Beautiful Maids All in a Row

by Jennifer Harlow

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked as I opened the car door. I managed a little nod and climbed out. The hard gravel dug into my already tender feet. I winced. I wouldn’t be able to walk right for weeks. Wade’s squad car pulled away when I stepped inside my silent house. Shit, I’d left the door unlocked and the alarm off. So much for diligence. I locked and armed them both before I dropped my purse on the couch and limped up the stairs into my bedroom. It was good to be home.

  I peeled off my soaked clothes, and after a thorough drying, I slipped into a black tank top and hot-pink pajama pants. I gulped down two glasses of water and examined my feet, which didn’t look as bad as I’d expected. A few cuts but no gashes. I was lucky. I cleaned the cuts and bandaged them. This efficiency calmed me down a lot, at least enough to breathe without gasping.

  After I’d put on the final Band-Aid, the phone rang downstairs. I didn’t have a phone in my bedroom, so I had to haul ass down the stairs before the machine picked up. I got into the kitchen just as Carol said, “Pick up the phone, girl!” on the answering machine.

  “Carol? Sorry, I was upstairs in the bathroom,” I said, out of breath.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asked harshly. “I was worried sick!”

  “You were worried sick? I just spent the last two hours running the length of Grafton screaming your name, trying to find you. Where the hell were you?”

  “Lord, calm down! You’ll have a heart attack!”

  “I’ve already had several tonight! Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I did!”

  “I left my cell in the car. I was so freaked out about you I stupidly left it in my purse.”

  “Well that was dumb, dummy.”

  “Shepherd told me he had you. I lost my mind. What the hell happened?”

  “I got this call at the office from Charlotte Memorial Hospital saying my no-good-son-of-a-bitch ex-husband just got into a car accident, and they couldn’t get hold of his parents, so he was asking for me. They said he was at death’s door and you know, despite everything he is Patrick’s father, so I rushed over there. But when I finally got there, they said Keith March wasn’t admitted. So I asked to speak to the doctor who called, and they said he never worked there. Well, I was as mad as a hornet. I went to Keith’s apartment and beat him with my purse when he opened the door for playing such a rotten joke on me. He said I was crazy and threatened to call the cops. On me! Can you believe it? After what that no-good son-of-a-bitch just pulled? I wanted to kill him!”

  “Understandable.”

  “So anyway, I drove home and Mrs. Nelson said you were looking for me, and when I couldn’t find ya I called Barry and he told me everything. I was so worried. Don’t scare me like that again!”

  “Ditto. My feet are ground chuck, and my legs feel like they’ve been hit by a sledgehammer because of you.”

  “Don’t blame me,” she said, “blame that no-good-son-of-a-bitch ex of mine.”

  “Carol, I’m pretty sure he’s off the hook for this one.”

  “Why?”

  “What was the name of the doctor who called you?”

  “Um…Woodrow, I think. Yeah, it was Wood…Oh.” It finally dawned on her. “That psycho called me, didn’t he?”

  “About ten minutes after I found out you were missing, he called and said he had you.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To torture me. To get me to panic and worry and run all over Grafton in my bare feet in a thunderstorm.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Yes, and this is exactly why you need to pack up you and Patrick and go stay with family or at a motel for a few days.”

  “No way! I am not letting this creep uproot me or my baby from our lives! He can—”

  “Carol, he could have grabbed you at any time today.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “But he can! Do you really want to risk it?”

  “Hon’, he can get me just as easy at Mama’s or at some motel or your home—you said so yourself. I’m staying here, and that’s the end of it.” She sighed. “I don’t think he wants me anyway. If he does, why didn’t he do it today? We’ll be more on guard now, we won’t make any more stupid mistakes, and the cops will be paying closer attention, too. You should have seen old Barry Wade when he came to my door a few minutes ago. He was so rattled when he told me how he found you. He’s gonna have your back from now on, I just know it.”

  “Hope so. Because eventually Shepherd’s gonna strike for real, and I can’t go through a repeat of tonight.” Thunder boomed as loud as a gunshot, making all my windows rattle. “Holy shit.”

