Prey of Desire Read online

  Mallory had found The Gunz on the dance floor. Their bodies meshed together so completely they could have been one person. Kim watched them, then smiled as Addison once again pried them apart and yanked Mallory from the ballroom.

  The countdown began ten seconds to midnight. Everyone on the dance floor stopped. Laughing and toasting, their voices counted down together, like one loud amplifier.

  Ten... Nine... Eight...

  Kim smiled at the Congressman. Around them, waiters were handing out glasses of champagne. He took two and handed one flûte to Kimberly, then they locked their arms together and joined in the countdown.

  Seven... Six... Five...

  Kim's eyes searched the ocean of people for Mallory. She was standing beside Addison as he was counting loudly with the crowd. Mallory noticed the well-endowed blonde from the powder room and shot her a dirty look. The blonde stuck out her tongue.

  Kim wasn't paying any attention. It was the end of the nineteen-nineties, and the end of the Twentieth Century. And she couldn't believe she was spending the New Year's Eve of a Lifetime at the most exciting party in town, locked arm in arm with one of the most charming, celebrated bachelors she'd ever met. Their eyes locked with the final seconds. Still she wondered where Ross was.

  Four... Three... Two...

  “ONE!” Kim screamed just as the Congressman wrapped an arm around her and brought her toward him. With one swift movement, he removed the reading glasses from her face and kissed her. When their lips parted, he beamed and yelled, “Happy New Year!”

  She could barely hear him over the cheering and screaming. Balloons fell from the ceiling as confetti floated in the air. The music was blaring. And Kim noticed she had once again spilled her champagne down the front of his tuxedo. He shrugged it off and brought her close to him, tightly squeezing her.

  Kim turned so that her cheek rested on the Congressman's shoulder. They slow danced amid the celebration around them, and she gripped his right hand in hers.

  Still, her eyes wandered the room. She thought about the shrink and wondered what happened to him. Had he really stood her up? Then she thought about Ross, and if he was here somewhere, lost in the crowd, watching her. Pushing the thought further from her mind, she wrapped an arm tighter around the Congressman's waist.

  There was a throbbing pang of alarm somewhere deep in her temples. More than just a dull headache. She could feel it. Something was about to happen.

  * * * * * * *

  From the shadows of the ballroom, a man blended with the crowd and watched Kim and the Congressman hold each other, slowly rocking back and forth. He imagined what they were talking about. He could see them whispering into each other's ear.

  Stepping away from the pillars in the corners, he moved across the dance floor, hidden among bodies, unseen and unnoticed. Moving into the hallway, he slipped up the large carpeted staircase and disappeared into a room upstairs.

  “If you forget me,” he said. “There's something I want you to know.”

  3

  Dead Man’s Time

  Saturday, January 1, 2000

  2:03 AM

  Twenty miles north of Tampa, a semi truck pulled into the parking lot at the Flying J Truck Stop, grumbling loudly as it rolled past the frail phone booth. A teenage girl, no more than sixteen, came out of the store carrying a Big Gulp in one hand and a suit case in another. She'd been crying.

  Behind her, a Chevy pick-up carrying an angry boyfriend skidded out of the parking lot and onto the street. Its tires screeched as he sped away. Through teary eyes, she watched him leave.

  Out the corner of her eye, she noticed the big semi truck pull around and park. Brakes squealed as steam released above the tires. It blocked her view of the storefront and engulfed her in deep shadows. Standing at the phone booth, the crying teenager fished a quarter out of her pocket and deposited it into the coin slot. She dialed. The phone rang.

  That's when she noticed it: A sticky, reddish-brown gunk on the pay phone, more reddish-brown splatters on the plexi-glass. She touched the glass, removing a spec of crust.

  The receiver to her ear, she listened to it ring again. Her father answered.

  “Brianna, is that you?” came his overjoyed voice through the phone. “Happy New Year, baby... Are you okay?”

