abandoned around here, nobody’s bothered with it since the last one out locked the gate. Padlock?
“Yeah, big one. Can you get it?”
Of course.
She waited for the telltale click, then removed the open padlock and hooked it on the chain-link fence. Then she paused. “You know, it just occurred to me that since textile mills are filled with big, heavy machinery, they tend to be built on slab foundations. Solid concrete. No basements or underground structures of any kind.”
Huh. How about that? I never would have—
“Goddammit, Gabe. We’re going to have to have another little Come to Jesus talk, you and me.”
I don’t know what you mean.
“The hell you don’t. You pull this protective shit on me one more time, and I’ll—”
You’ll what?
“Look for another partner.”
Yeah, good luck with that. We’re stuck with each other, babe. And in the meantime, why don’t you check out this place anyway? Because no matter what you suspect about my motives, the truth is that we’d be making a huge mistake in interpreting Dani’s dream literally. So we check out every potential hideout for a serial killer who needs space and privacy. Right?