Shocking Pink (35 page)

R
aven sat in her car, staring at the modest house in the middle of the block, watching and waiting, her thoughts chaotic. Moonlight filtered through the windshield, bathing the car’s stifling hot interior in cool blue.

Sweat trickled between her breasts and shoulder blades. She gripped the steering wheel, her palms slippery. Her heart thundered, and she struggled to breathe in the closed, airless car.

Raven feared she might suffocate.

But still, she didn’t open a window. She didn’t want anyone to hear her breathing. Anyone, but most of all Andie.

Andie would recognize her breathing, just as Raven would recognize hers, even from fifty or a hundred feet away. When she emerged from that house, she would sense her friend’s presence, the way a mouse did a cat’s. The way a child did her mother’s.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.

Her world was coming apart.

Panting, desperate for breath, Raven brought a hand to her forehead and wiped away the sweat. Andie had turned away from her. She had taken to keeping things from her. Turning to others for comfort and support. The way Julie always had.

But Julie was weak, her character deeply flawed. She had always been broken goods, right from the beginning. Raven had learned to expect less from Julie, to deal with her as she would a naughty child.

But Andie…she had always been Raven’s rock. Strong and centered. Completely loyal. Always faithful. Except for the summer of ’83.

And except for now.

Nick Raphael.

Now, Andie turned to him—just as she had once before. Now, she shared her dreams and secrets with him. She longed to be family with him. She didn’t need Raven anymore. She didn’t want her.

A moan eased from Raven’s parted lips. The sad sound surprised her, because what she felt was hatred. It burned in her chest and in the pit of her gut, huge and hot, with a life force all its own.

Tonight, she had followed Andie here. She had been watching her friend for days now. She knew Julie had paid a visit to Andie tonight and that they’d had some sort of a fight. And she knew the noose and scarf had sent her running.

But not to Raven. Not to the one who had always loved and cared for her. Not to the one to whom she had promised her undying loyalty.

She had run to Nick Raphael.

Raven narrowed her eyes on the house, willing Andie to emerge. Willing it with all her love and loyalty, with every fiber and molecule of her being.

And Andie did. She stepped out of the house and onto the small front porch.

Only to be drawn back into
his
arms for a long kiss. Raven watched, consumed with hatred and jealousy, her mouth dry and bitter-tasting.

Andie broke away. She was laughing. She looked happy, happier than Raven had ever seen her. Andie was in love with him, Raven realized, catching her breath. She knew her friend well enough to know that. What was happening between Andie and Nick Raphael wasn’t just sex.

Love. Andie was in love.

She could lose her forever.

Raven clutched the steering wheel tighter, fighting off despair, fighting off the possibility. She wouldn’t allow it to happen. She couldn’t. Somehow, some way, she would take care of it. She would make certain Andie didn’t leave her.

David Sadler.
His image popped into her head, realization with it. This was his fault, she decided. They had been happy until he’d come into their lives—now and fifteen years before. He was the problem. The one stirring up trouble, causing Andie to be confused and afraid, causing Julie’s slide into the abyss.

Raven started her car. The air conditioner shot a blast of tepid air at her face. Tepid and foul, but air nonetheless. She sucked it in greedily, gasping, revived. She was going to fix this. The time had come, she was going to make Mr. X pay.

R
aven decided she would give Julie one more chance to prove her loyalty. One more chance to prove herself worthy of Raven’s continuing devotion. To earn it, Raven had decided, Julie would have to choose their friendship over her affair with David Sadler.

Raven didn’t hold out much hope, not intellectually anyway. But in her heart it burned bright and hot. She had to try. She loved Julie. She was family.

David Sadler was going down. That was a given now. She, Raven, was bringing him down. And Julie was either with her or against her. Completely loyal to her or dead to her. It was as simple as that.

Raven had stopped by Julie’s apartment several times over the past two days; she’d never found her home. When she ran into a couple of Julie’s neighbors and asked about her, they said they hadn’t seen her around much lately. Curious, Raven called the club to find out when Julie would be working next. That day, the man said. She opened at ten-thirty. It would be her last day, he added. She had up and quit.

Raven hung up the phone, saddened but not surprised. If her friend hadn’t moved in with David Sadler yet, she would soon. Julie was doing the same thing she had always done, tossing aside her own life, a life with her friends, to be with a man.

One last chance. She had to give her one last chance to choose her family.

Raven checked the time. Perfect, she thought. She should be able to arrive at the club just behind Julie. She grabbed her purse and car keys and headed for her car.

