by Linda Barlow
“As I said, this is the first I’ve heard of Vico’s girlfriend.”
“I’d like to find her. Ask her a few questions.”
“So will a lot of people, especially if she or the boy was a witness. Still, isn’t that the sort of thing we should leave to the police, Jack? They’ll find Vico and the girl, if necessary, much more easily than you or I will. At least, that’s what we pay our taxes for.”
“I suppose,” Fletcher said.
They said goodbye and hung up. But the more Fletcher thought about it, the more he believed that the blond girl was the key. The key to Annie. If he could find her and find out what she knew, he could take it to Annie. She’d be grateful, he knew. Very grateful.
He drove home, fantasizing all the way. What he wanted, he decided, was a combination of grateful and scared. Grateful so she’d have to come to him. Scared once she was in his hands.
Annie was brave, and it was starting to get on his nerves. He wanted her nervous. Tense, fretful, a little upset. Briefly, when the cops had confronted them, she’d looked as if she hadn’t known quite what to expect or exactly how to handle herself. She’d been wary, perhaps a little frightened, and Fletcher had loved it.
That was the way he wanted her to look just before he fucked her. Vulnerable. Scared.
That was the hard part, for him. If they were willing, they usually weren’t scared. Made him want the ones who weren’t willing, but that raised a whole other set of problems. He’d learned the hard way that unwilling women could be real nasty about things afterward.
No, the women he got were usually the sluts who couldn’t wait to get on with it, and most of them were just too damn aggressive in bed. And the demands they made—Christ, what a pain in the ass! Not only would they expect to be given an orgasm—or several orgasms in the case of some of these broads—but they’d dictate how to do it and when to do it and where to touch, precisely, and how long and how hard.
Then there were the ones who didn’t make any demands but expected you to read their minds. They were a bit better, but not much. If you didn’t figure out what they wanted and how they wanted it, they didn’t scream at you and flounce into their clothes and out of your house—no, they sulked. Or, worse, they cried. He hated that. Crying women reminded him of his bitch of a mother, who’d been a whiner and a crier all her life. She was gone now, and good riddance. He’d always wanted a soft, warm, loving mom, but instead he’d had a harpy who’d terrorized and beaten him bloody when he was a child, then whined and cried because he didn’t come round to see her as an adult.
Annie, though—Annie would be different from all the other women. She was a lady, with all the class his loudmouthed mother could never in a million years have possessed. He’d never heard Annie mouth off at anyone—she was too elegant, too smooth. He just couldn’t see her picking up his finger and depositing it on the precise spot on her clit. She had better manners than that. She would wait for him to make the move, and if it wasn’t exactly what she wanted, she’d be far too polite to say so.
No, Annie would behave. Annie would do as she was told.
And if she didn’t… Well, there was a remedy for that as well. His mind slipped into a fantasy of Annie, naked, spreadeagled and bound to the frame of his king-size bed, her beautiful long limbs straining and her body arching as she struggled to get free. That was how he really wanted to fuck her.
And before he fucked her, he wanted to watch her expression. He wanted to see her fear. She’d look vulnerable then, by God. She’d look nervous and worried and sexy as hell.
Fletcher recalled with great pleasure the last time he had tied a woman up. Actually, she’d suggested it. Said she was into it. Said it excited her and to do it, do it please.
He’d never tied a woman up before then, although he’d certainly fantasized about it often enough. Having a taut female body arching helplessly beneath him while he fucked her was one of the sexiest things he could imagine.
And it had been wild. He’d gone with his instincts and blindfolded her as well. She hadn’t expected that, and he’d seen the wariness come over her face as he was tying the scarf over her eyes. Before that she’d looked almost too eager, but with the blindfold he got her back under his control. She didn’t know what he was going to do. She wasn’t absolutely sure she could trust him not to hurt her. What a turn-on!
And he had hurt her a bit. Slapped her a few times, pinched her nipples. Oh, he’d been careful about it. He’d been real careful about keeping his head and staying in control. At one point she’d complained about some numbness in her fingers, so he’d untied the numb hand and massaged it and made sure the rope was looser when he bound her again.
By then she was relaxed enough to get into it. So he’d hurt her a little more, and then he’d fucked her, and they’d both come, screaming.
Yeah, it had been wild. In fact, she was the one woman he’d actually wanted to see a second time. But then, she’d been the one to say, no thanks, no way. Once was all you get, kid, back off.
Not nice of her.
Not nice at all.
Fletcher forced his mind back to thoughts of Annie.
This time he’d do the bondage thing right. He’d learned a bit from the first experience. He’d learned he could push them a lot farther, a lot closer to the edge. That pain and arousal got mixed up in a woman’s mind. That as long as you did a couple of things to calm them down and set their minds at ease, you could get away with stuff that most men would never even dare dream about.
Maybe he’d tease her for a while first. Maybe he’d caress her inner thighs lightly until she became excited lying there. He wouldn’t let her get too excited, though. He wouldn’t want her to come. No, he was going to take his revenge against all those feminist bitches who’d given him instructions on how to maximize the quantity and quality of their orgasms. Annie wouldn’t be permitted to come. He wasn’t fucking her for her pleasure. He was fucking her purely for his own.
