Dance of the Crystal (23 page)

“It was time,” he said enigmatically.

She wrenched herself from his grip and spun around, her frantic glance searching for a clue to Rowena’s whereabouts. The room was ell-shaped, and she took the few steps to see behind the angle. She did a double take at the sight of a bed in the far corner—a single pallet with a lacy white coverlet. Then she noticed the painting that went almost from ceiling to floor. A life-size portrait of the Virgin Mary, the only color in the room. “Oh…my…God…”

Icy shards of panic lanced through her veins when she noticed. The portrait bore her face. A face that was ripped by the slash of a knife.

“This will be your ‘safe’ room,” Jack announced.

Her gaze snapped back to him. “Safe from whom?” she sneered then wondered if she should antagonize someone so obviously unhinged.

“From anyone who would harm you again.”

“‘Again’? What do you mean, ‘again’? Nobody’s harmed me.”

“When you were nineteen. I was too young, too helpless, to prevent it the first time. That’s why I made myself so strong. I will protect you with my last breath. You have my solemn vow, I won’t let it happen again.”

“Won’t let
what
happen again? Jack, you’re not making sense.”

“It’s okay that you blocked it out of your mind. It’s a defense mechanism for something that was simply too horrible to remember. God knows, I’ve never been able to forget it.”

“What are you talking about?” She almost yelled it. He sounded like someone who’d flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

The expression on Jack’s face turned from pained to rapturous. “I remember when we met. You walked into my shop with your grandmother, looking for a cheval mirror for your bedroom. You were eighteen.

When I saw your dark, innocent eyes, your curly hair almost black with glints of copper in the light, I knew that I would spend the rest of my life protecting your innocence, your purity.”

His gaze rested on her. “I can’t tell you how joyous I felt, to find you before it happened, before you turned nineteen and that vile man—”

His face darkened, as if a black cloud passed across it. A scowl twisted his mouth downward. His eyes sparked with malice. “For twelve years I protected you, watched over you. Then
he
came into your life.

Another devil, another bastard with defilement on his mind. I can’t let it happen again. You must be cleansed, and I’m prepared to do everything in my power to help you. Together we will make you pure enough to continue your novitiate.”

“What are you talking about?” This time it was a near whisper. Fear permeated every cell of her body.

Jack Healy seemed to have turned into a madman.

“I was eleven,” he said plaintively. “I was small for my age and terrified of him, but I had to try to save you. I knew what he was going to do.” A tear escaped his eye. He seemed not to notice. “Instead, I…I—”

An awful sound, a mix between a sob and a keening, emerged from his throat. “I made it worse. I didn’t mean to, but I-I…helped him.”

“It’s all right,” she said softly, having not the vaguest notion what he was talking about. “I forgive you.”

She took one step, two, three, around his kneeling, hunched form, the door her target. “It’s all right.”

She’d scrutinized every wall but could see no other doorway—or piece of furniture big enough—where he might have stashed Rowena, so she felt safe in trying to escape to call 9-1-1 and get help.

Or, worse, maybe the twisted-ankle story had just been a ruse to lure her here into this white room of madness.

Her hand grasped the doorknob, turned it. The door opened.
Thank God
! She took the first hurried step to freedom.

Suddenly Jack grabbed hold of her by her inner elbow. Gripping the doorjamb with her free hand and digging in her heels, she wrenched away from him. Searing pain shot through her shoulder and nearly brought her to her knees. Scrambling to stay upright, she staggered toward the stairs but only took a few steps before she was tackled from behind.

Instinctively she flung her arms out in front of her to cushion the fall and landed on her left wrist and right forearm. The shock of impact vibrating up to her injured shoulder brought tears to her eyes. Her forehead smacked against her knuckles but kept her from smashing her face onto the concrete floor.

Jack landed heavily on her legs, his hands grasping her hips in viselike pincers. “You can’t run away,” he raged. “You need to be cleansed. Do not run from your destiny.”

Dear God, he
was
mad! Crystal managed to scramble to her knees and began crawling toward the steps, toward freedom.

