“Irene’s grandson?” Mai shrugged. “Major geek. Into all things technical.”
“He’s supposed to fix the latches on my windows and install a new dead bolt.”
“In which century? He’s like a ghost, you never see him.”
“A techno-major geek ghost?”
“Exactly. Hey, if you’re not busy on New Year’s Eve, some of my friends and I are going to hang out at the Watering Hole. You could join us and y’know, ring in the new year. ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ funky little hats, confetti, champagne, and crap. The cover’s really cheap. Just enough to pay for the band.”
“Maybe,” Kristi said, acting as if her social calendar wasn’t completely empty. “I’ll see.”
The first notes of a classical piece Kristi couldn’t quite place erupted and Mai reached into her pocket for her cell. She glanced at the screen and grinned. “Gotta run,” she said quickly as she climbed to her feet. “Nice to meet ya.”
“You, too.”
“Seriously. Call me if you want to party and kick in the new year.” She pushed a button on her cell phone as she eased to the door and opened it with her free hand. “Hey! I was wondering when I was gonna hear from you. A text? Nah, I didn’t get it….” She was out the door and wrapped in her conversation with the person on the other end of the call.
Kristi closed the door behind her and, alone in the apartment, was left with a creepy feeling. “Don’t let it get to you,” she told herself. The building was centuries old, people could have died here, been killed here. All sorts of atrocities could have occurred here over the years. Tara Atwater’s disappearance wasn’t even necessarily a crime. She eyed the cozy room but couldn’t fight a sudden chill. What had happened to the girl? Was her disappearance really linked to the others? What had happened to all of them? Had they all met some horrid fate as her father seemed to think?
Find out, Kristi. This is the story you’ve been looking for. Here you are in the thick of it, in the very damned apartment from which one of them went missing. This is it!
She picked up her purse and dialed Hiram. True to the history of her previous three calls, she was sent directly to voice mail. “Great,” Kristi muttered, grabbing her purse. She wasn’t waiting for the dweeb. How tough could it be to install a damned dead bolt? She’d go to a hardware store, buy the hardware she needed, and put it in herself. She figured she’d take the expenses off the next month’s rent and Hiram could explain it to his granny himself.
Locking the door behind her, she headed to her car. No one followed her. No dark figure lurked in the shadows. No sinister eyes trailed her every move. At least none she could distinguish in the thick, shimmering, rain-washed shrubbery surrounding the pock-marked parking lot. She climbed into the Honda without incident, and after turning on the headlights and wipers, stared through the windshield, again seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Mai was just messing with her, jerking her chain.
Why? Sooner or later she’d be found out. No, Mai Kwan was telling the truth as she knew it.
“Wonderful,” Kristi groused to herself as she backed up, then rammed the car into drive. No one was about but a man walking his dog near the gaslight, and a biker pedaling fast enough to keep the beam of his headlight steady. No criminal was waiting for her. No deranged psycho hiding between the parked cars on the street. All was quiet. All was normal.
But as she drove onto the street, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go wrong.
So she’d returned.
Like a salmon drawn from the sea to a creek to spawn.
Kristi Bentz was a student again at All Saints.
It was fitting somehow, he thought, from his rooftop viewpoint. Through the skeletal branches of the trees near the thick stone wall of the campus, he focused his binoculars at the attic loft she’d rented.
Where one of the others had once lived.
A sign from the Almighty?
Or from the Prince of Darkness?
He grinned as he watched her check her window latches, make small talk with the Asian girl, then fly down the exterior steps to that pathetic little car she’d parked beneath a security lamp in the nearest lot. His view was cut off, of course, once she was down the stairs and below the wall, but he knew what she was doing.
The sound of the Honda’s engine firing up was barely audible over the drip of rain and swoosh of traffic on the side streets, but he heard it. Was tuned to it. Because it was she, the prodigal daughter. How perfect.
His throat went dry at the thought of her: long dark hair streaked with red, pert nose, intelligent green eyes, and wide mouth…. Oh, what she could do with those lips! He imagined them trailing down his body as she let her tongue slide across his flat abdomen, her breath hot and anxious as she undid the fastening to his jeans.
His groin tightened and his cock grew thick and he knew a minute of regret. He had to deny himself, at least for now. There was another…
He slid through the darkness and inside the fortresslike structure within the campus walls. Without turning on any lights, he made his way to the stairwell and eased down the steps, quiet as a cat. His gift was his vision, a gaze that could penetrate the darkness when others couldn’t. He was born with the ability, and even in the thick Louisiana nights, when low-lying fog clung to the cypress trees and oozed over the water of the bayou, he had vision. Enough that he could see prey and hunt without the use of night goggles or flashlights.
His ability had served him well, he thought, as he slipped outside and took in a deep breath of the fresh scent of rain…and more. He imagined he smelled the salty scent of Kristi Bentz’s skin, but he knew the aroma to be an illusion.
The first of many, he imagined, as he jogged silently and easily through the night. His body was in perfect shape. Honed. Ready.
For the ultimate sacrifice.
She wouldn’t be taken easily.
But she would be taken.
And, at first, willingly.
He just had to plant the seeds to pique her curiosity.
And then she wouldn’t be able to stop herself.
CHAPTER 3
“…This is Hiram Calloway,” a thin, reedy voice said over the static of a bad cell connection. “I got your message about the locks. I thought I’d stop by your apartment and see if I could fix them.”
“Too late,” Kristi said, irritated. Only today, at two o’clock on New Year’s Eve, had he decided to return her calls. “I already installed new ones and put in new latches on the windows. I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ll bill you.”
“What?” he shrieked, his nasal voice hiking up a notch. “You can’t—”
“I can and I did.”
“That kind of thing has to be approved. It’s…it’s in the lease, paragraph seven—”
“I’m just telling you, the apartment wasn’t secure and I think there’s something about that in the lease, too. Check it. And I don’t know what the paragraph is, but I’ve already taken care of the problem.”
“But—”
“I have to get back to work,” she said, snapping her cell off. She slipped the phone into the pocket of her apron and walked past two cooks loitering under the overhang of the back porch where they were smoking in their greasy chef coats. The screen door slapped shut behind her as she made her way through a maze of hallways in the thirties bungalow that had been converted to a restaurant