Against the Night (9 page)

Bennett hung like a landed fish. “You can’t do this!”

“Yeah?” Reaching into his boot, Johnnie pulled out his Ranger knife and flipped it open. Bennett’s eyes turned into watery, frightened orbs as Johnnie held up the gleaming six-inch, serrated blade.

“Oh, God. Don’t hurt me! Let me go!”

“Not likely.”

Bennett closed his eyes as Johnnie started cutting off his clothes. It took only minutes to have the bastard naked except for his socks and shoes. Johnnie reached up for one of the dildos. He knew where he’d like to shove it, but then again, Bennett might like it.

Instead, he stuck it into the man’s mouth, tore off a strip of duct tape and slapped it over the end to hold it in place. Satisfied Bennett wouldn’t choke to death or have trouble breathing, he grinned.

“The cops are gonna have a real laugh when they come to your rescue, buddy.”

Turning toward the bed, he reached down and fastened the buttons on Amy’s blouse, zipped her jeans and lifted her into his arms.

“Come on, baby. Let’s get you out of here.”

He flashed a last ruthless smile toward Kyle Bennett. “Have fun—
kiddo.
”

Closing the door behind him, Amy snuggled against his chest, Johnnie carried her down the hall. Knowing a woman’s most valuable possession was her purse, he ducked into Kyle’s office, grabbed her small white bag, and left the house.

He was taking the little dancer home with him where once again, he wouldn’t be able to touch her.

God had an amazing sense of humor.

Johnnie glanced at his heavy chrome wristwatch for the twentieth time. Ten hours. Amy had been out like a light for ten freakin’ hours. He wanted to go back and tear Kyle Bennett’s head off. The guy deserved a far worse punishment than he’d gotten. Johnnie would have been happy to rip him apart limb by limb if the little pervert hadn’t been so puny.

Instead, after he had brought Amy back to his house, he had used one of the disposable phones he kept on hand to call the police. He had given them Bennett’s address and told them a man was in trouble and needed their help. He couldn’t help grinning when he thought of the look on the officers’ faces when they found Bennett naked and trussed up like a pig with his own kinky toys.

He’d been tempted to call Vega, let him in on the fun, but he had more important work for his friend. He needed to talk to Rick in person. He wanted answers to his questions about Rachael and he had a better shot at getting them face-to-face.

In the meantime, he was keeping close tabs on Amy, regularly checking her pulse and breathing, making sure there weren’t any unforeseen complications aside from the powerful hangover she was going to have when she woke up.

He opened the bedroom door and looked down at her lying on his bed. He had imagined her there a dozen times but not like this. Johnnie sighed. He hadn’t taken off her clothes. Though she’d been dancing nearly naked in front of a roomful of men, he had a hunch she would prefer to keep her clothes on, no matter how uncomfortable they might be. She was still sleeping soundly, he saw, her long blond hair spread around his pillow like a sleek gold curtain. He had taken off her high heels and tossed a blanket over her bare feet.

He started to close the door and return to the living room when he saw her stir.

Slowly, Amy opened her eyes. It seemed to take Herculean effort. When she moved, her body ached all over. She felt groggy and disoriented, her brain mushy and her stomach queasy. She must have been sleeping the sleep of the dead. Her gaze surveyed the bedroom: white walls, black bedside tables with silver lamps on top. A black dresser with silver handles. There were photos of motorcycles and fast cars on the walls. None of it looked familiar.

With a panicky gasp, Amy jerked back the blanket that covered her, her last memory one of Kyle Bennett leading her down the hall to his bedroom.

“Easy, baby. You’re safe. Everything’s all right.” Johnnie’s deep voice washed over her from a few feet away and her fear began to recede. She saw him, then, big, dark and menacing, standing at the side of the bed.

“Where am I?”

“My house. I brought you here after Bennett drugged you.”

“Oh, my God!” She shoved herself to an upright position and pain slammed into her head.

“Take it easy.” Johnnie reached out and eased her back down on the mattress. “You’ve been out for nearly ten hours. You need to take it slow.”

“What…what happened?” She looked down, saw she was wearing her clothes. “He didn’t…didn’t…?”

“He didn’t have time to do much of anything. I was there, remember? Bennett put a roofie—that’s a date-rape drug—in your drink. I came in just a few minutes after he took you into his bedroom.”

