Hell on Heels

She wanted to wring Belinda’s neck, kick her in her butt, and pull her against her heart and make her swear she’d never do anything like this again.

What if Chantal hadn’t called her? What if Margaret hadn’t gone into the bedroom? What if…what if…Those kinds of thoughts could eat you alive.

It was a little over an hour later that she was allowed into the emergency-room area where a doctor told her they had pumped Belinda’s stomach and he’d summoned a mental-heath associate to speak to her.

“May I see her?” Chantal asked.

He nodded and motioned toward exam room seven. Chantal hurried into the enclosure to find Belinda with her head turned toward the wall in the semi-dark room.

“Belinda, it’s me.” Chantal sat in the chair beside the bed and reached for her friend’s hand. Without turning her head to acknowledge Chantal in any way, Belinda released a deep, heart-wrenching sob and squeezed Chantal’s hand.

For a long moment they remained that way, neither of them speaking, their hands clasped tightly together. Every woman, no matter what her age, needed a best friend in her life. Men were great for sex and opening difficult pickle jars and a few other things, but only another woman could understand the complexities, the joys and sorrows of being a woman.

It was Belinda who finally broke the silence. She turned to look at Chantal, her face pale and her eyes dark and haunted. “He’s going to get away. I knew he’d never be punished. I knew somehow he’d escape.”

“Belinda, you don’t know for sure what’s going on. Nobody does. They think it might be some sort of monitoring malfunction.”

“Bullshit.” The word exploded from her as tears filled her eyes. “He’s going to get away with it just like he did years ago. There’s no monitoring malfunction. He’s running and he has the money and the means to run where nobody will ever find him, where he’ll never have to face up to the lives he’s destroyed.”

She jerked her hand from Chantal’s and half rose in the bed. “Don’t you understand? It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. If I’d done the right thing years ago then none of those girls would have been raped. That bastard would have been in jail a long time ago.”

She fell back to the bed and shook her head wearily. “At least they were drugged when it happened. They were unconscious and don’t remember the smell of his breath or the feel of his hands or the things that he said.”

“What things did he say?” Chantal asked. In all the times they had spoken about Willowby, Belinda had never gone into the details of the rape that night in his mansion.

She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes feverish. “Sometimes I can’t get his voice out of my head. At first he didn’t say anything, he just grabbed my hand and pulled me into the bathroom. Before I even understood what was happening he was pulling up my skirt and yanking down my panties.” She drew a deep breath and released a sob.

“Belinda…you don’t have to…”

“No, I want to talk about it. Maybe if I talk about it I’ll be able to forget it.” Once again she reached for Chantal’s hand and grabbed it painfully tight. “I was so shocked, I didn’t even fight him. He shoved me back against the sink and it was over almost before it began. I started crying and he looked at me like I was nothing, like I was dog shit that he’d accidentally stepped in.”

She shivered, as if the devil himself had grabbed her soul. “I remember as clearly as if it happened yesterday, that look in his eyes, then he said, ‘You won’t tell.’ I told him I would, but he said nobody would believe me, that I was a fat girl with zits and he’d tell everyone I came on to him and it was nothing more than a pity fuck on his part.”

A rage of indignation swelled in Chantal and for a moment speech was impossible as the anger swept over her.

“The awful part was that I knew he was right,” Belinda continued as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I was fat and I did have bad skin and he was the handsome, popular Marcus who could have any girl he wanted.”

“I can’t take those ugly words out of your head, Belinda,” Chantal said softly. “But you know you didn’t deserve what he did to you.”

Belinda sighed and swiped the tears from her cheeks. “I’d rather be dead than know he’s out there raping more women, destroying more lives.” She turned her face to the wall once again.

“Belinda, that’s not going to happen,” Chantal said vehemently. “He’s not going to get away. If he runs, then I’ll find him. Have you forgotten that that’s what I do? I swear I won’t let him get away.”

Once again Belinda’s hand gripped Chantal’s and she turned her head to gaze at Chantal once again. “You promise?”

“Pinky promise,” she replied, a term from their youth. “And you need to make me a pinky promise.”

