by J. D. Robb
“I set it up, didn’t I?” Betz looked around, directly into the lens. “It’s on. Let’s quit fucking around and start.”
“We do it right.” Wymann stepped out of range. Music began to beat—something low and tribal. “We are the Brotherhood . . .
“Come on, guys, do it right. This is the first annual Celebration of the Brotherhood. April 12, 2011.”
When he nodded, they spoke in unison.
“We are the Brotherhood. We take what we want. We take who we want. From this day forward. We are bound, we are one. What one brother needs, the brothers give. What one brother desires, all brothers desire. All men envy what we are, what we have, what we do. And none but we, the six, will know. To break the vow of silence is death. Tonight, we seal our unity, our vow, by sharing the chosen. She is ours to do with as we will. The woman is a vessel for the needs of the Brotherhood.”
“Do we speak as one?” Edward Mira demanded.
“As one!” the others responded, though Stevenson ended on a giggle.
“He’s stoned,” Eve said. “Look at his eyes. The others, they’ve had some chemical enhancement, but he had more. Or he’s more susceptible.”
“Hardly an excuse for what they’re obviously about to do.”
“No, but they needed the false courage, this time anyway, to do it.”
“We drew lots,” the future senator announced. “I am the first to take the vessel.”
“Hold on!” Betz rushed the camera. “Let me set it up.”
“Make it fast.”
The image tilted, shook—Eve saw parts of the room—a large area. Sofas, chairs, some game tables, a bar.
“Like a game room, a lounge. No windows I could see. Lower level? A fancy basement maybe. Good size.”
Then the screen showed a woman—young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. A long sweep of blond hair, a pretty face with a rounded chin, wide-set eyes. Eyes closed now.
She, too, was naked. And bound, spread-eagle on a mattress.
“Like a convertible bed? A pullout deal. Leather straps tied to the legs. Fingernails, toenails, painted—pink. That’s girlie. She’s wearing earrings, glittery. Her makeup’s smeared some. Caucasian female, about eighteen, looks like about five-five, maybe one-twenty.”
Then Edward Mira stepped over to her, leaned over. And slapped her. One of the men off camera said, “Hey! Come on, Ed,” but he ignored the protest, slapped her again.
He had big hands. Eve knew how it felt to have a big hand slap you awake.
“Wake up, bitch!”
Her eyelids fluttered. Blue eyes, Eve noted. Glazed and unfocused.
“What?” On a moan, she turned her head. “I don’t feel good. What . . .” Hints of fear lit those eyes as she tried to move, found herself bound. The fear exploded as she focused.
On the six men, Eve thought. On the one standing over her.
“No, don’t. Please? What is this?”
“This is the Brotherhood.”
As he straddled her, she wept, begged.
“Let me give her the stuff, Edward. She’ll want it when it kicks in.”
“I don’t care if she wants it or not. I take what I want.”
“Please. Please.”
She wept as Betz fumbled with a syringe, managed to push the needle into her biceps. “Give it a couple minutes.”
Ignoring Betz, he rammed himself into the girl.
She screamed.
When he was done, she turned her face away and said, “Please.” Only, “Please.” Again and again.
“Freddy’s up.”
“I’ll say.” Betz stroked himself. “I got a hell of a boner. Let’s see how the magic juice works.”
He took his turn straddling her, gave her nipple a teasing pinch. “Hey, baby.”
“What? What? It’s hot. It’s so hot.”
“Yeah, magic juice. Gonna get hotter.”
She strained against the bindings, tried to rear up. But instead of fear and shock, now her eyes were glazed and wild.
“Some form, some early form of Whore or Rabbit. Chem major—family business,” Eve stated.
Roarke said nothing, but his hand slipped into his pocket, and his fingers closed over the small gray button he carried there, always.
While Betz raped her Eve heard voices, laughter, the clink of glasses. Getting drunker, she thought, getting higher. Getting off on it, and waiting their turn at her.
When Betz came with a triumphant roar, they actually cheered.
“Holy shit! Best I ever had.”
“Move your ass, Fred.” Wymann shoved him aside. “My turn.”
“It’s enough,” Roarke said and turned to the machine.
“No, it’s not. All of it.”
It made her sick, it made her sweat, but she watched it all. Watched as they went back for more, one by one, and again, even after the girl had passed out.
“She’s done, man.” Easterday sprawled beside her. She lay facedown now, limp. “No fun when she just lies there like a corpse.”
“Let’s clean her up and out. Douche the douche.” Betz cackled at his sick joke.
“She won’t remember anything?” Edward Mira demanded.
“Who’re you talking to?” Betz snorted. “She’ll remember the party—vaguely, but nothing after the first roofie we got in her. We clean her good—no DNA in her when we’re done. We get her dressed, and we dump her back on the campus. Just like we planned. Maybe she cries rape, because that bitch is going to be sore every fucking where, but they can’t put it on us. We’re our own alibis.”
“The Brotherhood,” Wymann said.
“Bet your ass, bro.”
He turned back to the camera, grinned. “And that concludes the First Annual Brotherhood Fuckfest. Thank you and good night!”