Someday… Fletcher thought.
He got a hard-on just thinking about it.
Someday soon.
When she got home that night, Annie found another letter. This time it had been tucked under the front door. Annie recognized the block writing on the envelope as soon as she saw it.
Hewas here,she thought, shivering. The person who’s doing this might be outside right now, watching the house.
She slammed the door and locked it, then drew all the curtains and pulled all the shades. Next she went through the entire house, checking to make sure that no one had broken in, that all the doors and windows were secure. Only then did she open the envelope.
A single page of paper slipped out. It was short this time. And it was written in the form of a mock obituary:
Entered into rest, Anne Jefferson, designer of church interiors. Suddenly. Crushed by the weight of her own prideful vision.
R.I.P.
Below that, in larger letters, were scrawled the words, Watch out—you ’re next. And then the signature; Jehovah’s Pitchfork.
Chapter Nineteen
“I probably should have shown these to you before, Sam,” Annie said the next morning, pulling out photocopies of the three threatening letters and handing them to him. “Besides poor Vico, there’s somebody else who appears to have some sort of hostile intent toward the cathedral. That’s the latest one I’ve gotten,” she said, pointing. “Last night I turned them over to the police.”
Sam read the letters, his expression growing increasingly grim as he read. By the time he got to the most recent one he was looking very angry indeed. “’You’re next’? My God, Annie!”
“The hostility toward me in particular has been escalating,” Annie said dryly.
“I’ll say,” said Sam. “Jesus. It’s been one thing after another lately, hasn’t it?” He looked up at her. “How do you feel about this?”
“Not great.”
Sam muttered a curse, unusual for him. He shuffled the letters, handling them gingerly.
“Do you have any idea who might have sent them?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been assuming it’s some random nutcase. But now that there’s been a murder, I’m wondering if there could be any connection between the killer and these letters.”
“When did they start arriving?”
“Recently. Just a few days ago, in fact.”
“What about that kid Vico? He may be the murderer. Could he also be your poison pen?”
Poor Vico, Annie thought. Everybody was so quick to blame him. “I doubt it, Sam.”
“You don’t believe he’s a killer, either, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
Sam rose and took a turn around his office. He stopped in front of the windows and rubbed the back of his neck, ruffling his golden hair. Then he turned to her and said, “Look, this is tough on all of us. But after seeing those letters, I’m realizing that it’s probably toughest on you, Annie. I’m really sorry about that.”
His voice was gentle, and Annie felt her eyes tear up. She bit her lip. Much as she liked Sam, she didn’t want to betray an oversupply of emotion. She couldn’t forget Charlie’s lectures on the subject: Women cry too easily. It’s unprofessional. If a woman is going to be accepted to work alongside a group of men, she has to adapt to their style. Men don’t cry.
Control yourself, Annie.
“I’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “A good night’s sleep will help a lot. I’m planning to go to bed very early tonight.”
“I’m worried about these letters,” he said. “I don’t want to scare you, but they sound really sick to me.”
“Well, the police know now. Presumably they’re doing something about it.”
“Have they offered you any kind of protection?”
“Well, no… but I didn’t ask for it.”
Sam reached for the phone. “Dammit, I’m going to get you some. This is ridiculous. A man has been murdered, nobody seems to have a very clear idea why, and now you’re being threatened—”
“It’s funny, but in spite of what’s happened, I don’t feel as if the letters are really a threat to my life,” she said slowly. “It’s more as if—this is just my intuition, of course—but it’s more like somebody is just trying to frighten me.”
His hand paused on the receiver. “What do you mean, frighten you? Why would anybody want to do that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe for the simple reason that I’m a woman, and it’s not all that common for women to be in charge of twenty-million-dollar construction projects.” She paused. “Sam, if you hadn’t put me in charge, who would have gotten the project manager’s position?”
He shrugged. “It would have depended on the owners, of course. It didn’t have to be one of us. In fact, it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for them to hire someone from outside, someone who knows the construction business better than you do, in fact.”
“Somebody like Jack Fletcher, perhaps?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You suspect him of being involved in this somehow?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know.” She had wondered about Jack Fletcher, because there was something about him that always made her feel a little uneasy. But it was just a gut feeling and very vague. “I don’t like him much, that’s certainly true. But that’s unfair of me, I know. I’m getting paranoid, I think. I’m starting to suspect everybody!”
“Well, actually, if you hadn’t been chosen as project manager, there’s somebody else in this firm who would have been perfect for the job. And that’s Darcy.”
“Darcy?”
“Sure. As an architect, she already knows some of the technical details that you had to learn on the job. And she’s worked with contractors before—in fact, I believe she did some sort of summer internship with Paul McEnerney back when she was still in architecture school. She lacks your know-how on interior fittings of churches, though. But in other areas she is your equal, if not your superior.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Annie said with a smile. “The one person I don’t suspect of trying to frighten me out of my job is Darcy!”
