Finally, he shrugged. “That’s easy to explain.”
She didn’t ask him to, wasn’t about to remind him that she could follow a conversation.
“I took you because of a little party you attended a couple of years ago.”
The club.
Confirmation, though she hadn’t really needed it
.
She’d known. Last night, after the possibility had occurred to her, she’d begun to think about the other girls who’d gone missing over the past few years. She didn’t know them all, but she’d known a few.
They’d been guests of the club, too. That was the connection.
Most girls brought to “entertain” there did it for the money. They knew what they were doing. Maybe they didn’t quite realize how bad it was going to get, or how many men would be attending, but they knew. And most of them were experienced.
Vonnie hadn’t known, and she hadn’t been experienced.
She had to close her eyes and swallow just to get the thoughts to leave her mind. Both of that long, ugly, demoralizing night, and of the harsh sense of betrayal that had changed her forever. Before then, she’d known her mom was unreliable and weak, but she’d always believed the woman whe she said “I love you,” and “I’ll change, baby; it’s just I need the stuff.”
After that, she had never believed another word that came out of Berna Jackson’s mouth. She’d grown up overnight, lost any sense of the girl she’d once been after the brutal trick that had been played on her. She supposed that’s what she got for trusting someone so twisted. But God, what fifteen-year-old girl would suspect her own mother of selling her into a nightmare?
“Ah,” her attacker said, sounding almost sympathetic, “I see you’ve put it together.”
She swallowed, then slowly nodded. Forcing the flood of images away, knowing she didn’t have the time or the emotional strength to deal with them now, she asked, “Is that the only reason?” He’d chosen her to be his victim because she’d once been a victim of others? Was there any motivation more sick than that?
“Isn’t it a good enough one? The members of that club have been very nervous lately, which makes me very happy. They did something very bad to someone I cared about and I’m punishing them.”
He cared about someone? Seemed impossible to believe. “So why not kidnap and murder
them
?” she spat, unable to help it.
He chuckled. “I considered it, believe me. But I do like girls ever so much more than men. And, as you should have realized by now, sometimes the psychological torment of not knowing what is going to happen—or when—is more frightening than anything else.”
He was right about that. Wasn’t that why he’d been playing this game with her?
“Do you know that club has been active here in Granville for over a hundred years?”
She shook her head, a little surprised but mostly not. Evil seemed to thrive in some places and the weird old house where she’d been taken that night had throbbed with it.
“My stepfather was a member.”
“Is he one of the ones you want to torment?”
He laughed behind the mask. “Oh, no, he’s dead. Jed sent him straight to hell years ago. Right around the time I sent my mother there.”
Jed. She focused on the name, thinking frantically, wondering if she’d heard it before. Some clue to who he was could help her in this psychological battle.
She’d taken psychology in school and her first thought was to wonder if there really was a Jed. If her tormentor had been that badly abused as a child, maybe this Jed didn’t even exist—maybe he never had. Abuse had certainly caused split-personality disorder in some cases.
“There is one other reason I chose you. I suspected your disappearance would get attention, which it did. I’m taking
her
for the same reason—attention. She’ll get even more of it. Granville is about to tear itself apart in utter terror.” The man casually reached down and fluffed the nearly flat pillow beneath her head, carelessly adding, “But I’m also taking her because she might have seen me when I followed you as you left school Monday night.”
As she’d left the school . . . meaning, several blocks before she’d reached the Boro where he’d grabbed her. The man had stalked her a long way.
The rest of what he’d said sunk in, too. A girl who might have seen him as she’d left the nearly deserted school? There weren’t many possibilities about who that could be, and the most obvious one became immediately clear. He wasn’t talking about some random girl. He meant one of her classmates, someone who’d been with her at the meeting last Monday. Maybe one of her new friends.
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
A sly chuckle emerged from his mouth and she realized she’d been a fool to act like she might be worried about this other unnamed girl. Thinking quickly, she added, “Don’t bother on my account. I mean. If she saw you, you’d know by now, right?”
