Pieces of Ivy (30 page)

His instructions were to keep her out of the way for exactly the time specified, then release her—
alive
. Do not fail, the message had said.
I never do.

Cole relished clockwork. If he was a slave to anyone, it was the temptress of time. So ordered and divine when worshiped and submitted to, she would then allow one to wield her to his advantage, let him slip in and out—strike and be gone. This was Cole’s claim to fame, and her gift for his servitude.

He had to sequester Miss Starr for four hours, then release her alive. The instructions didn’t explicitly say
unharmed
.

He deeply sniffed her scent again. He had smelled her clothes clean since seeing her that night during her midnight skinny-dip. Christ, he was horny. After pressing Send on his confirmation, Cole set his watch for precisely four hours and waited for his prey to stir.

† †
†

Vicki moved to her feet and stood in the dark chamber, dizzy, as a voice spoke from the black behind the bright light. “I think you dropped these.” Her panties flew at her. He was the one who had stolen her clothes, watched her from the woods and took her—

The disembodied hand aimed the muzzle of her missing Glock 23 at her belly and the voice commanded from the shadow, in a cold, cruel tone, “Strip.”

She held her hand against the gleam. “What?”

“Strip.”

She started to tremble, offering only a quick, short shake of her head. She couldn’t see the man who was cast behind the light, but she imagined the silhouette beneath that streetlight outside her apartment. That scared her more. He shot between her knees and concrete sprayed, biting into the back of her denim-clad thighs.

He laughed at her scream. He was feeling less professional, less disciplined. He knew his beloved injections were to blame, and he would have to get a grip on that … later.

“Why are you doing this?”

He didn’t know. The company of women had never been of much importance to him. A nice treat once in a while, but hardly a compulsion—it’s what set him apart, made him so formidable and incorruptible. His professional pride mattered less and less. Should he be concerned? At the moment, he wasn’t.

“I want to
humiliate
you.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a stranger in the night.” He glanced at his watch. They didn’t have much more time together. He resisted his impatience, to prove his control to the beautiful, young,
forbidden
woman.

The Glock barrel pressed Play on the dust-covered cassette player.
Jackpot! Sweet serendipity
. Cole rolled his head slowly to the Cowboy Junkies’ haunting cover of “Sweet Jane.” The FBI agent looked far more delicious when she was terrified. He grinned, aiming at her pelvis. “Strip.”

He loved how the nervous shake of her head contrasted with the vengeance burning in her eyes as she complied.

He decided the cool, musty smell of this subterranean chamber augmented her terror, like being entombed in a buried cinder block. He relished the way her fingers trembled as she struggled to unbutton her jeans. She issued every plausible threat, and, yet, she obeyed under lethal intimidation.

His brain was on fire—its torment: ecstasy. His greatest desire was to push her mouth onto him and drive past her tonsils, repeatedly. Was that too much to ask—
or too little
? The tight firmness against his hand answered, yes. But his
mistress
was jealous. She was letting her gifts of
time
slip away as he spent his focus on another. Time was running too short.

“
Strip
!”

He could tell she felt the heat on her skin from his hidden gaze rather than the lamp.

Close was so much better than from trees or through a distant window in the dark. He could smell her, raw, from here—a fusion of body and fear. Oh, he wanted her to finish him. Those lips, so soft, so lush, especially when trembling.

But he was not stupid. Even if he had the barrel pressed to her head, kitty might bite, and he preferred his utility intact. Besides, then he would have to kill her. His handler wouldn’t be happy—never was with anyone who went off script.

She looked mouthwatering. “Open yourself to me … Good. Very good.”

She was trembling.

“Come closer.”

She shook her head.

He leveled the gun. “
Closer
.”

The deed was about
impact
over tactile sensation anyway, so he resigned to keep his glove on and reached from the darkness into the light. “Don’t move.” She froze. He pushed his fingers between her legs then forced them up and in.

Vicki released a small cry, and, as she heard his low, dark chuckle, she whispered her shuddering threat, “
I’m going to kill you
.”

Fear smelled better than sex, but both combined was ravenous ecstasy.

