He turned and looked down the road. “No, I don’t know the exact address. It was on Whiticom Court, and it had a sculpture in the front yard.”
My eyes stretched wide. Kay! Holy crap! I snagged my phone and dialed Kay’s number. It went right to voicemail. Her phone was turned off. She would never ever, ever turn her phone off when she was with a new guy. It was against the girl-code-mutual-protection bond we’d made to each other. I jumped in my front seat, yanked my belt across my lap, cranked the car engine and took off. Lyle stood dumbfounded in my rearview mirror.
19
I was a mess. I was practically standing on my gas pedal, roaring down the street. I’d been parked facing the opposite direction of the police department and to be honest, in my blind panic, I forgot all about the department. I guess you could call it tunnel vision. I’d read about it in the police procedural books. It was when your mind was sharply attached to one set of information, and all other input disappeared. One cop I read about was shooting at a bad guy and the guy’s partner walked up behind the cop and hit him in the head. The cop had had no idea that he was being attacked from behind. I hadn’t believed it. I thought that was crazy.
You want to know about crazy? I was crazy. Kay, who looked like Chloe, was in a house with an artist who knew exactly how to make a mannequin. And Kay was alone with him. And I had to get to Kay.
Okay—I wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. This wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. But Daphne was attached to the house where Dante lived. Okay, people needed to know about this.
Who?
Connor.
Connor needed to know. I pressed the phone button and told the car to call Connor. Connor didn’t pick up. I rambled. Screamed out some words. The address. A few expletives and a whole bunch of now! Now! Now! Now!
Okay, Connor may or may not get that message in time, the tiny functioning part of my brain said as my wheels screamed around a corner. “Call Dick,” I yelled to my car. Dick droned on about leaving a message. I wished he’d shut the hell up and let me leave the darned message. I pushed my sweaty hair out of my face, waiting for the beep.
Beep!
Holy crap. Did I just pee on myself? I screamed equally incoherent things at Dick and gave him the address. I think I said the address a few times. Five or six times. Didn’t matter. He’d need to write it down, and my words were kind of jumbling together. If I said it enough times, he’d figure it all out.
Okay, now who?
Peter.
I called Peter and again got a message. What the hell was wrong with these people? They were cops. They were supposed to come to the rescue. How could they come to the rescue if they weren’t even answering their damned phones?
No. It never occurred to me even once to call 911 and besides, it didn’t matter. Because here I was, jerking to a stop in front of the sculpture, in front of Dante’s house.
I sucked in some air. I had to be smart about this. I opened my car door, got out, and ducked down as I shut my door quietly. Yeah, I had no idea why I was crouched like this. “Keep your head down” circulated through my thoughts, and somehow it seemed reasonable. I looked up at the house across from Dante’s and saw that they had a sculpture in front of their yard as well. Sculpture—that might be a stretch. It was more like a topiary. A bush that was cut to look like a giraffe. How did I miss that before? Was that the house that Lyle meant?
I looked down the road. There were three other houses that had something in their front yards that very well could be described as a sculpture. I had lost my blooming mind. I clunked my head back against the car. No more police novels for you, missy! I had primed my pump with stories of the evil that lurks out there. And again, besides Lyle’s theft and perversion, what exactly was I thinking happened? “Stepford Wives” flashed through my mind. But that was something about robots and …yeah, I couldn’t remember.
And if Daphne/Rosebud/mannequin/big mistake did belong to Dante, why wouldn’t he just ask for her back? He seemed genuinely interested in her from a marketing angle, and that was about it. And he’d moved on to a new idea.
I looked up at a woman talking on the phone and staring down at me from her upstairs window. I realized I was still crouched by my door, clinging to the handle, with Twinkles barking his head off. I stood and waved, trying to look normal. Which was, let’s face it, a stretch.
I opened the back door for Twinkles, and he took off running for Dante’s back yard. I ran after him. By the time I got to the back of the house, Dante was standing at the back door, with a look of amusement. “I’m assuming all didn’t go as planned? Twinkles is back.”
