Текст книги "Cry wolf"

Автор книги: Jay Ellison

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

I knew I had to find a way to let him off the hook. I’d decided some time ago I didn’t want to be one of

those clingy people who’s afraid to be alone. “On second thought, maybe I’ll turn in early. I had to cram

half the night for that killer History exam today.” I made a show of yawning.

“I can stay,” he said but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Nah. Gonna shower and turn in.”

He put his hand on the door. “You sure, Izzy Pop?”

“Absolutely!” I beamed a smile for him.

After we said our goodbyes, and I promised to meet him in the student cafeteria for breakfast tomorrow

morning, I closed and locked the door, then slid the three latches into place that I’d installed a few months

ago. After that, I dropped my books on my desk and went to shower, leaving the bathroom door wide open

so I could hear if anyone was trying to get in.

As I was stepping out of the shower stall, I heard a dull rustling noise at the door. I bundled a big

terrycloth towel around my middle and crept out of the bathroom, stopping only to grab up a pair of very

sharp scissors from off my desk. I stood very still, barely breathing, dripping water all over the floor.

Yeah, someone was definitely lurking at my door. I could see a shadow as they toyed with the doorknob.

Then more rustling as the unknown person slid a sheet of paper under my door.

I stood in the shadows, wet, dark tangles of hair clinging in commas to my cheeks, my heart thudding in

my ears, breathing in and out, in and out, trying not to hyperventilate. I clutched the scissors close,

realizing my hands were shaking.

“Stop it, Iz,” I told myself in a breathy whisper. “Just stop this shit, all right?”

I made myself set the scissors down before padding quietly to the door. The locks were still in place. No

one could breach three deadbolts, I reminded myself.

Whoever had been standing there was gone now. The room was dimly lit, but I could see the scrawled

letters of some funky font announcing a frat party this weekend. The students here were always handing

those out. I closed my eyes and breathed out in relief, then padded back over to my highboy to pull out a

pair of pajamas.

A year ago, this cute ivy league guy from uptown named Clark Bennigan asked me to a rave. It was, sad to

say, my first real date. I’d never been huge on dating in high school—too shy, too clumsy. But that night I

said yes. I’d thought it was time to come out of my shell, to loosen up. I didn’t want to grow old alone

because I was afraid to talk to a cute boy.

Clark picked me up in his Lamborghini and we went driving into the city. The rave was fun and loud and

crazy, and a lot of liquor was flowing. I wasn’t a big drinker, so I’d only stuck to one drink I planned to

nurse for most of the night. I knew better than to get loaded and let someone take advantage of me.

But before I knew what was happening, I started feeling sick and needed to throw up. Clark started

steering me toward the ladies room, but something happened, and it was like I was in a series of timelapse

photographs. One minute I was stumbling around like some drunken floozy, the next I remembered

being carried over his shoulder while he made excuses for me. Then came some sleazy hotel room, a bed

with an evil green spread.

I remembered crying, saying, “I want to go home, Clark. I want to go home!”

But as my voice steadily rose along with my panic, Clark threw me down and covered my mouth with his

hand. He put a small box cutter to my throat and said, “Shut up or I’ll fucking cut your throat, bitch.”

Most of the night after that was a fuzzy kaleidoscope, but I remember Clark telling me he’d hunt me down

and kill me and my family if I told anyone. He’d said he’d killed other girls for having a big mouth and

that his dad owned the police. The next morning I woke up sore and bleeding and alone in that dismal

little hotel room.

I only ever told Stefan, who’d had to come pick me up because I had no idea where I was and had no way

to get back to campus. On the drive back, he said point-blank in the coldest voice I’d ever heard, “He

gave you a roofie and he raped you. That son of a fucking bitch raped you, didn’t he, Iz?”

“No,” I told him. I was working hard to keep from breaking down into hysterics, and I didn’t want him

using that word. Rape was stuff that happened to the loose girls at college. It didn’t happen to girls on

their first date, to virgins. It didn’t happen to girls like me. “No, I consented.”

“Sure you did.”

“I did.”

“Let me take you to the ER, Iz, or the police. They can get DNA samples. They can find him.”

“No. I just want to go home.”

“You have to report this! You have to turn him in!” He was working himself into a rage.

“Take me home, Stef, please! Later. Please! I just want to go home.”

I was shaking, and I desperately wanted a shower. I wanted to pretend the last twenty-four hours was all a

dream, that it didn’t happen.

I didn’t want to get involved in this. It was obvious the guy had money. If I made a fuss, he’d come after

me, and then it would be his word against mine. He could probably hurt me. Or worse, he could hurt my

grandmother.

