Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) (16 page)

‘Fuck me,’ she snarled in his ear. ‘Fuck me harder than that.’ She bit his earlobe and Kyle roared through his clenched teeth. Sound and sensation blurred and melded into one and dimly he registered her shouting close to his ear, the noise deafening and inflaming him to an awesome height of need.

As the first inklings of his climax began deep in his pelvis, Kyle lifted his head free and twisted it to look at the girl. Still gasping and whimpering in his ear, her face seemed to be turned slightly away. He pushed himself up on his arms again, the leather sagging beneath his hands, and saw that she was looking at a point over his shoulder.

In mid-thrust, Kyle wrenched his head round to look behind him. The angle made it impossible to see clearly but the living room door was closing.

What the fuck?

As if sensing his bewilderment Madison’s own movements became more frantic, her hips bucking and stropping him so that the momentum toward his orgasm continued. Kyle tried to pull away but Madison’s legs locked around his butt, trapping him closer.

‘No,’ he yelled, managing to withdraw from her and staring back over his shoulder again at the closed living room door.

As he turned back to the girl he had just time to catch a glimpse of her blurred hand moving in from the side, something clutched in it, before pain exploded in the side of his head and darkness overcame him.

*

The first thing he saw was an ashtray.

That was odd, for two reasons. First, he didn’t smoke. Second, someone had splashed red paint on it.

Kyle blinked and tried to reach for the ashtray to take a closer look. Immediately a bolt of agony shot down the back of his neck and he froze, gasping. He couldn’t keep his head up and he let it drop, feeling something soft and uneven against his cheek.

Everything swam hazily after that. He might have slept, he wasn’t sure, but when he opened his eyes again there was a subtle shift in the light around him, something about the way the shadows fell, that suggested to Kyle he’d drifted off for a while.

Lying still, he took stock. He was lying on a floor – the softness against his cheek was a rug – and the ashtray was on the hard wood beyond the rug a few feet away from him in his sightline. It was a ceramic ashtray, he noticed, and a fragment had chipped off and was lying nearby.

His neck hurt like hell, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his head.

Kyle tried to move again, and once more the pain stabbed him. This time he gritted his teeth and rode it out, hauling himself upright before collapsing into a sitting position, his back against some item of furniture. A couch.

The couch he’d been having sex with Madison on.

Of course. He was in Donna’s house, in the living room. Flat on his ass on the floor, with his pants round his knees.

His balls ached dully, and his erection had long ago wilted. Grimacing, Kyle lifted his ass and pulled his shorts and jeans up.

Bracing himself against the pain, he turned his head, surveying the room. He appeared to be alone. From the slant of the sunlight through the big bay windows he guessed it was around mid-morning. Ten a.m., maybe. He’d been out for the count for two hours or longer.

He stared at the ashtray. At what he’d thought was red paint on it. A clump of brown hair stuck to the maroon semicongealed paste.

Not paint, but blood.
His
blood.

Vaguely Kyle recalled seeing the ashtray on the coffee table beside the sofa when he’d first sat in the living room and been interviewed by Donna. It must have been just within Madison’s reach, and she’d brained him with it. He touched his fingertips gingerly to his left temple and winced at the sting. His fingers came away sticky and stained.

Slowly Kyle dragged himself to his feet, slumping back on the first attempt and trying again. His legs felt shaky beneath him and the room reeled and tilted. Nausea clenched at his guts.

When he was as sure as he could be that he wasn’t going to either puke or fall over, he lurched over to the living room door. It was ajar. He poked his head through. The lobby was empty and silent. Madison’s miniskirt and panties, which he’d last seen on the floor, were gone.

Kyle began to lope through each door leading off the lobby in turn, ransacking each room. He swept ornaments off mantelpieces, pots and cups off kitchen shelves. He emptied drawers, flung open cupboards, even upended garbage cans on the floor.

But of course the painting wasn’t there. It was long gone. With Madison, and with whoever was helping her. Whoever it was that Madison had been distracting Kyle from, while this other person came in and took the painting.

What a screwup.

Slapping his jeans pockets, Kyle realized his keys were gone. The keys to the house, and the keys to the rental Subaru. His cellphone was missing, too.

He ran to the front door, ignoring the waves of agony and nausea which accompanied each jolt of his feet on the floor. The front door was locked. Kyle shook it uselessly.

Well, he’d have to get out a window. Or bust his way out.

A cordless phone rested in a cradle on a small table in the lobby. Kyle picked it up. He had a good memory for numbers, and had memorized Donna’s cell number in case he ever lost his own phone.

He punched in her number. As he waited for the connection to be made, he heard a sound that chilled his blood.

Sirens, lots of them. In the distance, and growing steadily louder.

At the other end the phone rang.

It rang a second time.

And a third.

Then it went dead.

Kyle dropped the phone with a growing, suffocating sense of horror.

He made it to the bay window in the living room just as the first of the howling sirens made it through the gates at the top of the driveway. Hefting one of the heavy chairs, Kyle swung it, smashing the window. He dove out on to the lawn and rolled, shards of glass pricking him.

He was halfway down the slope of the lawn, headed for the garden wall on the other side of the chalet, when he heard the first shouted commands behind him. He risked a glance behind him, saw the row of uniforms, a goddam
army
of them, and he knew it was all over.

Kyle dropped to his knees, his hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eyes, waiting.

*

Through the balcony doors, the breeze coming in off the Gulf of Mexico fluttered the drapes. The balcony itself was far too hot to sit out on at this time of day, the noonday sun hammering down ferociously from the scorched blue of the sky.

