The Delilah Complex

by MJ Rose

  Praise for THE HALO EFFECT

  “M. J. Rose is great.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich

  “Potentially explosive…Rose’s latest is not for the squeamish… [Dr. Morgan Snow] is an engaging guide to the world of dysfunction that Rose painstakingly constructs.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Dr. Morgan Snow is a refreshingly vulnerable character whose spunky decision to go undercover in the demimonde is both believable and hair-raising. The Halo Effect will have you on the edge of your seat from page one.”

  —Katherine Neville, New York Times bestselling author of The Eight

  “I dare you to read the first five pages of The Halo Effect and not be in its thrall: this is a compulsive, artful page-turner of a novel. Suspenseful, sleek and sexy, this is M. J. Rose at her best.”

  —Douglas Clegg, author of The Hour Before Dark

  “Rose writes fearlessly about sex. This is a true erotic thriller. The end will take your breath away.”

  —Lisa Tucker, author of Shout Down the Moon

  “Rose has written a steamy and sexy novel that keeps the adrenaline running until the very end. Sex, romance, and murder are artfully combined to produce a page-turning novel that shouldn’t be missed.”

  —New Mystery Reader

  “Interesting…thrilling…like a femme…Jonathan Kellerman.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Elegant, arresting and so suspenseful I was gripping the pages. Rose’s alchemy is to take the psychological mystery and spin it into something literate and new, giving us complex, beautifully complicated characters which are so real we hear them breathing in our ear, prose that’s both subtle and moving, and a plot that can only be described as a knockout.”

  —Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble

  Also by M. J. ROSE

  Fiction

  THE HALO EFFECT

  LIP SERVICE

  IN FIDELITY

  FLESH TONES

  SHEET MUSIC

  Nonfiction

  HOW TO PUBLISH AND PROMOTE ONLINE

  (with Angela Adair-Hoy)

  BUZZ YOUR BOOK (with Douglas Clegg)

  M.J. ROSE

  THE

  DELILAH

  COMPLEX

  THE DELILAH COMPLEX

  Copyright © 2006 by Melisse Shapiro.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  First published in the US by Mira Books.

  To my wonderful agent and dear friend,

  Loretta Barrett.

  Delilah, n. The name of the woman who betrayed Samson to the Philistines, used allusively to mean a temptress or treacherous paramour.

  “And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head;…and his strength went from him.” (Judges 16:19)

  complex, n.psychol. A group of emotionally charged ideas or mental factors, unconsciously associated by the individual with a particular subject, arising from repressed instincts, fears, or desires and often resulting in mental abnormality; freq. with defining word prefixed, as inferiority complex, dipus complex, etc.; hence colloq., in vague use, a fixed mental tendency or obsession. Also attrib. and comb.

  The use of the term was established by C. G. Jung in 1907 (Ueber die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox), but it originated with Neisser in 1906 (Individualität und Psychose).

  ’Tis not in the high stars alone,

  Nor in the cups of budding flowers,

  Nor in the redbreast‘s mellow tone,

  Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,

  But in the mud and scum of things

  There always, always something sings.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Contents

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Warm, engulfing, darkness surrounded him. Flesh moved over him. Naked legs held him, vise-like, rocking him, rocking him, lulling him back into haze. Shoulders, neck, torso, blocking all light. Hot breath on his neck. Soft hair in his face, soaking up his tears.

  He was crying?

  One wrenching and embarrassing sob escaped in answer.

  No. Take me back to the threshold of coming.

  Let me loose in you.

  Please.

  The pleasure was too much pain. He wasn’t taking, he was being taken. Sensations were being suctioned out of him. No control over the pulsing now.

  He didn’t know what time it was or how long he had been sleeping. Or even if he still was sleeping. He only knew that he had never been used like this and never cried like this before. Never cried before at all. Now he was reduced to weeping because—

  He didn’t know.

  Why was he crying?

  He could taste someone else on his lips. Smell someone else in his nostrils. A sour smell. A sweat smell. Not sweet. Everything stunk of stale sex. He wanted more.

  Please, come back.

  Nothing for a few more minutes. Or another hour? Ribbons of sleep. Weaving in and out of unconsciousness. Fighting through the interwoven dream web. Or had he awoken at all?

  Must be in bed. His bed? He didn’t know. Focusing, he forced his fingers to feel for smooth sheets but only felt skin. His own. Moist and frigid. He tried to move his hands away from his chest, to his sides, but he couldn’t.

  What was happening?