She closed her eyes, trying to replay the scene, but her memory was completely blank. Still, Johnnie had been there, so nothing terrible had happened. She felt a sweep of relief.

“What happened to Kyle? Did you call the police? Oh, my God, I could lose my teaching job.”

“You could lose your job if someone back home finds out you’ve been working at the Kitty Cat Club. But you don’t have to worry. I handled Bennett myself and no one knows you were ever there.”

She glanced at the biceps bulging beneath his T-shirt, thought of what might have happened if one of those powerful arms had connected with Bennett’s face, and her eyes widened. “What…what did you do to him?”

Johnnie grunted. “Nothing permanent—unfortunately. But the police found him naked and handcuffed in a bedroom full of kinky sex toys, so I don’t think you’ll be seeing him at the club for a while.”

Kinky sex toys?
Her stomach rolled. If Johnnie hadn’t gone with her, Kyle would have been using them on her while she had been unconscious.

“I need to get up,” she said, feeling suddenly sick. “I have to use the bathroom.”

Johnnie reached down and took her arm, helped her sit up and swing her legs to the side of the bed, but the minute she tried to stand, nausea hit her.

“Oh, God.” Clamping a hand over her mouth, she bolted for the bathroom, bent over and threw up what little there was in her stomach. Her hands were shaking as she flushed the toilet. She washed her hands, then cupped water in her palm and rinsed her mouth. In the mirror above the sink, she saw Johnnie standing behind her in the open doorway. He pulled a washcloth off the towel rack and handed it over.

“Wash your face. You’ll feel better.”

Amy took the cloth from his hand, waited until he stepped back, and then closed the door. The last thing she wanted was for John Riggs to see her being sick.

Fortunately, the cool cloth helped. By the time she came out of the bathroom, she felt a little better. Johnnie was waiting, one thick shoulder propped against the wall a few feet away.

He shoved off and came toward her. “You’re getting a little color back in your face. Feeling any better?”

She nodded, but sank back down on the edge of the bed. “If you hadn’t been with me, Kyle would have raped me.” She looked up as another thought struck. “Do you think he did that to Rachael?”

“Babs said Rachael dated him a few times. Your sister had been working at the club for a couple of years. She was probably too savvy to fall for Bennett’s tricks.”

“Unlike me,” Amy said glumly.

“You’re a schoolteacher, honey. You’ve never been around guys like that. At least you found out what you’re up against. You can let me handle things from here and—”

“Wait a minute!” She shot up off the bed, felt a jolt of pain in her head and sank back down. “You don’t think this changes anything? I’m finding my sister, Johnnie. I’m not letting some weirdo like Kyle Bennett keep that from happening.”

“Listen to me, Amy. You’re in way over your head with this. What happened today should have shown you that.”

She bit her lip. “Maybe Bennett killed her. Maybe he drugged her and something went wrong. Maybe she died and he had to get rid of her body.” Imagining her sister dead, she felt a sweep of pain mixed with anger. Amy steeled herself against it. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Anything’s possible. Look, I’ve got a friend in the homicide department, Detective Vega. I’m hoping he’ll let me take a look at your sister’s missing persons file. I’ll find out what the police know about Bennett’s involvement with Rachael, and find out who else they might be looking at in regard to her disappearance.”

She nodded, careful not to move too fast. “All right, that sounds like a good idea.”

“I probably shouldn’t encourage you, but if it makes you feel better, you got a name from Bennett before you passed out.”

“I did?”

“Kenny Reason. He’s a disc jockey over at Rembrandt’s.”

“Rembrandt’s? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s a nightclub, not a strip joint, fairly upscale clientele. Bennett said your sister dated Kenny for a while.”

“She must not have mentioned it to Babs. Maybe Mr. Reason will know something that will help.”

“Maybe.” Johnnie glanced down at his watch. “It’s getting late. If you’re feeling well enough, I’ll take you home. If you’d rather, you can spend the night in my guest room.”

Amy shook her head. “I need to go home.”

Johnnie didn’t argue. This was one time sex didn’t seem to be on either of their minds. Spotting her purse on the dresser, she rose carefully from the bed, walked over and picked it up. “Whenever you’re ready.” She slung the purse strap over her shoulder. “I really appreciate what you did today. There’s no way I can ever thank you enough.”

