Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  Baldy jumped up out of the chair, holding a .38 Special in his hand, his pale blue eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. Ted bit back a laugh at the smaller man’s comical expression, holding his own gun casually in front of him.

  “Drop the gun,” he said. “I want to talk.”

  “You with Delilah?” Baldy said.

  “The lady thief?”

  Baldy nodded, licking his lips, eyes flicking between Ted’s face and the Beretta.

  Delilah. So, this guy knew his thief after all. Not Donna. Delilah. A fitting name for her. Temptress, liar, destroyer of strong men. His Delilah. Ted was giddy with this discovery. He wanted more, to know everything about this woman.

  “Delilah,” he whispered, savoring her name the way he’d run a good aged scotch over his tongue. Then he said, louder, “Drop the gun.”

  The guy tossed the .38 onto the bed and backed away, toward the front door.

  “Look, man, I don’t want any trouble. I was just going to ask her some questions. But I don’t have to do that.” Baldy kept backing up as he babbled.

  “Shut up and sit down,” Ted said, kicking the chair toward him. He guessed he made a wonderfully imposing figure, all in black plastic with the black gun and latex gloves. Maybe the guy thought he was a pro hit man or something. Dangerous. Powerful.

  Ted had never felt any real need to dominate men or scare them. They didn’t matter, not really. He was an alpha male and that sort of thing didn’t need proving. Men understood. They only had to look at Ted’s car, his beautiful home, his clear and perfectly tanned skin, his six-pack abs and nicely cut, but not too large, muscles. Other men just knew they weren’t as handsome or successful. Men bought into the façade easily.

  It was the women who needed reminding. Women tried to control him, to change him. Women talked with their eyes, needing to be shown their place, to be taught what to care about. Men understood, could read the signs of an alpha staking his claim on life. It was always the women who tried to ruin things.

  Baldy glanced at the door behind him, then sighed. He stepped forward and sat in the chair, taking quick breaths.

  Ted held still for a long moment, letting the tension build. Then he strode forward quickly. He slapped away the man’s hands as they came up to protect his face at the last moment and smashed the pistol’s butt down into the scared little man’s temple.

  The guy passed out, sagging down in the chair. Ted grabbed his hunting kit from the back patio and went to work securing the man. He used a couple zip ties to bind his hands behind his back. Then he yanked him down onto the floor as Baldy started to wake up. A length of rope bound the man’s legs.

  Ted pulled a knife from the kit and sat down in the chair, letting his foot rest on the bound man’s stomach. Slowly the pale blue eyes opened and fixed on him, confusion and fear swirling through Baldy’s expression.

  “Now,” said Ted. “Tell me all about Delilah.”

  Fourteen

  Turned out Baldy’s name was Jimmy and he broke easily. Which worked well for Ted, since he wasn’t sure about cutting up a man. No joy in it, no true lesson, nothing beautiful about a man’s pain.

  “She’s a thief, that’s all I know,” Jimmy said, his voice an irritating whine. “Does she owe you money or something?” The little man kept trying to pull information out of Ted, though he wasn’t as sly about it as he might have thought. Fear overrode manipulative ability, apparently.

  Ted sat in the chair and ran his fingers over the small packet of lock-picking tools he’d taken off Jimmy. Lock-picking tools. Something didn’t add up.

  There was an IV bag, but no pills or medications. Bloody towels were balled up in the bathtub, soaked in cold water. Traces of iodine in the sink. The bed was rumpled, clothes still hung in the closet. Clothes that smelled like his Delilah, clean soap and that indescribable scent of woman, pure and untainted. A pair of silver, strappy fuck-me heels, as Ted thought of them, and Nike running sneakers were the only shoes. Size five and a half.

  Small feet, he liked that. It fit her slender form, his image of her lithe body writhing against him.

  It looked as though she were just out; leaving this stuff here, ready to return. Ted left Jimmy curled on the floor and walked back over to the closet. He picked up one of the running shoes.

  Clean tread, almost no wear. New shoes or else she wasn’t much of a runner.

