by Eros, Marata
He knocked tentatively on the girl's locker room, the halls eerily empty of students.
Patrick Boel had a moment's foreboding flash across the little-used part of his brain most human's ignored.
Had he listened to that precognitive flash, he might have lived to dance another day.
He swung the door inward and saw a huge man fingering what he knew to be Miss Mackey's toe shoes.
Patrick was momentarily stunned to observe two things at once: he had eyes that were devoid of emotion and he was also quite certain they seemed familiar to him somehow. It would come to him.
Of course, it never did.
“What are you doing with Miss Mackey's things?” Patrick began, though his heart sped at the gaze that met his, frigid and indifferent.
The large male laid the slipper in the locker with a resigned sigh, giving a subtle signal of some kind to Patrick's right.
Patrick turned as a dark haired young man of about six feet one with the palest eyes he had ever seen, swung a long tube down in an effort to brain him. Patrick sidestepped easily, after all, he was naturally graceful, strong and fast.
But it was two against one.
Thad grabbed him from behind, Mitch landing the tube deeply in the strong gut of the premier ballet instructor on the west coast as Thad nearly twisted his head off the stem of his neck.
They collected the slumped and dead form of Patrick Boel.
There was no blood and the FBI did not find his body right away. Those pesky lockers hid a myriad of things.
It could have been called sloppy by some, but to their credit, they were trying to save the missing daughter of the Senator of South Dakota who was even now running for President.
While his unhinged firstborn was in possession of his stepdaughter and suspected in the deaths of twelve women.
Thad had let one clue slip, Boel interrupted him at precisely the moment when his perfect planning would have prevented such a clue being left.
A fine filament of foliage dropped from the sleeve of his coat, indigenous to a specific locale, the fleece having captured it when outside then releasing it as the temperature and environment changed to the steamy inside of a women's locker room. It fell away, landing on the satin slipper to later be discovered by the forensic team; it stood out from all other fibers present.
They knew where that semi-rare plant grew.
Now Cas raced like a black bullet through the night to a summer camp for rich kids. There two mentally deranged teens had come together and began plotting the deeds that would be discovered by a sheltered and misunderstood Jewell MacLeod. Her friend's death would be the catalyst for her attempt at a brave escape and a life out of the shadow of fear that surrounded her with Thad.
She’d never known about Mitch Maverick.
She did now.
There were no kids at the summer camp in December.
Cas had a feeling there were just three people there now. He hoped to extricate one.
The only one who mattered.
*
Jewell MacLeod
I came awake, my mouth dry and swollen from breathing through it, my nose a squished pancake on my face and most likely broken.
I wiggle my fingers and toes, my knee screaming at the small movement and I bite my lip to stifle the agony. Looking around I try to find anything that will allow my escape.
Seeing nothing, I feel my old friend, defeat, try to sink its teeth into me and I shake it off.
I promised Faith at her graveside that I would live, that Thad would be caught, that his brand of evil wouldn't make it into the next generation.
Instead, I'm immobilized on a dirt floor, my nose wheezing as I gulp desperate air into my lungs and my knee... I feel it with light fingers and it's already swollen, the jeans tight against the joint.
I sit up and my head spins. That's what I get for telling Mitch, or whoever the fuck he was, what I really thought of him.
He'd hauled off and belted me.
I was a slow learner, he'd knocked me unconscious for a second time.
Now my thoughts turned, those that were the last of my life... to Cas.
I wished I'd been brave enough to tell him what the truth was: I loved him.
That was all.
That was everything.
A hot tear slid and burned over my wounded face, the tremulous drop of sadness making a perfect circle of grief on the denim of my broken body.
If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't change my time with Cas. He had awoken me from a slumber I hadn't known I was in.
I was Sleeping Beauty and Cas had been Prince Charming. It's a cliché that I know now is the truth.
My thoughts shatter when I hear male voices, then the one who had been La Hunk comes into the narrow doorway, framed for kids and he looks at Thad. “Look who's awake, dancing girl.”
He makes me sick.
Thad doesn't say anything. Instead he meets my gaze and smiles.
I'd know that leer anywhere.
I don't think I have the strength to scream but I surprise myself, the birds lifting out of the trees in response to my curdled fear, the sheer terror awakening the things that roam the forest.
They recognize it for what it is and take heed, avoiding the area where a lone woman has come full circle, the predator and the prey together again.
Only one will be victor.
19
Mitch hauls me off the floor. “Shut your fucking mouth or I'll knock your teeth down your throat... Jewell.”
I shut my mouth, keeping it slightly open to breathe, my breath wheezing through my beaten nose.
Thad grabs my chin and jerks my face toward his and I flinch. He chuckles. “You did a number on her face.”
“You like?” Mitch asks with a thread of manic glee in his voice.
The bastard.
Thad slowly nods. “I think I do... such delicacy, so easily broken. Like a little china doll.”
He drops his hand and flicks a switchblade open. I stifle a whimper, my arms looped through Mitch's and held against his much larger body, it squeezes out of my mouth like the sound of pain it is.