  “Daddy.” She looked around. There was a puddle of the reddish-brown stuff at her feet, and a trail winding through the pavement in the parking lot.

  “Daddy.” Her voice trembled. “I think something's happened.”

  * * * * * * *

  Kim and Mallory made it home after two that morning. Zeus was waiting for them and Kim could see his head staring impatiently out the front bay window in Mallory’s townhome as they pulled up. Mallory was still begging for details about Kim’s time with the Congressman as Zeus greeted them with leaps and bounds, wagging his stubby tail. Mallory screamed at him for jumping on her. Kim hugged him and walked him next door to their home.

  Once the Doberman was fed, walked and laying securely at her feet, she collapsed in her grand-father's old recliner and wrapped herself in the hand-stitched quilt her grandmother had made.

  Burrowed into the quilt as if she could stave off the cold dread stealing over her, she waited for Ross. To pass the time she found an old scrapbook and thumbed through the pages. Between its covers were all the love letters he had ever written to her.

  She lifted one handwritten poem from the book. A poem she'd read for the gazillionth time. Sighing, she read it once again.

  “Oh, Love rips the heart in pieces,

  When distance fills the empty creases

  Of time

  And days become long stretches

  Of pain and wretches

  Of torment

  When our love ceases.

  “So take what little comfort and solace

  To atone

  In knowing that you are not alone,

  For every tear that you have shed

  My own heart has wept and bled.”

  Ross wrote that, and it made Kim smile.

  Turning, she read the note she'd received at the New Year's Eve Party again. “If you forget me, there's something I want you to know” Her eyes tearing, she placed it on a blank page. It was now three weeks, five days and 23 hours.

  “Oh, Ross,” she said quietly, impatiently. Where was he? Would he call? Or would he just show up at her door step? She imagined the door bursting open and Ross stepping inside. He would come to her, pick her up in his arms, then carry her upstairs to their bed.

  Over the last three weeks, she had considered time and again just dropping by his job at Eddy’s Garage downtown. But she didn’t want to make the first move. She didn’t want to look desperate. So she waited. Kim knew sooner or later, Ross would contact her.

  By two-thirty, she found the remote and turned on the television. She flipped aimlessly from channel to channel until finding an “I Love Lucy” rerun.

  Shifting comfortably in the recliner, she laughed. Lucy read a murder mystery and now she thought Ricky was trying to do her in. She'd seen this episode a hundred times, and it made her miss being a little girl who would climb in her Grampa’s lap when he was trying to read the newspaper. With no other option, he would turn on reruns of “I Love Lucy” and she would curl up beside him, and they would laugh and laugh.

  Zeus lifted his head, cocking it to one side, and watched her. Rising to his feet, he climbed into her lap. Kim squealed and pushed him down, yelling that he was too big to climb into the chair with her.

  By three, she turned off the TV plunging the room in darkness. She stared at the phone, willing him to call. At some point, she dozed into a light, restless sleep.

  When she woke again, Kim felt cold and alone. Slipping out from under the heavy quilt, she moved toward the bay window, opened the drapes and stared outside. The moon had long since vanished and the sky was black and forbidding; an angry January wind howled and pressed violently against the glass. She paid no attention to it as
her mind wandered, and her eyes followed the room, coming to Ross' smiling face in the framed photographs hanging on the wall. The scrapbook with ripped notebook pages of handwritten love letters lay on the chair.

  Three weeks, six days and four hours. Where was he?

  “I think something's happened,” she said.

  * * * * * * *

  Saturday, January 1, 2000

  10:35 AM

  Black Moon Manor was quietly lit with morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, and the Congressman's bedroom, with an eastern exposure, was especially bright making sleep impossible. A mass of blonde curls with a little head poked up from under the covers and groaned. Why hadn't they drawn the drapery last night? Didn't he have people who saw to those kinds of details, she thought.

  Stretching an arm, she reached for the Congressman, but found the sheets empty and cold beside her. The blonde sat up and groggily forced one eye open. She was alone in bed. Unsnapping the handcuffs dangling around her right wrist, she wrapped a sheet around her naked body and slipped out the room.

