Luring. Блейк Пирс

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СКАЧАТЬ sorry you feel that way. I’m not changing my mind. I’m going to Quantico tomorrow.”

      Ryan stared at her like he couldn’t believe his ears.

      Riley got up from the table and said, “Enjoy the rest of your meal. There’s some cheesecake in the refrigerator. I’m tired. I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”

      Before Ryan could reply, Riley hurried into the bathroom. She cried for a few minutes, then took a long, hot shower. When she put on her slippers and bathrobe and came back out of the bathroom, she saw Ryan sitting in the kitchen. He’d cleared the table and was working at his computer. He didn’t look up.

      Riley went into the bedroom and climbed into bed and started crying again.

      As she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, she wondered …

      Why am so angry?

      Is Ryan wrong?

      Is any of this his fault?

      Her thoughts were such a jumble, she couldn’t think things through. And a terrible memory started to creep up on her—of waking up in this bed with a sharp pain, then seeing that she was soaked in blood …

      My miscarriage.

      She found herself wondering—was that one of the reasons Ryan didn’t want her to go into the FBI? She’d been badly stressed by the Clown Killer case when it had happened. But the doctor in the hospital had assured her that stress had nothing to do with her miscarriage.

      Instead, she’d said that it had been caused by “chromosomal abnormalities.”

      Now that Riley thought about it again, that word disturbed her …

      Abnormalities.

      She wondered—was she somehow abnormal, deep down inside where it really mattered?

      Was she incapable of having a lasting relationship, let alone a family?

      As she drifted off to sleep, she felt as though she knew only one thing for sure …

      I’m going to Quantico tomorrow.

      She was asleep before she could think about what might happen after that.

      CHAPTER TWO

      The man was pleased to hear the woman’s soft moan. He knew she must be regaining consciousness. Yes, he could see that her eyes had opened a little.

      She was lying on her side on a rough-hewn wooden table in the small room that had a dirt floor, cinderblock walls, and low timbered ceiling. She was bound up tightly in a curled up position, taped fast with duct tape. Her legs were sharply bent and tightly bound to her chest, and her hands were wrapped around her shins. Her head lay sideways on top of her knees.

      She reminded him of pictures he’d seen of human fetuses—and also of embryos he sometimes found when he cracked a fresh egg from one of the chickens he kept. She looked so mild and innocent, it was somehow a rather touching sight.

      Mostly, of course, she reminded him of the other woman—Alice had been her name, he believed. He’d once thought that Alice would be the only one he’d treat this way, but then he’d enjoyed it … and there were so few pleasures in his life … how could he stop?

      “It hurts,” the woman murmured, as if out of a dream. “Why does it hurt?”

      He knew that it was because she lay in a thick tangled bed of barbed wire. Blood was already trickling onto the table top, and it was going add to the stains in the unfinished wood. Not that it mattered. The table was older than he was, and he was the only person who ever saw it anyway.

      He was hurting and bleeding some as well. He’d cut himself while getting her into the truck with the barbed wire. It was harder to do than he’d expected because she’d fought back more forcefully than the other one.

      She had writhed and twisted while the homemade chloroform was starting to kick in. But her struggles had weakened and he’d finally subdued her completely.

      Even so, he wasn’t much bothered to be hurt by the sharp barbs. He knew from hard experience that such cuts healed up pretty quickly, even if they did leave ghastly scars.

      He stooped down and looked closely into her face.

      Her eyes were opened almost impossibly wide now. Her irises twitched around as she looked back at him.

      Still trying to avoid looking at me, he realized.

      Everybody acted that way toward him, wherever he went. He didn’t blame people for trying to pretend he was invisible, or that he didn’t exist at all. Sometimes he’d look in the mirror and pretend that he could make himself disappear.

      Then the woman murmured again …

      “It hurts.”

      In addition to the cuts, he was sure that her head ached badly from the heavy dose of homemade chloroform. When he’d first mixed up the stuff right here, he’d almost passed out himself, and he’d suffered from a splitting headache for days afterward. But the preparation worked very well, so he would continue using it.

      Now he was well prepared for what he was about to do next. He was wearing thick work gloves now and a thickly padded jacket. He wasn’t going to hurt himself any more while getting the thing done.

      He went to work on the mass of barbed wire with a pair of wire cutters. Then he pulled a length of it tightly around the woman’s body and twisted the ends into makeshift knots to hold the wire in place.

      The woman let out a sharp whimper and tried to twist loose from the duct tape as the barbs tore through her skin and clothing.

      As he kept working, he said …

      “You don’t have to be quiet. You can scream if you want—if it helps.”

      He certainly wasn’t worried about anybody hearing her.

      She whimpered louder, and she seemed to try to scream, but her voice was weak.

      He chuckled quietly. He knew that she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to properly scream—not with her legs bound up against her chest like that.

      He pulled another length of barbed wire around her and stretched it tight, watching as blood dripped from where each barb pierced her flesh beneath her clothes, soaking through the fabric, spreading and making spots much wider than the wound itself.

      He kept right on pulling strand after strand around her until she was all bound up like some kind of enormous wire cocoon, not looking human at all. The bundle was making all kinds strange low sounds—sighs, gasps, whimpers, and groans. Blood trickled here and spurted a little there until the whole tabletop was bathed in red.

      Then he stepped back and admired his handiwork.

      He turned off the overhead light and walked out into the night, closing the heavy wooden door behind him.

      The sky was clear and starry, and he couldn’t hear anything now except the dense rumble of crickets.

      He took a long, slow breath of the clean, fresh air.

      The СКАЧАТЬ