Oh god, I couldn’t let my grandmother learn about this. She was the one who raised me after my parents

died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She was so proud of my grades, so proud of my common sense. I

couldn’t let her see me like this. Like some victim.

So no, I didn’t tell anyone, even later on. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I wasn’t proud of that. You always hear about victim guilt, all that crap, but the reality of it was, when you

actually experience it, things looked different. Things aren’t all black and white, right and wrong, like

everyone says. It’s hard to be brave. It was too hard for me.

And besides, my grandma had recently had a serious heart condition. She’d already had two stents put in

She didn’t need the extra stress of seeing me this way, not on top of losing her son, my dad, the way she

had. If she found out, it might kill her, and she was my only family now.

With a sigh, I padded back to the bathroom and just stared at myself in the mirror in the dark. I didn’t like

putting on bright lights anymore. I’d always hated my body—I was short and stocky, with huge, double-D,

basketball-sized boobs, which sounds good in theory but are just plain awful for buying clothes and

looked all wrong on me—and not for the first time, I desperately wished I could trade bodies with one of

the tall, willowy college girls I passed in the hallways all the time. I wish I had their lives.

I picked up my lipstick off the vanity and added to the list of imperfections I’d started writing on the

mirror. Under Too Short and Too Fat I wrote Mousy Hair. Under that, I added Stretch Marks. I had a lot

of them since gaining weight over the last few months. As I set the lipstick down, I saw the scrap of paper

that Stefan had given me lying on the floor. I figured it must have fallen out of my things as I was

undressing.

I added Disorganized under Stretch Marks, then went to pick up the paper.

I didn’t want another job, frankly. After what happened last year, I’d quite the coffee house job I’d been

doing so I could put my head back together. But student loans were piling up, and I couldn’t live off

Ramen for the rest of my life. On top of that, my grandma was going to need another surgery soon. Poverty

and the threat of being thrown out of college was forcing me back into the workforce where I didn’t want

to be anymore.

I looked at the address and the time of the interview that Stefan had gotten me. It was tomorrow, Saturday,

at ten in the morning. He’d underlined the word sharp. I thought about what Stefan had said about Dr.

Dorian Michaels. What little I remembered of him was a cold and aloof man. But he was gay, so it was

obvious I didn’t have to worry about that.

“This is important, Iz,” I told myself. “This is part of Operation Putting Your Shit Back Together.”

I nodded. I’d always been very good at talking myself into anything.

Before I went to bed, I gave my grandma a call and we chatted for a few minutes about everything and

nothing. Then I got into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. And like I had for the past year, I cried

myself to sleep.

***

Read an excerpt from The Dollhouse Society: Charlotte by Eden Myles:

I held up my badge and said, “Detective Charlie Hu, NYPD.”

The big, blocky cop guarding the crime scene looked me and my partner over, then nodded in a silent,

Lurch-like way, and raised the yellow crime-scene tape so Rodriguez and I could slip underneath it.

“What did they get him from, the goon squad?” I said, jamming my thumb back at Lurch as we headed

down the rain-slick alley toward the group of people collected around the victim.

“Be nice, Charlie,” Roddy warned me.

Vince Rodriguez once said I was five feet and a hundred pounds of pure sarcasm. I was never sure if I

should take that as a compliment or an insult. Roddy was tough as nails and twice as mean as a cornered

junkyard dog in the right situation. I loved him to bits. He’d been my partner for going on six years, and I

knew that, whatever he thought of my personality, he always had my back.

We came upon the first of New York’s Finest, and he moved aside so I could see the coroner bent over

the vic. The coroner—Bigby, by name—was a tall, thin, angular man wearing a yellow rain slicker

flecked with rain. Everyone I had ever known called him Biggs.

I shook the rain out of my ponytail and off the back of my black leather jacket, wishing I had thought to

take a slicker from the back seat of our unmarked car instead of being in such a hurry. “What do you have

for us, Biggs?” I said.

Biggs creaked back to his six-plus height. “Hispanic female, approximately sixteen years old. No I.D.

Pretty safe to assume she died from an impact injury, but there’s also evidence of assault.” He looked

over her fingernails, where even I could see the blood. She’d fought like a wildcat as the perp tossed her

off the top of a building. “I’ll confirm the DNA when I get her back to the lab.”

I nodded. She was a pretty girl, and much too young to be on these streets at night.