  Ted bet they were new. A woman didn’t survive what she’d survived without being in excellent shape. And he’d touched her body, if only all too briefly. Delilah worked out.

  Lock picks. For a sliding glass door? Ted had assumed that Jimmy was the one who opened the back door and left it unlocked behind him. Delilah wouldn’t have left the door unlocked, she didn’t seem the type to be that stupid, not injured as she’d been.

  “The door, you picked the lock?” Ted turned back to Jimmy and kicked the man in the ribs to get his attention.

  Jimmy groaned. “Yes. I told you. I just wanted to ask her what she was doing here. She’s yours, I don’t care. Just let me go, man. I’m gone.”

  “Which door?”

  “What?” Jimmy squinted up at him. “The front door. Jesus.”

  Ted froze and looked around the room again, turning in place to get a full three-sixty view.

  “Fuck,” he said. He’d missed her. This bumbling, stupid, useless beta male had fucked it all up. Delilah would be miles away by now, headed who knew where. She’d escaped him.

  Rage burned white inside him, rising like acid into his throat. He picked up the knife and bent over Jimmy.

  Jimmy struggled, seeing the anger in Ted’s face, accurately reading his intent.

  “Help,” he screamed, too late. “Somebody help—”

  Ted cut him off with the knife, slicing deep into the pathetic man’s vocal chords. Then he stood back and watched Jimmy’s body twitch for a long moment. Thick red blood gurgled sluggishly out of the wound after the initial rush from the blade coming out.

  Ted watched and waited to see what he would feel. He’d never killed a man before. Disappointment, perhaps? Had he killed the idiot too soon, missed some bit of knowledge about Delilah that he needed, missed the key to finding her? He doubted it.

  Other than the mild worry he’d missed asking a few questions, Ted felt nothing. No rush of elation, no arousal. He could have been staring down at the dishwasher after he’d finished loading it for all he felt.

  That, too, disappointed him.

  Delilah. Ted shoved off his annoyance at the dead body and stepped in close to the wall that neighbored the next unit over. The rain made it difficult to hear but he made out the sound of a TV going. Good. The dead man’s scream, which had sounded loud in the small room, likely hadn’t traveled much beyond these walls.

  Delilah had left in a hurry it looked like. Probably as soon as she heard the idiot at the door with his lock picks. She was a professional, Jimmy had confirmed that, though Ted had already assumed as much from the jewelry and other evidence. And she’d gotten medical care, the IV bag was evidence of that.

  Ted sat on the bed, fingering the plastic tubing. The bag was almost empty. He ran his hand over the dented pillows and then bent down low, rubbing his nose into them. Something tickled his skin and he carefully lifted a hair from the pillows. It was short, about the length of his middle finger, and black.

  Delilah was a blonde, wasn’t she? He rose and went back to the closet. Extra blankets were stacked on a shelf above the clothes hangers. Ted yanked them down and grinned at the small bag behind them.

  He pulled it down and unzipped it. Wigs, two of them, in plastic and carefully packaged. One was short, cut in a page-boy style, and auburn, the other long and brown. Both were good quality and made of real human hair. There wasn’t a blonde one, but Ted guessed she’d shed it either in the car or while running away from his home.

  Dark Delilah. Her frightened, exotic features better fit a dark-haired image. Ted’s heartbeat picked up, his fingers tingled. She
’d left in such a hurry, so what else had she left behind?

  He tore the room apart; searching underneath the mattress and slicing open the box-spring beneath. He emptied the trash, pulled up the corners of the carpet, and came up empty.

  Jimmy’s bowels had given way when he died and the room reeked of drying blood and shit. But Ted couldn’t leave yet. Not without some hint.

  He picked up the phone and hit redial. It picked up after one ring, beeping twice and then silence. A pager or an automated message machine. Curious, Ted punched in the numbers on the hotel phone and hit the pound key.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and waited. The clock’s minutes turned over once. Twice. Then the phone rang.

  Ted picked it up but didn’t say anything.

  “Delilah?” A man’s voice yelled through the line, “Goddamnit, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’m wondering the very same thing,” Ted said, amused. “Who’s this?”

