Dark Paradise (70 page)

"Do the right thing, Del," she whispered. "Put the gun down."

She met his eyes, not blinking, not condemning, not ridiculing. She

wasn't like the other one. He knew that.

She wanted him to help. She wanted him to be a hero too. The blue of her

eyes was like a lake after all. Calm and deep. An angel's eyes.

Something in them reached out and touched him in a place no one had

tried to enter in such a long time. . . .

"If this is a trick, ma'am," he said softly, stepping back, lowering the

rifle, "I'll kill you later."

The sound of dogs pulled Samantha up from the depths of unconsciousness,

up through layers of dream and memory. There were always dogs at her

grandfather's place. Skinny mongrels. The old man told stories about

eating dogs. When they had supper, he would whisper in her ear that they

were having puppy stew and laugh at her when she didn't eat anything but

bread. She thought of Rascal and wondered if he was worried about her.

She felt guilty that she'd been neglecting him. The guilt made her feel

tired, and she drifted back toward the black void.

A sharp howl that ended in a sharper yelp flipped a switch inside her,

and her eyes flew open. She was still in the cabin, tied to the bed. It

was still daytime---or it was daytime again. She had no idea how long

she had been out. All the same pains were throbbing in her body and in

the base of her skull. Her hands, lashed to the headboard, had gone

numb. The smell of urine and the dampness of the sheets beneath her told

her her bladder had given up while she had been unconscious.

She could hear indistinct voices outside and she tried to call out, but

the gag was like a cork in her mouth and there was no way to dislodge

it. Hope surged like a geyser inside her. Maybe the voices belonged to

hikers and they would come in and rescue her. Or hunters - with the dogs.

But it wasn't hunting season.

Hope receded with the thought that the voice might belong to her captor.

A door opened somewhere behind her. She couldn't crane her neck around

far enough to see. No one spoke.

Minutes stretched on, stretching her nerves into brittle, hair-thin

strands. Her head pounded. She wondered dimly if she had hallucinated

the door opening, the sound of boots on the wood floor. How could she

hear anything at all with this pounding in her brain?
 
How could any of

this be real?
 
Who would want to kidnap her?
 
She wasn't worth anything.

The boots sounded again against the wood floor.

Closer. Closer. Right behind her. She struggled to twist her head

around, but couldn't see the owner of the boots, and the pain from the

movement was excruciating.

Then she felt a warm breath on the top of her head, and a pair of gloved

hands slid between the bars of the headboard, one on either side of her,

and she jolted hard against her bonds out of fright. The hands cupped

her face, thumbs caressing her cheekbones and along the corners of her

mouth, down over her jaw to her throat. The black leather was cool and

fragrant, the touch bold and strangely sensual.

"How's my little Indian princess?" The low voice was almost masculine,

sharp with sarcasm and secret amusement.

Sharon.

A shudder went through Samantha. A nameless fear that sank deep into her

bones. She had no idea what this woman was capable of doing. Naive as

she was, she had sensed from the first that Sharon had seen things,

experienced things Samantha had never even imagined. Dark things.

Squinting at the pain, she tipped her head back, wanting to see her

tormentor. Sharon pressed her face against the thin iron rods of the

headboard and smiled.

"It's just us girls, princess. No men to fight over." She settled her

thumbs in the hollow at the base of Samantha's throat and pressed

experimentally, choking her briefly, then sliding her hands down over

her breasts.

"Just us girls," she muttered.

Slowly she rose and came around the side of the bed, her boots thumping

dully against the worn wood floor.

She wore a skintight black catsuit with a dark brown hunting jacket over

it. Her hair was slicked back against her head as tight as the body

suit, her thin, wide mouth was a slash of blood-red lipstick. From a

deep pocket on the coat she extracted a slim, deadly looking knife. A

dagger that gleamed as she turned it from side to side and admired the

blade.

Samantha's eyes went wide and sweat filmed her body in a fine mist.

Sharon's mouth curved in amusement. "Oh, yes, little princess, this is

for you." She seated herself on the edge of the bed and rolled the

handle of the knife between her palms, twisting the blade around and

around. "I can't have you turning Bryce's head. I was willing to share,

but I won't let you take him away from me. I wouldn't let Lucy have him.

I won't let you have him. He has always been mine. I won't let his

obsession with you change that."

With one hand she grabbed the bottom of the T-shirt Samantha wore and

with the other brought the knife down swiftly. She laughed as Samantha

strained against her bonds and tried to scream behind the gag.

"Not yet." She let the tip of the blade nip into the silk and sliced the

fabric open from the neck down. Her eyes locked on Samantha's, as cold

as a snake's.

"I haven't had my fun yet," she whispered as she peeled back the halves

of the shirt to reveal Samantha's breasts.

They were small and pretty. Soft-looking with dusky brown centers. A

young girl's breasts. Natural and unembellished. She thought about

slicing them off.

"I wanted Bryce to share you, but he wouldn't. He thought you were too

pure. Untainted," she sneered, her mouth twisting in disgust. "His

little virgin. You won't be untainted when I finish with you. You won't

die untainted."