The screen went back to blue.
After a long silence, Roarke ejected the disc, put it back in its case.
“These are the men you’d work yourself to exhaustion for? These sick, spoiled, vicious animals are who you’re standing for?”
“I don’t get to choose.” Her voice shook. She fought to steady it. “I don’t get to choose,” she repeated. “I have to do— God, I’m sick.”
She ran out, dropped to the floor in the nearest powder room. Her stomach pitched out the vile and bitter until all that remained was the raw.
“Here now.” Gently, Roarke laid a cool cloth on the back of her neck, stroked her pale, burning face with another. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry, darling.”
She only shook her head. “No. They are animals, and the ones who live, I’ll work myself to exhaustion to put in cages. I’d bury those cages so deep if I could, they’d never, never see light again. It hurts you, to see someone treated that way, and it hurts more because it makes you think of me. What happened to me.”
He said nothing, only reached up to get the glass he’d set on the counter when he’d come in. “Sip this.”
“I can’t.”
“Trust me now. Just a sip or two. It’ll help settle you.”
“Beating them all into bloody pulps. That would settle me.”
Gently, as Dennis Mira had been gentle, Roarke cupped her cheek. “There’s my Eve. Just a sip now.”
She took one. “And you know I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“And there’s my cop. I’m madly in love with both of them. One more sip now.”
Like Dennis Mira’s brandy in her tea, whatever he’d put in the glass soothed, settled. Maybe it was love that held the magic.
“It hurts you,” she said again.
He sighed, pressed his lips to her brow. Cooler now, he thought, though not a whiff of color had come back to her cheeks. “It does, yes. And yes, it makes me think of you.”
“It hurts you,” she said for a thi
rd time, “but you’ll still help me.”
“A ghrá.” He urged another sip on her. “I’m with you.”
She pressed her face to his shoulder, let a few tears spill when he drew her to him. “Every day,” she murmured. “However we got here, however and whyever you’re with me, I’m grateful. Every day.”
She drew back, brushed her lips over his cheek. “I’m sorry we have to do this.”
“There’s no sorry, not for this, not between us. Let’s find at least one of them still breathing, so we can have the satisfaction of that cage.”
“All right.” She pushed away tears with the heels of her hands. “Let’s do that.”
He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked back to her office. “You should have something—a little soup.”
“I don’t think I could keep it down right now. Later, okay?”
“All right. You’ll watch that obscenity again.”
“Yeah, I have to. But later.” She stopped, studied the board. She’d update that, the book, her notes. She needed to check her incomings. Maybe Harvo—Queen of Hair and Fiber—had some hits. Maybe Yancy had some luck.
“I’ve got three names. There are five women, two yet unidentified. If one of the three we have has other property—I’m leaning toward private home, old building, warehouse—a place they could . . . do this work—I need to find it. And I need to find Betz’s other property. All I’ve got is what I think is the street number. And a probability that we’re looking at the Bronx.”
“He had a bank and box there.” Roarke nodded. “Why go there for that unless there was another connection. I can start on both of those, but it would go faster, this sort of wide-range search, on the unregistered. More corners can be cut without CompuGuard watching, or having to avoid that annoyance.”
By agreeing to the use of the unregistered, she’d be cutting corners.
She thought of the girl gang-raped in a basement, and the forty-eight who’d come after her. Sometimes, she thought, corners needing cutting.
“Okay. If you could get started on that, I’ve got some things here I need to do. Then I’ll come work in there with you.”
“Fair enough.” He ran a fingertip down the dent in her chin. “No coffee.”
“What?” She hadn’t thought anything more could appall her that day. “Did you lose your mind between here and the bathroom?”
“You lost your lunch—or whatever passed for nutrition,” he reminded her. “If you need the caffeine, go with a Pepsi. Ginger ale would be better, but I suspect you won’t settle for it.”
“My brain can’t function on the ale of ginger. I don’t even know what it is!”
“Pepsi then—as if you know what the hell’s in that. And a bit of broth to start when you feel more ready for it.”
“Yes, Mom.”
So he kissed her forehead, as a mother might. “Be a good girl, and there may be candy later. I’ll get started.”
“I can copy you a disc with all relevant data.”
He gave her a pitying glance. “Please. As if I can’t hack it out of your comp in less time.”
When he strolled off, she had to admit he was probably right. Then she pressed a hand to her belly. Her brain said: Coffee, please. But he was right again—damn it—her system said: Do that, and I boot.
So she got herself a tube of Pepsi, cracking it as she sat to check her incomings.
She hissed at the number of them, opening one from Yancy first.
Dallas, we hit two high probables on the younger subject. I’m sending you both, but want to add I lean toward hit number two. Elsi Lee Adderman, age twenty—at TOD. Self-termination last year on September nine. Details in attached article. Primary on the investigation was your own Detective Reineke, with Jenkinson on board, so you can get their report, and their take. She went to Yale. Other hit did not.
Still working on the other subject. I’m going to take my pad on this date thing, see if there are any more details to work in and refine the search.
Yancy
“Good work. Damn good.” She ordered the ID photo he’d attached on screen.
