Carnal Vengeance (4 page)

David's imagination was already busy trying to put these three visitors into a scene with Erica Donner, when another woman entered the hotel lobby. She was vaguely familiar, though he couldn't place her. Then again, it could just be that she embodied everything he lusted after in a woman.

Her light-blonde, chin-length hair was softly waved and framed a flawless face. He couldn't see her eye color, but her full, rose-tinted lips were almost the exact shade of her simple, tailored dress.

Expert that he was, he noted that the cut and length of the dress were meant to hide a lush figure and long, shapely legs—two female characteristics he found irresistible. If he weren't working...

Before he completed the thought, she had approached the express elevator and pressed the "up" button.

She was nervous. Though he'd been focusing on her spectacular looks, he had also seen the way she slowed down as she neared her destination and, once there, shook her head and straightened her shoulders, as if she had to talk herself into going on.

* * *

Holly almost turned back. She could no longer remember why she had agreed to come here. She had managed up 'til now without discussing her personal problems with anyone. Why should she begin now, with a group of strangers?

Yet, when the elevator doors opened, her feet took her inside. Her finger touched the only thing that resembled a button, a little red square on the wall with a credit card-sized slot beneath it.

"Hello?" asked a detached female voice a few seconds later.

Holly looked around the mahogany-paneled enclosure with its polished brass rails and saw a duplicate set of doors behind her, but no visible speaker. "Um, I have an appointment in the penthouse suite with Doctor MacLeash. I'm Holly Kaufman.''

"I'll bring you right up."

The doors closed and the elevator began a rapid ascent the next instant. When it stopped, the rear doors opened and Holly stepped into a foyer that expanded into large living room, beautifully appointed with Italian and French antiques and rich brocades. A grand piano adorned one side of the room, where floor-to-ceiling windows offered a magnificent view of the capital.

An attractive woman a few inches shorter than Holly, with blonde-on-blonde frosted hair cut in a pixie style, greeted her with a warm smile. "Holly Kaufman? Welcome. I'm April MacLeash." She held out her hand.

Holly surreptitiously wiped her damp palm on the side of her skirt and forced a return smile as she briefly shook hands. "How do you do, Doctor."

"No formality here. I'm just April. Come on in and meet my friends."

Three other women were seated in a conversation area on the opposite side of the room from the piano. As Holly and April approached, they stopped talking and turned toward the new arrival.

"This is Holly Kaufman," April said with her pleasant smile firmly in place. The women remained seated as they were identified. "This is Erica Donner, today's hostess. Erica's company owns the majority of the stock in this hotel, so they usually give us special treatment."

Erica's mouth softened into a semi smile, but her dark, slightly slanted eyes glittered with a permanent hardness that couldn't be disguised by a professional makeup artist.

"And this is Bobbi Renquist. The Internal Revenue Service is her employer."

Holly had an easier time smiling at Bobbi, whose timidity seemed to equal her own. If she hadn't been told Bobbi's profession, she might have guessed the extremely plain woman with the bifocal glasses was a librarian.

As Holly's gaze moved to the last woman, it caught on the weapon strapped to her shoulder.

"Our armed member is Rachel, also known as Special Agent Greenley of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We've convinced her to remove her jacket, but she swears she feels naked without the gun, so I hope it doesn't make you nervous."

"Oh, no," Holly said quickly. "It just surprised me." Rachel toasted her with a Manhattan glass, half full of an amber-colored liquid, then drained it before setting it down again on the coffee table. As April directed her to a seat, Holly was somewhat relieved to notice that the others had all been drinking coffee or tea.

Rachel's voice sounded perfectly sober though as she said, "Actually, I'm not the only armed member. Agent Renquist carries a cute little toy in her purse, the way a
real
lady who's licensed should." When Bobbi didn't rise to the obvious bait, Rachel changed topics. "We were discussing the Ziegler hearing, Holly. I say we should just cut the bastard's balls off and be done with it. What do you think?"

April frowned, Bobbi blushed and Erica rolled her eyes. Holly wondered if this was some sort of test and opted for the truth. "I think what I've seen on television the last two days was the most disgusting display of male power I have ever witnessed."

"Bravo!" Rachel said and toasted her with her empty glass. "I especially liked the part where Ziegler made it sound like Cheryl regularly consented to gang-bangs when she was intoxicated."

Shaking her head, Holly admitted, "The worst part of it is, although I have no doubt it happened exactly like Cheryl said, he came off much more believably than she did."

"The fact that he performs in front of the public for a living and she's practically a hermit should have been taken into account in advance," Rachel said. "Slight miscalculation there, wouldn't you agree, Doctor?"

Holly noted the way April's cheeks flushed at Rachel's snide words, but she made no retort.

As though she were unaware that her glass was empty, Rachel tipped it to her mouth then stared at it suspiciously when no liquid poured forth. "You don't mind if I help myself, do you, Erica?"

As Rachel headed for the bar, April said gently. "Rachel, why don't you have a cup of coffee instead? Lunch will be served in a few minutes."

Rachel laughed as she splashed whiskey into her glass. "You know better than to try mothering me, April. I need alcohol, not caffeine."

"But you were doing so well," April continued in a nonpressuring voice. "It's been months—"

"Eight months and two weeks to be exact. Since the last bastard got—" She glanced at Holly and changed whatever she had been about to say. "Since the last time I got shitfaced. The only thing between me and Tim Ziegler's balls right now is this." She held up the refilled glass. "And as long as you panty-waists are still voting against violence, I'm going to stay drunk."

