Skin (13 page)

“So this is a personal project?” When he didn’t answer right away, Lilith studied him as best she could with only passing street light revealing his tight expression. “We all have things we don’t want to talk about, I guess.” She certainly didn’t want to tell him about Hannah.

Not knowing what to expect from his place, she was only a little surprised when they pulled up in front of an old warehouse at the edge of a semi-gentrified neighborhood. The building across from the raised Metro tracks was a conversion from factory to timber loft. They took an elevator up to the penthouse that served Michael both as living quarters and workplace.

As big as her whole apartment, the main room had exposed brick walls, heating ducts near the thirteen-foot ceiling and refurbished plank floors. The kitchen at one end had high end counters and appliances and a long island. Black leather couches and chairs in the middle were sandwiched between a fireplace with a large LCD television and doors to an outside deck. And on the far side of the main room, Michael had set up an open mini-studio with professional lights overhead on some kind of grid. A rack to one side held what looked like recording equipment. A camera mounted on a tripod sat near two stools – one in front of the camera, the other next to it.

Lilith took it all in as she set her shoulder bag on the kitchen island and wandered around, her movement feeding her nerves. “Wow, you live with your work.”

“You think Sal would let me do this at the club?”

“Probably not.”

“No
probably
about it. That’s not all the equipment. The second bedroom is a combo office and editing suite.”

Lilith was aware of everything Michael did. He sauntered over to the camera.
Uncapped the lens.
Looked through the viewfinder and made adjustments. She glanced
around,
saw a statuette on his fireplace mantel.
A plaque, too.
She moved close enough to read the inscriptions.
Awards for his documentaries.
He really was legit.

“So what is it you want me to talk about?” she asked, stopping at the stool in front of the camera.

“Whatever makes you
comfortable.
”

“Nothing about this makes me comfortable.”
Especially since she had her own purpose.
How could she get information about Hannah and who he’d seen sniffing around her out of him? She told herself that was the only reason she’d agreed to come home with him. “I think you need to be more specific.”

“All right.
Do you like working at the cub?”

She noticed that a red light on the camera was lit. Michael slid onto his stool, ignoring the equipment, focusing on her. His face in shadow, he was there but anonymous.

“I hate that club.”

“Then, why?”

Unable to focus, Lilith circled her stool, trying to figure out how to get
him
to talk, trying to figure out Hannah.

“Sometimes a kid gets in a bad situation and can’t find any way out.”

“What about her family?” he asked.

“They’re the problem. First she’s abused.
Then ignored.”
She could picture Hannah, the
real
Hannah, the last time she’d seen her, right before going off to college.
“And finally abandoned.”

As much as she’d denied doing so, guilt choked her.

“So she has no choice?” Michael asked.

Lilith tried not to feel that familiar agitation that was making her heart beat faster, but the past always did that to her. “If she doesn’t have anyone to help and no education or training, what can she do but use what God gave her to make a living?”

Lilith continued prowling.
Thinking.
Trying to figure things out.
Trying to understand why Hannah did what she did.

“How do you feel about that?” Michael asked.

“It sucks. It makes a woman feel powerless.”

“You mean it makes
you
feel powerless.”

She suddenly stopped. “We weren’t talking about me.”
Though Hannah had maintained that her life gave her power.

“Weren’t we?
Then who, Lilith?”

“The dancers all have their sad stories.”
A great intro.
“Like the one who just disappeared from the club. Anna Youngheart.”

“You knew her.”

“Anna?
No, not really.”

“When you came back to the club the second time, you were looking for Anna.”

But Lilith didn’t know that woman. She knew Hannah, the girl hidden deep inside the stripper’s body. At least she thought she did.

“Maybe I was simply fascinated with someone who looked like me. What about you?” she asked. “You’re at the club every night, so it seems. Why?”

“I told you I’m making a documentary.” He cleared his throat. “I thought I was supposed to be asking the questions.”

She ignored the protest.
“But why a gentlemen’s club?
What’s your stake?”

Lilith could feel Michael’s sudden unease. He didn’t want to open himself up any more than she did.

So it surprised her when he said, “A few years back, I got kind of a shock. I learned my birth mother was a stripper. The reason she gave me up, so I would have a better life. As for herself – she’s never tried anything else.”

“And you can’t understand how she can do it.” Lilith could relate to that. It was how she felt when thinking about her sister.

“Exactly,” he said.

He was trying to keep control, but she didn’t miss the emotion in his voice. They had more in common than she could have imagined. It made her feel closer to him. More open. Part of her wanted to tell him everything. No one but Elena knew what she had gone through in trying to find her sister. Surely if she probed Michael further about Hannah – or Anna as he knew her – he would be open to talking. Hopefully something to give her a clue about the bastard who had her
sister.

“So if you spend most nights at the club, how could you not know Anna?” she asked.

“I don’t get involved with my subjects.”

“But you see what they do, how they act around men, who they want to be with... or don’t.”

“I don’t make judgments,” Michael said. “I just observe.”

“What did you observe about her?” she pressed him. “You watch everything that goes on around you,” she said. “I can’t believe you never noticed what she did.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t really know her.”

“But you know things
about
her. Like the men she fraternized with.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“How would
you
put it?”

Michael didn’t answer for a heartbeat,
then
said, “She was looking for what she could get from them.”

Lilith’s stomach
clenched,
and she wanted to yell at him that he was wrong. Only she knew he wasn’t. “Like who?”

“
That guy
whose sister is a stripper, for one.”

“Paul Ensdorf?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the guy’s name.”

“Who else?”

“Some guy who sits at the bar every night,” he said.
“Dark hair.
Muscular.”

That sounded like Gabe. Why would Hannah have spent time with him? He was there on the job. She couldn’t think of any other guy who fit the description.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Why do you want to know all this?”

