Pieces of Ivy

by Dean Covin

  She was relieved when the doctor said Roscoe would be okay. “Significant blood loss but, miraculously, the blade did only superficial damage to his liver and large intestine. He’s an extraordinarily lucky man.” Then he added, “And since he’s refusing to stay for more than a day or two, we’re all lucky.”

  Her legs were too sore to fight any longer. She slid into the bedside chair and sat quietly for about ten minutes, watching him. His face turned to her. “I brought a gun to a knife fight and lost. Not my brightest hour.” His chuckle hurt.

  “You saved my life regardless.” She touched his face. “Thank you.”

  He grinned his wicked grin. “You know where to plant it, baby.”

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, whispering this time, “Thank you, John.”

  He blushed. “I was kidding.” He was.

  “No you weren’t.” She smiled and left the room.

  An hour later, she signed her discharge papers and returned to his room. Rose sat by his side, holding his hand.

  “You okay?” Rose asked, handing Vicki her loaner Glock.

  Vicki nodded and smiled at Roscoe. “Thanks to your husband.”

  “You wanna thank me? Put on a hot little nurse’s uniform and mount up!” he said, slapping his thighs, trying to hide his wince.

  Seeing through his inability to take a real compliment, Vicki stroked his shoulder gently and whispered into his ear, “Maybe later.” She winked at Rose, who smiled back. Vicki wiggled toward the door, offering him a full show to linger upon. It was the least she could do.

  “I should deputize her.” He sighed.

  “You should behave,” Rose countered, knowing that was a long shot.

  † † †

  Cole looked from the report on his phone to the man dangling upside down from the rusting metal rafters. “You sell yourself short, my friend. I would have asked for more money—though I doubt your employers are as wealthy as mine. Regardless the attack was pretty stupid. It would’ve changed nothing.”

  Cole knew this guy wasn’t responsible for the first attack on Miss Starr and her partner. Had he not been chased out of town that night, he would have had his hooks in that little shit too. This guy had been hired after the other had failed—and now he gets to pay for his client’s persistence.

  He read further. “Ex-military. That practically makes us brothers”—he feigned a heavy sigh—“which makes this so sad. The problem is, she’s mine. Besides, you’re a bit of a disgrace. Using gasoline against a woman—especially with her history—that’s cold. Let’s warm you up.”

  “No. Please!”

  The man in the gray hoodie burst into flames.

  † † †

  As Vicki acclimated to the heavy, charred smell of the catacombs, she found Hank leaving the hidden chamber.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Oh, hey.” He scowled. “Total loss.” He nodded at her angst. “And, so far, we have no idea which entrance they used. Forensics is on it—they feel as shitty as Parsons.” He looked at her. “You okay?” Hank had left the hospital a couple of hours ago to check on the fire damage.

  She was sore, shaken, but would be fine. Viewing the carnage, Vicki did want a throat to choke, but that would change nothing.

  Hank texted an update to Kempt.

  “You can get a signal down here?”

  “The forensic team’s portable cell booster was one of the few things that survived—it’s just outside the door.”

  As proof, her jacket hummed. She answered.

  “I can’t believe why I’m calling you,” Charlie said. “In all my years, I’ve never dreamed of something this bizarre.”

  Vicki took a seat on a soot-soiled metal fuel barrel. It didn’t matter that it was dirty; she didn’t know if she could take this case anymore. Everything in her warned of another impending physiological bomb.

  “If I hadn’t found your blood on those clothes—” He was rambling, not hearing Vicki’s interruptions past his apologetic confusion. “I had no reason to check this—a total fluke. I never would’ve—”

  “Just tell me!” Her echoed yell drew Hank’s attention.

  “I found a match, Vicki.” If the pause was for dramatic effect, it only served to make her sick feeling thicken. Her beseeching, depleted eyes turned up to Hank as he stepped to her side.

  Charlie’s words caused Vicki Starr’s world to implode.

  Fifty-five

  “Your twin sister?” Hank could scarcely form the words.

  Vicki could barely nod. A soul will never attach to strangers, Sky had insisted.

  “Ivy Turner … your twin sister.”

  Her inflamed eyes filled from frustration rather than sadness. “I don’t”—her voice caught in her throat—“I don’t understand.” Tears spilled onto her hot cheeks.

  Hank scanned the irrelevant chamber for answers as confusion took hold. His face twisted in inexplicable loss. “Twins—that … doesn’t even make sense.” He turned and challenged the flame-gutted room again. “I mean, your birthdays don’t even match.”

  She shrugged. “So Dad lied—no big shock there.” Even with her hand braced on the barrel, her head spun. “No wonder my horoscopes were always off.” She couldn’t laugh. Had she just gained, or lost, two months of her life?

  “That’s not the worst of it,” she said.

  It was Hank’s turn to take a dirty barrel.

  “Charlie said that Ivy and I were the result of heteropaternal superfecundation—”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  She glanced up. “Fraternal twins … from two fathers.”

  “How the hell does that work?”

  “Because, apparently, good ol’ Mom had sex with Dad and another man at practically the same time.” She swallowed her shame. “Means I come from some pretty awesome stock.” She wiped her tears.