  “It’s a bad one,” Carol said. “I don’t like the idea of you staying all alone in that house tonight. I want you to come over and sleep here.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I assured her. “I have an alarm that can wake the dead and a fierce guard dog to protect me. Gus’ll—”

  Gus. Where was Gus? He wasn’t in my bedroom or in the living room, his usual hiding spots. All the other doors were closed, so he couldn’t be hiding from the storm in any of them. I knew he was inside when I left, so he couldn’t be running around outside. Then where—

  “Iris?” Carol asked. “You still there?”

  “Gus is missing.”

  “He’s probably hiding,” she said. “He’s just a big old ’fraidy cat.”

  “He wasn’t under the bed, because he would have come out to greet me despite the storm,” I said to myself. “He’s definitely not outside…”

  “Iris? You sound strange. Are you—”

  The phone line went dead as another window-rattling boom shook the house. There was no dial tone. “Shit.” A second boom jolted the house with the same ferocity, and this time the lights flickered several times, finally shutting off.

  I hung up the dead phone slowly. Thunder rolled again, followed by lightning, which lit up the black kitchen for a moment. There were no sounds but the rain pattering on the windows and my ragged breath. I quickly turned to the alarm panel by the door. All the little green lights were still on, which meant the house was still armed. Glad I’d sprung for underground electricity for the alarm.

  Another thunder-and-lightning combo rang out, though not as violently this time. I couldn’t see shit, but I heard something over the rain. Worse, I felt it. The door behind me slowly, quietly opening, and breathing. My heart stopped, and all other noise disappeared except for my pounding heart and those breaths.

  “Thought you’d never get here.”

  I spun around as another bolt of lightning flashed, revealing his white teeth with lips drawn back into a pleased grin. Before I could form a reaction, his manicured hand rose, a shining silver object in it that thwacked my head with a painful crack.

  The last thing I thought before drifting into unconsciousness was I should have closed the stupid gate.

  Chapter 27

  Being hit by a truck was the only explanation for that much pain. My entire head throbbed, and every muscle ached with such ferocity I was afraid to move. My arms were the worst, limp like all the bones had disappeared. They were stretched above my head, held up by something tight and cold wrapped around my wrists. I willed my arms to move, but I’d lost control of them.

  After a second fruitless attempt, my brain finally rebooted and started functioning past the instinctive level. The smell hit me first: stale air and musky mildew. Touch: besides the general hit-by-a-truck feeling, I also felt a trail of something sticky starting at my throbbing forehead and running down to my cheek. My head was leaking, never a good thing. My hair was still damp, a fact that pleased me to no end. That meant I’d been out for only a few hours, not days.

  Sound came next: thumping footsteps above my head, followed by the creaking of wood. Finally, I opened my eyes, blinking a few times for them to adjust. The boxes stacked up, the redbrick walls, the dirty concrete floor that I seemed to be sitting on, the lone light bulb hanging above, and the
steep wooden staircase that led up to the kitchen. My basement. Okay.

  Back to the problem at hand, my arms. I tilted my head up to see what was so tight around my wrists. Big mistake. A wave of nausea hit like a baseball bat. I choked the foul bile back. I was now positive I had a concussion; it was something that could never be mistaken for anything else. After the nausea passed, I bent my head back slowly this time, keeping the second onslaught to a minimum. My arms were handcuffed to a rusty pipe above my head, attached like two white vines. No wonder they were numb. I balled my hands into fists several times to get the blood flowing. My arms started coming to as the pins and needles under my skin started. Improvement, but not much. I was, after all, handcuffed to a pipe in my basement while a psychopath was upstairs planning God knew what.

  When my arms no longer felt dead, I started pulling on the pipe with all my might. The handcuffs dug into my wrists, rubbing them raw. I grunted and groaned, using all of my 105 pounds to pull. The pipe didn’t move an inch and neither did I.

  “Good, you’re awake.”