But Jack had already gained his footing and lifted her by her hips until she, too, stood on wobbly legs, her back to him. He wound his arms around her chest like an octopus. She could feel his hot, heavy breath at her nape, raising the fine hairs there.

“Do not fight me, Patty.”

A shudder tore through Crystal like a volcanic eruption. Who was Patty?

Slowly he began walking backwards, dragging her inexorably with him, closer and closer to the white-walled prison. “I will make you pure again. Then you will be worthy.”

Crystal forced herself to speak in a normal tone. “I’m not Patty. I’m Crystal D’Angelo, and Rowena is my grandmother.”

But he seemed not to hear. This time when he slammed the door behind him, he shoved her forward and she landed gracelessly on the sofa. He spun around to lock the door with a key he apparently kept on a chain around his neck.

Her phone! Please, let her phone still be there.

She tried to be casual as she slipped her hand in her jacket pocket, but winced at the pain. At least one of her fingers felt as if bones were broken when she fell.

With an effort she hid her relief as her fingers wound around the precious lifeline. But…who to call?

9-1-1? If she dialed emergency, how could she explain her predicament without Jack hearing? Could they pinpoint her location if she couldn’t talk but they could hear fighting or screaming?

Soren? She’d programmed his home number into her speed-dial, but would he have gone home or to his pub? Or somewhere else entirely? The look of disgust on his face when he’d stomped out of her living room told her he wouldn’t talk to her even if he did answer the phone.

But wait! If he refused to pick up and she just kept the line open, whatever transpired in this white prison would at least be recorded on his answering machine. She could give hints as to where she was being held. The sensitive tips of her fingers glossed over the buttons.

“It’s time for your cleansing to begin.”

Jack jerked her off the sofa by grabbing hold of both her upper arms. Crystal cried out in pain and frustration—he’d yanked her hand up before she found the correct button to depress.

“I’m sorry to hurt you. But this is the only way.”

He pulled her toward the obscene painting. She turned her gaze away. She had no desire to see the object of his obsession, big as life but a travesty.

His fingers skimmed the snake writhing under the Madonna’s feet. He positioned a finger on each of its eyes and pressed into its sockets. Creaking slightly on hidden hinges, the painting swung out into the room, revealing a doorway.

With another shove, he herded Crystal into a white-tiled, white-fixtured bathroom and closed the door behind him. The room was long and narrow, maybe six feet by sixteen, with a tub on one end, a shower in the other, a sink and toilet between them on the wall opposite the door.

“We will begin with the shower, then into the tub to soak out all the remaining impurities. You will please disrobe now.”

“Jack, this isn’t right—”

“And if you don’t,” he rode over her objection in a monotone as if in a trance, “I will do it for you.”

Crystal felt the short hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Jack Healy was totally insane. Quickly she weighed her options. For some reason she thought he wouldn’t rape her. He wanted to “cleanse” her, whatever that meant. Okay, she could stand him watching her as she bathed, if it would keep from triggering who knew what kind of craziness. He weighed close to two hundred pounds, most of it solid muscle, and she had no self-defense training. If he began to strip her, he’d find her phone.

She turned away from him, pretending to study her surroundings. Surreptitiously she slipped her hand in her jacket pocket and concentrated on the buttons. She pressed what she fervently hoped was Soren’s speed-dial number then made a big production of removing her jacket, folding it, and placing it on the floor with the correct pocket facing up.

“Really, Jack, I would rather you didn’t watch me get undressed.”

“If it makes you more comfortable, I will turn my back until you are under the shower.” He matched deed to words and stood facing the closed door.

Realizing she had to fill the silence so he wouldn’t hear Soren’s voice either with his voice mail message or answering the phone himself, Crystal spoke loudly as she shucked off her sneakers. “I still don’t understand, Jack, why you made a special suite of rooms for me in the basement of Time Treasures.

None of the rooms have windows. You know how much I love the sunshine.”

“I will explain it all when the time is right.”

“Can you at least tell me who Patty is?” Off came the ratty tights, which she dropped to the floor. She didn’t want to put it on top of the jacket and muffle whatever sound could filter through the phone.