His noncommittal shrug said she hadn’t mollified him.
“Besides, I kinda like it as it is. I never had anybody give me as much attention as you do. My mom sure didn’t.”
Clapping his hands together in delight, he chortled, “Oh, you are jealous! Isn’t that just the cutest thing?”
No, actually, the cutest thing she could think of would be looking up and seeing a sharp spike being plunged into his eyeball. But she merely forced a tiny smile.
He bent down and patted her hip. Vonnie couldn’t help tensing, even though, so far, he’d limited his abuse to beating her, not raping her. If he’d once been a member of that club, however, she knew it would probably be only a matter of time. She honestly had no idea what he was waiting for.
Don’t question it; just be thankful.
“Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, sweet one. I doubt she will be here for long. I suspect she’s not going to be quite as adept at entertaining me as you have been.”
She stared up at him, not asking what he meant. She already knew.
Because he was twisted and because he liked her terrified, he explained anyway.
“So I’ll probably have to kill her much sooner than I’m going to kill you.”
Chapter 10
Saturday, 3:15 p.m.
The paramedics who had responded to Julia’s 911 call had insisted on taking Lexie to the small local hospital to be checked out. She had tried to refuse, but Aidan had overridden her protests. Her throat was bruised and swollen, her back scraped and abraded from rubbing against the brick wall. No way was he letting her just leave the scene, despite this “new information” she’d discovered, not until he was sure her windpipe hadn’t been seriously damaged and she wasn’t going to suffocate the next time she lay down.
He’d wanted to ride with her in the ambulance, but had instead remained behind to talk to the two cops who’d responded to the 911 call. They were young, not entirely poisoned by their idiot boss, and had taken the situation with the seriousness it demanded. Lexie’s attacker, who was well known to them, was taken off in handcuffs and they’d said they would be by the hospital to take her statement once she’d been looked at.
That was how it should have gone, anyway. But when he got to the hospital a short time later, having driven over in the rental car she’d asked him to retrieve, he realized things hadn’t gone as planned. Because as he reached the curtained area in the emergency room, where he’d been directed by a nurse, he heard the irritated voice of someone who had to be Chief Dunston.
“Just can’t keep your nose out of trouble, can you? Had to go down there where you don’t belong and try to stir up trouble.”
Shaking with anger, Aidan grabbed the curtain and flung it aside. “What’s going on?”
The police chief spun around, startled and more than a bit irritated. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who found this woman being attacked and nearly killed on a public street in your supposedly safe town,” he snarled, pushing past the chief. Seeing Lexie’s pale face, he put a hand over hers. “You okay?”
She nodded, squeezing his fingers. “The doctor says I’ll be all right. I’ll just have this supersexy voice thing going on for a while.”
It was supersexy. It also sounded superpainful.
And he really wanted to hurt someone superbad for that.
The chief was the closest target. Aidan whirled around to face the man, and jabbed an index finger toward him. “Instead of berating the victims of crime, or just ignoring their existence altogether like you have all the girls who’ve gone missing, why don’t you try doing the job you’re being paid to do for once?”
Dunston stuck out a belligerent jaw. “You can’t talk to me like that. I want your name.”
“You can have it,” he snapped, “and you can have the name of my attorney as well. I’m quite sure he would be happy to represent Ms. Nolan should she decide to pursue a complaint of harassment and negligence against you and your whole department.”
“It’s not negligence that she gets herself attacked while consorting with criminals!”
Aidan’s jaw clenched so tight he thought he might crack a tooth. “Again, I remind you, a public street. Broad daylight. Your supposedly ‘peaceful’ town. Several witnesses who saw her nearly strangled to death. How do you think accusing the victim will play on
Larry King Live
?”
Steam almost flew out of the man’s ears. But like all bullies, the idea of being made to look like a fool on a bigger stage than the one on which he already stood was too much for him to bear. Casting one final frustrated stare at Lexie, he said, “You’ll be hearing from one of my officers. Don’t leave town.”