  I gazed up at the staircase and saw Shepherd, nonchalantly resting against the doorframe. The light from the kitchen behind him gave him an almost supernatural look, as if he were standing at the doorway of heaven looking down into hell.

  “You know,” he said, pushing away from the doorframe, “you have no real food here. I found about five different kinds of candy bars but nothing of substance. I have no idea how you manage to keep your figure.” He began to limp down the stairs one at a time. The right pant leg was torn, with white gauze wrapped around it.

  “What happened to your leg?” I asked with satisfaction.

  “Your dog bit me.”

  “I’ll have to remember to get him a steak next time I go shopping.”

  “I wouldn’t bother.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pulled out a silver, snub-nosed .38 from his pants. “I shot him.”

  I jerked forward but the cuffs stop me. “You son of a bitch!” I screamed. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

  “I don’t think so. You don’t get to make the threats now, I do. Bet you’re wishing you’d killed me when you had the chance.”

  “Fuck you!”

  He crossed the room at a superhuman speed. Before I registered it, his fist made contact with my cheek, sending my head flying back into the wall with a thump, fazing me. “Nobody talks to me that way, Iris,” he hissed. “Nobody.”

  Now my cheek felt like the rest of me, broken and throbbing. “Oh, God,” I whispered.

  “I never thought I’d ever see you looking so pathetic. It almost takes the fun out of this. Almost.”

  I looked up at his hard face. “What are you going to do to me?”

  He knelt down to my level. “I haven’t really decided yet. There are so many possibilities, I almost can’t choose. Looking at you like this, so helpless,” he began to trace my naked arms with his fingertips, “I feel like a kid in a candy store.” He trailed them down my cheek, the one he’d hit, but I yanked my head away. He caressed it anyway. “I’ve waited for this moment for weeks. You can’t imagine the things I’ve done to you in my mind.” He traced the outline of my jaw. “And now to finally have you in front of me…” His thumb gently rubbed my dry lips. “I’m rock hard.”

  I spit on his cheek. He winced on contact. “Get your fucking hands off of me.”

  He scoffed and wiped the spit off. “Classy.” With one quick movement, he raised the .38 toward my head and fired.

  BOOM!

  My eyes closed instinctively as I moved as far left as I could. Not far enough. Bits of brick hit my face, ripping my skin away in their wake. The pain was the only way I knew I was still alive. I opened my eyes and turned to the right to find a smoking hole in the wall three inches from my head. Short gasps escaped my mouth, close to the point of hyperventilating.

  “I’m surprised it didn’t ricochet,” Shepherd said nonchalantly. “Good gun. Got it black market. Untraceable.”

  “This is insane,” I said to myself, my whole body quivering from shock and fright. “You got away with it. What can you possibly gain from this? Everyone’s going to know it’s you. Why are you doing this?”

  With his whole body, he leaned forward into me. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but his face stopped two inches from mine. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “Your hair, your lips, your…breasts.” He touched the curve of my breast with a faraway look in his eyes. “You haunt my dreams, Iris.” He looked up at my eyes. “You’re driving me crazy.”

  “You were crazy to begin with,” I said breathlessly. “I’m not responsible for that mess.”

  He snarled like a wolf. “I hate you. I hate you more than anyone else I’ve ever come across.”

  “Well, at least we’re on the same page there.”

  He pulled away from me and stood, gazing down at me, eyes laughing with victory. “I just figured out what to do with you. I think I’ll go find your friend Carol and her little boy. She still lives on Hazel Lane, no? I’m going to fuck her while you watch and slice open her chest when she’s alive. Then I’ll do the same to her little boy. He’s not really my type, but tonight I’ll make an exception. Then finally, I’ll do you. Every which way possible…repeatedly until the sun comes up, then I’ll rip out your beating heart. How would you like that?”

  “Your mother really did a number on you,” I said with as much confidence as I still possessed, which wasn’t much. “Or maybe it was you who initiated first contact. Maybe you snuck into Mommy’s room, and she was there, looking so beautiful…Did you get an erection, Jerry? Do you still beat off to her picture?”

