Tall, Dark And Deadly. Suzanne Brockmann

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СКАЧАТЬ after only two days, Syd was best friends with all three of them. And Bobby, too.

      She laughed, she smiled, she joked, she fumed at the computers. It was only with Lucky that she was strictly business. All “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” and that too-polite, slightly forced smile, even when they were alone and still working at oh-one-hundred….

      Lucky had managed to negotiate a truce with her. They had a definite understanding, but he couldn’t help but wish he could’ve gone with the girlfriend alliance scenario. Yes, it would’ve been messy further down the road, but it would have been much more fun.

      Especially since he still hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss.

      “Here’s another ‘what if’ situation for you,” Lucky heard Syd say. “You’re a woman—”

      “What?” Rio hooted. “I thought you wanted to know about being a SEAL?”

      “This is related to this assignment,” she explained. “Just hear me out. You’re a woman, and you turn around to find a man wearing panty hose on his head in your apartment in the middle of the night.”

      “You tell him, ‘no darling, that shade of taupe simply doesn’t work with your clothing.’” Rio laughed at his joke.

      “You want me to kill him or muzzle him?” Thomas King asked.

      “Rosetti, I’m serious here,” Syd said. “This has happened to eleven women. There’s nothing funny about it. Maybe you don’t understand because you’re not a woman, but personally I find the thought terrifying. I saw this guy. He was big—about Thomas’s size.”

      “Flee,” Mike Lee said.

      “But what if you can’t?” Syd asked. “What if there’s no place to run? If you’re trapped in your own apartment by a known rapist? Do you fight? Or do you submit?”

      Silence.

      Submit. The word made Lucky squirm. He stepped into the room. “Fight,” he said. “How could you do anything but fight?”

      The three other men agreed, Rio pulling his boots down off the table and sitting up a little straighter.

      Syd glanced up at him, her brown eyes subdued.

      “But we’re not women,” Rio said with a burst of wisdom and insight. “We’re not even men anymore.”

      “Hey, speak for yourself,” Thomas said.

      “I mean, we’re more than men,” Rio countered. “We’re SEALs. Well, almost SEALs. And with the training I’ve had, I’m not really afraid of anyone—and I’m not exactly the biggest guy in the world. Most women haven’t got either the training or the strength to kick ass in a fight with a guy who outweighs ‘em by seventy pounds.”

      Lucky looked at Syd. She was wearing a plain T-shirt with her trademark baggy pants, sandals on her feet instead of her boots. Sometime between last night and this morning, she’d put red polish on her toenails.

      “What would you do?” he asked her, taking a doughnut from the box that was open on the table. “Fight or…” He couldn’t even say it.

      She met his gaze steadily. “I’ve been going through the interviews with the victims, looking for a pattern of violence that correlates to their responses to his attack. A majority of the women fought back, but some of them didn’t. One of them pretended to faint—went limp. Several others say they froze—they were so frightened they couldn’t move. A few others, like Gina, just cowered.”

      “And?” Lucky said, dragging a chair up to the table.

      “And I wish I could say that there’s a direct relationship between the amount of violence the rapist inflicted on the victim and the amount that she fought back. In the first half-dozen or so attacks, it seemed as if the more the woman fought, the more viciously he beat her. And there were actually two cases where our perp walked away from women who didn’t fight back. As if he didn’t want to waste his time.”

      “So then it makes sense to advise women to submit,” Lucky figured.

      “Maybe at first, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. His pattern’s changed over the past few weeks.” Syd scowled down at the papers in front of her. “We have eleven victims, spanning a seven-week period. During those seven weeks, the level of violence our guy is using to dominate his victims has begun to intensify.”

      Lucky nodded. He’d overheard Syd and Lucy discussing this several nights ago.

      “Out of the six most recent victims, we’ve had four who fought back right from the start, one who pretended to faint, and Gina, the most recent, who cowered and didn’t resist. Out of those six, Gina got the worst beating. Yet—go figure—the other woman who didn’t resist was barely touched.”

      “So if you fight this guy, you can guarantee you’ll be hurt,” Lucky concluded. “But if you submit, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of his walking away from you.”

      “And a chance of being beaten within an inch of your life,” Syd said grimly. “Keep in mind, too, that we’re making projections and assumptions based on six instances. We’d really need a much higher number of cases to develop any kind of an accurate pattern.”

      “Let’s hope we don’t get that opportunity,” Mike Lee said quietly.

      “Amen to that,” Thomas King seconded.

      “I still think, knowing that, I would recommend zero resistance,” Lucky said. “I mean, if you had a shot at this guy just walking away…”

      “That’s true.” Syd chewed on her lower lip. “But actually, there’s more to this—something that puts a weird spin on the situation. It has to do with, um…” She glanced almost apologetically at the other men. “Ejaculation.”

      Rio stood up. “Whoops, look at the time. Gotta go.”

      Syd made a face. “I know this is kind of creepy,” she said, “but I think it’s important you guys know all the details.”

      “Sit,” Lucky ordered.

      Rio sat, but only on the edge of his seat.

      “Actually, Lieutenant,” Mike said evenly, “we’ve got a required class in five minutes. If we leave now, we’ll be on time.” He looked at Syd. “I assume you’ll be writing a memo about…this for the other members of the task force…?”

      Syd nodded.

      “There you go,” Rio said with relief. “We’ll read all about it in your memo.”

      All three men stood up, and Lucky felt a surge of panic. They were going to go, leaving him alone with Syd, who wanted to discuss…Yikes. Still, what was he supposed to say, “no, you can’t go to class?”

      “Go,” he said, and they all nearly ran out the door.

      Syd laughed. “Well,” she said, “I sure know how to clear a room, don’t I?” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to follow СКАЧАТЬ