“I know, I know. I was stupid.” She released a tremulous sigh. “When I heard that he’d missed his check-in, I just felt the deepest, blackest despair I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“Then you should have called me,” Chantal replied. “Because I can’t imagine my depth of despair if I didn’t have you in my life.” It was true. She couldn’t imagine not having her best friend in her life. “He’s not worth it, Belinda. He’s nothing but scum.”

Dusk had fallen and night was only minutes away when Chantal finally left the hospital and headed home. She was exhausted. The afternoon had been a mental roller-coaster ride and all she wanted to do was go home and curl up in her bed.

Back at home, she headed for the master bath and changed into her favorite silk pajamas. Sam, who was curled up in the middle of her bed, glared at her balefully as she stepped into the room.

As she approached the bed he hissed and dove for the doorway, then disappeared down the hallway to an unknown destination. Just her luck, the one and only male she’d allowed in her house and he had attitude.

She slid beneath the sheets and grabbed the remote control from the nightstand. She was just in time to catch the ten o’clock news.

She sat up as an attractive reporter announced that the Willowby jury had delivered a verdict late that afternoon. “Guilty,” the reporter exclaimed, as if personally pleased with the jury decision. “But the real news is that Jonathon Mathis, Willowby’s lawyer, was unable to produce his client for the verdict. Tonight a warrant has been issued for Marcus Willowby. Anyone with any information as to his whereabouts is asked to call the TIPS hotline.”

Chantal lowered the volume of her television and picked up the phone receiver by her bed. She quickly punched in Big Joey’s number. Busy.

She got out of bed and headed for her computer, sleep the last thing on her mind. Her conversation with Belinda played and replayed in her mind and the rich anger that had filled her then consumed her now.

She hadn’t realized when she’d made the promise to Belinda that Willowby had already flown the coop. Chantal didn’t make promises easily and she never made promises she didn’t intend to keep.

Because of her love for Belinda, because of what Willowby had done to her and to so many other helpless women, Chantal would use whatever means necessary to hunt him down and see that he faced the justice that he’d managed to escape for so many years.

“Game on,” she murmured as her computer connected her to the Internet.

Chapter 3

Sleep deprivation made Chantal cranky, so did dieting, rude salespeople and non-returnable policies on anything, but lack of sleep was the worst. She was a nine-hour-a-night kind of woman and actually preferred ten to twelve whenever possible.

It used to drive her mother crazy, Chantal sleeping away half a day. “Life is passing you by while you’re dreaming,” Katherine would say. For a while Chantal had tried to exist on six to eight hours of sleep a night, but within weeks she was back to her normal pattern.

When she pulled into Big Joey’s the next morning she was definitely feeling the effects of a night with too little sleep and she was more than a little crabby.

She’d spent most of the night printing off whatever she could find about Marcus Willowby’s life and trial. She had a feeling that somewhere in the ream of paperwork she’d printed off was a clue as to where he might run. All she had to do was find that clue.

Her foul mood instantly intensified when she pulled into Big Joey’s parking lot and saw Luke Coleman standing outside the bail bonds building.

As usual, Luke was dressed in a white T-shirt that displayed muscled biceps and worn jeans that hugged his slim hips and long legs.

Despite the early-morning hour, dark whiskers covered his firm jaw, making her wonder if the man even owned a razor. The brilliant sun managed to pull highlights from his shiny, long, dark hair.

As she got out of her car she felt his gaze on her, and, as always, a small knot of tension balled in the pit of her stomach. What was it about the man’s very presence on the earth that bothered her?

She wondered what he was doing standing outside the building in air that was already far too hot for mid June.

Maybe he’d been fired, she thought optimistically. Yeah, right, and maybe Paris Hilton would go to work for the Peace Corps.

“We need to talk,” he said as she approached.

“I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about,” she replied with just the right amount of cool disdain in her voice. “Unless of course you feel the need to apologize for your behavior on Saturday night.”

One corner of his mouth curved upward and his dark eyes lightened in obvious amusement. “Why should I apologize for saving your ass?”