Mortal Sin (28 page)

Terry blew out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t have to like the man to work for him. The work’s easy, the pay’s good. The customers don’t smell like stale sweat. I put in a few hours here, that’s eight hours I don’t spend standing on a street corner. I got no complaints. But you look like some sweet young high school girl ought to be going to the prom with her sweet young high school boyfriend. Didn’t your mama ever tell you if you lie down with dogs, you wind up with fleas?”

Flatly, Kit said, “My mother’s dead.”

“Yeah, well, life’s a bitch.” Terry eyed her hard enough to make her squirm. “You want my advice? Get the hell away from that man. His girlfriends have a nasty habit of disappearing when he’s done with ‘em.” Terry crushed out her cigarette on the lip of the lavatory and peeled her T-shirt off over her head, revealing a body Kit would have given her eyeteeth for. “Help me get this damn-fool outfit on,” she said. “Don’t want to keep Mister Spielberg out there waiting too long.”

“So how’s the character-building going?”

“Slowly.” Clancy leaned back on his tailbone, one hand on the stem of his wineglass, and rotated it slowly on the tabletop. “Jamal’s hardheaded, just like I was at that age. He has some difficult lessons to learn.”

The restaurant exuded an old-world elegance and charm. Soft music, soft lighting, hushed atmosphere, lots of dark wood. The flickering shadows from the candle at the center of the table threw his face into sharp relief. There was nothing soft about Clancy Donovan. He was all lines and angles, all strength and decisiveness. He’d worn his clerical collar tonight, and Sarah wondered whether it was his way of thumbing his nose at the world, or if it was intended to remind her—and him—of just who and what he was.

She took a sip of white wine. “Yes,” she said. “I seem to recall you saying something about being on the fast track to hell. Somehow, I can’t picture it.”

The waiter arrived with their dinners, prime rib for him, poached salmon for her. When he’d gone again, Clancy picked up his napkin and arranged it on his lap. “Excuse me,” he said, closing his eyes, and Sarah realized with a start that he was blessing the food. She was instantly swept back to her childhood, to Sunday dinners at Gramma Connelly’s house. Gram had been a devout Southern Baptist, and every Sunday after church, the entire family had gathered at her house for dinner. Aunts, uncles, cousins, the occasional neighbor. Anybody who exercised the poor judgment of lifting fork to lips in Loretta Connelly’s house before the blessing had been said suffered a punishment severe enough that the offense was never repeated.

Clancy opened his eyes. Picking up his fork, he said, “I was a monster in the making. Smoking, drinking, stealing. Getting high and ditching school. The list is endless. I thought I was tough and cool and sophisticated. My mother was ready to tear her hair out. She couldn’t do a thing with me.”

It was hard to imagine, and she wondered what other secrets he hid behind that bold amber gaze. “What turned you around?”

He sliced his prime rib, took a bite. “Fiona Rafferty got her hands on me.”

“Josie’s mom?”

“Yes. She basically put her size-eight foot up my scrawny arse and kept it there until I got the message.” His smile was wry, and utterly charming. “It took a while.”

It explained a lot. Why he’d taken such an active interest in Jamal. Why he’d brought the boy to Fiona. She took a bite of salmon. “So you grew up here?”

“Born here, grew up here. Except for my time in Asia and then in seminary, I’ve lived in South Boston all my life. I made my first communion in the same church where now I say Mass every Sunday.”

“How long were you in seminary?”

“Seven years.” He wiped his hands with his napkin. “In a little town a few miles west of Springfield. Along the way, I earned a bachelor’s degree in counseling psychology, and then of course my Master of Divinity. It was a long, arduous road.”

“But worth the journey?”

He picked up his glass of wine, took a sip, leveled a glance at her. “I’m still on the journey. Priesthood is just one stop along the road.”

“My, my, Father. We’re thinking deep thoughts tonight.”

“It’s not me, it’s the wine.” Humor flickered in his eyes as they examined her face. “So, Sarah Connelly, tell me. Are you collecting information to write my biography?”

She set down her fork. “I’m just curious, sugar. I don’t mean to pry.”

“Pry away. I’m teasing you. Ask whatever you want, and I’ll try to satisfy your curiosity.”

“What was your family like? Any brothers or sisters?”

