THREE TIMES A LADY (26 page)

‘Hell yeah,’ he said, digging his elbow into his partner’s ribs.  ‘Some cash and a BJ sounds just about right to us.  What do you need from us, honey?’

When Dana’s world finally swam back into focus fifteen minutes later, she found herself bent forward over the driver’s-side seat of her Protégé with her jeans and underwear ripped down around her ankles. 

Cold winter air froze the backs of her exposed thighs.  She tried to straighten but found she couldn’t.  She’d been pinned down hard beneath a heavy weight. 

Vomit rocketed up Dana’s throat and burned the thin lining of her esophagus before flooding into her mouth and wearing away the enamel on her teeth.  One of the men in blue overalls who’d been loading boxes into the back of the building when she’d been speaking with Bill Krugman on the telephone had positioned himself between her legs and was pumping himself furiously in and out, shredding Dana’s insides and grunting hard with his efforts like a wild beast in heat.

Dana choked on the contents of her stomach.  Hot tears sprang up into her eyes and blurred her vision, burning her retinas and making it impossible to see clearly.  She again tried to straighten but the man on top of her shoved her face back down into the leather of the car seat. 

‘Just stay down, bitch,’ he hissed, wrapping a thick handful of Dana’s hair in his fist to keep her in place.  ‘Just stay down and try to enjoy yourself.’

Dana closed her eyes and tried to ignore the searing pain between her legs, still fighting with every last ounce of energy she possessed.  She kicked her legs.  She bowed her back.  She gritted her teeth.  Tears streaked down her cheeks and dropped down into the grooves of the car seat, sliding down the leather and collecting in a saltwater pool at the bottom of the backrest.  She wondered briefly if this was what her mother, Sara Whitestone, had felt when Nathan Stiedowe’s father had raped her over a church altar way back in 1957.  A feeling of complete and utter hopelessness.  A feeling of complete and utter violation.  A feeling of complete and utter hatred.

A feeling of wanting to
kill
the person who was doing this to you.

Dana took in a deep breath that filled her lungs to capacity and opened her eyes.  She needed to remain in the moment here; she knew that, no matter how horrific that moment might be.  Marshalling every last ounce of strength left in her body, she took in another deep breath, ready to scream with all her might to alert someone to the fact that she were being raped just fifty feet away from the entrance to the coroner’s office.  Suddenly, though, a different scream ripped through the night.  A high-pitched yelp of terror that sounded eerily similar to that of a mortally wounded animal. 

The man on top of Dana withdrew quickly from between her legs and whirled around to trace the source of the scream.  Dana did the same.  Her pale blue eyes burned in their sockets, glistening with hot tears of rage and shame. 

Five feet away, the rapist’s partner writhed on the snow-covered pavement, clutching at his neck.  Rivers of bright red blood pulsed from between his trembling fingers before soaking into the pristine white snow covering the ground.  A horrible gurgling noise came from deep within his slashed-open throat. 

Dana widened her eyes in shock and amazement.  A woman stood over the prone man, holding a long knife in her right hand.  Its sharp silver edge still dripped and glinted with her target’s fresh blood. 

The primary rapist – the one who’d been violating Dana only moments earlier – fumbled with the belt on his overalls.  ‘What the…’ he began.

The words died in his throat as the woman sprang forward in a quick flash of movement and shoved the knife deep into his Adam’s apple, twisting hard before pulling it out again.  The man’s esophagus collapsed on itself.  Falling to the ground next to his partner, he began to choke to death on his own blood.

Dana stared up in complete confusion at the woman holding the knife in her hand.  Utter disbelief filled her mind.  She found it impossible to breathe, to speak…

To
thank
the woman. 

Dana blinked hard, still fighting back the insistent tears and trying desperately to process the surreal scene before her.  Her saviour had dressed in formal attire for the occasion, her long blonde hair streaked with subtle shades of red.  Dana’s hands trembled uncontrollably as she yanked up her pants and underwear around her waist.  Wiping away the tears from her eyes, she coughed painfully.  ‘Thank you,’ Dana sobbed.  ‘Thank you so much.’

The woman smiled at Dana and waved a delicate hand in front of her face.  ‘Hell, don’t go thanking me just yet, honey.  We girls need to stick together, though, don’t we?  Anyway, you would have done the same for me, right?’

Dana narrowed her eyes, not quite understanding the woman’s meaning.  It seemed an odd thing to say considering the gravity of the moment.  Flippant.  Out of place.  ‘Of course I would have.  I’m an FBI agent.’

The woman narrowed her own beautiful green eyes.  They shimmered in her face like glistening emeralds set into a face carved out of pure porcelain.  ‘Yeah, I know that, Dana.  That’s why I’m here.’

Dana pulled back her head.  An uneasy feeling boiled away deep in the pit of her stomach.  Still, her traumatised brain didn’t seem capable of processing the woman’s odd words. 

Her pulse crashed in her wrists.  ‘How in the hell do you know my name?’ she snapped.

The woman smiled again and adjusted one of her small gold hoop earrings; as though they found themselves engaged in a bit of mindless chitchat at the moment rather than acknowledging the horrific rape to which Dana had just been subjected.  ‘Oh, I know
a lot
of things about you, Agent Whitestone,’ the woman said.  ‘Let’s see here: I know that your parents were murdered when you were four years old – a murder you yourself had the pleasure of witnessing.  I know that you live in Lakewood with your pet cat and that you enjoy watching the same television programme on Showtime every Wednesday night. 
Weeds
, isn’t it?  The one starring Mary-Louise Parker?  Anyway, I also know that you probably think you’re better than me.  It’s not true, of course, but in short I know
plenty
of things about you.’

The woman paused and lifted up one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows ton her smooth forehead.  ‘Can’t say I like a single goddamn one of them, though.’