  Remember something, he told himself. Try to catch something from last night. No memory.

  So he had to be sleeping. All he had to do was wake himself up. Open his eyes. From there he’d sit up, stretch, feel the damn sheets, put his feet down on the carpeted floor and get to a shower where he would wash away this fog.
>
  But he couldn’t be at home.

  The body had not been his wife’s.

  Was it any lover he’d ever known?

  He fought, ignoring the tears, to open his eyes. To push one more time through the last vestiges of the milky-blue fog. Part of his brain, the small section that was functional and was informing the emotion that led to the weeping, knew that something was desperately wrong. This was not just about fucking. Hot streams of tears were sliding down his cheeks and dripping off the sides of his face. His rib cage hurt from the crying.

  He gulped air, hoping that would help clear his head, and became aware that the air was icy.

  Weak, helpless, spent, he lay there.

  Why was he crying?

  Because…

  Because…

  The hands stroked his hair. Cupped his skull. He felt himself stiffen again. Tears and erections. What was wrong with him? Fingers played with his curls. Where each hair follicle met his scalp, his blood singed, sending shivers of pleasure down his neck, his spine, to his solar plexus.

  Please. Take me back inside of you.

  He moved to reach up and brush the wetness off his face, but his hand wouldn’t lift. A metal bracelet, hard and icy, dug into the flesh of his wrist.

  Silver cuffs flashed in the darkened room.

  When had he been chained?

  He tried to lift his head and shoulders and felt another pressure holding him in place. A band across his chest prevented him from rising. Falling back, his head hit the thin pillow. Not the overstuffed down pillows on his own bed, but a poor substitute that offered only a few inches of padding between his head and the inflexible cot.

  Was this more of the dream? It didn’t matter, as long as the fingers kept playing so exquisitely with his hair. He tried to move his legs so that he could thrust up, but the same pressure that radiated across his chest also held his ankles. The same sound of metal against metal rang in his ears.

  On his back, naked, shivering, he gave up wanting to understand.

  The fingers were torture now. The rhythm of the stroking was making him harder. He opened his mouth, wanting to lick the skin he could smell.

  His tongue wouldn’t move. He tried to speak but his mouth was filled with a dry thickness that absorbed the sound. How could his tongue be so swollen?

  He worked at it for a few seconds, then tasted the cloth gag.

  Suddenly the fingers stopped.

  He saw a glimmer of silver. Bright in the room’s darkness. Heard the murmur that razor-sharp metal makes as it cuts, exacting and fast.

  The only thing he was capable of bringing forth from his body was more tears.

  Weak. Like a woman, he cried.

  Because he, Philip Maur, who was fearless, was scared.

  Scared to death.

  Two

  The lights on the subway flickered off and then returned. In front of me someone gasped prematurely, as if expecting disaster.

  “Boom! Boom! Boom!” A man shouted in the rear of the car.

  We all turned but there was nothing to see. An irrational outburst from someone who had already disappeared into the crowd.

  Since the terrorist attacks on the city in 2001, we looked out for the stranger among us who might spell danger. And since the killings I’d stumbled on to last summer, and the murderer who hid from me in plain sight, I no longer trusted my ability to identify a threat.

  I used to suffer the hubris of thinking I could identify who was dangerous and who wasn’t, blindly enjoying the fallacy that, as a trained psychotherapist, symptoms would present themselves to me as long as I remained aware. But now I know that’s not true.

  The genuine lunatic, the real psychotic, can fool me as well as you, so I have become ever more vigilant and ever less sure that I can protect those I love. Questions keep me awake at night: Will I be prepared when someone comes for me the next time? Or worse, if someone comes for my daughter, Dulcie?

  Beside me, Dulcie sat oblivious to what I knew could catch us unawares. A pair of expensive headphones—a gift from her father—covered her ears, and her head bobbed to the soundtrack that was audible only to her. Silently, my lovely young daughter mouthed the lyrics to the score of “The Secret Garden,” because in four months, on January 5, she would stand on a Broadway stage and take on the role of Mary Lennox in a new production of the classic. Every day now on our way to and from the rehearsal studio on Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan, she burned the nuances of the music into memory, working tirelessly on her part.

  A thirteen-year-old girl should not have a job, not even if her talent has bloomed early and she has acting in her blood. But the price of stepping on my daughter’s dream wasn’t something I was willing to pay. And so, more intently than I surveyed the strangers on the train, more doggedly than I observed my patients, I watched my daughter. Carefully. Always monitoring. Maybe too closely sometimes. But if the anxiety or pressure of performing weighed on her too heavily, I wanted to be prepared to step in.

