Skin

by Patricia Rosemoor

  SKIN

  Patricia Rosemoor

  Copyright © 2012 Patricia Rosemoor

  Cover Copyright © 2012 Patricia Rosemoor

  Thanks to the family of writers who have encouraged me along the way: members of my critique group, who helped me resolve character questions; my fellow Intrigue and indie authors who helped me narrow down covers until I found the right one; Rosemary Paulas, who read through the first draft and gave me great notes that improved the story. Also thanks to Norman Glick for the professional copyedit.

  oOo

  SKIN

  Patricia Rosemoor

  Prologue

  HER SCREAMS gave him a hard-on that ached so badly he could hardly move. But if he didn’t run, the hunt would be over. His prey would get away.

  Rotten leaves and pine needles still damp with that afternoon’s spring rain muffled footfalls made by her bare feet as she scurried away from him between the canopy of trees. Too bad for her she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, couldn’t stifle the obliging squeaks and squeals shooting through the dark that not only told him where she was, but shot a thrill of anticipation through him.

  Running faster now, he shifted the rifle to his right hand, fighting disappointment that she would be so easy. The last one had been more of a challenge. He could hear her jagged breath coming faster than his own, didn’t have to see her to know how she would look, all panicked, fleshy ass and full tits jiggling in the breeze. Her panic was the turn-on. He’d been holding her prisoner, terrorizing her for the past ten days, and this was the payoff. He tore through the trees to his right. Circled. Kept vigilant as he pulled alongside her. Not that he thought she would try to fool him.

  She wasn’t that smart. None of them were.

  Coming alongside a clearing, he realized he’d beaten her out of the forest. He stopped and juggled the rifle until she pounded out from between the trees, then calmly announced, “You lose.”

  An anguished cry tore from her throat as she stumbled to a dead stop and faced him. Moonlight silvered her pale skin and cast a blue glow over her. Her dark eyes were wide. Unblinking. When he stood there silently for a minute, letting his own anticipation build, furtively unsnapping the leather holster at his belt, allowing his fingers to caress the knife hilt as he watched her breasts heave, her expression slowly changed from terrified to furious.

  “A game?” A hopeful note crept through the outrage. She swept her long, dark hair out of her eyes. “This is a game? Why didn’t you say so? You scared the shit out of me, you bastard!”

  “That’s the best part.”

  Her features relaxed some, then took on that know-it-all expression he particularly hated. The one that reminded him of her. She drew close enough so he could see her tongue dart out to wet her full lips, and he could practically smell the rivulets of sweat licking her flesh as thoroughly as he’d done a few times himself. His raising the rifle slightly stopped her in her tracks.

  “C’mon, honey,” she coaxed in that low, throaty voice that had gotten to him for a while. “I could make it good for you. Real good.”

  He knew she could. It was her profession. But he would make it better and without sex. What he was going to do to her would get him off like nothing else could.

  “What’ve you got in mind?” he asked.

  “Anything. You know I’m good for it.” She gave him one of those burning looks that was supposed to melt him. “Right now.”

  Unmoved, he asked, “You want it now?”

  “Now, baby, yeah.”

  Tossing that mane of lush dark hair, she held her arms out to him.

  Lifting the rifle to his shoulder, he aimed at her and squeezed the trigger.

  oOo

  Chapter 1

  KICKING, SLUGGING, BATTERING a padded man while an audience cheered her on, Lilith Mitchell did her best to down him. She backed off for a moment and took a deep breath. Took a quick look around at the other women at the health club who were part of the Street Survival class. Her expression as ferocious as she could manage, she ground out a war cry – “NO!” – and was on the attack once more, her long dark ponytail flying along her T-shirted shoulder.

  A few seconds later, the padded man was on his butt on the floor.

  Several women gathered around to congratulate her.

  The teenager who Lilith mentored, muttered, “I could never do that.”