With eyes closed, Rachel savored a long swallow then turned her attention to Holly. "You're our special guest today. Would you care to tell us what brings you here?"

Holly's uncertainty made her pause and Rachel spoke again before she could reply.

"I've got a better idea. I'll go first. The good doctor always tells us talking about our problems with others who can empathize is the best medicine for what ails us." She came out from behind the bar, but rather than sitting back down, she paced as she prepared to relate her personal nightmare.

"You heard Cheryl's accusation against Ziegler and his buddies. Well, there's a little more to the bedtime story that she didn't tell to spare the rest of us. Like Cheryl, the four of us were freshman at Dominion, but only Bobbi and I knew each other at first. I'm sure you remember the fraternity Ziegler belonged to was mainly for jocks, but their competitive spirit took on a new dimension that year."

"They made up a game in which each brother had a 'dance card' with one hundred lines on it. Every time they could prove they
danced
with a different girl they wrote her name on the card. Freshmen were the easiest prey, so we received the most aggressive attention. Once her name was on three cards, a girl was said to be a member of the Little Sister Society, and the boys made such a membership sound very elite. Understand, there were some girls who joined the Society knowingly, but too often that wasn't the case. What happened to Cheryl was no isolated incident."

Holly turned in her seat to follow Rachel's progress around the room. Part of her was hanging on every word; the other part wanted to run before she heard more than she had bargained for.

"Each of the fifteen brothers competing in the dance contest put one dollar in a glass jar in the fraternity game room for every line he filled in. The one who filled up his dance card first won the jar. Rumor had it that the King Stud walked off with over a thousand dollars."

"Dear god," Holly whispered, and before she thought better of it, she asked, "What was the winner's name?"

Rachel took another swallow of her drink then said, "Jerry Frampton."

Chapter 2

"Holly?" April said softly. "Are you all right? You've gotten very pale."

A musical chime sounded and Rachel went to the intercom on the wall by the elevator. A moment later, she returned to the group and announced, "Lunch is on its way up now, so I'll be considerate of our guest's delicate sensibilities and save my story until after she's eaten."

Rachel's consideration came too late for Holly. Her stomach was already twisted into such a tight knot that all she could eat of the elegantly served luncheon was the lobster bisque and a slice of sourdough bread. As soon as the others had progressed to their brandy snifters of chocolate hazelnut mousse and cappuccino, Rachel picked up the thread of her account right where she had left off.

"The one thing both Cheryl and Tim have agreed on so far is that a lot of young people get a little wild when they go off to college. I knew quite a few girls who did the kind of nonstop partying that Cheryl did. Unfortunately for them, they let their hair down in a year when that was all the encouragement the boys needed to take advantage of their disoriented condition."

Rachel absently stroked the grip of her gun as she continued. "I was different. Getting drunk or stoned held no fascination for me... in spite of the evidence before you," she added with a crooked grin. "I was at school to study, not blow off steam, but one night, a friend talked me into going to a fraternity party. You can guess which fraternity. As usual, I turned down offers of beer or drugs, although there was enough marijuana smoke in the game room to give anyone a buzz." She took a sip of the coffee April had poured for her then made a face as she set the cup back on its saucer.

"The music was ear-splitting and I was embarrassed by what some of the couples were doing right in front of everyone else. I was about to leave when a boy I knew from one of my classes asked me to dance. His name was Billy O'Day and I had always thought he was kind of nice for a big, empty-headed jock. After a few dances, he yelled in my ear that he wanted to talk and motioned for me to follow him upstairs, away from the stereo speakers. It never occurred to me to be wary.

"He led me to his room, but I still didn't worry. Billy seemed like a gentleman to me."

Rachel's gaze was fixed on the cup in front of her, but Holly was certain she was seeing something else entirely. No one else spoke, so Holly remained quiet as well, and waited until Rachel was ready to finish her account.

"Three of his brothers were waiting for us there. My mistake was that I fought them. They hadn't expected that and it really pissed them off. I've always been tall and strong, and I had taken some judo classes. They managed to rip my clothes off, but I got in a few good licks while they were doing it. Unfortunately, so did they. The harder I fought, the rougher they got. I don't remember being raped, because a couple hard kicks to my head knocked me out before they got what they wanted.

"I regained consciousness in the college infirmary eight hours later. A nurse told me that sometime during the night, I had been dumped in front of the door, naked and bloody. Written across my stomach were the Greek letters of another fraternity and a happy face. I had stopped hemorrhaging, but I had sustained internal injuries and was warned to take it easy because of the concussion. The only thing that wouldn't heal was the membrane one of the bastards had broken when he took my virginity."

Holly's shock held her immobilized. She had had her virginity stolen as well, but at least she knew the name of the thief.

"The nurse was sympathetic and called the police for me. They gave her the same runaround Cheryl got."

"But you had visible injuries," Holly protested.

Rachel snorted. "Sure, but how did I get them? It was the precious football players' words against mine. No one at the party heard any screams, and no one remembered seeing me go upstairs with Billy. When it got around campus that I was trying to file assault charges, my fellow students harassed me until I gave it up. You see, I was there on scholarship and couldn't afford the luxury of transferring to another school or taking a year off until my attackers graduated."