Maggie Shayne – Innocent Prey (страница 4)

Holding her head, she sank onto the seat and started screaming at the top of her lungs. “You fucker, you’d better fucking let me go or my father will destroy you! You’d don’t even know—”

The driver braked to a whiplash-inducing stop, and then he was on her, all his weight on her back. He pushed her face down into the seat while she wriggled and thrashed and cried. Her hands were tied behind her with what felt like a plastic band. A zip tie. She couldn’t breathe. He was smothering her.

He jerked her head up by the hair, and she sucked in a desperate breath. Then he wrapped a strip of duct tape all the way around her mouth to the back of her head. Finally he got off her and shoved her to the floor. In seconds the van was moving again.

She dragged herself up onto the seat, sobbing, trembling. She’d thought her life couldn’t get any worse. It was painfully obvious that it could. And had.

God, what had she done?

1

Whitney Point, New York

Okay. Maybe the bullshit I wrote was a little bit true. If you wanted it, you could have it. There was more to it, of course. But that was the basis of every book I’d ever written. And it seemed like my own bullshit was determined to prove itself to me.

I’d wanted my eyesight back, I’d wanted my brother’s murder solved, I’d wanted to survive the holidays—literally, survive the holidays. And I’d wanted Detective Mason Brown.

I pretty much had all of that now. I could still see. No complications, no rejecting of the donor tissue this time—besides on moral grounds, that is. It did come from a serial killer—my brother’s killer—after all. I had survived the holidays, though it had been a damn close call. The case was solved, sort of. Tommy’s killer was dead. Twice now. And his brother, the aforementioned Detective Dreamboat, was in my bed, if only for an hour or two at a time.

I was actually beginning to believe that the messages of my bestselling books (and calendars, coffee mugs, app and upcoming series of imprinted apparel) were valid. I was actually starting to think, as Mason did, that my unoriginal philosophies on positive thinking and deliberate creation were popular because there was some truth to them, that they were more than just regurgitated new age psycho-spiritual babble. And if I were honest with myself, it felt good to believe that. It felt damn good to think I was serving some kind of higher purpose in the world.

I choked on a sarcastic laugh from my inner bitch, and it sounded like a snort. Higher purpose. Right. Still...I was warming up to the notion that there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere. For me, that’s about as close to a spiritual awakening or an “ah-ha moment” as it’s ever gonna get.

So why was I still kinda miserable?

Mason rolled away from me, sat up and bent forward to pull on his jeans. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand—10:00 p.m. “This has to be some kind of a land speed record.”

He stopped with his hands on his button fly and turned to look back at me. He was the sexiest man in the universe. I am not exaggerating. I didn’t know why women didn’t swarm him in the streets like adolescents mobbing a Jonas brother. (Yes, that’s a dated reference. I’m over thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t say Hansen.)

Mason leaned over and kissed me nice and slow. “Sorry,” he said when I let go of his lips. “But the boys will be home from the movies and—”

I held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s just...”

“Just what?” He knelt on the bed, his jeans still undone, as he buttoned up his shirt. I thought he could’ve been on the cover of a steamy novel. Fifty Shades of Brown. Mason Brown, that is.

“I really have to go,” he said.

“So go, then. You remember the way, right?”

“Don’t be mad.”

I sighed, thinking I was acting like a sophomore pouting over her steady, which was stupid, because this was just the way I wanted it. And because I don’t even like sophomores.

“Don’t be dumb. I’m not mad. You’re the world’s greatest uncle, and you’re also all they have. Besides their grandmother, the queen of cold.”

“Easy, woman.”

I grinned at him, pleased with myself. By insulting his mother, I’d diverted his attention from my petulant little burst of emotional ickiness. “Go on. Tell Josh and Jeremy I said hi.”

He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide whether to say something, or maybe waiting for me to say something more. Then he nodded, kissed me quickly and got up to finish dressing.

“I’ve got that meeting with the chief tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call you right after, tell you what it was about.”