  Silence then, and Ted wondered if the man would hang up on him.

  “Who the fuck are you, pal?” the man said after a moment.

  “I’m going to kill Delilah,” Ted said. “And anyone who gets in my way.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” the man said, and the line went dead.

  That had been amusing, but ultimately fruitless. However, Ted guessed his little warning might create a few questions for his Delilah. She’d called this guy at a time when she had to have needed a lot of help, injured like that. She might get in touch with the angry fellow again.

  Ted took a deep breath and regretted it. Damn dead body. He needed a new plan, a next step.

  Jimmy had spilled the information about the job that wasn’t going to happen, though Ted hadn’t cared about the particulars. Ted doubted that anyone was still using the meeting hotel anymore, or that this Al man would know more than Jimmy had. It would be his next stop, however. He couldn’t give up on Delilah yet, she wasn’t allowed to win.

  She was out there. Living, breathing. Knowing she’d beaten him, escaped him. Laughing at him.

  Ted’s eyes settled on the square vent. This hotel had central air. He hadn’t taken apart the walls yet.

  Heart starting to race again, Ted picked up the bloody knife and cut into the drywall around the vent, prying the covering loose.

  It came away with a few hard tugs. The screws were loose; the vent had already been tampered with.

  Tucked inside was a little cloth wallet, like a traveler might carry against his body in a foreign country. Delilah hadn’t had time to pry open the vent and retrieve it. Ted grinned. She’d left him a present, a clue. Clearly the universe was still on his side.

  The pouch contained two hundred dollars in cash, two keys on a ring, and a Georgia driver’s license with the name “Lily Chung” on it. The tiny picture was his Delilah, however, staring dark-eyed and quiet. It was basically the same picture that was on Donna Utley’s driver’s license, only with dark hair instead of blonde. A woman of many names, it seemed. Deceitful Delilah.

  And there was an address. Atlanta, Georgia. Ted had never been there. But he knew that when humans were injured and scared and on the run, they all wanted somewhere safe, somewhere familiar. It was human nature, plain and simple. She might be special, but she was just a girl in the end, and she’d run home.

  Run right to him.

  He called the airport from the hotel phone. There was one flight left tonight from Daytona to Atlanta, leaving in less than two hours. Ted booked a seat. She’d either be on the same flight, he guessed, or driving home. Either way, he’d arrive before she did or catch her on the plane. He’d have to ditch the gun and his car, but that was all right.

  He had no plans to use a gun on his little Delilah anyway.

  Ted tucked her picture into his pocket. One last thing to do before he caught his flight. He didn’t want Delilah to think she’d gotten away. It was time to put a little pressure on his prey.

  Before slipping out the back door, he dialed nine-one-one and left the phone off the hook.

  Fifteen

  The orange glow of the low-fuel light caught Delilah’s attention. She slammed her fist down onto the steering wheel, cursing her luck. Pain stabbed through the painkilling fog and she winced.

  The rain fell hard enough to bounce off the road, leaving a bright mist in front of her headlights and turning the tail-lights of the cars ahead into dim patches of bloody water. There was an exit coming up. She’d made it out of Daytona, almost to Jacksonville.

  Not close enough, however. She’d hoped for another sixty, seventy miles, to at least get away from the rain.

  The drugs swathed her mind in a thick cloud, but the pain waited along the edges, testing the boundaries every time she shifted or took a deep breath. It was hard to think, to process anything. She just wanted to be home already. Then she’d sleep for a year. Heal and figure out what had gone so wrong.

  She’d made mistakes here in Daytona, she knew that. Delilah was young, but she’d grown up around professionals. She’d figure out what she’d done wrong and make damned sure she never repeated the stupid things.

  Delilah knew bad men. Men who killed without a thought if they had to. She’d even met a pro hit-man, a guy working for an outfit. He’d cut a deal with her father, weeks before the crime that got Benny incarcerated. She remembered that man’s eyes. Cold, empty.

  Not at all like the eyes of the man who’d stabbed her. His had been warm, intense. Bile rose in her throat as she merged into the exit lane and remembered the feel of his lips on hers as he swallowed her scream.