  “Warren, honey?” she called out in the hallway. There was no answer; the large house was silent. The Congressman had given his staff the day off for tending last night's New Year's Eve party and now the house seemed deathly still.

  She walked to the edge of the staircase and leaned over the banister. She tried to remember his name. Was it Warren or Willie or Webster?

  “Winchester? Are you hiding again?”

  There was no answer. She tiptoed downstairs. The large rooms, the banquet hall and the dining room were all a mess, littered from the enormous amount of people now gone. She entered the kitchen.

  Long, narrow and stainless steel, it looked even worse than the banquet hall. Jell-O and eggs were splattered along the countertops. Chicken and ham sat spoiling in the sink. Melted ice cream and ketchup, mustard and olives were left on the island beside an overturned carton of milk. Shelves from inside the refrigerator lay scattered on the countertops and across the floor. The girl ran her hands through her long blonde mane and laughed.

  “Looks like a hurricane blew through this place,” she said and wondered if there was anything left for breakfast. Or at least a hangover.

  She opened the refrigerator and peered inside, then froze. The sheet wrapped around her body fell to her ankles, as her hands rose to her mouth. She screamed.

  Congressman William Dietz was staring back at her from inside the refrigerator, folded and stuffed like a frozen rag doll. Dark brownish-red blood stained his head, matting his hair to his skull and leaving long streaks down his face. Thin layers of ice flaked on his pale cheeks and in his eyelashes. His left eye, wide open in terror, was vacant. His right eye was gone, leaving a bloody brown crater where his eye socket had been.

  The blonde stepped back, gasping for breath. She clutched her hands over her breasts and tried to calm herself. She was trying to think. What should she do? She stumbled to the table and clutched a chair to help her stand. Who should she call?

  She inhaled deeply, remembering the acting exercises she learned in class to relieve anxiety. She closed her eyes then counted backwards from ten.

  Nine... Eight... Seven... Six…

  Okay, she decided. I'm calm. Straightening her back, she regained her composure. First, she shut the refrigerator, then looked for a phone. There was one on the wall at the end of the counter.

  She picked up the receiver and dialed “0”

  “Operator, this is an emergency,” she said quickly. “I need the number for People Magazine.”

  A week later...

  4

  A Cold Day

  For Murder

  Monday, January 10, 2000

  7:35 AM

  “INVESTIGATION CONTINUES OF MURDERED CONGRESSMAN, EX-MISS STILLWATER QUESTIONED BY POLICE” screamed the headline. Kim couldn’t believe it, picking up the morning paper from her doorstep.

  Slamming the front door, she unfolded it and scanned the article. It had been a week since the body was found and it still shocked her. Police had questioned her a couple of days ago. They had stopped by the old folk’s home where she was visiting her grandfather, and she told them everything she knew. Everything except for the handwritten note she’d received.

  Kim knew the love poem was not connected to the murder, and even though Ross still hadn’t called her or come home, he was out there. It was just a matter of time before he came for her. And she wished that she knew where he was.

  Zeus’ barking distracted her, and she put the newspaper down beside her school books on the kitchen table. The Doberman was growling at the overalls and work boots sprawled out on the linoleum floor, the man’s upper-half hidden under the sink. The garbage disposal was acting up again, and the landlord swore he’d fix it this time.

  “Zeus!” she yelled. Rushing to the sink she grabbed the dog by the collar. “I’m so sorry! How’s the faucet?”

  “What?” his voice was muffled under the sink. He strained to be heard over the barking.

  “I said, ‘How’s the faucet?’”

  “Missy, you’re a fine tenant” He flipped out from under the sink and held a ratchet in his right hand. Like all landlords, he was simultaneously crotchety yet a knowledgeable southern gentleman, in his late sixties and the product of another era. Kim had known him for several years now and, in all that time, had never seen him wear anything but the same ole blue jean overalls and weathered straw hat. He picked the hat up off the kitchen floor and placed it on top his bald head as he continued his lecture. “But the good Lord knows I’m seriously considering adding a ‘No-Pets Clause’ to your lease.”