“No brothers or sisters. My mother died six years ago, while I was still in seminary. She didn’t live long enough to see my ordination. I’ve always regretted that. She would have been proud. As for my father—” He picked up a dinner roll, pulled it apart, busied himself buttering it “—I haven’t seen him in thirty years. He left when I was… oh, two or three, I guess. I have vague memories of him, but that’s all. So it was just my mother and me.”

“That must have been hard.”

“At times, it was brutal.” He glanced up from the dinner roll. “But you do what you have to do, and the sun continues to come up every morning. How’s the salmon?”

She glanced down at her plate, at the food she’d barely touched. “Delicious.”

“I bought a ridiculously expensive bottle of wine to bring to dinner the other night. I was trying to impress you. I should have remembered what the Bible says about pride going before a fall. I got my comeuppance. The bottle’s still sitting in the back seat of my car.”

In the pit of her stomach, something warm and tremulous fluttered to life. “If I wasn’t already impressed with you, sugar,” she said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The atmosphere between them was suddenly supercharged, and her words floated in it, invisible but palpable. She’d said too much. Gone too far. Stepped over the line and turned a harmless flirtation into something dark and dangerous. Overhead, from some distant time and place, Frank Sinatra was singing about flying to the moon. Clancy’s keen gaze pinned her in place while she cast about desperately for a way out, a way to rewind the tape and take the words back.

To her immense relief, the waiter interrupted with an offer to freshen their drinks.
Loose lips sink ships
, she thought, and shoved her wineglass aside. “No more wine,” she said, “but I’d dearly love a cup of tea.”

Clancy ordered the same, and the waiter left silently and discreetly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“No offense taken.”

But the intimacy she’d felt between them was gone, flattened by her own carelessness. He’d withdrawn smoothly and, she supposed, wisely. It was what she deserved for momentarily forgetting herself and the uncrossable boundary between them. The clerical collar should have been a patent reminder. But she’d always been a slow learner.

Flirtation wasn’t the reason they were together, anyway. There was only one reason she and Clancy Donovan were sitting at this table together, and once Kit was found, that reason would no longer be valid. Sarah wanted Kit back so bad she ached inside with it. She needed to make up for all those lost years. For Kit’s sake, for her own. She desperately needed to fill up the emptiness she’d carried inside her for so long. She hadn’t expected that her need to find Kit would come into direct conflict with her need to keep Clancy Donovan in her life. The thought of never seeing him again filled her with a sadness so profound it bordered on despair.

She picked listlessly at her salmon. Set down her fork. “Any nibbles on the flyer?” she said briskly.

“Not yet. I spent a few hours Sunday night liberally distributing them. I imagine that sooner or later, one will fall into Rio’s hands. But the wait is frustrating.”

“I just don’t understand what would make Kit stay with someone like that. She’s a smart girl, no more naive than any other girl her age. Probably a little less than some. She’s done a lot of living in her sixteen years. Was life with me that bad?”

“Of course not. It has nothing to do with you.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his, a gesture meant to comfort. As a priest, he probably did it so often the action had become automatic. His skin was warm, and needles of awareness skittered up her arm, raced past her heart, and settled somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. The nape of her neck was suddenly damp. He gave her hand a squeeze and withdrew, and Sarah struggled to settle the Ping-Pong tournament he’d set off inside her.

“A man like Rio,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “is a master of manipulation. An amateur psychologist, experienced at reading people, able to zero in on a girl’s weaknesses and play on them. He’ll seduce a young girl with his charm, make impossible promises, build her trust by showering her with gifts, even as he’s subtly but effectively breaking all her emotional bonds and redirecting them toward him. If he’s good enough at it, and if the girl is malleable enough, eventually he’ll become her whole world. Then he can make her do anything he wants.”

The waiter returned with their tea. Sarah waited while he set both cups on the table and cleared away their plates. Sorrow weighing heavily on her shoulders, she said, “It kills me to think about it. Wondering what kind of pain she’s suffering at the hands of this bastard. What kind of permanent damage he’ll inflict.”

Clancy poured milk into his tea and stirred it. “From everything you’ve told me about Kit, she sounds resilient. We have to concentrate on getting her back. Then—” he lifted his cup, took a sip of tea “—then, whatever transpires, we’ll deal with it. One day at a time.”