She could tell the question had escalated his tenseness by the set of his shoulders. To forestall an outburst, she switched gears. “Is Grandma here too? In the basement of your shop? Are you holding Rowena hostage in a separate room?” Braless, she was conscious of her breasts swaying as she bent down to dump the sweatshirt on top of the tights. “Are you planning to keep me a prisoner here in the cellar of Time Treasures?”

She was now naked except for her panties. She just couldn’t take them off. It wasn’t right. She took the few steps to the shower and lifted the stainless steel lever. In seconds the water was comfortably warm.

She hoped she’d given Soren enough hints already, because she feared the sound of spray hitting tile would muffle further conversation. To compensate, she raised her voice.

“I’m soaping myself up, Jack. I’ll be done in a minute. Keep your back to the door, okay? I’ll let you know when I’m—”

In two quick steps Jack loomed over her in the shower. He grabbed her left hand, jerked it up, knocking her knuckles against the tiles. Next thing she knew, a cold band of metal surrounded her wrist, holding it immobile.

“What the—a handcuff? Jack, what are you doing? Turn me loose!”

“Did you think,” he retorted, heedless of the fact that water cascaded down his shirt and trousers as he loomed over her inside the enclosure, “that you could wash away all the filth in two minutes?” He seized her other hand and yanked it up and across the shower space. With another ominous clanking of metal on metal, that wrist was imprisoned as well.

“Let me go!” Crystal yanked hard with both arms. Pain exploded all the way from her wrists to her battered and bruised shoulder, and she ground her teeth together to keep from crying out.

“You did not listen to me, Patty.” He slipped a wet hand inside his trousers pocket and pulled out a small knife. She cringed at the sight.

“I will not hurt you, my dear. You have my word.” Opening the blade, he slashed one side of her panties then the other, and tossed the ruined lingerie and the knife onto the floor outside the shower.

He picked up two large loofah mitts from an inside shelf, sheathed his hands and lathered them both with a bar of soap. “I watched your reprehensible behavior. It wasn’t enough that you made a spectacle of yourself on the front page of the newspaper, acting wanton for all the world to see.”

With both hands he began scrubbing her skin, up and down her back, around her hips, her buttocks.

“No, you allowed him to take you on the kitchen counter like performers in a pornographic movie.”

Crystal gasped. How had he seen—

“And in the tub, for shame!” He moved to her thighs and calves, roughly scouring her skin front and back as he crouched behind her.

Good lord, he’d spied on her! How else would he have known where they’d made love? “Jack, you’re hurting me. You don’t need to rub so hard.”

“I have not yet begun to rub hard enough. This is the strongest soap I could find. It contains caustic lye to burn the wickedness away. It will take more than these few minutes to purify you.”

As he came around to face her, swirling the soap between the loofahs to make more lather, Crystal stealthily adjusted her stance to rest on the balls of her feet, knees flexed. If he turned j-u-s-t a little bit more, she’d slam her knee into his testicles and hope they’d shoot all the way up into his mouth.

Apparently reading her intent, he dropped the soap, swept an arm behind her knee and yanked one leg up, forcing her to hop to stay balanced and upright.

“You cannot best me, Patty. You must face your destiny.” Sloughing off a loofah from his free hand, he pulled the loosened tie off his neck, flung it over a sturdy-looking grab bar positioned at waist level, and looped it under the back of her knee. Then he made another loop over the bar and tied a tight knot, leaving Crystal’s leg trapped at an uncomfortably high angle and exposing her most private spot to this madman.

“Do not worry that I will ravish you, Crystal. I aim only to cleanse you.” With that he knelt down before her and began to scrub vigorously, making wide swaths from her pubic bone, around the arc between her legs, and all the way up her crack to her anus. He shoved the thumbs of his loofahs inside her vagina and anus a number of times, scraping her tender flesh unbearably.

“Jack! Stop it! You’re hurting me! Jack, that burns! Stop! Help me! Help!”

The horror of her predicament closed in on her and she panicked. She knew it was useless, that no one would hear her, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Help, please, someone help.”

He was at her breasts now, rubbing them mercilessly until her nipples felt raw and abraded. “Please,”

she whimpered. “It hurts. Please stop.”