Donna stretched a bare leg luxuriously, high in the air, pointing her toes. Beyond it the ceiling fan whirred through its languorous circles. Reaching into the ice-bucket on the nightstand with one hand, Donna grabbed a few cubes and rubbed them over her forehead, between her breasts, drawing pleasurable breath between her teeth at the sudden freezing sensation against her warm skin.

The lips moved slowly, sensuously, up the inside of her leg.

It was a small hotel, off the beaten track but well-appointed. She’d decided to avoid the major tourist areas in the Yucatan for obvious reasons, but hadn’t wanted to stint entirely on the luxury her new wealth could afford her. The hotel was a good compromise.

The lips, joined now by lightly caressing fingers, reached the sensitive flesh at the back of her knee. Donna arched her back a little, smiling.

For maybe the tenth time, she played the scene back in her memory again. It had come close, so close, to falling apart. In her mind’s eye she was in the Mercedes, hurtling along the hilly streets of Green Island Hills, when the phone rang on the car seat beside her. She snatched it up.

‘Oh my God, he’s here. I’ve got the painting but I’m in the house and he’s after me.’

‘Madison –’

‘Where are you?’

‘Ten minutes away.’

‘I’ll distract him. You get the painting. I’ve left it in the kitchen behind the door.’

‘How are you going to –’

‘Distract him? Use your imagination. I’ll leave the phone on so you can hear.’

And Donna had indeed heard, as she’d put her foot down and driven as fast as she dared through the winding hills. She hadn’t heard clearly – Madison had left the phone in the kitchen on the breakfast bar, and they hadn’t gone in there – but she’d been left in no doubt as to what happened. As she drove through the gates of her home and down the driveway, she heard from her phone the sounds of their voices, Madison’s and Kyle’s, echoing in the lobby. Pulling up outside her front door, she jumped out and, phone pressed to her ear, ran up to the porch. And she’d heard them at it, Madison’s exaggerated screams and Kyle’s yells, though she didn’t need the phone any longer. The sounds of their rutting were plain as Donna opened her front door and stepped inside.

She moved quickly to the kitchen, found the wrapped package behind the door as Madison had said, took a quick peek inside. This time it was the real thing. Picking up the girl’s phone from the breakfast bar, she’d stepped across the lobby to the living room and opened the door silently.

There, on the couch, they lay sprawled, Kyle’s taut, muscular butt pumping away between Madison’s splayed thighs. Donna felt a flame of anger surge within her. Over Kyle’s shoulder Donna caught Madison’s eye. The girl nodded.

And her hand reached over for the ashtray.

Donna stepped out then, not wanting to see the next part. The sound had been sickening, like a butcher pounding a hunk of meat with a wood mallet, and Kyle let out a groan. A few seconds later Madison emerged, bare-assed. She looked at Donna for a moment before pulling on her thong and skirt.

And that was that. They waited till they were clear of the state line before Donna made the call to the cops, anonymously, from the same anonymous cellphone she’d used to call Madison earlier, to tell her Kyle was on his way to the house and the painting was hidden under the floorboards in the chalet by the pool.

She told the dispatcher that she’d just seen Kyle Cantrell, the guy suspected of the Thurgood burglary and killing, going back into the property. She hung up before the woman could ask for her name. The cops would figure out it was her before long, whether or not Kyle ratted her out. She was on a one-way ticket out of there.

But it didn’t matter. Because she’d lied to Kyle. The painting wasn’t worth seven million dollars. It was worth twenty million. And she had a guy waiting, with the cash, in Alabama.

The lips and feather-light fingers continued their journey up the inside of Donna’s thigh.

That had all been six weeks ago. She’d followed the news, heard about the arrest of Kyle Cantrell and the charges of burglary and manslaughter brought against him. There was no mention of her or Madison, no hint that anybody else was being sough in connection with the affair.

Nobody had remarked on her disappearance. She’d announced to friends and family she was going traveling for a couple of months. Lately she’d sent an occasional email to say she was in Europe and starting to come to terms with Blair’s death. The pretense wouldn’t last forever, and sooner or later people would begin to wonder where the hell she was. Then she’d have to disappear for good, and break off all ties.

Twenty million dollars bought you a lot of ways to disappear.

Her thigh muscles began to flutter and leap under the caresses of the lips and now the tongue, and she parted her legs wider, her juices starting to flow.

Kyle
, she thought,
I’m sorry
.

And she really was. He was a good kid. A decent guy. Sure, he’d cheated on her with Madison, but the circumstances had been extreme. And in any case, Donna was hardly in a position to pronounce moral judgement in that regard.

He’d filled a need; she’d known it the moment she’d laid eyes on him that first day. She’d required somebody to fit her plan, and he was the guy. It was in some ways a pity he was the man he was and not some asshole. That would have made it easier.

And he’d been a great lay. No – a
fantastic
lay. She had to admit that. The best she’d ever had.

Well…
almost
.

‘Oh, baby,’ Donna breathed, and reached down to grab the dark head that had now reached the top of her thighs. She squirmed, pressing her pussy against the probing lips and tongue, her entire body quivering with delight.

Between Donna’s legs, past the mound of hair, Madison’s eyes appeared, wicked and amused.

And Donna pushed Kyle from her mind and filled it with thoughts of Madison. Madison, who they’d agreed would be Blair’s mistress in order to lure him away from the house one weekend so that the painting could be stolen. (
That
hadn’t worked out so well, and Donna shivered as she remembered the girl’s panicked call that Saturday evening while Donna had been at the dinner, to say that Blair had canceled their proposed rendezvous and was heading back home.) Madison, whose idea it had been to give Kyle’s description to the police so as to force him to go on the run, when it was looking like he would never let on where he’d hidden the painting.