Read Killer Among Us Online

Authors: Adriana Hunter,Carmen Cross

Tags: #erotic thriller, #bondage, #submissive, #domination, #bdsm erotica, #dungeon, #erotic horror, #bdsm horror, #bdsm thriller, #thriller and mystery, #bdsm absolute power

Killer Among Us (5 page)

BOOK: Killer Among Us
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Will you catch
him?”

I hope so.
“Yes.


Good.”

Before he could say anything else she slid
inside the door and shut it firmly behind her. He heard multiple
locks sliding home and he stood there for a few minutes, listening
to the silence and wondering what it was about her that invoked his
protector side as much as it stirred his long suppressed
desires.

 

***

The apartment was clean, except for the room
where the woman had died. She had been a fighter, lamps were
knocked over and a long tear in the sheets offered up a long red
fingernail, it had been torn from her hand while she had
desperately fought for her life.


Her name was Pamela
Skinner, also known as Pam Skin. She was a singer in a punk rock
band that was fairly popular in the mid-nineties. This guy, he
kills people who almost made it.” Lynette turned toward Kane, her
brow furrowed in thought. “You’re the former FBI guy, you call
it.”

Kane winced; he hated to be reminded of his
time at the Bureau. “You just did,” he said and walked into the
living room to talk to Pam’s shaken roommate.

***

 

Kane was frustrated beyond words long before
he staggered into his apartment for a quick nap and a shower. He
was certain that the dead woman was somehow connected to Sophie’s
sighting. He was, in fact, utterly positive she had seen the
victim’s head, the serial killer, and that she was lucky to be
alive.

He lay in bed, exhaustion settling into his
bones as he played over the details of the case in his mind,
looking for clues into the killer’s mind, seeking out any sort of a
pattern.

What am I not seeing?

Kane had been on the fast track at the
Bureau, and when he had made the decision to leave in order to join
the police force in New York it had shocked everyone. He could have
told them why, but he had felt like it was his decision and he owed
no explanations.

He had been exposed to a lot of the best
minds the Bureau had on tap as well as some of its most violent
cases. He had worked hand in glove with profilers and he knew that
there was always a pattern, some underlying commonality when it
came to the people that were selected by serial killers. The key
was to find it.

But what had all the women had in common?
None of them had the same hair or eye color or were the same age.
They all had the same lean and attenuated bodies; they had all been
semi-famous in some way or another, those were the only things that
were the same. What was it about those two things that set the
Creeper off? Kane wondered, or did they have anything to do with
the killings at all?

He knew it would just be a matter of time
before the FBI got called in and he knew that the only reason
Captain Ross was putting it off was because he was hoping his
detectives could solve it, and that he could take the credit.

Kane doubted that they would be able to. The
Creeper’s kill rates were accelerating. He had killed three women
in two weeks and Kane knew one thing about serial killers, once
they started accelerating they rarely slowed down.

He closed his eyes but their faces remained.
Seven women, all of them killed violently and without reason. He
shut his mind off deliberately and went to sleep.

 

***

There were seven heads. He counted them and
blinked. He knew five of the women, only five. He counted them
again and scratched his head. The oddly desperate feeling that
seemed to always be right below the surface returned, swarming
under his skin like a horde of angry bees.

Where had the other women come from? That
was a ridiculous question, he had killed them. But why? He poured
milk onto his cereal and stared at the heads. The latest had a deep
dimple in her chin that would have elevated her face from merely
pretty to incredibly striking by virtue of its being so
unusual.

The milk tasted sour and the cereal was
dried out and flavorless. It crunched grittily between his teeth,
but he didn’t notice. The one his eyes kept being drawn back to
stared at him with a seeming reproach, he could almost feel the
contempt coming from her.

Appetite gone he dumped the bowl into the
sink, making sure to clean it out afterward. He had become
obsessive about neatness the year before and he was simultaneously
aroused and sickened by the frozen patches of maroon colored blood
that clumped around the ragged stumps of their necks.

His hand crept toward his crotch but his
body refused to respond. Anger swelled instead of his member and he
clenched his fists in rage as he stared at the face of the first of
his victims.

Her hair had been shining and soft in life,
but in death it hung in a limp straw textured clump around her
cheeks, her face was patched with frost and ice crystals and her
blue eyes had developed a film over them, giving her the appearance
of someone who was aging and developing cataracts.

His eyes closed but the red streaked
darkness behind his eyelids offered him no answers.

Sighing he turned and left the comfort of
his home, like any regular guy on his way to work.

 

***

Sophie was beyond grateful that she had a
couple of days off from work for she was thoroughly exhausted.
Sassy’s small heavy weight rested near her right hip and she
relaxed as she picked up one of the thin novels that sat in the
cardboard box under her coffee table.

The cover showed a woman with eyes too big
for her face and a thin gown standing on a snow bank. Wolves
circled around her slight figure while a dark haired man seated on
a large black horse were featured in the background. Everything
about the book screamed cheesy romance and she gave a happy sigh as
she opened the pages and began to read.

Barbara Cartland had been a name she had
known as soon as Geoff had said it. Her mother had had shelves
filled with those books, at twelve she had still been too young to
read them and when she had been taken in by the system she had not
been allowed to keep her parent’s possessions, they had owed money
and creditors had swooped down to claim their home and belongings
to offset those debts. Besides, the foster system only allowed her
so many possessions. The worker had packed all of her things into
black trash bags rather than the suitcases that had been in her
parent’s closet.

The books made her feel close to her mother
again but they also made her wonder what it would be like to be so
in love that there was no risk not worth taking.

She closed the book, suddenly restless. Her
mind kept going back to the scene she had witnessed at the club
that she had been in with Kane. Was that love? How could that woman
have trusted someone so much that she would allow herself to be
tied up and used so openly? That memory brought heat to her face
and between her thighs.