Raven walked into the bar at ten thirty-five. Julie stood with her back to the door, counting the money in the register, getting ready for the day.

“We don’t open until eleven,” she called, not turning.

“I’m not here to drink.”

Julie spun around, her cheeks hot with color. Her friend looked as guilty as a six-year-old who had gotten caught playing doctor with the boy next door. “Rave!”

“Hello, Julie.” Raven slid onto one of the stools. “I’ve been looking for you. We need to talk.”

“Now?” Julie cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m at work.”

“It won’t take long. I thought we could chat about the affair you’re having.”

Julie widened her eyes in exaggerated innocence. “I’m not having an affair, Rave.”

“Don’t lie to me, Julie. I know everything. Even that you asked Andie to lie for you.”

Julie nervously clasped and unclasped her hands. “She told you that?”

“What did you expect?” Raven made a sound of disgust. “She’s a better friend than you, Julie. More loyal. She always has been.”

Julie’s eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

Raven waved off the apology. The tears. “What does that mean to you? If I had a nickel for every time you said that to me, I’d be bloody, fucking rich.”

Julie hung her head. Silence fell between them. After several moments, Raven cleared her throat. “Do you have anything to say to me? To ask me? Or is this it?”

Julie lifted her gaze. “To ask you?”

“That’s right. Don’t you even wonder why I’m here?”

“I know why.” Julie sighed and looked away. “I can’t believe Andie told you… I’d hoped that this time, that she might choose…”

Julie let the thought trail off, and Raven narrowed her eyes slightly. What was Julie getting at? Obviously, Andie had
not
told her everything.

“Of course she told me,” Raven said. “We’re best friends. The way you and I are
supposed
to be.”

“I’m sorry.” Julie took a deep breath, her face pale, her expression distraught. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just…I was wondering about that summer. I had some questions, that’s all.”

The summer of ’83.

And Mr. and Mrs. X.

“Here I am. Ask me.”

Julie twisted her fingers together, something Raven had seen her do a thousand times when she was uncertain or nervous. “I just wondered if that summer…if maybe you saw something you didn’t tell me and Andie about. Something you were afraid to tell the police.”

“We were always there together, Julie. How could I have seen something different?”

“I know, but…if you ever went over without us. Maybe you stopped by and forgot to tell us. Or…or something.”

Disloyal little bitch. After everything she had done for Julie, she repaid her with this? With suspicion? With doubt about her honesty and her loyalty?

Raven shook with fury at the betrayal. It was yet another slap in the face from someone she had called family. She leaned toward Julie, heart thundering, breath short. “Why are you asking me this?”

Julie shrank back. “I just wondered.”

“You just
happened
to be thinking about Mr. and Mrs. X? You just
happened
to be wondering about events that are fifteen years old?”

“Yes,” she murmured, shifting her gaze, “that’s all.”

“You’re a rotten liar, Julie Cooper.”

“I’m not lying! You have to believe me, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Raven reached across the bar and grabbed her friend’s hands, squeezing them so tightly Julie gasped. Raven lowered her voice to a deadly whisper. “You don’t think I see through your questions? You don’t think I know who’s behind them? Your
boyfriend,
of course. David Sadler. You’re pathetic, Julie. Really pathetic.”

“Let go of me!” Julie cried, tugging against Raven’s grasp. “You’re hurting me!”

Raven tightened her grip. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see? He’s using you, Julie. He’s involved with all three of us. He’s planning to bed us all. You certainly didn’t think you were his one and only, did you?”

“That’s not true. It’s not!”

“But it is.” Raven laughed. “He’s already tried. But Andie and I aren’t easy like you. We don’t fall into bed with every dick that happens by.”

Julie was crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks, tugging futilely against Raven’s strong grasp. “No…no. That’s not true. David loves me. I know he does.”

Raven glanced at the bar doorway, then turned back to Julie, lowering her voice. “Of course he’s using you. Why is he asking about the events of fifteen years ago? Is he getting off on it? Or maybe you and he are into that same kinky stuff that Mr. and Mrs. X were into. Maybe David Sadler is Mr. X?”

“No!” With an almighty tug, Julie ripped her hands from Raven’s. “Leave David alone. He hasn’t done anything to you.”

“Maybe I should call the police,” Raven said evenly, getting to her feet. “I’m sure they’d find your boyfriend’s sexual proclivities very interesting. Especially considering that he’s found a way to entangle himself with the three girls involved in the Leah Robertson murder case.”

