The Lover. BEVERLY BARTON
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Lover - BEVERLY BARTON страница 5
Название: The Lover
Автор: BEVERLY BARTON
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780007278909
isbn:
She wanted to die. Longed to die. It was the only way she would ever be free of him. But there was nothing in this room she could use to aid herself in committing suicide, so all she could do was hope that he would tire of her soon and kill her.
The lock on the door clicked. Stephanie’s body tensed and her mind screamed silently as she stood there, frozen to the spot, knowing the monster would open the door and come down the steps.
Listening, her eyes focused on the bottom of the wooden staircase, she heard his footsteps. Slow and steady. Not rushing. Taking his time.
“Good evening, Stephanie,” he said, a self-satisfied smile on his face.
“Is it evening?”
“Yes, it’s nearly eleven o’clock.”
He gazed at her, studying her from the top of her disheveled hair to the tips of her bare toes. Without being told, she knew what he expected, what he demanded of her. She was allowed to wear nothing except a black silk robe, and only when he wasn’t there. With numb, trembling fingers, she undid the tie belt and peeled the robe from her shoulders. It fell to her feet, puddling on the floor like a soft, black cloud.
“My lovely Stephanie.”
He came to her, took her by the hand and led her to the bed. Without being told, she lay down, parted her thighs and held her arms open to him.
“Always so willing to please,” he said. “I love that about you.”
“I love you.” She told him what she knew he wanted to hear. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. Please, darling, make love to me.”
He quickly shed his clothing, as always very eager. What would he do to her first? He had to inflict some type of pain before he could become aroused enough to rape her.
But apparently not this time. When he stood over her, his eyes wild and his breathing hard, she saw that his penis was already erect.
“Turn over,” he told her.
Knowing what he intended and that it was useless to protest, she turned over onto her stomach. She waited for the first blow, but there was none. Instead, his hand caressed her buttocks. Tenderly. And then she felt him as he crawled on top of her. She held her breath. He rammed into her. She whimpered in pain. He rode her with a fury, coming within minutes. Still embedded inside her, he kissed her shoulder, then grasped her hair and jerked her head up off the pillow.
He’d never done this before so she didn’t know what to expect next. Suddenly, she felt something pressing against her neck, just below her chin.
“Do you want me to set you free, my darling?” he asked.
And then she realized that he held a knife to her throat.
No, please don’t kill me, a part of her begged silently. That tiny part of her consciousness that longed to live, longed to believe that there was still hope. But the terrified, tormented part of her who couldn’t bear to suffer any longer said aloud, “Yes, please. Please set me free.”
And with one quick, deep slice of the sharp blade, he ended their relationship.
Despite living in a new place, sleeping in a different bed, Jim had rested soundly. Thanks to prescription pain medication. It would have been easy to get addicted to the stuff years ago, and God knew he’d come shamefully close a couple of times. But if he’d fallen prey to drug addiction, he might as well have kissed his life good-bye. He was forty, with a couple of bad knees, unmarried, unattached, could barely make ends meet and had to struggle to sustain his father/son relationship with his only child. And here he was on this sunny, clear-blue-sky Thursday morning dreading starting a new job, one that anybody would see as a demotion for a guy who’d been a detective on the Memphis police force.
He parked his seen-better-days Chevy pickup truck in the area of the courthouse parking lot designated for the Adams County Sheriff’s Department. After getting out and locking the doors, he glanced around at the other vehicles and grunted. Then he chuckled to himself. Figures, he thought. There wasn’t another vehicle as old and dilapidated as his. One particular car caught his eye as did one SUV. The car was a late-model white Mustang convertible with the top down. Whoever owned the sporty little ride must have felt confident that it wasn’t going to rain today and that nobody would dare mess with his car. He figured the owner to be young—possibly thirty or less—and single. A guy who liked the way he felt when he was behind the wheel of a car other men envied. His guess was that a guy like that usually had a pretty, bosomy gal with him, a looker he could show off the way he did his car.
When Jim passed by the SUV, he’d noticed it because it was clean as a whistle, as if it had just been washed. He knew for a fact that it had rained in Adams Landing very recently, because of the mud puddles he’d seen driving in yesterday. Pausing for a couple of seconds, he looked inside the neat-as-a-pin black Jeep Cherokee. The carpet was clean; the seats and floorboards were void of any clutter, except for a closed black umbrella. Whoever owned this SUV was probably a neat freak, somebody who needed to control every aspect of his life, saw things in a linear way, needed his ducks in a row.
Admitting to himself that he was stalling, Jim ended his vehicle inspections and headed toward the side entrance that led into the north wing of the two-story building. Like so many other towns across America, especially in the South, the Adams County courthouse stood in the middle of town, like the center of a box, with streets crisscrossing in the four corners. The white columned entrance faced Main Street. Two large, age-worn statues of Alabama Civil War generals presided over the green lawn on either side of the brick walkway leading from the city sidewalk to the front veranda. The back of the courthouse faced Adams Street, directly across from the post office, which was flanked by Long’s Hardware and Adams Landing Dry Cleaners. The side-porch entrance to the sheriff’s department faced Washington, a tree-lined street boasting the local library on the corner of Main and Washington and the county jail on the corner of Washington and Adams. An antique shop and a radio station, both housed in old Victorian painted ladies, sat side by side between the library and the jail.
Taking a deep breath of fresh morning air, Jim squared his shoulders, opened the door and walked into a long, wood-floored hallway. The minute he entered the building, he saw the sign protruding sideways from atop the door frame of the first door on the right: SHERIFF. As he approached the office, he noted that the door stood open, as if inviting people to come inside and make themselves at home. He had no more than stepped over the threshold than an attractive young woman, in the typical brown and tan Alabama deputy uniform, walked toward him, a smile on her face and a cup of coffee in her hand. Slender and blonde. Not pretty, but cute. With short, bright pink fingernails.
“Hi, I’m Deputy Holly Burcham.” She transferred her coffee cup from her right to her left hand and held out her right hand to Jim.
He took her hand, shook it, and replied, “I’m Jim Norton.”
She smiled warmly. “Thought you were.” She glanced at the wall clock. СКАЧАТЬ