“Hooker?” Roddy said, craning his neck back to take in both buildings. Both were old brownstones

owned by slumlord millionaires, and I could tell he was already trying to calculate their heights in

relation to the crime scene. This was a bad neighborhood in need of dire urban renewal. The only types of

people who lived here were folks who sold illegal product and folks who bought them.

I crouched down and looked the vic over. “Looks like it.” She looked less like a teenaged kid and more

like a broken bag of bones. I glanced right and left, spotted a giant blue dumpster with a massive dent in it

and started calculating trajectories, drying to guessimate how far a body had to fall to hit the Dumpster,

bounce, and land there.

“She’s really creepy when she does that,” Biggs said.

“That’s why I love her,” Roddy answered.

I pointed at the top of the brownstone to our left. “She was pushed from there.”

“Is that a knife wound?”

“Looks like it.”

“Probably couldn’t pay her pimp.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Let’s canvas the area.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You two always talk like cop buddies in a movie,” Biggs laughed.

“All the world’s a stage and we are but the actors,” I said, getting to my feet and dusting myself down.

“No Chinese proverbs?” Biggs kidded.

“That’s racial profiling,” Roddy explained in a droll tone. Then he turned to me. “No Chinese proverbs,

Confucius?”

I flipped him the bird.

“See, that’s what I like to see: bickering like an old married couple.” Biggs and his team started zipping

up the vic in a body bag.

“We should,” said Roddy, “but then Mrs. Rodriguez might find out about our torrid love affair.”

Biggs laughed.

An ongoing joke at the precinct was that Roddy and I were in each other’s pants. Roddy cleaned up real

nice, and I’d never made noises either way. Nothing makes you look guiltier than denying accusations

every chance you get. But it still bothered me.

As we went around to the front of the building, I said, “Do you have to put fuel on the fire, Roddy?”

He waved it away. “Don’t let Biggs get to you.”

“He doesn’t,” I answered in a tone of voice that suggested otherwise.

He snorted as we reached the doors to the old project. “It really bothers you…what they say?”

“It could get in the way of a promotion, so yeah.” I knew that, generally speaking, female cops didn’t

command the respect that their male counterparts did. So far, our chief of police had been pretty fair and

evenhanded with me. He neither pandered nor disparaged me. But the same couldn’t be said of other

cops, and in my line of work, a rumor—even a false once—could kill your chances of promotion.

“You worry about the job, of course,” he drawled.

“Sure,” I answered, holding the door open for him. “Don’t you?”

Roddy went in ahead of me. I’d never been one for chivalry. “I love you, Charlie,” he said over one

shoulder, “but you do need to get some interests outside the job.”

***

Available everywhere ebooks are sold, including Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords.com and

Kobobooks.com. Select titles are available at AllRomanceEbooks.com.

Love erotic romance with a touch of elegance?

Sign up for alerts on new books at:

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***

Also Available from Courtesan Press:

Indecent Proposal

Dreams in Black & White

Playing House

Freeze Frame

The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn

The Rules of Engagement

Big, Bad Wolf

The War of the Roses

The Dollhouse Society Volume II: Rachaela

Eyes Wide Open

Touch

Teacher’s Pet

Angel in the Dark

The Dollhouse Society Volume III: Daniel

Lady Luck

House of Dolls

The Reluctant Bride

A Woman on Top

The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky

All I Want for Christmas: A Dollhouse Society One Shot

Red (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

Puss ‘N Books (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

Snow (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

The Little Mermaid (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 1

50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Volume I

The Beauty of the Beast (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

Rumpelstiltskin (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

Cinderfella (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

Beauty’s Sleep (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)

50 Shades of Fairy Tales Volume II

50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 2

50 Shades of Fairy Tales Volume III

The Dollhouse Society: Margo

The Dollhouse Society: Felix

The Dollhouse Society: Bad Girls

Blood & Lace (Blackstone Hall #1)

50 Shades of Fairy Tales (Courtesan Press Ultimate Collection)

The Dollhouse Society: Ultimate Collection

Devices & Desires (Blackstone Hall #2)

Blackstone Hall, Volume I

The Dollhouse Society: Isabelle

The Dollhouse Society: Teachers’ Pets

The Dollhouse Society Omnibus Collection Volume I

The Dollhouse Society Omnibus Collection Volume II

The Dollhouse Society: Charlotte

The Dollhouse Society: Stefan

***

Available everywhere ebooks are sold, including Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords.com and

Kobobooks.com. Select titles are available at AllRomanceEbooks.com.

Love erotic romance with a touch of elegance?

Sign up for alerts on new books at:

http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com