Julie crumbled. “Please, Rave,” she begged. “Don’t go to the police. My David didn’t kill Leah Robertson. He couldn’t. He loved her. He loves me.”

“And I don’t love you?”

“It’s not the same,” Julie whispered. “You’re not a…”

“A man?” Raven supplied, making a sound of disgust. “You’re willing to believe this sick bastard, a man who’s only just come into your life, over me, after everything I’ve done for you? After everything I’ve been to you? You’re willing to think
I
did it? Please.”

“I didn’t say that.” Julie shook her head and took a step backward. “I never suggested that you—”

“You’re such a fool, Julie.” Raven placed her hands flat on the bar and leaned toward her. “When it comes to men, you always have been. You never saw what was important in life. Friendship and family. The things Andie and I gave you. We’re the ones you should be pledging your loyalty to.”

“You’re crazy,” Julie whispered. “You’re obsessed with loyalty because of your nutty old man. You’re as nutty as he was.”

Raven froze, feeling her friend’s words like a sharp slap to the face.

She had her answer. Julie had betrayed her for the last time.

Raven walked toward the door. When she reached it, she turned and looked back at her former friend. Julie stood with her head and shoulders bowed, her arms wrapped around her middle. The picture of vulnerability and defeat. Tears pricked Raven’s eyes, but she hardened herself to them. And to the place inside her that yearned to forgive her friend and welcome her back home, anytime, no matter what.

She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.

Julie Cooper was family no more.

“I suggest you watch yourself,” she said softly. “If you don’t, you might end up just as dead as Mrs. X.”

R
aven planned carefully. If she was going to bring David Sadler down, she was going to have to do it carefully, so as not to incriminate herself in any way. To simply walk into the police station and announce that she had been in that house all those years ago, that she had witnessed things she hadn’t admitted to before, would open herself to questions. To speculation and suspicion.

She wanted no part of that.

David needed to be caught in the act.

So Raven followed Julie and David, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, knowing him well enough to know that it would come. The man was as predictable as a set clock.

Raven discovered immediately that David and Julie were, indeed, playing the same sick and dangerous game that he and Leah Robertson had been. In fact, David was orchestrating the scenes to be exact duplicates of the ones of fifteen years before. Which put him exactly where she wanted him to be.

She followed them to the Gatehouse community, to the model home whose interior she had put so much of herself into. His taking Julie, the woman she had once loved and cherished, to that house—
her house
—was an obscenity. The ultimate insult.

She wondered if he thought of it that way; wondered if he got a kind of vicarious sexual thrill from it.

She wondered, too, if he had any inkling that now, like all those years ago, he was being watched.

He took her former friend to the formal living room, with its exposed-beam ceiling and the waiting rope. Raven crouched beneath a window and peered over the sill, the night oppressively hot and still. The heat and humidity settled atop her like a smothering blanket, sweat rolled down her back and pooled under her arms.

As she had known he would, David blindfolded Julie and bound her hands. Then he led her to the stools and the noose. As Raven watched, the past and present mingled in her mind, twisting and turning together until she was uncertain where one began and the other ended.

Her mind galloped back and forth between her twelfth year, her fifteenth, this one. Her head filled with the sound of her mother and father’s last fight, the image of the shovel coming down on her mom’s head, blood flying; then with Leah Robertson’s throaty laughter and the way her body had twitched and jerked in her last moments of life.

And it filled with thoughts and images of Julie, her sweet, sweet friend. That first day they met, in the church yard, the sun sparkling in her blond hair; on the morning of her first wedding, radiant and hopeful; the way she had been a year later, marriage over, as she had turned to Raven for comfort and support.

And the way she was now, demeaned and unfaithful, as low to the ground as a snake’s belly.

Poor Julie, she thought, tears stinging her eyes. Poor weak, confused Julie. If only she were stronger. If only she had more brains or a bigger heart. Even though she had hurt Raven time and again, even though Raven had washed her hands of her, she still loved her. The way, she understood now, her father had never stopped loving her mother.

And like her father, she would mourn Julie’s loss forever.

Raven knew everything David was saying to Julie, though she couldn’t hear him. She knew he uttered the same words he’d uttered to Leah Robertson all those years ago; they were burned on Raven’s brain. Julie was at his mercy; he could do anything he wanted to her, even kill her. If she didn’t obey him. If she didn’t please him.

All it would take was one little kick to the stool.