  Zeus barked again and he cringed. Kim gripped the collar to hold back the dog.

  “I’m sorry. I gotta get to class, but I’ll take Zeus with me.” She dragged the dog backwards across the linoleum as he let loose a spasm of barks, yelps and a copious string of slobber.

  “What?” The landlord cupped a hand to his ear as if he couldn't hear a thing over Zeus’ tantrum.

  “I gotta go to class!” With one hand gripping the leash and holding back her growling dog, Kim grabbed her text books from the kitchen table. She left the newspaper behind.

  “I can’t hear you over the dog!” he yelled again.

  And again, Kim apologized, dragging Zeus out of the kitchen.

  “Just consider this payback for the dress your garbage disposal ruined on New Year’s Eve,” she said to him. “That cost me a hundred fifty dollars.”

  The landlord ignored her. “I’m serious about the No-Pets Clause.”

  Zeus growled again. Kim tugged on his collar, pulling him to the front door. With books in hand, she and Zeus were outside and walking across the lawn toward the sidewalk leading to the gated entrance. The Doberman, sighing, finally complied with her direction, until he saw a Pekingese named Rosie that lived in the townhome across the street. Mrs. Roundtree was walking the little dog, and Zeus immediately scrambled in that direction. Kim yanked hard on the leash, causing Zeus to double back.

  “Come on,” Kim said to him through clenched teeth, dragging the dog across the grass. Zeus locked down, focused on the Pekingese and barked. Little Rosie stopped, looked in his direction, and yelped back. Now Zeus growled, and Kim tugged harder on the leash.

  “Would. You. Come. On.” Kim forced the words out her mouth, somewhere between growling herself and yelling, all the while hoping the thin leather leash didn’t snap.

  Ultimately, her will being stronger, Kim won the tug of war and Zeus turned and followed her to the sidewalk. They exited the gate and walked toward downtown Stillwater, headed to the University.

  * * * * * * *

  For reasons known only to her, Kim often took the long way to the University.

  Today was no different and she walked Zeus along the out-of-way, winding, busy Morris Munger Road. She could have cut through downtown and made it to class in just under twenty minutes. But she rarely took that route anymore, opting instead to add a g
ood half hour to her trip. She had adopted this custom since her last night with Ross. And every time she made her way down Morris Munger Road, she stepped deliberately along the shoulder, staring down at her feet, staring intently at the viney stink weeds, dandelions and occasional Coke bottle.

  As the cars whooshed past, she would hesitate at the same point on the street. Stop here every single time.

  The dilapidated sign advertising a cow pasture that was now commercial land for sale was a significant landmark known only to her. It stood near the curb, where Morris Munger curved and a long abandoned wooden fruit stand was rotting on the other side. Many times over the past five weeks, Kim had searched the ground there, picking through the tall grass sprouting around the sign posts and within the drainage grate along the curve. Sometimes, she would cross the street and search the ground around the fruit stand.

  That real estate sign and lonely fruit stand were the only witnesses to that night Ross left her standing on the gravel shoulder.

  Today, she held her books tightly in one arm and tugged on Zeus’ leash with the other, holding him back as she waited for a break in the traffic. When the street was empty, and she had looked for cars coming from either direction, Kim and Zeus jumped out to the center of the road. There, she knelt down by yellow painted dash marks and searched the hot concrete, ran a hand over the grains of gravel like a miner sifting for gold.

  Zeus stared at her, his head cocked.

  A brown and tan station wagon screamed past them, blaring its horn. It blew Kim’s hair and she dropped her books. Papers scattered across the pavement as Zeus barked at the car.

  Collecting her books, Kim scooped them up and dragged Zeus back to the shoulder of the road. She would continue her search later.