  Since she had been chosen for the part back in June, Dulcie was thriving, doing better than she had at her private school where too many label-obsessed kids had goals no more complicated than getting the next Prada bag. The Bartlett School, even with its emphasis on the arts and its high number of scholarships, still had its share of kids with limitless gold credit cards and limos at the ready.

  The train doors opened. A middle-aged businessman entered and sat in the seat on the other side of me, despite the empty seats across the aisle. I reached into my bag, pulled out a peppermint, unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth.

  As I’m overly sensitive to smells, public places are sensory nightmares for me. I bit down. The intense flavor burned as the cool blue-green scent rose up and insulated me against any possible assault.

  I felt his glance.

  A dark-haired woman in narrow black slacks, a longsleeved white shirt and a black leather blazer, sitting next to her lithe thirteen-year-old daughter, who was wearing jeans, a pink T-shirt, a jeans jacket and a wristful of purple and light green beads, listening to a CD, was not a threat.

  When I turned a minute later and he looked at me, I didn’t turn away. I don’t do that.

  No, that’s not true. I look away from myself all too often, especially in the four months since my divorce. I ignore what is not in my life anymore and shy away from facing the one issue I spend my days helping other people deal with: sexuality. Dr. Morgan Snow, in denial. It isn’t something I’m proud of. But it is how I cope.

  Once more the lights went out and the train came to a dead stop. It didn’t bother me, but I wasn’t certain about Dulcie. I didn’t have to search for my daughter’s hand. I just reached out, instinctively knowing where it would be, even in the dark.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. It’s kind of creepy, though. How long do you think we’re going to be stopped here?”

  “Hopefully not long.” I squeezed her hand.

  She squeezed back and then pulled away to switch on her CD player again.

  The lights flickered on but the train still didn’t move.

  Down the aisle, a man in a ripped jacket streaked with grime turned and ogled my daughter’s legs. Dulcie didn’t notice him, but I did and stared him down.

  Why was his jacket dirty? What had broken his spirit? What had cracked his self-esteem?

  Occupational hazard #1: Reading the body language of strangers. Like judging a book by its cover, it is tempting to make a diagnosis based on insufficient information.

  A woman with downcast eyes opposite us kept flexing her fingers in a habitual way that suggested she was slightly compulsive. About what? It would take hours on my couch to find out, but I could guess at the darkness that bound her mind like barbed wire.

  The lights went off again, suddenly, and we returned to stuffy blackness.

  You will be on a dark street and he will jump out at you, his knife gleaming in the lamplight. Or you will be on the sidewalk below a fifty-f
loor office building and the noise will take you by surprise, as will the glass that rains down and slices your skin. There are so many possibilities of catastrophe that sometimes you do not know how you stay sane.

  You manage because you have a child. You accomplish it because you still have hope, which, most therapists agree, is the hardest emotion to give up.

  We started moving again and the lights came back on. Another five minutes passed and we were at the stop before ours.

  “Hon.” I touched Dulcie’s hand.

  Dulcie hit the stop button and turned, cornflower-blue eyes wide and waiting.

  “Yeah?”

  “Next stop.”

  “Really?”

  She was always surprised the rides between our apartment on the Upper East Side and the rehearsal studio in SoHo were over so quickly. As she listened to her music, her sense of time deserted her.

  Peering out the slimy windows into the blackness, Dulcie looked for a marker, not trusting how much time had passed.

  “Mom?” Her face was still focused on the hollow tunnel. “Did you get nervous when the lights went out?”

  “A little. I bet a lot of people did.”

  “Will I get that kind of nervous if I’m onstage and just forget the words? Will I get sick from it? What will being nervous do to me?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s not a bad thing to feel anxiety. We can talk about how you can overcome the feeling and learn from it.”

  My job wasn’t to protect this budding teenager from the darkness as much as it was to teach her how to find the switches so she could always turn on the lights.

  But I would have preferred to protect her. To wrap her in my arms the same way I had when she was only months old, to keep her away from the open windows, from the cold and the poisons.

  Three

  The telephone was ringing as we walked into the apartment.

  “Do you want me to get it?” Dulcie asked as she raced ahead of me.

  “No, I’ve got it. You get ready for dinner.”

  While I picked up the receiver, Dulcie threw her backpack on the floor and immediately opened the refrigerator. Pulling out a bottle of carrot-apple juice, she drank almost half of it without stopping.