A hot gleam appeared in his eyes. “Our business isn’t finished. The next time you’re in my bed, honey, I promise you won’t be sleeping.”

Eight

Johnnie called Rick Vega first thing Friday morning and the detective agreed to meet him at the station. As she had the day before, Gwen Michaels sat behind the front desk. When she spotted Johnnie walking toward her, she smiled.

“Vega is expecting you,” Gwen said. “You know where to find him.”

“Thanks, Gwen.” Heading down the hall, he waved to a couple of beat cops he knew, turned the corner and pushed through the doors of the detective bureau. The place was well lit, lined with rows of desks, each with its own computer, and always humming with activity as cops came and went. Rick motioned him over and Johnnie sauntered in his friend’s direction, then sat down in the chair beside the desk.

“Heard you were in here looking for me yesterday. I meant to call, but things got crazy.” Vega was handsome as sin, about the same height as Johnnie, with gleaming black hair slicked back from his face and smooth dark skin, a bachelor who spent too much of his paycheck on the perfectly tailored suits he liked to wear.

“Not a problem.”

“Must be important if you’re back again today.”

“I need a favor, Rick.”

Vega scoffed. “So what’s new?”

Before he’d been promoted to detective in the homicide division, Rick had been his sister Katie’s partner, which was how he and Rick had become such good friends.

“I need to take a look at a file. Girl reported missing a little over six weeks ago. Name’s Rachael Brewer. She worked over at the Kitty Cat Club.”

Vega frowned. “Brewer…Brewer…that name sounds familiar.”

“At the club, she used the name Silky Summers,” Johnnie added.

Rick shoved up from his chair and walked over to speak to Mitch, a balding older guy, who after a departmental shake-up had just been reassigned as Vega’s new partner. Mitch said something and Rick headed back to his desk, his strides long and confident, not a wrinkle in his perfectly pressed navy blue suit.

Though her death was not his fault, Vega had never forgiven himself for Katie getting killed that day in front of the bank. It was part of the reason the detective usually agreed to help him. Since Johnnie helped the police in return as much as he could, he didn’t feel a damn bit bad about benefiting from Vega’s guilt.

Rick sat back down and started typing on his keyboard, pulled up Rachael’s missing persons file and pushed the print button.

“I could catch holy hell for this.”

“They say anything, tell ’em I’m working on a lead. I’ll let them know if it comes to anything.”

“It’s still against the rules.” But Rick handed Johnnie the pages spitting out of the printer. There weren’t all that many.

He studied the pages. “Brewer, Rachael Carolyn. Age twenty-eight. Five foot seven, one hundred-twenty pounds. Brown hair, green eyes. Employed two years as a dancer at the Kitty Cat Club, before that, a waitress at Milt’s Coffee Shop. Reported missing May first of this year.” Most of which he already knew. He skimmed down the page, shuffled through the next and the next. “Looks like the suits questioned Kyle Bennett.”

Rick made a rude sound in his throat. “There’s a real scumbag. She was scraping the bottom of the barrel if she was running with him.” Rick started grinning. “Matter of fact, we got a call on Bennett yesterday. Uniforms found him naked in some kinky sex deal.”

Johnnie grinned. “That so?”

Rick eyed him with suspicion. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Johnnie’s shoulders went up in an innocent shrug. “Who me?”

Rick shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

Johnnie returned his attention to the pages in Rachael’s file. “According to this, Bennett said he hadn’t seen Rachael for at least two weeks before she disappeared. Says the info checked out.”

The police had also interviewed the employees Rachael worked with at the club but had come up empty. “Mentions a Realtor named Peter Brand. Doesn’t say much, though, just that Brand knows Rachael through some charity he’s involved with.”

“Interesting.”

“Looks like he has an alibi for the night she disappeared.”

“Anything else?” Vega asked.

“Says here she and Honeybee didn’t get along.”

“Honeybee?”

“Redhead named Vicky Thomas, dancer at the club.” Johnnie remembered talking to her when he was hunting Ray Carroll, the skip he’d returned to Texas. “I’ll take another look at her.” He studied the words on the page. “Rachael’s car is also missing. Blue, 1998 Toyota Corolla. Haven’t found a trace of it.”

“Maybe she took off with a boyfriend.”