Setting the knife aside, she rose from the bed and undressed.

Tears leaked from Samantha's eyes as Bryce's cousin fondled her. She

tried not to cry, because the gag choked her and because it only made

her head pound harder, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. She was

caught in a nightmare that was her own fault. If she hadn't fallen in

with Bryce's crowd . . . if she had remembered her place . . . Think

what you're doing, Samantha!
 
You're not like them. . . .

She had thought she could pretend for a while, be a part of the good

life, live as if she were somebody special.

But she wasn't Cinderella and life wasn't a fairy tale. She didn't even

want a fairy tale, she thought, her heart breaking at the realization.

All she had ever wanted was Will and a home and a family. She cried as

much for those small lost dreams as she did for the degradation Sharon

Russell put her through. The violation of her body seemed incidental to

the breaking of her spirit, the shattering of hope.

She would never have Will. She would never have a family. She would die

out here at the hands of a madwoman in payment for the sin of her own

stupidity.

Those were the things she cried for, not the hands that touched her or

the mouth that plundered or any of the vile acts Bryce's cousin

committed with twisted hedonistic joy.

"You're tainted now, little virgin," Sharon said, straddling Samantha's

hips. Her shoulders were as wide and angular as a man's. Her breasts

thrust out from her chest twin cones of plastic encased in flesh. There

was no fat beneath her skin, only muscle and sinew. She reached for the

knife on the stand beside the bed. "You're tainted, and you'll be ugly

too."

She brought the dagger up and pressed the tip of it just beneath

Samantha's right eye, pressing, pressing ever so slightly. Samantha bit

down hard on the gag and tried in vain to stop her body from shaking.

She could see Sharon's hand on the hilt of the knife. She could see most

of the blade as she angled it up and down, playing, toying with her. The

point bit into the tender flesh, and Samantha strained to push herself

down into the mattress.

Terror clawed through her, raw and primal. Sweat streamed down the sides

of her face. She could smell her own fear, sour and strong above the

ammonia stink of urine and the sickeningly sweet scent of arousal that

radiated from Sharon.

Her tormentor laughed deep in her throat. "You'd be ugly if I cut your

eyes out, wouldn't you?
 
Bryce wouldn't want you then. He wants only

beautiful things. Beautiful, like you, with your long, silky black

hair."

Abruptly, she lifted the knife and grabbed hold of Samantha's braid. Her

face twisting into a grotesque masque of hatred, she pulled the braid up

hard, winding it around her fist. Samantha squeezed her eyes shut

against the pain of having her head jerked to the side. It felt as if

Sharon would pull her hair off her head, scalp and all, but she hacked

at it with the knife instead, sheering it off raggedly at the base of

her skull.

It was a relief when the last strand gave way against the blade and

pressure went with it. She tried not to think of how her hair had been

one of her few sources of pride, or how Will used to love to play with

it when they were in bed, rubbing it between his fingers, stroking it

over her skin and his skin. She tried not to think of Will at all. She

tried not to think. Maybe if she could stop thinking, she could simply

cease to be. She could become invisible, and Bryce's cousin with the

insane gleam in her eye would lose interest and go away.

She prayed desperately for that to happen. She prayed for deliverance

from the nightmare. She prayed for a miracle.

No one answered.

Sharon leaned down and whispered in her ear. "No more pretty hair,

little princess. No more pretty face," she whispered as she laid the

blade of the knife against Samantha's right cheekbone.

Orvis Slokum sat in the cab of his ramshackle '79 Chevy pickup, enduring

what was for him a rare experience: a crisis of conscience.

Most everything that had ever happened in his life he could blame on

somebody else. He flunked out of high school because the teachers had it

in for him on account he was a Slokum and his brother Clete had gone

ahead of him, laying a trail of trouble. He had never been able to hang

on to a decent job because every last boss he'd ever had was a son of a

bitch who expected too much and paid too little and had no understanding

of a man's need for latitude. So he was late to work once in a while.

That wasn't his fault. It was the fault of his alarm clock, his mother,

a woman, his truck, the weather, the clerk at the Gas N' Go. Nor was it

his fault he had landed in prison. That was the fault of his partner,

the cops, the public defender, the judge, the prosecutor - all of whom had

no respect for him on account of he was a Slokum which wasn't his fault

either.

He regretted many things - not the least of which was being born a

Slokum - but one of the few regrets he had regarding jobs he had landed

and lost was that things had not worked out for him on the Stars and

Bars. The Raffertys were good people. Will knew how to have a good time

and was always friendly - had never looked down on him 'cause he was a

Slokum. J.D. was a tough bastard, but he was fair and he was the kind of

man other men could admire. He'd been three grades ahead of Orvis in

school, and Orvis had watched him with a kind of awe. J.D. had always

had an aura about him, as if he were stronger and wiser and more

clear-minded than the average man. He always seemed to just know what

was right, which was a true mystery to Orvis, who always seemed to do

what was wrong regardless of his intentions.

Yes, sir, he regretted that J.D. had worked him too hard and then fired

him for screwing up the irrigation dams - which was not his fault. He