  Carmen Vargas was a pretty seventeen-year-old, slender with long dark hair and big dark eyes. Lilith had convinced her to take the six week self-defense class that met three nights a week and had paid the girl’s fee herself.

  “Sure you could do it,” Lilith said with a grin. “It’s all in the body language.”

  “Any man that tries to get next to Lilith should be a really good reader,” said her friend and coworker, Elena Gutierrez, another paralegal at Hamilton, Smith and Willis.

  They all laughed together, the camaraderie being one of the reasons Lilith repeated the class every year. The other reason being she didn’t want to forget how to protect herself. Even though she wasn’t a small woman and an “I’m in control” attitude now came naturally to her after years of hard work, Lilith knew anyone could be victimized. Staying on guard, prepared, was her best defense.

  The women strayed off, some to change, others to pump iron. Lilith noticed her opponent had finished removing his padding and was now gathering his gear to leave. Jack was great-looking, but what she admired about him most was his volunteering to be a human punching bag.

  “Tough job,” she told him, holding her hand out for a shake.

  “Tough lady.” His grin lent a boyish cast to his face. “Say, do you take bribes?”

  “As in, you bribe me with something I want, and I might not have the heart to hit you so hard next week?”

  He flicked his eyebrows at her. “That’s the idea.”

  Lilith laughed. “I’ll think about it.”

  Flirting with an attractive man made her think of hot sex. No strings. No future. Just the now. Simply not in the mood, she forgot about Jack by the time she arrived in the locker room.

  There on a bench, a blazing newspaper headline caught her attention: HUNTER-MURDERER FLIPS OFF CPD. Lilith picked up the front section of The Chicago Record and quickly scanned the article about The Hunter Case. The article accused the Chicago Police Department of doing a slipshod investigation of a possible serial killer because the victims had been deemed worthless to society. A waitress and a prostitute might not be high profile, but they were human beings, Lilith thought, feeling badly for the victims. And the families they left behind. Both women had been connected to Club Paradise, a “gentlemen’s club,” both murdered in a county forest preserve less than six months apart.

  Wishing the women had been smart enough to take a self-defense course, she signaled to Carmen who was talking to one of the younger women. The teenager smiled, made her excuses and came running.

  “Man, you’re good at this,” Carmen said, opening her locker. “No guy should mess with you.”

  “Attitude helps.” Lilith asked, “Has someone been messing with you?”

  Carmen shrugged. “Not really.” But her mouth tightened, and she didn’t look directly at Lilith.

  “Anything you want to talk about, you know I’m here for you. Call me anytime.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Being in the mentor program meant that the girl was at risk, with little hope of getting through high school. Carmen’s grades were good enough to get her into college on a scholarship, just as Lilith had done. Lilith’s job as a mentor was to set an example, give Carmen someone she could relate to outside her tight-knit community.

  Working as a legal assistant might not put her on the fast-money track, but Lilith had gotten away from the poverty of her youth.
She had a solid income, and she was working at something she loved with plans for her future – law school as soon as she could afford tuition.

  Economic freedom. If only there were courses in the subject starting in grade school. Girls needed to be able to take care of themselves before having a family. If Mama had known how, after Daddy died, she wouldn’t have married Marlon Aldrich rather than be on her own with her two daughters. Then Hannah would never have been forced to run away, disappearing without a trace.

  Remembering the last time she’d seen her younger sister, Lilith swallowed hard. Hannah had been little more than a kid. She couldn’t even imagine how a thirteen-year-old had survived on her own on the street.

  If she had survived.

  Lilith didn’t want to think her sister was dead, but guilt kept Hannah in her mind every day. A scholarship to college had been her way out of that house of hell. She’d been gone barely eight months when Hannah had been compelled to run.

  It was that guilt that led Lilith to be part of the mentoring program. Carmen would never take Hannah’s place, but she was a great kid, and Lilith wanted to make sure Carmen had opportunities that she hadn’t been able to give her own sister.