Dana reached inside her leather jacket for her Glock and curled her fingers around the corrugated-plastic grip.  Her thumb went to the safety to flick it off.  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Dana barked, following the training that told her to keep her voice even but still speaking harshly enough to display control.  You could never show fear to your adversary.  That would only reinforce their confidence and encourage them to attack.  ‘You’d better start making sense or I’m going to arrest you right now.  Tell me how you know these things about me.’

The woman dressed in black smiled and produced a syringe loaded with a clear liquid.  Dana slid out the Glock from her shoulder holster as the woman took a step forward, pointing it directly at her head.  ‘Stop right there,’ Dana ordered, both her hands and voice perfectly steady now.  ‘Just stop right there or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking brain.’

But the woman
didn’t
stop. 

Dana lowered the gun and pulled the trigger once, aiming for the woman’s kneecap, just like she’d done with her half-brother in his underground bunker two years earlier.  A warning shot meant to drive home the painful reminder that the predators weren’t in charge here.  The
good guys
were. 

But the gun only clicked dryly.

Dana stared down at the Glock in her hand.  She shook her head and pulled the trigger again, praying that a particle of dust had somehow caused a temporary malfunction.  Again, nothing happened. 

The woman in black widened the smile on her pretty face, showing off two rows of perfectly white teeth.  Without warning, she shot out a hand and grabbed Dana hard by her throat, squeezing forcefully enough to cut off Dana’s air.  The power in the woman’s grip was unbelievable,
unladylike
, to say the least, nearly inhuman. 

Pain like a scorpion’s sting bit deep into Dana’s flesh as the woman jabbed the sharp needle into her throbbing carotid artery, producing a pinching sensation that reminded Dana of the yearly influenza shots she’d received as a kid.  Only then did Dana realise that the woman accosting her was the exact same woman from the one in the autopsy-room video.  The woman’s hair and clothes were different now, but her eyes were the same brilliant shade of green.  Sadly, though, Dana didn’t have time to process this information before her eyelids grew heavy and her world faded away again.

Through the fog in her brain, Dana heard metallic clinks that sounded like silver raindrops echo against the frozen pavement. 

The woman’s last words – like all her previous words – were delivered in a voice positively
dripping
with contempt.

‘In case you were wondering, my dear, those men were working for
me
,’ the woman said, letting the remaining bullets from Dana’s gun drop from her hand and onto the hard surface of the parking lot below.  ‘We took the liberty of emptying out your gun while you were passed out the first time.  Anyway, like I said before, you shouldn’t thank me just yet.  I may be done with you for the time being, but I’m certainly not done with you for good.  I saved you only because I want you for
myself
, Agent Whitestone.  Sweet dreams, sweetheart.  I’ll be seeing you again real soon.’

The woman paused.  Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, ‘Better look twice, though.  I know you’re supposed to be the world’s greatest cop and all, but you probably won’t recognise me the next time around.’

Dana came to again twenty minutes later, woozy and nauseous from the effects of the powerful drug still coursing through her system. 

Shaking her head hard to clear away the fresh scattering of cobwebs in her frazzled brain, Dana pulled herself up off the ground and punched 911 into her cellphone before pacing the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office for ten solid minutes while waiting impatiently for the cops to arrive. 

Dana forced herself to not cry during the interminable six hundred seconds.  Wasn’t easy.  Her head was killing her and her body temperature had soared to a feverish level despite the bitterly cold wind that was whipping in off the lake and knifing viciously through her traumatised body.  Still, the bitter cold couldn’t touch her right now. 
Nothing
in the world could touch her right now.  Not today and maybe not ever again. 

Dana stomped back and forth in front of her car: twenty feet forward and twenty feet back, tracing and re-tracing the same path until she’d worn a patch three feet wide into the snow.  Sweat rolled down her temples and plastered her short blonde hair to her forehead.  More sweat seeped into the armpits of her shirt beneath the leather bomber jacket.  Still more perspiration flooded into her palms.  Her ears rang.  Her skin crawled.  Her stomach churned.  Her Glock – useless as the goddamn thing had been tonight – rubbed the left side of her ribcage raw, until Dana’s entire left side had been turned into a painful hunk of tenderised meat. 

Dana ignored the pain and sweat and nausea and paced on, the gun continuing to shift back and forth inside its holster and further mutilating her side.  But it was a
good
kind of pain.  The kind of pain Dana
needed
to feel right now.  It was like working a loose tooth back and forth and actually
enjoying
the way it hurt, unable to keep your fingers out of your mouth for the life of you.  Unable to keep yourself from
wanting
the pain.

More importantly, it was the exact
opposite
kind of pain than what Dana had experienced only half an hour earlier.  The kind of pain that violated your mind every bit as much as it violated your body.  Probably more so.

One thing was for certain: with every last cell in her body Dana wanted revenge. 
Needed
revenge.  With everything she’d already been through in her thoroughly fucked-up life, she was sick and goddamn tired of playing by the rules.  Constant subjectivity was way too much to ask of
anybody
, much less a person in her already-weakened psychological condition.  After all, there were limits to what the human spirit could endure, no matter how tough you thought you were or how many inspirational posters they tacked to the walls in warm, safe office buildings.  Stupid, third-grade-level posters that urged you to keep on keeping on, to keep on trucking, to continue trudging through the muck of everyday existence and to look at the trash all around you and convince yourself it was actually flowers. 

When everything was said and done, though, Dana knew that there were no atheists in the foxholes of life.  No matter what anyone said to the contrary, when you’d reached the breaking point that every person in the world possessed you got down on your fucking knees and you prayed to God in a trembling voice to please, please,
please
take away the other kind of pain.  To relieve the agonising pressure.  To grant you sanctuary from the hellish reality of your everyday life, if only for moment or two.