  Vicki envisioned her beloved mother … and her powerful father. The rage that the affair would have induced—Lionel Starr’s insistence that his wife discard the illegitimate infant. Vicki wondered now, how often had her mother looked into Vicki’s eyes and recalled only loss? The revelation tore at Vicki’s soul. Could a simple turn of fate have destined Vicki, rather than Ivy, to be gutted on the table?

  “This changes nothing about who you are.”

  “No, Hank, it changes everything.” She sobbed under the crushing weight of the revelation.

  Hank handed her a small packet of tissues from his pocket. “What are the odds of you landing your twin sister’s case?”

  She remembered her nightmare but said nothing.

  Hank had to stand, his face gray with confusion. He circled the room, combing his fingers through his hair. He turned to her, admitting, “This is fucked.”

  His barefaced exasperation with her personal hell actually made Vicki laugh.

  † † †

  “She’s in a hurry.” Cole followed the GPS tracking dot betraying Vicki’s location.

  He set his phone down on a stump so he could view the screen as he leaned against the log. The thick forest air was rich, warmed by the late afternoon sun. He pulled off his black jacket so he could expose his arm.

  Cole grew to love the needle’s pinch—delivering the experimental serum into his vein—like a man grows to crave the harsh bite of strong Scotch. Possessive of the surge that coursed through his muscles, he hoped it never cleared the go-ahead for human trials.

  He felt twenty years younger—and supercharged. The stronger grip, the faster reflexes—the endurance. His heightened senses and awareness were addictive. Sure, the more he used, the angrier—and more lascivious—he got, but he could live with that.

  As he watched her car, turn by turn, via the GPS tracker, he pictured her flawless young body a
nd pushed against the tension in his groin with the palm of his hand. “Soon,” he whispered, as the pulsing dot grew closer.

  † † †

  As Vicki pulled around her now-familiar corner, something new caught her attention. Her twisted gut pinched harder. The black vehicle protruding from the trees just past the berm belonged to the dark man; she was sure of it.

  Vicki wasn’t finished being angry. Parental betrayal can be the most vicious salt in any wound. Now she had a target for her rage. She pulled into the trees.

  “You’re not getting away this time, fucker.” She pulled her new weapon, confirmed the vehicle was empty and then stepped cautiously into the woods.

  † † †

  He watched through the trees. She had taken the bait. “Come, little fly.” All week he had watched her take this same road, sometimes three times a day—small town routine had grown on her. He had left just enough of his car exposed in the brush to catch her attention. Like the moth, drawn to its fiery fate, she drew in after him. Even with all her frights, the woman was obstinate. He liked that.

  He loved the thrill of stalking, but now the game had changed. He had been moving wide to flank her, but she spied him. “Clever girl,” he whispered, but the professional in him wasn’t happy that he had been seen so quickly—he liked it better when his prey didn’t know he was there.

  But Vicki Starr was better than most, and there was a shiny, strange stirring in him, a thrill that had never been present before. She was actually trying to stalk him—as if she had a chance. Most people were not so futilely brave or reckless.

  The firelight coursing through his muscles fueled his delight. Cole didn’t play games, but as it was afoot, something deep within him, something fresh, like a new childhood friend, wanted to play.

  He knew she thought she was following him, that she had the upper hand and would soon be able to strike. He let her feel that way. He wouldn’t need another delicious shot of his slow-burning adrenaline cocktail for hours. Until then he was superior in all ways.

  He also knew this part of the forest. He had studied it for days, and it was far removed from that hateful bitch on the dark side of the woods, far to his left.

  He allowed Vicki to follow him closer, toward the hidden entrance. Not because he couldn’t easily carry her limp body into it from anywhere out here, but because this was more fun. Maybe it was the new juice talking, but—unlike the dozens of meticulous, professionally executed jobs before her—this time he felt compelled to have some fun.

  And the little fly stalked the spider into his web.

  † † †

  She momentarily lost sight of him. She knew the man was moving fifty paces ahead of her when her periphery picked up something incongruent. There was a right angle among the soft contours of nature’s architecture.

  She should have ignored it, but the moss and decaying forest floor concealed something man-made, like a large buried frame on the ground, camouflaged around wet graying planks of heavy wood.

  A door, she thought. A black-gloved hand seized her face from behind as a pinch of icy pressure pushed into the side of her neck.

  Fifty-six

  His instructions were to keep her out of the way for exactly the time specified, then release her—alive. Do not fail, the message had said. I never do.

  Cole relished clockwork. If he was a slave to anyone, it was the temptress of time. So ordered and divine when worshiped and submitted to, she would then allow one to wield her to his advantage, let him slip in and out—strike and be gone. This was Cole’s claim to fame, and her gift for his servitude.

  He had to sequester Miss Starr for four hours, then release her alive. The instructions didn’t explicitly say unharmed.

  He deeply sniffed her scent again. He had smelled her clothes clean since seeing her that night during her midnight skinny-dip. Christ, he was horny. After pressing Send on his confirmation, Cole set his watch for precisely four hours and waited for his prey to stir.