  Though Lilith had found the strength to overcome her own past, she knew either the lack of money or naivete in managing finances too often trapped women in situations that were humiliating, unbearable and sometimes downright dangerous.

  oOo

  TOSSING HER DARK HAIR around her bared shoulders, Hannah Mitchell noted the hunger in the faces of the customers sitting along the edges of the stage, read the lust in the eyes that crept up her flesh. Pumped with power to make these men salivate, she flowed along the stage and slithered down the ramp.

  “Hey, Anna, c’mon, give us some tits!” a beefy young man called.

  She flashed him a smile as fake as the name she was using – Anna Youngheart. As fake as the interior of Club Paradise, the gentlemen’s club where the palm trees were either neon or plastic. Her disguise allowed her a power over men that was as intoxicating as any drug. She never felt so high as when she controlled a man’s wallet for the night.

  She changed her look and her identity as easily as she changed towns. New York... Los Angeles... Las Vegas... New Orleans. Fantasy. That’s what she sold.

  Sliding scarlet dragon-queen nails down her own thigh past a hot pink satin thong and a black garter belt, Hannah puckered her lips and played with the straps of her top.

  “Take it off!”

  Ignoring the demand, she aimed her fake-hot gaze at one of the regulars. Michael Wyndham. Longish dark hair. Good looking with that edgy shadow of a beard narrowing his cheeks. He was quiet. Serious. Mysterious. A student of human nature, he sat at the back of the room, mentally dissecting it all: the bouncers in tuxes guarding the place as well as the dancers; the waitresses in loose trousers and backless vests delivering watered-down drinks. She hadn’t quite figured what made him tick yet. But she would.

  She held out a net-stockinged leg and let a customer slip a twenty under her garter. When his coarse fingers lingered on her flesh a little too long, she kicked out and shook her finger at him, then whirled away, pulling money from her bra and removing the scrap of clothing just as her music ended.

  Her bare back was to her audience, her long hair trailing her breasts at the sides.

  Guys whistled and stomped.

  “Hey, baby, turn around and give us a better look!”

  Smiling, Hannah kept her back to the man, grabbed the clothes she’d stripped off, and with a toss of her head, left the stage to the next dancer.

  Power was the name of the game for her, even as it was for the men who mixed business deals with cocktails and lust.

  In the corridor that led to the dressing room, Hannah slipped back into the clothing before sashaying around the room and stopping at the bar. No sooner had she ordered a soda to quench her thirst, than a hot breath trailed along her neck. Shivering, she turned to find Rudy Barnes grinning down at her, his pale blue eyes gleaming strangely, as if he were on something, which probably he was.

  Hannah frowned at the tall, lanky man with the pock-marked face. “Crawled out of your booth, did you?” she asked the disk jockey. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Just needed to wet my whistle, same as you, Sweetpea.”

  “Uh-huh.” She took her soda and turned to walk away.

  Rudy grabbed her arm. “And I need to eat, same as you. How about we do it together after hours.”

  “I would rather eat dirt.”

  Hannah pulled her arm free and walked away from the snake she’d dated once. Afterward, he’d expected her to give him head in the booth while he worked. According to the other dancers, that was his thing. Well, it wasn’t hers.

  She would stick to well-off customers.

  Finishing her soda, she left the glass on an empty table and checked out the manager who stood near the entrance, demanding a kid’s ID. Sal Ruscio was trying to coax back a full head of dark hair with strategically placed hair plugs. And to further his youthful image, he wore his trademark flowered shirt with a thousand-buck suit.

  Hannah entered the dressing room that reeked with the smell of weed. The counter below the lit mirror was littered with open cases, a jumble of loose makeup, cheap hair fasteners and equally cheap jewelry spilling from their guts. A dusting of white powder on a hand mirror sat in the midst of it all. Most of the girls were on drugs. Maybe that’s how they got through the night. Not her, though. She wasn’t going to throw away good money on bullshit. On the opposite wall stood several lockers and a rack of scanty costumes. Only two other dancers primped before the mirrors.