David made love to Julie. With his hands and mouth, bringing her friend, Raven saw, to the point of orgasm, again and again. Suddenly he stopped. Raven wasn’t surprised, this was part of the game, too, one she recognized from years before. One only she knew about.

Raven understood. He was asserting his total dominance over his lamb. Reminding her that she was his, that her fate was totally in his hands. He owned her.

To prove his point, he left her. Alone in the dark. To wait. And worry.

Her time had come.

Raven waited until David had driven off, then went around to the front of the house. She didn’t know how much time she had, so she would have to act quickly. Raven unlocked the front door and stepped inside. She heard Julie crying softly, whimpering in fear. With a disgusted shake of her head, Raven crossed to the security system’s keypad, entered the code, then breathed deeply, taking a moment to enjoy the new-house scents of the fresh paint and newly milled wood.

She snapped the door shut behind her.

Julie’s whimpering stopped. “David?” she called. “Is that you?”

Raven smiled. It wasn’t David who mattered now, wasn’t David who was in control. It was her.

Raven dipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves, the kind surgeons wore. She slipped them on, working her fingers all the way in. That done, she headed for the living room, heart thundering, adrenaline pumping.

Her first look at her friend turned her stomach. The taste of bile was bitter on her tongue. She forced it back. “Hello, Julie,” she said.

For one moment of crackling silence, Julie was still with shock. Then she turned her head in Raven’s direction. “Rave,” she whispered, “is that you?”

“None other.”

Julie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Raven could only imagine the chaos of the other woman’s thoughts—her shock and shame, her questions.

Raven laughed softly, deciding to cut her some slack, considering the circumstances. “I followed you and David here. I knew he was up to the same sick tricks as fifteen years ago.”

She circled the other woman, pleased to see that she trembled. “You should see yourself now, Julie, trussed up like a Christmas goose. It’s disgusting. Where’s your pride?”

“Let me down,” Julie whispered, the tiny sound broken by tears. “Please, Raven.”

Raven ignored her plea. “All those years ago, I hand-picked you to be a part of mine and Andie’s family. Because you needed us so much. I thought that would make you loyal. How could I have been so wrong?” Raven clucked her tongue and shook her head. “You never got that, did you? You were our friend because
I
said it was okay.
Me.
”

Julie started to cry, quietly at first, then with increasing force. Her sobs shook her, nearly unbalancing her. She begged Raven, over and over, to let her down.

“So, now you need me, is that it? Now that you want something from me?” Raven narrowed her eyes. “I hate him, you know. Though I didn’t always. I admired him. Maybe I even fancied myself in love with him.” Raven shrugged. “He taught me about power. About wielding it over others. He taught me about control.

“He opened a whole new world for me.” Raven smiled, remembering, her heart thundering. “Things I’d had only glimmers of before. Suddenly I understood…everything. Who I was. What was important. What my father meant by loyalty and the extremes one must go to protect the ones you love.”

Inside the rubber gloves her hands began to sweat. “That’s why I sneaked into the house all those years ago, to watch. And to learn.”

At Julie’s involuntary sound, Raven giggled; the girlish sound echoed through the big room. “You were right. I did go back and watch them. I hid in the closet. I saw and heard everything. That’s how I knew what David was doing with you, where it would lead.”

“You…killed…her,” Julie choked out, her words partially obscured by her sobs. “Didn’t you?”

Raven clicked her tongue. “No loyalty. He has you strung up like a sacrificial lamb, and you’re thinking
I
killed Leah Robertson. That’s why I’m here, Julie. That’s why—”

She bit the words back, angry suddenly. Furious. At David Sadler for bringing them to this. At Julie, for allowing it to happen. “He should have stayed out of our lives. He should have stayed as far away from us as possible. But he didn’t. He thought it would be fun to mess with
my
family. Just like fifteen years ago.”

She took a step closer to Julie. She smelled her fear, she smelled sex and sweat. “I’ve decided to be rid of him, once and for all. Unfortunately, you have to be a part of the plan. I can’t do it without you.”

She lifted her face to her former friend’s, wishing she could remove the blindfold, wanting to look at her beautiful face one last time. “Mrs. X was easy,” Raven murmured, reaching out to Julie but stopping short of touching her. “I wanted her to die. But you… I’m sorry, Julie. I am. I wish this could be different. I wish you had been more loyal.”

“Let me go, Rave,” Julie begged. “Please, don’t do this. I love you. You’re my best friend. Rave, plea—”

“Too late, Julie. Way too late.”

Raven kicked the stool out from under her.