“What are you doing, Thad?” I ask in a low voice, barely more than a whisper, my fear having swallowed its volume.
“I'm afraid Ben here got a little enthusiastic with a slow down for you.”
Who?
Thad looks at my face and laughs. “You didn't really think his name was Mitch Maverick did you?”
Actually, I was on autopilot, any kind of higher reasoning had gone out the window when they had beaten my ballet partner to death and bashed my knee in.
“I chose Maverick,” Mitch/Ben said next to my ear as I try to tear away from those hands.
He holds me tighter; I can hardly breathe.
“Don't. Bother,” he says. “You don't have a chance of escape, Jewell. Neither did Faith.”
My breath stops in my throat, arrested in a surreal moment of understanding.
“How do you think I got away with it, Jewell?” Thad asks softly.
I shake my head. Thad killed Faith. I heard him do it.
Thad shakes his head ruefully. “You were so sure about everything you found.”
Ben says, “It was a team effort and you were getting too nosy.”
The pieces came together like shards of jagged glass.
“Where?” I ask.
Thad's eyes narrow and Ben says, “Tell her. We can give her this before we fuck her six ways to Sunday.”
My soul groans. I thought it was Thad but it's not just him. They were working together all this time. And they would do to me what they had done to others.
“I made Ben's fortuitous acquaintance at the camp our parents banished us to each summer.” Thad gets a faraway look in his eyes and I watch him remember. “I found a kindred spirit in Ben,” he says with a wide grin.
Thad turns away, thunking the blade in a rhythmic pattern against his jeans, my eyes are mesmerized by it. “You should have seen
this coming.” His pewter eyes meet mine. “You wouldn't quit looking. Every time you found a neighbor's Fido, I would discover your snooping then threaten you.”
“And then your bitch sister told her little friend...” Ben says.
A look of radiance came over Thad's face. “She was a fighter.”
“Yes,” Ben breathes his agreement.
I can't help my reaction. The two bastard's discussing Faith fighting for her life like a dessert to be savored was too much. I got just enough clearance, driving my elbow into Ben's gut. He made a satisfying oof sound and I staggered away from him.
Thad was on me in seconds, spinning me around on a knee that was no longer flexible and perfect, it stiffly relented, toppling me into him. They'd taken everything from me.
“Kill me now you sick coward,” I hiss into his upturned face, as I gasp for air from my compromised nose.
“I will, Jewell,” he says, his eyes hold the promise of it. “But first, it will be my pleasure to take what you so freely gave that cop.”
What?
Thad laughs, shaking me until my teeth rattle, Ben moving up beside him. “Who'd you think Devin Castile was?”
The man I love.
But I'm struck dumb as more of the misery of my life topples down into puzzle pieces that suddenly fit with sickening clarity.
Transfer student. Looks older than he is. Has mini-vacations where I don't see him and he doesn't communicate.
Has a secret.
Thad watches me put it together and slowly nods. “I think sleeping beauty has been woken up,” Thad tells Mitch/Ben.
“Well let's start kissing her then,” Ben says.
I see the metal of the switchblade hiss as it zips along the seam of my jeans, tearing a razor sharp path from hip to ankle.
“No, please...” I beg.
“That swollen knee of yours gets in the way of our fun, Jewell,” Ben false-pouts.
They cut my jeans off because my knee's too wounded to tear them off.
When I'm standing on one leg in my panties and the thin shimmering top that seemed so beautiful when I danced with Cas at the club and now lays the barest covering across my body, I begin to plead in earnest.
Thad just shakes his head. “No Jewell, you're way beyond saving. If you'd just stuck around... maybe we could have struck up a bargain.”
I shudder. I know what kind of bargain he means.
The corners of his mouth turn down when he sees my expression. “Not too good to spread your legs for Castile.”
He grabs my sex like a snake and squeezes me painfully and I whimper.
Then all hell breaks loose as Ben's head explodes like a watermelon beside me, littering fragments of his sickened brains all over myself and everything around me.
*
Cas watches Thaddeus MacLeod grab his defenseless stepsister in the crotch with vicious intent and sees her face as he hurts her.
A place that Cas has loved with his mouth and the rest of him, tenderly.
His finger depresses the trigger before he consciously decides, the weight of the hammer striking and a heartbeat later, Benjamin Miller's head pops in a delicious shower of brain matter and blood.
One serial killer down, one to go.
Then MacLeod grabs Jewell and uses her as a shield.
*
“No!” I yell as gore falls like rain. In a state of shock, I gasp, trying to tear off the shirt that sticks to my skin in a bath of Mitch's blood. When Thad takes me against himself, I don't fight, my breaths coming in quick succession, the gorge of my belly rises helplessly inside my chest. I begin to shake and realize shock is overtaking me.
Just as I meet Cas's eyes.
That might not be his name, I realize a little randomly, as if from a distance. But there's truth in those eyes and care... and a hard edge that if I'd looked hard enough, I might have recognized for what it was.
What makes my heart stutter is that Brock stands beside Cas and they come as a team, then Thad has his hand on my throat, the bruising of his fingers will be a necklace of chartreuse thumbprints on my flesh for two weeks afterward.