This time there was no peaceful sedation. Her eyes were too wet and straining against the harsh light to see the coming blow.

† †
†

Vicki stirred against the cool wash of forest air over her skin—her head throbbing. She quickly sealed her audible moan as she tried to orient her mind. Only recalling the quick beeps from his watch and then the sharp flash of pain, which hemorrhaged into a disorienting pounding inside her skull, Vicki stared up at the skeletal fingers of Cherrybrook’s deadwoods reaching to choke out the early evening sky.

Where had he dumped her? She rolled her head, left to right, against the sharp, drying grass and saw the burned effigy of the former church watching her lying naked in the center of the bone yard.

Squinting against the shadowed brightness, she prayed her clothes were tossed there with her. They weren’t. When she heard the voices, she rolled quickly behind a large, crumbling headstone, rushing for modesty.

They were young, male—a number of them, laughing and swearing—coming around the far side of the church. In her panicked haste, she called out
hello
for help and immediately cursed herself for it.

“
Hello
?” a young, maliciously curious voice responded.

Eight of the Hoods rounded the corner. Seeing her crouched behind the broken stone the leader cried, “Holy fuck, boys, the bitch is naked.”

Another backslapped two of his mates. “It’s Christmas, boys!”

“She
really
must want us.”

Vicki bolted for the darker tree line behind her. She dodged this tree and that, the terrible timberland remembering her, wanting her flesh, again—so accessible now. The pack was fast. They howled behind her with ravenous delight.

“Wait!” one yelled to her. “We want to
help
you.”

Another cackled. “Yeah, get off!”

They all laughed and bolstered their torment.

This was bad. She knew these boys would make good on their vicious threats: use her, defile her and then make her disappear—these young fiends, the type not wanting to be caught, but unafraid of the consequences. She needed to reach the bridge, to force faith that its terror was real and would have the potential to stop
them
, but praying that she could push through somehow, even with this level of fright amplified.

The root snatched her foot. She scrambled to the ground, and they were on her.

The unnatural screams raging through the forest didn’t come from Vicki. The boy who straddled her, to cage their fallen prey and prove dominance, jumped off of her as quickly as he had pounced.

Vicki rolled to see him join his petrified comrades slowly retreating through a cluster of trees. She leaped to her feet, putting solid wood between her, the Hoods and the spectral howl that terrified the lupine bastards.

The sudden silence in the deadwoods held only the Hoods’ heavy panting and the snapping twigs of their cautious retreat. Then the voice cried, “
Go
!” and the boys bolted away toward the church.

† †
†

Sky wore her jeans, T-shirt and bare feet, carrying heavy burnt shackles around her neck and a menacing blade in her hand. As the boys ran, she slung the shackles over a fallen tree, touched the blade to her lips and set it gently upon a nearby log.

The weight of what had happened crashed with Vicki’s adrenaline. Vicki breathed the heavy words through her dry throat, “Thank you.”

Sky stripped off her T-shirt and then pulled down her jeans. Vicki stiffened. The naked woman tossed Vicki her clothes. “You need these more than I do.”

† †
†

Hank found Vicki sitting on her hospital bed. He didn’t have any details, only that she was found walking barefoot along the side of the road. She didn’t appear fine, as she had insisted. Instead, she had looked traumatized. He wanted to press further, but, looking at her, he was uncertain how to proceed.

He recognized the clothes on the counter.

“Why were you wearing her clothes … again?”

She looked at them for a long moment then began trembling. “
He took me, Hank
,”—she wet her lips—“He took me, and then
they
found me … naked in the woods. She gave me her clothes because”—her chin quivered—“he still had mine.”

Fear filled his face as he looked upon her, processing.

She stared into her partner’s seeking eyes, and hers started to fill. “He took me—the dark man took me.”

White lips trembling, he tried to form the words but only managed an audible but broken utterance, “Did he—”

She couldn’t answer. She didn’t know. The tenderness within her body terrified her. How far had he gone with her after striking her unconscious?

They sat in silence for nearly ten minutes before Dr. Shepard appeared with Dr. Voxel; she had a bag with her. Hank stood by Vicki as if she were the mother of his unborn child. He didn’t realize he was holding Vicki’s hand until she squeezed it—telling him it helped.