  “If you’re trying to get me to shoot you, save your breath. I’m not going to kill you in some fit of rage. I can only kill you once.”

  “And then what? You think the pain will go away when I’m dead?”

  He knelt down right beside me again. “No,” he whispered as he leaned in so close to my face I could smell the Scope on his breath, “but it’ll make me feel so much better.”

  He lunged at my face, smashing his lips against mine so hard my lips hit my teeth. As if that wasn’t revolting enough, his free hand moved into my tank top, finding my bare breast and kneading it roughly, twisting the nipple like a screw so hard I would have screamed if I could. Panic hit. This was really happening. He was going to rape and kill me in my own basement. I was momentarily paralyzed with fear, unable to do anything even if I’d been free. But when his slimy tongue slipped into my mouth like a slug, it snapped me out of shock and into rage.

  I bit it. Hard.

  My mouth filled with metallic blood and the nausea resurfaced. Shepherd pulled away, hands and all, and touched his bleeding tongue. I’d only nicked it, but he got the point. I spit out his blood onto the concrete.

  He spit out his blood too, only he did it on my face. “You fucking bit me!” he shouted, absolutely shocked.

  “Didn’t think I was going to make it easy for you, did you, you fucking psycho!” The back of his hand smacked the left side of my face, sending my head flying back again. My poor head—good thing I was so thick skulled. I turned back to Shepherd and smiled. “That all you got? My grandmother hits harder than you.”

  He was right back in my face. “I am going to teach you what real pain is,” he whispered through clenched teeth.

  I leaned in so our noses touched. “Then do it, motherfucker.”

  A screeching from above caused us both to glance up at the ceiling. The alarm. Dear Lord, I would never complain about that sound again. A perplexed Shepherd jumped to his feet. I could practically see the wheels of his mind turning, running through all the possibilities and contingencies. After five seconds, he looked back down at me, holding the gun up to my forehead. “Give me the code and password.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A pounding upstairs made him turn back to the open door at the top of the stairs. There was rhythmic pounding, then silence. Two gunshots boomed
above us, followed by the sound of wood breaking.

  “Help me!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “I’m down here!”

  Shepherd pulled out a set of handcuff keys, and keeping the gun turned on me, unlocked my cuffs. He yanked me to my feet, pressing the gun against my temple. He held my left arm, fingers digging into my flesh so hard I winced. Iris Ballard, the human shield.

  “Keep your hands to the side,” he said into my ear as the running footsteps got closer, “and don’t make any sudden moves or I’ll fire.”

  “Iris?”

  The sound of his voice was such a relief, I was sure I would have fallen if Shepherd weren’t holding me so tight. “Luke?” I called.

  “Iris?” he shouted again, desperation in his voice.

  “Luke! Run!” I shrieked. “He has a—”

  Luke stepped into the doorway, his own gun out. No man had ever looked so good to me before. His eyes doubled in size when he saw me, a mix of terror and relief on his face. As trained, the moment he saw the gun, he moved behind the door for cover. Shepherd pressed the gun even harder into my head.

  “Take out the clip and bullet in the chamber and throw it all down here,” Shepherd commanded.

  “No way, Shepherd,” Luke said.

  “I will shoot her dead if you don’t.”

  “Luke, don’t you fucking dare!” I shouted.

  “Let her go, Shepherd!”

  “Throw the gun down first, and then we’ll talk.”

  Luke peeked out of his hiding spot, glancing down at me. I pleaded silently with my eyes for him to just turn around and run. Our eyes met. For a fleeting moment I saw his indecision. Training said you kept cover, tried to talk the perp down, and waited for backup to arrive. And you never, ever gave up your weapon. Luke’s indecision vanished. He always was a chivalrous fucking idiot. I gasped as he pushed the clip release button. It fell into his hand. He tossed it down the stairs. It landed in the far corner. He yanked back the chamber, expelling the sole bullet. The rest of the gun landed on top of some boxes in front of me. Luke raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his head, surrendering. He slowly walked down the creaky stairs. “Now let her go.”