  A dark-haired girl who looked young enough to be illegal was applying an extra coat of deep red to her bee-stung lips.

  “Hey, Melinda.”

  “Hannah. So is Paulie out there tonight?”

  “Isn’t he out there every night?”

  Paul Ensdorf came to watch his sister dance. Melinda laughed about it, thought it was funny, her big brother lathering himself up over her. Hannah thought it was creepy how he kept tabs on his sibling like that.

  “It isn’t bad enough that our harridan of a grandmother was on my back when I lived with her,” Melinda complained. “Now Paulie has to follow me around, trying to reform me.”

  “Have Sal keep him out.”

  “Right. Like Sal’s going to boot a customer who doesn’t mind spreading the wealth.”

  Hannah shrugged. “You have a point.”

  “Thanks for the thought, though. Later.”

  Melinda left, leaving Hannah alone with the other new girl who called herself Caresse.

  Sitting before the mirror and applying blush to her dusky face, Caresse looked up. A small frown creased the skin between her dark, almost black eyes. “You look whipped, child.”

  Hannah dumped herself in a nearby chair. “Yeah, I’m splitting early.”

  She picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes and tried not to let Caresse’s steady gaze disturb her. The exotic-looking woman was as tough as they came. Tall and raw-boned, she exuded a don’t mess with me kind of attitude. Lighting her cigarette, Hannah took a long drag and tried to blank her mind.

  “Something wrong, child?”

  Caresse hadn’t worked at Club Paradise long, but she seemed concerned about the other dancers. Though Hannah usually appreciated the caring, tonight she wasn’t in the mood.

  “If there was something wrong, could you give me a prescription to make it all better, Doctor Caresse?”

  The other dancer gave her one of those looks that made some of the girls shrink. “You got a problem with your life, you fix it.”

  Like it was so easy.

  The last time, she’d ended up back on the street as she had when she’d first run away. She’d do anything to make certain that never happened again. She was safe now. Money did that for a girl. Besides, she liked having a good time, liked buying herself things. Most of all, she liked having the upper
hand for once.

  “You got options,” Caresse was saying. “What about a family? You weren’t born in no cabbage patch.”

  “There’s nothing for me there.”

  “Not even a brother or sister?”

  An image burned into her memory, haunted her for a moment. “A sister... who wouldn’t understand,” Hannah said quickly, thinking that if they ever caught up with each other, Lilith might wish that she’d stayed missing forever.

  “Maybe not,” Caresse said, “but that don’t mean she can’t love you anyhow.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ll talk about your sister later,” Caresse threatened. After swiping a lip gloss across her full mouth, she rose and headed for the door. “Right now, I better get my butt out on the floor before Sal comes gunning for it.”

  Hannah didn’t answer, merely stared at herself in the mirror and removed her makeup. After changing into a blazing red miniskirt and white T-shirt, she clamped a thick black leather belt around her waist. From her bag, she pulled out a fine chain, the clasp secured by a tiny gold safety pin, and put it on. A glance at the mirror reflected the transformation that amazed even her. The fantasy creature had been replaced by an almost plain-looking woman who appeared young. Innocent, even.

  The eyes told the truth about her.

  Hannah touched the heart-half that dangled against her T-shirt and thought about doing something daring, like calling Lilith. That’s why she’d moved to Chicago, right? Because she’d seen that article about all the good works Lilith had been doing for teenagers with her boss here in Chicago? That’s what Caresse would tell her to do.

  But that, too, was just a fantasy.

  oOo

  DETECTIVE JOHN PUCINSKI drank his Pepto-Bismol cocktail straight from the bottle. Thick pink liquid oozing down his throat to coat his gut, he tore the bottle from his lips and capped it.

  “Planning on eating raw onions for lunch?” A grinning Gabriel O’Malley stood in the doorway to Pucinski’s glass-enclosed office, file folders in hand.