Twinkles was snuffling and digging again.
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what to think. Dante didn’t look like he’d morphed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. He just seemed mildly irritated that my dog was digging up his beautiful garden.
Dante opened the door. “Come on in. I have something that will make him happy.” He went to the fridge. “Can I get you some of that lemonade that Kay is drinking?”
I followed him in. “Where is Kay?”
Dante pulled a steak off a plate in the fridge, opened his screen door, and called, “Twinkles, here buddy!”
Twinkles looked up, stalled, then came running. Dante backed up—as any sane person would do. That was a hundred and thirty pounds of get-out-of -my-way galloping at him. Dante moved to the side of the kitchen, opened a door, and threw the steak into the opening. Twinkles was powering ahead and chased it through the door. My hands were over my mouth; I was shrieking.
Dante slammed the door on Twinkles. Then he slammed the door to his backyard.
I backed up.
Dante stalked toward me. Walked, stalked—I don’t know how to define his movements—he came forward, and I felt crazed.
“Where’s Kay?” my voice quivered out. “Kay?” I yelled, backing into the dining room. “Kay?” I yelled louder, backing into the living room. “Where is she?” I asked Dante. “What have you done with Kay?”
“What are you doing?” he asked me, looking like I’d up and lost my mind. Which was feeling kind of accurate. The cogs were misaligned; things weren’t working right upstairs in the old grey-matter department.
Had I lost my mind? What was happening here? Dante was dressed in a different t-shirt. He had put on cargo pants and his feet were bare. That was weirdly the detail I focused on—his bare feet.
“Where’s Kay?” I swung my head around, looking for options. Maybe she was in the bathroom?
Dante held up a glass of lemonade. “Your drink?”
I blinked at him. I was so confused. I didn’t know how I should be acting. What I should be doing. I wanted Twinkles up out of his basement. I wanted Connor to roar around the corner.
“Please, tell me where Kay is.”
He smiled and tilted his head. “She’s upstairs in the studio. She can’t call down to you because she’s not supposed to move her face. The plaster hasn’t set.”
Oh. Yeah. That was reasonable. That might be why she’d turned off her phone, too.
“Come on, I’ll take you up and you can sit with her.” He held his hand out to indicate the stairs and smiled kindly.
I walked up the stairs sideways with my back to the wall. God, this felt wrong. It all felt wrong. The books all say, “Trust your instincts.” “Go with your gut.” My gut was telling me to smash the glass into this guy’s face and run! But Kay… I could never leave with Kay in danger. I would never leave with Kay in danger. Kay, please don’t be in danger.
Twinkles was going berserk. He was throwing his body against the door. I could hear him trying to get to me and that made me cry. Big gloopy hot tears ran down my face.
“You’re almost there, BJ, almost there. A few more steps, and you’ll see Kay.”
20
Finally, I reached studio. There was a dentist chair on the side wall, next to a wheeled trolley. The trolley was covered in a plastic bag and there was a pile of cloth strips
, a bucket of grey goop, and a big jar of Vaseline. It was just as he’d described it.
There was a glass on the trolley that was empty except for a couple of melting ice cubes. I set my glass down next to it.
Kay’s wrists and elbows were held in place by Velcro straps. Her face was covered in plaster, and she had two straws up her nose.
I held the back of my hand to the straws and felt warm breath coming out. But she was so still. I slid my hand in hers. “It’s Bobbi Jax,” I said. But she didn’t squeeze back. I looked over at Dante. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s perfectly fine. She said she was anxious about messing up the mask or getting claustrophobic, so I gave her a little something to sedate her so she’d sleep through the whole thing.”
I focused back on the glasses.
“It blends very nicely into lemonade made with lavender. The lavender oil really helps women relax.” He pointed to the glass I’d just put down.
“Women?” I choked out.
“Women,” he said.
“People are going to miss Kay at work if I don’t get her there in the next fifteen minutes. We’re running late.”