“I'll break her neck, heroes,” Thad says with the ominous certainty of conviction.
My eyes move to Cas's face, his bulging biceps hold the gun steady on Thad, his thick neck richly decorated with tattoos that I've traced with my tongue, and a gurgling plea sweeps up inside my throat. I would give all that I am to be with him again.
His eyes flick to mine then away.
Cas pulls the trigger and a searing pain lances my head.
I feel arms release me and I fall as if in slow motion to the ground.
I am so cold. I lie still as I watch bodies in blue rush around me.
Only one set of eyes I recognize.
Eyes that eat the pupil in ebony totality meet mine, his mouth is moving but no sound is coming out. My ears ring and my body goes numb, something hot and warm slides into my vision. Copper pennies fill my mouth.
Then I'm in his arms. My nose works enough to smell the scents of Cas: mint, musk and male.
“Don't you leave me, Jewell,” I hear his urgent whisper.
Then I do.
*
later
The reporters have been camped outside the hospital for a week. Each day I ask the nurse the same question.
When will they go?
Her response is always the same, I don't know.
It is the story of the decade. I'm the story of the decade. The Presidential candidate's step-daughter discovered, saved by the FBI while his natural son is killed along with an accomplice.
Lone serial killers are rare enough, but a duo?
That I'd escaped relatively unharmed was being sensationalized across the globe. My eyes move to my knee hanging suspended by elaborate pulleys. The doctor says I'll have a brace and walk again.
His words stop when I ask if I'll dance.
He doesn’t know.
The news that Brock was actually Agent Luke Adams and was framed in an elaborate FBI ploy to entice Thad into a false sense of complacency had worked almost too well. He'd come out to play alright, he and... Mitch. Who'd never been who I thought, but a man named Benjamin Miller.
I haven't seen Cas. No surprise there.
The doctors gave me something to dry up my tear ducts, I've cried so much I can't open my eyelids, their angry and swollen slits have begun to interfere with the healing of my nose.
It's almost a good thing because upon hearing the news that Patrick Boel had been murdered and knowing what happened to Shelby, I wept my dry sadness into the uncaring hospital pillow.
It's a curse to know me. Boel is dead, Shelby too. Just like Faith.
Just when I believe my heart is a husk to be blown away on the wind, Carlie bursts through the door.
“Those goddamned butt-sucking leeches!” she yells into the still hospital room. “And that asshat outside the door did a anal probe so I could see you,” she whispers in an insulted voice.
Carlie moves toward me and her eyes tell me how bad my face looks.
“Does it hurt?” she asks and I shake my head.
Carlie's gaze shifts from my healing nose to the leg suspended awkwardly in a sling and sighs.
“I'm so glad it's over, Mackey,” she says.
You ever see anyone cry without tears?
Carlie hadn't but knew I was coming apart and held me while I sobbed my dry grief against her.
“Shush, Mackey... you're okay. You're okay.”
Carlie pulls away.
“I found out that stuff you wanted,” she says, handing me the newspaper since internet was off limits for a person just out of ICU.
I looked at the headline:
President's Daughter Escapes Death by Killing Partners
“Looks like the old parental unit won't be using the White House as their new 'hood,” Carlie says, her eyes on the paper.
I'd already heard. My stepfather had withdrawn his bid for the Presidency. After
all, how could he run for the highest office in America when he couldn't keep his personal house in order?
I set the paper on my lap and Carlie asks, “Can you believe Brock?”
I shake my head.
“He was an agent the whole time.” I knew that part but it still stung. They'd used me.
“Must've hurt when Cas beat the shit out of him.” I laugh then it turns into a cough. Carlie's brows pinch together in concern but I know this lying on my back shit is making me sick. I'm not accustomed to being immobile.
“Brock... I mean, Agent Adams, sure made it real enough... are the FBI allowed to hit the people they protect?” she asks and I shrug. “I'd love to be a fly on you-know-who's-hot-ass after he belted you. Authenticity-much?”
“Have you seen him?” Carlie asks in a whisper.
I don't meet her eyes. “I dream of him,” I say just as quietly.
“I'm sure there's a reason he hasn't come to see you. I mean, Mackey,” she looks into my green eyes, the roots of my hair grown out in a narrow copper stripe at the crown of my head, “he saved you. He came... he-”
“Don't say it, Carlie.” I can't stand the sympathy. I'm lucky to be alive when so many around me are not. That's what the media should be doing; celebrating their lives instead of focusing on an insecure woman.
“I have to, Mackey.”
I cross my arms and she ignores me.
“He couldn't tell you he was FBI; they'd tracked Thad to the school. He'd have blown his cover if he told you the truth.”
I glare at her, though it isn't Carlie I'm mad at.
“So fucking me against walls was part of his job description?” I ask.
She shrugs helplessly. “All I know is he's feelin' you, girlfriend. He was doing a job, and still wanted to be with you, y'know?”
I didn't know. I didn't want to know. Cas had lied. That was it.
He'd also saved me.