  † † †

  Vicki moved to her feet and stood in the dark chamber, dizzy, as a voice spoke from the black behind the bright light. “I think you dropped these.” Her panties flew at her. He was the one who had stolen her clothes, watched her from the woods and took her—

  The disembodied hand aimed the muzzle of her missing Glock 23 at her belly and the voice commanded from the shadow, in a cold, cruel tone, “Strip.”

  She held her hand against the gleam. “What?”

  “Strip.”

  She started to tremble, offering only a quick, short shake of her head. She couldn’t see the man who was cast behind the light, but she imagined the silhouette beneath that streetlight outside her apartment. That scared her more. He shot between her knees and concrete sprayed, biting into the back of her denim-clad thighs.

  He laughed at her scream. He was feeling less professional, less disciplined. He knew his beloved injections were to blame, and he would have to get a grip on that … later.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  He didn’t know. The company of women had never been of much importance to him. A nice treat once in a while, but hardly a compulsion—it’s what set him apart, made him so formidable and incorruptible. His professional pride mattered less and less. Should he be concerned? At the moment, he wasn’t.

  “I want to humiliate you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just a stranger in the night.” He glanced at his watch. They didn’t have much more time together. He resisted his impatience, to prove his control to the beautiful, young, forbidden woman.

  The Glock barrel pressed Play on the dust-covered cassette player. Jackpot! Sweet serendipity. Cole rolled his head slowly to the Cowboy Junkies’ haunting cover of “Sweet Jane.” The FBI agent looked far more delicious when she was terrified. He grinned, aiming at her pelvis. “Strip.”

  He loved how the nervous shake of her head contrasted with the vengeance burning in her eyes as she complied.

  He decided the cool, musty smell of this subterranean chamber augmented her terror, like being entombed in a buried cinder block. He relished the way her fingers trembled as she struggled to unbutton her jeans. She issued every plausible threat, and, yet, she obeyed under lethal intimidation.

  His brain was on fire—its torment: ecstasy. His greatest desire was to push her mouth onto him and drive past her tonsils, repeatedly. Was that too much to ask—or too little? The tight firmness against his hand answered, yes. But his mistress was jealous. She was letting her gifts of time slip away as he spent his focus on another. Time was running too short.

  “Strip!”

  He could tell she felt the heat on her skin from his hidden gaze rather than the lamp.

  Close was so much better than from trees or through a distant window in the dark. He could smell her, raw, from here—a fusion of body and fear. Oh, he wanted her to finish him. Those lips, so soft, so lush, especially when trembling.

  But he was not stupid. Even if he had the barrel pressed to her head, kitty might bite, and he preferred his utility intact. Besides, then he would have to kill her. His handler wouldn’t be happy—never was with anyone who went off script.

  She looked mouthwatering. “Open yourself to me … Good. Very good.”

  She was trembling.

  “Come closer.”

  She shook her head.

  He leveled the gun. “Closer.”

  The deed was about impact over tactile sensation anyway, so he resigned to keep his glove on and reached from the darkness into the light. “Don’t move.” She froze. He pushed his fingers between her legs then forced them up and in.

  Vicki released a small cry, and, as she heard his low, dark chuckle, she whispered her shuddering threat, “I’m going to kill you.”

  Fear smelled better than sex, but b
oth combined was ravenous ecstasy.

  This time there was no peaceful sedation. Her eyes were too wet and straining against the harsh light to see the coming blow.

  † † †

  Vicki stirred against the cool wash of forest air over her skin—her head throbbing. She quickly sealed her audible moan as she tried to orient her mind. Only recalling the quick beeps from his watch and then the sharp flash of pain, which hemorrhaged into a disorienting pounding inside her skull, Vicki stared up at the skeletal fingers of Cherrybrook’s deadwoods reaching to choke out the early evening sky.

  Where had he dumped her? She rolled her head, left to right, against the sharp, drying grass and saw the burned effigy of the former church watching her lying naked in the center of the bone yard.

  Squinting against the shadowed brightness, she prayed her clothes were tossed there with her. They weren’t. When she heard the voices, she rolled quickly behind a large, crumbling headstone, rushing for modesty.

  They were young, male—a number of them, laughing and swearing—coming around the far side of the church. In her panicked haste, she called out hello for help and immediately cursed herself for it.

  “Hello?” a young, maliciously curious voice responded.

  Eight of the Hoods rounded the corner. Seeing her crouched behind the broken stone the leader cried, “Holy fuck, boys, the bitch is naked.”

  Another backslapped two of his mates. “It’s Christmas, boys!”

  “She really must want us.”

  Vicki bolted for the darker tree line behind her. She dodged this tree and that, the terrible timberland remembering her, wanting her flesh, again—so accessible now. The pack was fast. They howled behind her with ravenous delight.

  “Wait!” one yelled to her. “We want to help you.”

  Another cackled. “Yeah, get off!”

  They all laughed and bolstered their torment.

  This was bad. She knew these boys would make good on their vicious threats: use her, defile her and then make her disappear—these young fiends, the type not wanting to be caught, but unafraid of the consequences. She needed to reach the bridge, to force faith that its terror was real and would have the potential to stop them, but praying that she could push through somehow, even with this level of fright amplified.