  He’d been so fast, so strong. Miles away and safe, she still shivered.

  The men she knew killed when they had to, when they needed to protect themselves, either from physical danger or from jail. A good thief should never have to hurt anyone. Benny and Colin had taught her that. A good con man stayed ahead of everyone and a good thief was gone long before the crime got reported.

  Delilah blinked hard and the dead staring eyes of the woman’s severed head flashed across her closed lids.

  Teddy wasn’t a professional. He was a predator. Probably a serial killer, though she’d only seen one head. But he’d stabbed her without thinking and his words to her, those whispered promises: those were the words of a man with plans for more.

  “Shh, stupid girl. I’ll be right back for you,” Delilah said the words from her memory. He hadn’t killed her because he hadn’t finished with her yet. It would have been easy for him to pull out the knife and finish the job. He was strong enough that he could have just broken her neck.

  But he hadn’t wanted her dead. Not yet.

  Alone in the car as it floated through the rain like a submarine, Delilah let the hot tears slide down her cheeks. She’d made so many mistakes and that man had almost killed her. With the space to think, finally, it hit her how close she’d been to really dying. Dying horribly. A man who kept a woman’s head in his freezer probably wasn’t the type to kill her quick.

  The car’s engine stuttered as she reached a stop light and Delilah forced her attention back to the road. She ran the back of her arm across her face, rubbing the tears out with one sleeve.

  She had no money, so a gas station was out of the question. If she hadn’t been injured, she would have just done a gas and run, but she didn’t want to take the chance that an attendant was paying attention. So that left the options of either finding some money, or stealing a new car.

  The neon light of a sign caught her attention. A bar. Delilah nursed the dying car into the parking lot and twisted the ignition switch to kill the engine. She noted that the fuel needle rested at the midpoint. Stupid broken things. The owner clearly didn’t take care of his or her things.

  Him. The name on the registration in the glove box confirmed that. She searched the car for anything useful, coming up with a few pennies and a dime. She took the change and the screwdriver.

  Delilah thought about popping another pain pill but pushed it away. She wanted
her head clear, or at least as clear as it was going to get. She dashed across to the awning of the bar, hood up against the rain. There were a few cars in the parking lot and traffic was steady on the road. All the cars she could see were more modern models, nothing cheap and easy to break into or hotwire.

  Movement and light caught her eye. Across the parking lot from the bar was a garage, one of the bay doors open. Dim gold light spilled out into the rain, refracting off the water. Two men stood under the protection of the raised door, smoking cigarettes and talking. One man rested his foot up on an older model Buell motorcycle. The harsh bark of laughter sent a shiver down her spine. The guy resting his foot on the bike turned and seemed to look across the parking lot at her.

  Too many people, too much traffic. Stealing a car here was going to be a problem.

  No, she told herself, not a problem. Just a challenge. Stop making mistakes. Stop rushing.

  With a sigh, Delilah walked into the bar. She was cold, exhausted, and hurting. She needed a minute to think. Just for a minute. Get warm, reason out her next plan, then she’d go. She was nearly an hour outside Daytona now. There was no way killer Teddy could find her here.

  So why did she still feel like a rat on the run?

  The heat inside the bar blasted into her and she started to shiver. Smoke and beer and peanuts assaulted her nose and her sandals crunched on the floor as she moved further into the bar. She slid along one wall, taking in the place, the patrons. Looking for the rear exit. She needed an exit if she wanted to stop hyperventilating.

  Delilah had been in a lot of bars and this one had a pretty typical layout. Booths lined one wall, with a couple small tables scattered around the room. There was a pool table off to one side and two young men leaned on it, chatting with a blonde waitress whose skin had seen too much sunlight and many better days. The bar ran in a half moon through the back of the room, with one bartender washing glasses. He glanced her way.

  Delilah pushed her hood off her head and ran a hand through her hair. Through a side hallway were the restrooms and at the back of that hall was the fire exit. She walked past the ladies’ room and checked the door for an alarm. None, just the bright friendly glow of the exit sign. Her heartbeat slowed.