She managed a cheeky smile. “I’m not going anywhere.” The words were hoarse and she had to be smiling through a lot of discomfort.
The chief spun around, his footsteps so hard, they heard him throughout his entire march across the ER. Once the sound had died out, Aidan released his tight grip on Lexie’s hand, but didn’t let go entirely. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up sooner.”
“It’s all right. He was here only a couple of minutes.” She moved her eyebrows up and down. “I notice you never did give him your name.”
“No, I guess I didn’t. Forgot all about it.”
Snickering, she swung her legs over the side of the thin, gurney-type ER bed and rose to her feet. That was when he realized she was fully dressed, ready to go. She scooped up a small tube of ointment and some medical papers and said, “Let’s roll.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Clean bill of health, I swear.” She raised two fingers in a Scout’s promise. “The doctor already cleared me. I was just waiting for you to pick me up.”
“Don’t they have to wheel you out?”
But he was talking to air. Lexie had left the examination room, heading toward the exit. Sighing, glad the incident in the alley hadn’t robbed her of her independent streak, but also wishing she’d let somebody take care of her for a while, he strode after her.
He flinched when he saw the rips on the back of her shirt—and the white bandages underneath. Damn that man.
“Would you hold on?” he asked, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. He did it carefully, not knowing where else bruises might be hiding on her body. “Where are we going?”
“I was talking to Walter on the phone,” she told him. “Right before Dunston showed up.”
He rolled his eyes. “Ignoring that whole no-cell-phones-in-the-hospital rule, are we?”
“No, Mr. Smarty-Psychic, I used the one in the room.” Looking a little sheepish, she admitted, “I can’t find mine. I think I dropped it in the alley.”
Knowing her relationship with her boss was a close one, he had to ask, “How did Walter react to what happened?”
She nibbled the corner of her lip, not quite meeting his eyes, which was when he knew she hadn’t told him. She’d called the man she considered her closest friend from a hospital bed, and hadn’t mentioned she’d nearly been murdered.
Then he thought about that friend, what he’d been going through, and admitted, “I guess he wouldn’t have handled it very well. And there’s nothing he could have done.”
Lexie’s mouth fell open, as if she’d expected him to criticize her decision. In truth, though, he understood it and probably would have done the same in her situation. It sounded like this editor of hers was a good man, with a lot of problems. Not wanting people you care about to worry about you when there’s nothing they can do was human nature.
“Thanks for understanding.”
“So why’d you call him?”
She glanced around, seeing a few patients and staff members milling around. Nodding toward the exit, she said, “Why don’t we talk in the car?”
He nodded his agreement, put an arm on her elbow—funny, how easy it was to touch her now—and led her out the doors of the stuffy, medicinal-smelling hospital into the bright sunshine. It was one of those beautiful Georgia fall days, clear and warm, the air free of the haze that usually hung around during the long, brutally hot summers. Lexie’s smile seemed a little more relaxed out here, as if just the change in scenery was helping her to recover. Obviously the woman strongly disliked hospitals.
“Wait here and let me pull up, okay? The car’s right over there.”
“Look, I’m fine, Aidan.”
He’d had enough of the bravado. She might have desperately needed to get out of the hospital—in fact, he suspected the way she’d hurried up to do so had as much to do with needing to feel in control and strong again as it did with getting back to work. But the woman had limitations. Everyone did.
He put both hands on her shoulders. “Lexie, you
are
fine.”
“I know . . .”
“You’re fine physically,” he said, cutting her off. “I believe you. But you were attacked. You can’t ignore that. You have to deal with it.”
She stared up at him, her beautiful green eyes a little bloodshot from her ordeal. And those bruises on her throat, God, just the sight of them—ugly and dark against her creamy skin—made him want to drive over to the police station and beat that animal all over again.
“I will,” she said, her lips trembling, her whole body tight as if she was holding on to her control by a thread. “However, right now I just need to work, okay? I
need
to. I’ll deal with all of this later—I swear. When I’m a little more pulled together.”