“Listen,” Sam said slowly. “I want you to let me know if this begins to get too nerve-racking, okay?”
“Uh, what exactly do you mean?”
“Simply that a lot has been going on—a lot of unexpected stuff. Being a project manager isn’t supposed to involve getting mixed up in a murder investigation or having your life threatened.”
Annie felt her anger rise. Was he suggesting that she wasn’t tough enough to deal with these things?
She quickly told herself not to overreact—Sam was only expressing a sincere and legitimate concern for her. But what he could never understand, as a man, was that a woman in this business was always nervous about being thought incompetent.
Murder and threatening letters probably brought out the macho in most men. Men under fire were supposed to tough it out and fire back. But women under fire were expected to wilt with the pressure.
I’m not wilting, dammit!
“I can handle it, Sam,” she assured him.
“I know you can. You’ve been great on this job, and you know it. I’m immensely proud of the work you’ve done.”
She relaxed a little. “Thanks.”
“But I promise you, I’m not going to allow you—or anyone else, for that matter—to risk your life because of a construction project. I don’t care how many millions it’s bringing in. I’m going to have a little chat with the detectives on this case. If they think there’s significant danger to any of my people, I’m going to pull everybody back for a while.”
“But, Sam, the construction schedule—”
“The hell with the schedule. The cathedral is close to completion, and a few more weeks aren’t going to make all that dire a difference. If the building has to sit empty with no work going on while this crime is investigated and this killer caught, fine. I don’t want to go to any more funerals, Annie.” He paused. “Especially yours.”
As Annie left Sam’s office, Sid Canin brushed by her and went in. He took no notice of her. In fact, ever since the other day when he’d exploded in her office about Matt Carlyle’s involvement with the cathedral project, Sidney had been exceptionally rude.
Annie had brushed it off as an irritation not worth fretting about. Besides, Giuseppe’s murder made everything else seem even more trivial.
Now, though, she noticed that Sidney began yelling at Sam as soon as the door closed behind him. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, and she wasn’t going to hang around and eavesdrop.
As she walked down the short hallway that led back to her office, she heard Sam yell back.
About an hour later, Darcy popped her head in. “More trouble,” she said. “Sam fired Sidney.”
“What?”
“Yep. Apparently it’s one of those ’clean out your desk and don’t darken my doorway again’ sort of things. Gloomy old Sid is out.”
“On what grounds?” Annie asked.
“Sam’s not talking. Rumor has it they had a tear-up, rip-roaring fight. Supposedly Sid is saying, screw this business, screw this city, he’s going to chuck everything and go live in New York, just like he’d planned a couple of years ago.”
Annie shook her head. “Everything’s changing,” she murmured. “And it’s all happening so fast.”
“Everything sucks,” Darcy agreed, “but it can’t change fast enough to suit me.”
Chapter Twenty
Darcy began crying during Giuseppe Brindesi’s funeral and couldn’t stop. People hugged her and offered soft words of consolation; others seemed surprised and touched that she was so upset by the death of a workman whom she hadn’t really known very well.
Darcy felt like a fraud.
She had known and liked Giuseppe, but her grief, she knew, was not entirely for him. She was mourning in part, for herself.
Things were falling apart on all sides. She had made no headway whatsoever with Sam. He didn’t seemed t
o be at all interested in resuming their love affair. None of her tactics were working.
Meanwhile, Sid Canin’s summary dismissal had rattled everybody at Brody Associates. Although Darcy was not particularly sorry to see Sid go, she didn’t like not knowing why he’d been fired. What had he done or not done? What had he said? If Sam had found fault with Sidney’s work, what was to stop him from examining her’s? What if he found some flaw in her work that he could use as an excuse to send her packing too?
Everything depended on her keeping her job. Shit, and she’d slept with the boss! She couldn’t believe the risk she had taken. Or the new risks she kept taking every day.
And of course Giuseppe was dead—a good man, a fine craftsman, his life cut short. It was so wasteful, so unnecessary.
God, what a world.
Entering the church with the other mourners, Darcy had exchanged a hug with Sam—the same friendly, comforting hug she had exchanged with everybody. Except it seemed that Sam had held her a little closer this time, and for longer than was strictly necessary.
Or had she imagined it?
She could tell that he too was very upset by the murder. He was one of the speakers during the service, and his words about Giuseppe were so warm and so emotional that he’d had most of his listeners in tears. At one point he’d choked up as he’d read a short selection from John Donne: “No man is an island, entire of itself… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
Listening intently, she’d been moved by his words, and proud of him.
Dammit, she still loved him so much!
She wondered about the blonde. Had he seen her again? Would he see her again soon? This coming weekend, perhaps? Or would he use the blonde and cast her off as casually as he had done with her?
Darcy felt a confused surge of anger.
She tried to convince herself that she knew Sam’s type— wealthy, sophisticated, single, and unable to commit to one woman. He was forty years old and had never married. In San Francisco, that would usually suggest he was gay, but she knew better—she’d heard too long a litany of Sam’s cast-off women.