Table of Contents
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Title Page
Chapter One
About the Author
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PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI
“Sensational . . . masterful . . . brilliant.”
—New York Post
“(A) chilling tale of obsessive love from Thriller Award–winner Zandri (Moonlight Weeps) . . . Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . . Oh, what a story it is . . . Riveting . . . A terrific old school thriller.”
—Booklist “Starred Review”
“Zandri does a fantastic job with this story. Not only does he scare the reader, but the horror
show he presents also scares the man who is the definition of the word “tough.”
—Suspense Magazine
“I very highly recommend this book . . . It's a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists . . . Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”
—Life in Review
“(The Innocent) is a thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.”
—The Times-Union (Albany)
"The action never wanes."
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting."
—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years
"Tough, stylish, heartbreaking."
—Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Savages and Cartel.
“A tightly crafted, smart, disturbing, elegantly crafted complex thriller . . . I dare you to start it and not keep reading.”
—MJ Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Halo Effect and Closure
“A classic slice of raw pulp noir . . .”
—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
“It was the only ambition I ever had—not to be a dancer or a Hollywood movie star, but a housewife in a good marriage.”
— Doris Day
They were unstoppable.
Tara and her good friend Allison.
When I came through the door of Allison’s single-story, ranch style home which was located in a wooded neighborhood a few miles west of my own, they were already in bed.
“We’re in here!” Tara called out.
I hesitated. Was this an invitation of some kind? I didn’t wait for an answer. I went with my gut and made my way down a long corridor with a polished wood floor until I came to an open bedroom door. The room was dimly lit, and the curtains were closed on the windows, but I could sense movement inside. When I poked my head in, I could see them both.
Tara and Allison together, in bed.
I took the room for the former master bedroom since it was so big, and the bed that occupied its center was a king-sized job with a large metal frame. The sheets were black and silky, and Allison’s long, lush hair blended in with them. She was kissing Tara, and both their sets of hands were playfully petting one another’s breasts. Their panties were still on, but as I approached the bed, Tara slowly peeled off Allison’s. Allison rolled onto her back while Tara made her way south and settled between her legs. Allison opened her legs, and Tara began to use her mouth on her pussy.
I was torn because part of me just wanted to stand there and watch, but another part of me wanted to strip naked and join in. I decided to take a seat on the small wooden stool that was set in front of a makeup table. The table supported a large mirror, so I could watch them in the mirror if I preferred. Watching Tara work on Allison in the mirror made the scene all the more surreal, but at the same time, sexy as all hell.
Allison ran her hands through Tara’s thick sandy blonde hair. She wrapped her hands around her head and pulled her into her pussy like she couldn’t get enough. Allison was heaving her chest up, her small but pert titties and nipples standing at rapt attention. Her eyes were closed, but every now and then she’d open them to watch Tara’s mouth and tongue working on her pussy. It was causing her to moan and sigh with a pleasure so profound I could feel it in my sternum.
It became impossible for me to stand idly by just watching. So, when Tara lifted her head, turned to me over her shoulder and said, “What are you waiting for, Vic? Are you going to fuck me or what?” I stripped myself of all my clothes and knelt on the bed behind her. Entering her took almost no effort since she was so wet, so ready for me. I was rock hard, and I knew if I went too fast, I would finish way too soon and I’d be back to just watching.
Making love to two women would take a special effort on my part.
It would take patience and discipline. It would take pacing. I wanted badly to please them both. I wanted to make them both cum before I came.
Two weeks had passed since the tragic death of Tara’s long-time husband. No police inquiries had been made into what was being described as a tragedy since her husband hadn’t even seen his fiftieth birthday yet. He’d simply drank one too many and, while heading downstairs to his man cave, met his fate on a stair tread that must have come loose over time. Tara’s husband never was much of a handyman around the house.
The handyman, as it turned out, was me.
During that two-week time span, I’d rewritten Obsessive Compulsive and started on the opening chapters of what would be my first big novel, Savage Sins, both of which used some of the details of the “tragic accident.” The loose stair tread…the big man dropping through the stairs…his chin bouncing off the stair tread directly below the loosened one…his body rearing back…the back of his skull bouncing off the concrete…the melon sound it made when it cracked…the blood that immediately began to pool around the crushed skull . . . the crimson red blood.
It all made for some vivid writing.
I resent Obsessive Compulsive to the editor who’d requested a second look once I’d rewritten. He accepted the piece, and it was scheduled to run later in the fall of the year. The elation I’d felt when I received not a full manuscript back in the mail, but instead, only an eight by ten inch typed letter telling me how honored the magazine would be to publish my gut-wrenching, heart-pulsing piece, was incomprehensible. They also informed me I would be receiving a check for five hundred dollars upon publication.
It was the most money I’d ever made as a writer.