Young, she thought, and very, very pretty with wide green eyes and long, wavy brown hair.
Quickly, she scanned the data. Born in Crawford, Ohio, both parents living, and still married—to each other. Two younger siblings, one of each. Exemplary student, entered Yale on partial scholarship. Taking the track toward medicine—course work, extracurricular. And moving right along the track through her first year and nearly through the second.
All more than good until the previous spring, when grades took a dive.
“Like MacKensie,” Eve murmured.
Dropped out, moved to Manhattan, worked as an aide at New York Hospital.
“Never reported a rape, but . . .”
Eve yanked out her communicator, tagged Reineke.
“Yo, boss.”
“Last September you caught one—a suicide. Elsi Lee Adderman. Early twenties, mixed race, green and brown. East Fourth, off of Lex.”
“Ah, wait a sec . . . Yeah, yeah. I got it. The Bathtub Lament. Slashed her wrists. Soaked about twenty-four, if I got it right, before one of the women she worked with—hospital work—talked the super into opening the door. Girl had missed two shifts, didn’t answer her ’link or her door. We caught it. Nothing hinky about it, Dallas. Straight up self-doing.”
“She leave a note?”
“Yeah. Something about not being able to face the demons—not illegals, as that came clean, and we didn’t find any in her place—and how she was sorry. ME ruled it right off, so there wasn’t much to do on it.”
“I need the book—everything you have.”
“Shit. What did we miss?”
“Nothing. I think she’s tied to what I’m on. Can you get me that report?”
“Sure thing. Just having a post-shift brew with my partner and a couple others. I’ll walk back to Central, send it to you.”
“Appreciate it.”
She continued to scan the article—more an obit, she supposed. Memorial to be held September twenty-first—vic’s hometown.
“Computer, search for travel on September twenty and twenty-one, 2060, on the following names.”
She reeled them off, pushed up—wanted coffee—paced, and drank Pepsi.
They did to Elsi Lee Adderman what they’d done to the woman on disc. Somewhere between the gang rape in April, like an anniversary, and September 2060, she’d remembered enough. She’d met the other women.
Support group. Just had to be.
Elsi couldn’t live with it, couldn’t handle it. She’d opted out.
Somewhere between September and now, the rest of them had plotted full payback.
It fit like one of the fur-lined gloves Roarke kept buying her.
But it didn’t help her find Betz, find Easterday.
Task complete. On September 20, 2060, Carlee MacKensie, Lydia Su, Charity Downing traveled from Laguardia Transportation Center to Columbus, Ohio, with a return flight on September 21, 2060.
“How far is Crawford, Ohio, from Columbus?”
Working . . . Crawford is nine-point-six miles from Columbus, and is a thriving bedroom community.
“Computer: Search manifest for that shuttle flight. Give me the names of the passengers, female, between the ages of forty and fifty. Start with passengers matching that criteria with seats behind, in front, or beside any of the three previous subjects. Coming and going.”
Working . . .
Sisterhood, she thought. They went to the memorial. They went to pay their respects to one of their own to mourn her, and to cement the vow to avenge her. They all went.
Initial task complete.
“On screen, one at a time, name and ID shot. Go.”
Working . . . Marcia Baumberg, age forty-two.
Grace Carter Blake, age forty-four.
“Stop. There. Gotcha. Run this subject, full run. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”
The painting—and/or Yancy’s sketch from the wit’s memory—hadn’t been far off. The face was leaner, the mouth maybe a little wider. But this was the fifth woman.
“Computer, pause run. Tell me when current subject attended Yale.” Because she did, high probability she did. Or had some connection.
Grace Carter Blake attended Yale University from September 2035 to May 2043, including postgraduate work. Subject graduated with honors from Yale Law School.
“When did they take you to that room, Grace? That basement?”
Insufficient data.
“Yeah, for now. Continue run.”
She went back, pulled up the incoming from Harvo.
Hey, Dallas! Forty-nine samples. Fun for me. I’m going to hang in the lab extra to play. I got three DNA matches for you already—easy as peasy. Data with IDs attached. Send you more as it comes. Harvo—QofH&F
Quickly, Eve opened the attached report. New names, three women, current ages fifty-two, thirty-four, and twenty-three.
She tagged Harvo.
The screen filled with what looked like an active sea of lava. Then Harvo turned toward the screen, and Eve realized that rather than an exotic natural disaster, it was Harvo’s hair.
“Hey, Dallas! Click-bang on the timing. I just hit another one. I’m doing them alpha order, and figured I’d send them to you in groups.”
“Harvo, you’re my new best friend.”
“Solid! Let’s go get drunk and troll some beefcake.”
“Later. You’ve got one there labeled Grace.”
“Lemme see . . . yep, got two for Grace—a brunette, looks natural eyeballing, and a redhead that’s not.”
“I’m looking for one that’s probably from between 2035 and 2043. But if you’d run both next, hit me back as soon as you verify. I’ve got a Grace Carter Blake, and I want to verify it. I’d appreciate it.”
“You got it.” The tiny green hoop at the center point of her left eyebrow winked as she turned her head to check some odd piece of equipment.