Vicki confirmed that she had requested Dr. Voxel’s attendance. Hank was asked to leave while they discussed the results.

He waited for permission to reenter; instead, Vicki left the room with Allison Voxel. The news must have been good. He waited for Vicki to hug Dr. Voxel goodbye before approaching her.

She looked at Hank. “This doesn’t make him any less dead.”

Hank didn’t argue.

† †
†

Regardless of the negative results for oral contact or penile penetration, Vicki had still been sexually assaulted. She shuddered at the leather-gloved invasion, trying to convince herself that she was lucky—escaping far worse.

And what if Sky hadn’t come? She doubted the boys would have let her resurface. In their pack mentality, they wouldn’t have stopped no matter how much she pleaded.

None of this made her
feel
lucky. Being unable to put a face to her attacker was infuriating. She had seen him multiple times, and yet, somehow, he was able to remain veiled to her.

He may be tied to Ivy’s murder
somehow
, but Vicki’s gut claimed this was not Ivy’s killer. Vicki’s attacker was standing outside her window while Ivy was being ruined. Vicki would find Ivy’s killer. Then she would find the dark man, get her answers, put him behind bars—and pray he found
penile penetration
there.

Her capture bothered her. He had baited her, and she had fallen for it. Not knowing
why
was worse. He had captured and violated her—degraded her. And then let her go. The attack didn’t make sense.

She allowed Allison Voxel to persuade her to stay the night for observation. “Let them take care of you,” she had insisted. “You’ll be more effective tomorrow if you do.”

Apparently Roscoe was on a rampage in spite of his wound, teetering on losing his job. She hated to admit it, but that made her feel better.

† †
†

Night consumed her, and the wolves chased her through her terror, yowling, as the depraved threats grew closer, closer, closer. Their heads, enveloped by smoking flames, bared their charred and snapping wolf jaws. Flashing between the gaps of the black trees around her, the vicious pack howled for her destruction, switching back and forth between the burning wolf-boys and the feral, cruel mothers and daughters, trying to run her down and ruin her.

As their debauched threats drew closer, Vicki raced for the bridge, ignoring the roots that sliced at her bloody feet as the sharp, hungry fingers of the forest carved away thin, dripping ribbons of her flesh for their own as she rushed past—her thousand bleeding cuts slowly sapping her scant lead.

Pushing faster toward her terrifying salvation, Vicki’s mind argued to let the pack take her rather than face that malicious bridge again. Her heart drove her forward but the forest held its distance to the bridge, stretching, no matter how fast she ran. She could smell lavish perfume, bone smoke and wolf’s breath, closing in as the savage screaming of their blended taunts—male, female, animal—filled her ears.

Sky stood stripped in the middle of the path. She opened herself up to the marauders as Vicki rushed past. They pounced—man, woman, animal—ripping the witch to pieces, feeding on her flesh—

“Vicki! Vicki!”

Hank shook her. She was still screaming.

“
Vicki
!”

Vicki blinked up at her partner against the early morning sunbeam. Realizing it was a dream.

“Vicki!” he pleaded, with two nurses standing behind him.

Though wide-eyed and taking in the reality of her hospital room, Vicki could still feel herself screaming.

Hank turned desperately to one of the nurses who quickly left.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he repeated, holding her.

Only then did she hear her cries wind down.

She tried to catch her breath as Hank waved off the returning nurse’s sedative.

“The wolves,” she shivered as he pulled her into his chest, cradling her head beneath his chin where she could feel enveloped and safe. “They’re
packs
. They kill for competition. They kill for carnage. They just kill.”

“I know—shh, shh, shh,” he whispered. “I know.”

She struggled to sip her grounding cup of tea. She thought of the mean girls, the malevolent wives—the overwhelming envy Vicki had felt in her mirror. “I think I know who did it,” she whispered. She relayed her nightmare, explaining away her screams.

Hank was elsewhere, looking distracted.

“You’re not listening, Hank!”

He looked at her. “We found Ivy’s killer.”