She had never known lust, never known the
throb of excitement that accompanied sex until she had seen that
couple and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. Sex, in her
experience, was painful and frightening. Susan had traded sex for
money and drugs and so she had also seen it as a commodity,
something fast and cheap and easily forgotten. None of that
appealed to her.

But what she had seen in the club had
excited her; she couldn’t deny it. She turned the thoughts off as
best as she could and buried herself back in the book but the
memory kept seeping back in, as did the heat.

Frustrated, she decided what she really
needed was some exercise. Sassy gave a low hopeful whine as Sophie
put on her shoes but she gave her a little hug and a promise to
walk her when she returned and left the apartment alone.

The sun hung low in the sky, barely visible
above the tall buildings on Fifth Avenue, bathing the people
walking with a soft golden glow. Lines of people waiting for food
at the carts clogged foot traffic and taxis clashed their gears
while their drivers shouted curses at each other and impatient
drivers flipped each other off and beeped their horns despite the
signs declaring horn honkers would be fined three hundred
dollars.

Sophie felt immediately better. She walked
fast, having learned that to walk slowly was to risk being run over
by other people, slowing only occasionally to peek into shop
windows. A thrift store window’s merchandise beckoned and she went
in, coming out with a bag that held a small print for her living
room wall and a set of fanciful coffee mugs that had colorful fish
swirling around the rims.

Her mood had lightened considerably by the
time she bounded back into the apartment. She took Sassy back out
for a few minutes and then she put herself back into her little
nest on the sofa, the book once more in her hands.

It slipped from her fingers as she fell
asleep, landing on the floor with a small thud. She rolled over,
her face nuzzling into the back of the sofa as she dreamed.

 

***

The DNA matched. Kane gave the results a
grim once-over, before leaning back in the creaking chair that sat
at his desk. Forrester lounged over his own chair; his suit had
rucked up around his back, causing large and bulky creases in the
jacket.


So this woman didn’t see
anything huh?” He asked.


Just a guy with a head in
a bag.”

Forrester riffled through the report in
front of him, “Susan Hammond,” he said, “Lives at Thirty-Third and
Eighth.”

Kane wondered what report the other man was
looking into but didn’t ask, he had learned long ago that to ask
what was going on in Forrester’s cases somehow translated to him
agreeing to take them on. He didn’t need any more cases on his
plate.

The DNA matched, the rush results proved it.
The man Sophie had seen had been the same man who had murdered the
latest victim. He stood up, rubbing his eyes and lower back. The
precinct hummed with activity, below the long staircase various
petty thieves and junkies were hustled in and out of the pens, all
of them screaming for lawyers or that they were being railroaded.
Half of them were in so often they knew most of the cops by
name.

Hookers laughed and joked in the lock up
space that was referred to as the kitty crawl by the women who
frequented it. The Homicide Division’s home building was undergoing
major remodeling so the detectives were all crammed into a
sprawling open space on the top floor, all the noise drifted upward
to them. For some it was a distraction, Kane never noticed it.

The FBI was going to be in by the end of the
week and he knew that while the help would be needed he also
dreaded it. The news reports were full of the killings: the latest
had been a bit different however; the woman who had been killed had
not been almost famous, she had been famous. Or, at least, in some
circles.

Jenny Fox had been known for her eccentric
and flamboyant behavior, she claimed to be a gypsie, to be
possessed by the goddess Inanna, and that she was able to speak to
the dead. The woman had made a living by holding séances and
channeling spirits. She was known for showing up on television
shows while being ‘used by the Lady’ as she put it, and even though
many people shot her rather ridiculous claims down with logic, she
seemed to stay popular with those desperate to talk to their dead
until the year before, when her ex-partner had announced to the
world that Jenny was a fraud and a liar who had been born in the
mountains of North Carolina and that she had left a husband and a
warrant for her arrest behind, as well as a past marked by mental
illness and drug use, when she moved to the city.

Kane could not figure out where she fit into
the serial killer’s pattern, Jenny was older and not at all thin.
She was in her forties and she had short hair, all of the other
women had been possessed of long hair.

Could there be a copycat? Or was she killed
by a person who had taken her head in an attempt to throw them off
the trail? His every instinct said she had been a victim of the
Creeper but there was no pattern.

He stared down at the photographs, his mouth
thinning down to a hard line. Jenny had been killed far more
savagely than the last victim, further proof that the killer was
accelerating. His neck ached and his mood was black as he decided
to call it a night.

Walking home he felt tension draining away
from his shoulders. His back muscles loosened and his long legs ate
the distance but the movement could not help shut off his mind.

His thoughts drifted away from the case and
back to Sophie. He had not realized how much he longed for a new
submissive, how much he had missed the rough and intense sex and
the trust that made a scene really work for him until he saw the
look of yearning wonder on her gorgeous face.

His crotch ached at the memory of her parted
lips, widened eyes and flushed cheeks. He walked faster, hoping
that that sudden burst of lust would subside but it didn’t, if
anything it intensified. It was late, after midnight and he had to
curb the urge to go and knock on her door.


What would you say to
her?” he asked himself, “Hi, remember me? The cop you met at a kink
club? I was just checking to make sure you were still alive and,
hey, by the way, would you mind if I took you to dinner then
spanked you and fucked you senseless?”

The image that conjured up: Sophie on her
belly with her firm and pale ass bared to him, made his cock grow
harder. He growled out an expletive, startling the woman who was
walking in front of him.

I want her, he admitted as
he opened the door to his apartment. After all these years I want
to take a new submissive under hand and, go figure, she does not
even know what that means…
yet
.

BOOK: Killer Among Us
8.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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