Rio had lied to her.

Not so much by commission as by omission.
Nothing too fancy. Low budget all the way
. At least he’d told the truth about that. The total cost of this movie was a hundred dollars to Terry, $39.95 for the room, and a few bucks for a roll of film.

She must be a moron, because it hadn’t once occurred to her that they were making a porno movie, not even after she stepped into the motel room and saw the camera and the lights aimed at that hard wooden chair. After all, as far as she knew, even in a porno flick, people generally did the nasty in bed, not in a chair.

It wasn’t until she saw Terry’s outfit that Kit figured it out. The girl looked like a reject from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. She wore a black leather bustier that laced up the front, with dangling garters attached to black fishnet stockings. With it, she wore a matching black thong, five-inch heels, and black lace gloves that reached to her elbows. That in itself was enough to qualify her as a look-alike for Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. But Terry took it one step further when she pulled out a whip, a paddle, and a black eye mask. The end result was a cross between the Lone Ranger and Cat-woman.

Kit could have laughed it off if Rio hadn’t taken it so seriously. But when they emerged from the bathroom, he was pacing and glancing at his watch. He eyed Terry critically, made a couple of minor adjustments to her costume—that was the only way Kit could think of it—and nodded his approval. “You know the routine,” he said.

“Been there, done that,” Terry said. “I could do it in my sleep.”

The client arrived shortly thereafter. A tall, distinguished-looking gentleman starting to go gray at the temples, he took off his overcoat and tossed it on the bed, then handed Rio a thick envelope. His eyes were on Terry from the instant he stepped through the door. Rio opened the envelope, smiled, and stashed it in his briefcase. Picking up the camera, he nodded.
Let the games begin
.

With seductive grace, Terry crossed the room to the client, touched a fingertip to his chin. “I hear you’ve been a bad boy,” she purred.

In a breathy voice that betrayed either great excitement or great fear—maybe both—the man said, “‘Very bad.”

“Sit!” Terry commanded as though she were training a dog. And like a dog, eager to please its master, the man walked to the chair and sat. As Kit watched in mounting horror, Terry proceeded to do bizarre, abusive, and humiliating things to him. All for the benefit of the camera lens.

She took as much of it as she could handle before running to the bathroom, locking herself in, and losing her dinner. She retched and retched, her head hanging over the rusted John while tears welled up in her eyes and poured down her cheeks. When there was nothing left in her stomach, she flushed the toilet and ran cold water in the sink, splashed it over her face, rinsed out her mouth. For the first time in a long time, she actually felt sixteen years old.

Kit met her eyes in the mirror over the sink and shuddered. Did people really do that kind of thing to each other? What kind of sicko would pay a woman dressed in leather and lace to abuse him? If this was what adulthood was really about, she didn’t want any part of it. She’d rather be sixteen forever. She stayed in the bathroom for the rest of the shoot. When Terry rapped at the door, Kit escaped to the relative safety of Rio’s BMW. When he came outside a few minutes later, whistling nonchalantly, she was sitting in the passenger seat, feet tucked up beneath her, curled into a huddled ball of misery.

“Poor little Kit,” he teased as he started the engine, wheeled the car around, and shot back out onto Route 1. “Did she bite off more than she could chew?”

Still curled in a ball, she clung to the door because it was the farthest she could get from him without climbing into the back seat.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he snapped, “stop being a baby. Don’t tell me you didn’t know exactly what we were doing.”

“I didn’t! And you didn’t warn me! All you said was that you were making a low-budget movie! How was I supposed to know?” She swiped furiously at a tear. “I hate you!”

For an instant, she flashed back to her last battle with Aunt Sarah. She remembered how angry she’d been over something that now seemed petty and trivial. They might have had their differences, but at least Sarah’d been concerned with her welfare. If her aunt knew where Rio had taken her tonight, she would probably whip his ass single-handedly.

“Don’t blame me,” he said. “I’m just the guy who runs the camera. I’m a businessman, Kit, and the first thing you learn in the business world is that the customer is always right. Whatever the client wants, that’s what I film. I go where the money is, and sometimes that means dirty movies. You know how much money I made tonight? Three grand. That’s three thousand dollars, Kit. I can buy you a lot of pretty baubles with that kind of money. So quit your sniveling and grow up. This is the way the world works.”