“It’s kind of scary knowing someone who kind of looks like me is in the hands of a killer who keeps going for the same type.”

“Anna didn’t just look like you,” Michael told her. “She could
be
you when you were a little younger.”

Lilith wasn’t going to let him go there.
“Anyone else?”

“Not that I remember, but there was someone always after her. That disk jockey
who
runs the music.”

“Rudy?”

“Don’t know his name.
Tall, skinny, geeky.
Has an attitude.”

“Rudy.”
She wondered if Pucinski considered Rudy Barnes a suspect.

“Who
is
doing this interview?” Michael asked.

“I prefer having a conversation. You tell me something interesting,
then
I tell you.”

“I’ve told you a lot already.”

“What about you?” she asked, certain he was holding something back. “Anna
never
spent any time with you?”

“You think
I’m
a suspect?”

“I don’t know. Should I?

“Anna liked to have the upper hand, so she hung out a lot with men she could control. She usually stayed away from the others, including me.”

And Gabe.
No way would Hannah have been able to control the cop.

“Your turn.”
Michael turned the interview back to her. “Why did you come to the club looking for her?”

“Who said I did?”

“Short memory.
You did. Okay, then, why did you take the job you so obviously hate?”

“Jobs are scarce in this economy.”

“Bullshit. I thought we were having a conversation. That goes two ways. I told you something you wanted to know.
More than something.”

“Okay. I saw the ad for Club Paradise in the paper. I saw Anna and I thought that could have been me.”

“Could have been?”

She stared hard at Michael’s shadowed face. Started wondering why she was there talking to him at all. Her pulse was racing, and her chest was tight. She could hardly breathe. When it came down to it, she wasn’t ready to open a vein. Not with a man who was little more than a stranger. Not even if he told her about his birth mother. He’d never actually known the woman. He hadn’t grown up with her by his side. He’d had no reason to be shocked and frantic at her life choices. She hadn’t been taken by some crazy killer who liked to play with his victims before he ended their lives.

Realizing she’d made a mistake by going home with Michael – she hadn’t learned anything substantive here – she rose from the stool and headed for the island and her bag, but he stepped in front of her.

“Don’t go, please. You’re upset. I didn’t mean to upset you like this.”

“I’m done talking, so I have no reason to stay.”

“Liar,” he said softly, his face blurring as it drew closer to hers.

His breath laved her face, and her breath stuck in her throat. No denying the attraction. Just thinking about what could happen if she would let go made her breasts tighten and the flesh between her thighs go damp.

He inched his head closer, brushed her mouth so lightly with his that sensation made her pulse flutter and her knees go weak. She parted her lips and a choked sound passed through them as she pushed herself away from him. She bolted for the island and her shoulder bag.

“Hey, Lilith, wait a minute. Don’t go. We can just talk about something else.”

Lilith ignored him and threw open the door.

“At least let me drive you home.”

She heard him follow, but he didn’t try to stop her. Luckily, she knew exactly where she was, only a block and a half from the rapid transit.

The ride home to Hannah’s building was short.

And the station that late at night was creepy. A guy looking for a handout approached her, but the furious look she adopted made him back off. Different coming home on foot than it was driving a Jaguar. Maybe she would start taking Hannah’s car to work.

On the walk to Hannah’s building, she passed an old homeless woman sitting on the curb next to her bulging black plastic bag that probably contained everything she owned. The woman was rocking, eyes closed, humming to herself. Lilith hesitated. She didn’t know about shelters in the area, so she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a fifty from her tip money.

“Hey,” she said, bending down to give the bill to the homeless woman
.“
Get yourself something to eat.

The old woman looked up and frowned. “You’re not the same one.” She took the money from Lilith.

“Same one?”

But the woman was back in her own world, humming to herself.

Lilith shrugged and moved toward the entry to Hannah’s place... then stopped. Wait a
minute,
Pucinski had said the only witness to Hannah’s kidnapping had been an old homeless woman.

She whipped around, but the street was empty.

oOo

WHY DIDN’T HE just kill her?

That was the burning question in Hannah’s mind.

As far as she could tell, this was the third day he’d kept her alive. Or was it the fourth? Living in the dark was timeless. Sunlight came through cracks between boards covering the windows. The only light she’d seen. Other than that, she’d been in the dark for however long she’d been here.

Wherever here was.

She didn’t know where she was or who had taken her. She didn’t know how much longer he would keep her alive. He’d dumped her in this cold, dank, dark room which she assumed was a basement. Cuffed to a narrow bed except for the few times he’d let her up to use the gross excuse for a toilet, she couldn’t free herself, couldn’t move around.

All she could do was await her fate.

How had this happened to her?

Why?

Had she pissed off some customer? Of course she had. The one who’d killed the waitress and the working girl.

Only, who was he?

Every time he came in here, he was wearing the billed cap and camouflage and sunglasses. Every time he came in here, he thought of some new small torture.

He hadn’t raped her.
Yet.
But she was sure it was coming.

He was playing with her, building his own anticipation. While calling her vile names and making all kinds of accusations that made no sense to her, he’d touched her all over.
Rubbed her through her clothes, pulled at her nipples and dug into her through her panties.

Through it all, she’d lain there frozen, sending her mind to some other dark place. The way she used to when she was on the street and needed food. Lucky for him he hadn’t tried to get her to reciprocate. She would tear him apart with her nails or her mouth. He’d told her how he could do anything to her, and no one was coming to her rescue. He outlined the things he would like to do to her body and her mind until little by little, he shredded her confidence that she would somehow get out of this mess. He sent her plunging back to the hellhole of her childhood, when she’d first been witness to her stepfather’s brutality and then had more than a taste of it herself.