“That’s true. They’ll probably miss you too after a while.”
I blinked.
“Things will go easier for you if you have a little drink, BJ.” His smile was easy, gentle; seductive, even. “Kay would want it to be easy for you.”
“What to be easy?”
“The mask.” His voice was so reasonable.
He was gaslighting me. Making me feel crazy when I wasn’t crazy. Something horrible was happening. I just couldn’t get my brain to put it together. Where was Connor? When would Dick get here? Peter?
Dante cocked his head to the side. “You promised me I could make a mask of you?”
I swung my head around to face him. “Like you made of Chloe?”
That was the switch. I flipped it and the light came on. Dr. Jekyll slipped away, leaving a very vicious Mr. Hyde.
There. That’s what I needed. Assurance that what I thought was true was indeed true. We were in danger. Big time. Kay was no help to me. I wasn’t sure I could be of any help to her. The only thing that gave me even the least little glimmer of hope was imagining that one of the guys was hot on my heels coming to intervene. And should I not be able to stall that long, they’d at least have a starting point for looking for us. Or our bodies. Bodies…? “Holy shit.” I stared wide eyed at Dante. “Chloe.”
He lifted a brow.
“Is that what Twinkles was digging up in your garden?”
No agreement. No denial. Just eyes dark with evil and…delight.
A shiver raked over my body.
I looked down at Kay. Focused on the straws and the plaster.
“Only thing I have to do,” Dante whispered, “is take these straws out and put my fingers over her nose, and she never has to wake up again.” He looked at her, assessing, evaluating. “She’s a beautiful creation. I am just the master to make sure that the world can appreciate her beauty.”
“You’re one sick prick.” I reached out and yanked the straws from her nose with one hand, the other clawing at the plaster, trying to get her mouth and nostrils clear.
He was just as quick. As my hands moved over Kay’s face, he locked his grip over my wrists and yanked me off-balance, stepping to the side as I skid onto the floor. I flipped onto my back and kicked out. He caught my foot and yanked me toward him. I worked to turn over and get my knees underneath me so I could push to standing.
He straddled me, wrapping my hair in his fist, and jerked my head back. Staring down into my face, he said, “Oh, this is fantastic. No one has ever fought back before. It’s exhilarating. Come on, BJ, fight!” His voice was painted with excitement. Joy was the lightning flash in his black gaze.
And I did. I clawed and bit. I kicked. I hit. He was laughing. It was exhausting. His laughter was draining my strength. Anger against anger might have been easier. Laughter made me feel lame. Silly. Incapable. But every time my head swiveled, and I took in Kay, I worked harder. Until he was done letting me fight. I had shoved a fingernail into his eyeball, and the game was done.
I had no idea Dante was this strong. He pushed me up against the wall, pinning me in place with his body weight, then dragged my hands behind my back.
“Where did you bury them?” I gasped. The physical fight hadn’t done much. Certainly, it hadn’t hurt him, or bought us much time. But when I was up against the wall, my head was turned toward the window, and I saw that Connor was here. He stopped and stared at the house, then bolted around the back. Surely, he could hear Twinkles in Berserker-mode. I needed time. Not much. Some.
“Them?” Dante hissed.
“Lyle Cummings stole Chloe from off your porch last Halloween. He said there were others inside, displayed in the window. Chloe wasn’t your only victim.”
His hands encircled my throat. “I always cut off their air with the straws. But this is so much better. When I strangle you, I want you to fight hard. Fight to save your life.” He laughed, and I could feel his aggression growing. “It won’t help you. It’ll probably make your death faster, since you’re using up all your oxygen in the fight. But I can tell already how fantastic it will be.”
Tension thickened the air around me. My heart beat so hard that I was sure it was visible against my shirt. My eyes welled up, blinding me. I didn’t want to die like this. Would Connor get up the stairs in time to save me? Would he be calling backup? Waiting for them to come? Should I scream, or would Dante cut the sound off in his strong grip? I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know… But my mouth opened, and I heard myself speak.