I couldn’t wait until Stella got home to share the news. I used the credit card to buy a mid-range bottle of champagne. Mid-range or not, I chilled it in a bucket of ice which I set out on the dining room table along with two champagne glasses left over from New Year’s Eve. When Stella got home, looking beautiful and sexy in her short brown skirt, loose-fitting white button-down, and tall black leather boots, she raised her eyebrows.
“What are we celebrating, Vic?” she asked.
I showed her the letter. Her face lit up. She cared after all. She really cared. It was an amazing feeling. I wondered if Mackey had felt this good when he first showed her his acceptance letter for his new novel. A man always wants to make his woman happy, to make her proud. I was that kind of man. I wanted Stella to brag about me to her friends, to tell the world about me. I wanted her to be proud to be walking arm in arm with me along a busy city street.
I wanted her complete devotion.
Pulling the bottle from the ice, I popped the cork. We drank two glasses each. Then I took hold of her hand, pulled her over to the couch. Turning her around, I pulled up her skirt and pulled down her black satin panties, f
orced her to kneel on the couch. I crouched and used my tongue on her heart shaped ass, flicking the tip of my tongue in and out of her tight hole. Stella loved when I tongued her rim, and her moaning with pleasure was proof. At the same time, I ran my fingers over her pussy, gently sliding two of them into her soaking wetness. There was too much room inside it, so I used three fingers, and when that wasn’t enough, I used four. I worked my tongue while finger fucking her, and it was all she could do not to scream aloud when she came.
Standing, I pulled out my cock and slowly entered her from behind. Suddenly, her pussy felt as tight as it did hot.
“Fuck me with everything you’ve got, Vic,” she whispered passionately.
I took hold of her long hair, yanked her head back. Then, I slapped her hard on the ass. So hard, I left a red mark with the imprint of my hand. She made a little crying noise with each slap. She loved the pain, the sting, the shock and awe of it all. I was fucking her so hard I thought I might hurt her until I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I pulled out, brought my cock around to her face. She quickly pulled back her hair and opened her mouth wide. When I released, she took it all in, and when I was done, she took my entire cock into her mouth and down her throat.
Less than a minute later, we sat half-clothed on the couch and finished off the champagne. We laughed and chatted it up for the first time in I don’t know how long. It felt really good.
It felt like that was as good as life could get.
Like I said, I not only had success with Obsessive Compulsive during that two-week period, but I’d also made terrific progress with Savage Sins. In the past, the words came very slowly. So slowly it had been like carving granite with my fingertips. But now, the words flowed with relative ease. It was a murder mystery that took place in Albany, and it was about a writer whose wife was cheating on him with another writer. But the husband was having trouble coming up with a story, so he made friends with his wife’s illicit affair in order to steal the novel of his competition. Once the deed was done, and the novel had been published with great fan fair, the husband was confronted by his wife’s lover who was angry as all hellfire. The husband had no choice but to kill the man and dispose of the body.
Turned out, it was easy to write about writers since I was one of them. I used Stella as my model for the wife, and Mackey as my model for her illicit lover. More importantly, I put to use every ounce of experience I’d collected as Tara’s handyman. I had it all planned out in my mind. In the novel, I would kill him by loosening the floorboards on his basement staircase. When he came home one night, drunker than a skunk, and decided to head down into his basement writing studio, he’d suffer a terrible accident.
It’s all there in Savage Sins. The grisly details.
The head smashing against the concrete, the blood pool, the slightly ajar mouth, the wide eyes, the whites quickly fading, the final, eternal exhalation of air leaving the lungs…It was a beautiful thing. In two weeks’ time, I was able to write twenty thousand words. At that rate, I’d be done with the novel in another three weeks. After that, a quick edit, and then the manuscript would be off to an agent I had chosen through some careful internet research. A slick New York agent who represented a certain author I knew.
An author named Mackey.
Kneeling behind Tara, I worked her slowly but hard at the same time. I watched them pet one another, their mouths connected, their tongues played, the nipples on their pale full titties as erect as my cock. Turning to me, as if on cue, they both smiled.
“It’s about time,” Tara said.
“I was getting worried,” Allison said. “I thought you said your handyman was horny.”
“He is,” Tara said, her voice trembling from my thrusts. “You just wait and see. He’s got enough for both of us.”
I couldn’t help it. I came like it was my first time. And just like that, I was hard again.
Later, we sat around the table in Allison’s kitchen, the girls wearing T-shirts and panties, me dressed back in my trousers and button-down shirt, the tails hanging out. We were drinking coffee spiked with Jameson. Irish coffee. We spent some time getting better acquainted and laughing about stupid things until it came time to get down to business.
“Tara tells me you have a way of fixing things,” Allison said, both her hands wrapped around her coffee cup as if it were cold inside the kitchen.
I nodded.