New subject. Nice. I was uncomfortable talking about...relationship stuff. Heavy stuff. Fortunately, so was he. “I already know what it’s about,” I said, crawling halfway out of the bed and pulling the little plastic stairs closer. Myrtle, my bulldog, was still snoring, but now she could join me when she was ready. Moving her doggy stairs away from the bed was essential to having good sex. Otherwise she spent the whole time trying to wriggle her way in between us. It was just wrong, you know?

“Yeah? What’s it about, then?” he asked, though he already knew what I thought.

“The rumors are true. Chief Subrinsky has decided to retire, and he wants you to be his replacement.”

Mason shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. “I don’t think so. This feels different.”

He’d already been wined and dined with Chief Sub in the company of a congressman, everyone from the D.A.’s office, the owner of the Press & Sun-Bulletin and the mayor. He was clearly being groomed for the job, even while insisting he didn’t want it.

I could’ve smacked him. It paid six figures. Low six, but still...

“‘Feels different,’ huh?” I asked. “You’re starting to sound like me, Detective Brown.”

“There are worse things.” He sent me a wink and a killer smile. His damn cheek dimples were my undoing. How did I live for twenty years without once seeing a cheek dimple like that? He pulled me close and did a better job of kissing me goodbye, then dropped me on my pillows and headed for the door. “I’ll call you after the lunch.”

“Okay.”

“Night, Rache.”

“Night.”

He closed the bedroom door on his way out. I rolled onto my side, curled up and pulled the covers over my shoulder, while my inner girlie-girl whined that she wished he could spend the whole night.

This is what we both want. It’s perfect. Don’t go thinking if a little is good, more would be better. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just leave it alone. Don’t screw this up.

I waited until I heard his car leave, then got up, pulled on a robe and crouched beside Myrtle, who was still snoring on the carpeted floor. “I hear brownies and milk calling my name, Myrt. What do you think?”

She perked her ears but did not open her eyes. Not that it would matter if she did. She was blind as a bat.

“You hungry, Myrt? You want to eat?”

Her head came up a microsecond before she sprang to her feet and said, “Snarf!”

I scratched her between the ears. “This is good, right? Just you and me and bedtime brownies. Even if you do have to have the low-fat ones from the gourmet doggy bakery. This is the life, Myrt. This is the life.”

I wasn’t really convinced, but I figured if I said it often enough I could make it true.

* * *

Mason walked into The End Zone in the suit he saved for weddings. Overdressed for a sports bar, but if this turned out to be another part of the unending audition for the chief’s job, then it was perfect.

Besides, he’d already worn his funeral suit to a couple of the VIP meals the chief had been dragging him to for the past few weeks.

Grooming him to take over his office when he retired, or so Rachel kept telling him. He hoped to God that wasn’t the case. He didn’t want the headaches of that much responsibility, the hassles of politics or the boredom of a desk job, no matter how demanding it might be.

And yet, he was raising two boys now. Their father was dead by his own hand—as were a lot of others, though no one else knew that besides Rachel—and their mother was in a locked psych unit, after trying to reclaim a bunch of her husband’s donated organs. Including the corneas Rachel was currently using.

Yeah, his family was a mess. And yet Rache still hadn’t run screaming. Well, she had. A couple of times. Just not from him.

The chief-of-police position would bring a massive pay raise and much longer life expectancy. Didn’t he owe it to the kids to take it if he could?

But he couldn’t, could he? He’d lied. He’d covered up his brother’s crimes and destroyed evidence to protect his surviving family members. He didn’t deserve to still be a cop at all, much less chief of police.

He spotted the chief’s boxy flat-top silhouette at a table all the way in the back of the bar, swathed in shadows because the big-screen TV closest to it had been turned off. The only tables near it were empty.

Another man, taller and almost painfully thin, sat across from the chief with his body angled toward the wall and his head down. He was trying hard not to be noticed, Mason thought, and wondered why.

The chief caught his eye and waved him over, so Mason made his way to the table, giving the place a once-over on the way. There were only a handful of other customers, and no one seemed to be paying him any undue attention. But the chief’s companion was nervous, and that made Mason nervous.