“Why do you do this? Do you want to be famous? Can’t you do that with your normal art?” I hoped this would distract his fingers from tightening.
“Art. Ha! That just isn’t in the cards. But fame, yes, that’s what I want. No one remembers the good guys, the heroes. No, the people that acquire the fame are those who’ve left countless bodies in their wake.”
“Are you trying to hurt Kay because her brother is a cop? Do you want to get caught?”
“Which serial killer wanted to get caught? All I’m doing is making the world a more beautiful place. My lovelies will live on forever. We all have to die.” His words were matter-of-fact. “I’m just making sure they are plucked at the most perfect of times. Like one of the beautiful blooms in my garden.”
“Your garden?” A horrible thought crossed my mind. “Your garden is beautiful.” My voice was a mere whisper of air, barely words.
“Yes, specialized fertilizer. Lily is under my lilies. Sage is under my herbs.” He chuckled. “Gloria went where I had a dead spot. I couldn’t get anything to grow there—but now, it’s glorious.”
Oh, my god. Three more names. “Chloe is under your sidewalk?”
“Yes, well, I was having fun with the name game. I thought I would do a little mosaic up the path, like cloisonné. Now.” His voice had an introspective quality, the one he used when he was talking about art and was trying out ideas. “BJ and Kay. Kay’s first name is Mary. That works. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? But BJ? That’s going to be a challenge.
Yeah. I promise you, I’m going to be a challenge. He was going to kill me and Kay over my dead body! Hmm, that threat didn’t work, did it? “How many?” I stalled. “Where are the other mannequins?”
“Four before, six now. My mannequins are in my bedroom. They’re only allowed downstairs for Halloween. We don’t want to spoil them. And now they’ll all have to stay locked inside, since Chloe was stolen. I need to get her back. Do you have the bar key on you?”
My mouth fell open.
“No need to tell me. I’ll find it on you later.”
I heard a mad scrambling on the stairs, vicious growls that vibrated through my body. Twinkles was free. Connor must have let him out. Twinkles leaped through the door and his fangs sank into Dante’s arm. Twin
kles dragged Dante away from me and onto the ground. He was on top of Dante, biting him. Dante was screaming. I…couldn’t. I couldn’t anything. Think. Move. Breathe.
I saw more movement. Flashes of blue. Men’s voices. Commands. Sobbing. Oh, that was me. I was sobbing.
“Find Bobbi. Go, find Bobbi.” That was Connor, commanding Twinkles. And there he was, my beautiful furball. He whined and nuzzled me, circling around, licking me, jumping up to whole-body hug me. With my arms wrapped around Twinkles, I could finally take in the room.
Connor pressed his knee into the small of Dante’s back. Dante was cuffed, and bleeding profusely from his nose and arms. One eye was shut and swelling. Dick stood over Kay, checking her breathing and her pulse. He picked up a cloth and wiped the last of the plaster off her face, then patted her cheeks, trying to rouse her.
Peter came in and took hold of Dante, wrangling him to the corner and reading him his rights. Connor checked Kay for himself, then pushed Twinkles off me. Connor was probably the only person in this world at that moment that Twinkles would allow near me. Connor reached out to pull me into a hug of his own. I could feel him trembling.
“Oh, thank God,” he said into my hair. “I heard your voice on my phone and terror—that’s the only possible word for it. The two women I love the most in this world…”
He didn’t add anything to that sentence, just held me tight as he spun me around so he could watch Dick talking to Kay. She was awake and looking around as Dick explained the situation to her.
I pointed toward the glass on the tray. “They might be able to test that glass for whatever he used to put Kay out.” It was the first clear thought I’d formed since I was talking to Lyle.
Connor dropped a kiss into my hair. My cheek rested against his chest, and I could hear his heart galloping. His phone rang with “Million Dollar Baby.” I glanced up to see Connor make the B.O. face. He swiped the screen to stop the noise.
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