“I helped Tara when she needed it most,” I said. “How can I help you, Allison?”
She glanced at Tara, bit down on her bottom lip nervously.
“I have a problem,” she said.
“What kind of problem?” I asked, knowing full well her answer.
She finger-combed her long, lush black hair so that it parted over her right eye.
“It’s my husband,” she said. “We’re legally separated, but he won’t leave.”
“Do you have children?”
“No kids.” She shook her head. “There’s no reason for him not to leave, other than to torture me.”
I stood from the table, took a look around the kitchen. It was a modern kitchen. Maybe that’s not exactly right. It was more like a retro kitchen, modeled after something from the 1960s only with updated appliances. Like I said, the house was a ranch, probably constructed right after World War Two. It had obviously been gutted and refurbished relatively recently. In the past five years or so. The counters were covered in stainless steel, the appliances were also stainless steel, the gas stove contained six burners and a giant exhaust hood. There was a wine cooler and not one sink, but two. One for drinks, the other for cooking. The wood table we had been sitting at was long and black and probably came from Ikea, along with its matching chairs.
Some serious money had definitely been dumped into this place.
“You’ve got one hell of a setup here,” I said. “Maybe that’s why he doesn’t leave. He probably thinks he owns the house more than you do.”
“He’s got enough money to build another one,” Allison said, stealing a drink of her coffee. “Believe me.”
I took a walk into the living room. It wasn’t separated from the kitchen by a wall. In fact, there were no walls separating anything other than the bedrooms and bathrooms which were located at the back side of the house. There were exterior walls of course, but they were made of brick that had been painted hospital white. The walls were otherwise bare. No framed photos of Allison and her husband, no photos of them together or apart. No kids, no dogs, no extended family. Just nothing.
“What’s his name?” I asked from where I stood on the bare wood living room floor.
Both Tara and Allison looked at me.
“Andrew,” Allison said. “Andrew Craig.”
“What’s he look like?”
That’s when Tara got up. “I’m going to take my leave, and allow you two to discuss this matter on your own.”
“Oh no,” Allison said, a pout on her pretty face. “Does that mean Sex Club is over for today?”
“There’s always next week,” Tara said with a smile.
She pushed her chair in, left the kitchen area and went back into the master bedroom. When she came back out less than a minute later, she was fully dressed. She looked beautiful, her blue eyes lighting up the otherwise cold and barren room. Allison got up from the table, walked her to the front door. The two embraced, and then kissed one another gently on the mouth. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d bet their true relationship had not so much to do with erotic pleasure or consensual experimentation—the Sex Club—but instead had to do with real love, real friendship.
They trusted one another.
Maybe that’s why Tara felt confident about introducing me to Allison. She knew I might be able to help her. And in helping her, I might also help myself and my work. The relationship would be mutually beneficial. It was as if I had suddenly entered into a secret organization—an underground organization—that I had no idea existed in the suburbs. A club in which these beautiful, proud women
, were being victimized.
They would be victimized no longer, now that they had someone like me to help them. Someone who, unlike the police, was willing to help them without humiliation, without fear, without remorse. Someone who could give them the finality they needed and, what was equally important, revenge. I was their way out of the horror. I was their handyman.
Tara left, and Allison locked the door behind her.
She turned to me.
“I want to show you something that will explain a lot, Vic,” she said. “Come with me.”
Together we entered a room located across from the master bedroom. A big desk took up much of the far wall. The desk was neat, tidy, and didn’t appear to be used for anything but show. It contained a desk lamp, a pen holder, and a desk mat, but otherwise . . . nothing. No phone, no computer, no papers.
The opposite wall contained a tall glass and wood cabinet. Stored inside it were numerous pistols and long guns. The cabinet was locked. To my right was a closet, and the wall to my direct left supported a pair of double-hung windows that looked out onto the back lawn.
“This is my husband’s office,” Allison said, “if you haven’t already guessed.”
I nodded. I might have mentioned that, like the rest of the house, the office was sterile, dead, cold. Like a morgue. But why state the obvious?
“What is it you wish to show me, Allison?”
She went around the desk, reached under the top center drawer, produced a key that was stored there.
“Andrew has no idea I know where he keeps this key,” she said as she unlocked the top drawer, which also unlocked all the desk drawers. Setting the key on top of the desk, she opened the top drawer, came back out with a framed photo. She set it on the desk.
I stepped over to the desk, picked up the picture. It was a middle-aged man dressed in a blue suit. He was well built and sported a mustache and goatee sprinkled with salt and pepper. His hair was short and receding in front. Eyes brown, far as I could tell. He was receiving some sort of award from a police officer with his left hand while, with his right, he shook the officer’s hand. In the background hung a large banner that read, “Colonie Police Department Benevolent Society.”
Naked Heat: The Handyman, Episode II Page 1