Innocent Prey

“I’m not mad at you, honey,” Loren said softly. “This is not a punishment. It’s time for you to test your wings, just a little bit.”

“I’m not ready.”

“It’s a hundred feet, Stephanie.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to do this.”

Loren moved, and Stephanie heard her, knew she was sitting down on the bench she’d mentioned.

“Go,” Loren said. “I’ll be right here waiting. I’ll watch every step you take.”

“You don’t even care how scared I am, do you?” Stevie accused.

“Of course I care. But that fear isn’t going to go away until you face it and beat it. Stephanie, you can do this. You’re strong. You’re not helpless. Now go.”

Stevie bit her tongue before the words I hate you could emerge. Yes, she was acting like a ten-year-old. She didn’t care. She was furious. And terrified.

“Fine.”

She tapped the sidewalk to get herself lined up, finding where it ended and the grass began on the right, and then she started walking, keeping herself in that area, so others could pass by her, if there were any others. She was so focused on staying aligned and walking straight, and so afraid of walking into something, that she barely noticed people approaching until they walked or jogged past her, and it startled her every single time. But she kept going. She kept going until she felt the sidewalk make a right angle. Then she took a few more steps forward, tapping to make sure. Yes, the sidewalk ended; she could feel the curb. She imagined stepping off that small drop by accident, figured she could easily break an ankle. It would fix Loren’s ass if she did, wouldn’t it? Her father would fire her for sure.

But with Stevie’s luck, her replacement would probably be worse.

Carefully, she turned around, 180 degrees, tapping her way back to the inside edge, where the sidewalk turned. She lifted her head, facing the direction she’d come from, hoping like hell Loren was looking, and flipped her off, then pivoted 45 degrees and walked around the corner, out of Loren’s sight.

Let her panic and come chasing after me, she thought. Let her suffer a few seconds for pushing me so damn hard and making me do what I wasn’t ready to do. She tapped about ten steps, expecting to hear Loren come running after her. Instead she heard a vehicle stop very near her. She heard its door open, and footsteps coming toward her. A chill went up her spine, and she turned all the way around and began tapping back the way she’d come, toward the corner. But a pair of very strong arms snapped around her, and one hand covered her mouth. She fumbled for her cell phone, then dropped it as she was yanked off the sidewalk and thrown into a vehicle. A door slammed closed, and the vehicle lurched into motion as she scrambled from the floor up onto a bench seat, her hands patting the area all around her to get her bearings.

“What’s happening?” she shouted. “What is this? Who are you?”

No answer. She felt her way to the side of the vehicle, running her hands over the seat, then the inside of the door in search of a handle. When she found it and started yanking on it, it wouldn’t budge, but she knew by then that this was bigger than a car. It was a van. She was in the back of a van. It took a corner hard, damn near rocking up on two wheels, and she was slammed into the other side, cracking her head on metal. There didn’t seem to be any glass. No windows. No one could see her.

Holding her head, she sank onto the seat and started screaming at the top of her lungs. “You fucker, you’d better fucking let me go or my father will destroy you! You’d don’t even know—”

The driver braked to a whiplash-inducing stop, and then he was on her, all his weight on her back. He pushed her face down into the seat while she wriggled and thrashed and cried. Her hands were tied behind her with what felt like a plastic band. A zip tie. She couldn’t breathe. He was smothering her.

He jerked her head up by the hair, and she sucked in a desperate breath. Then he wrapped a strip of duct tape all the way around her mouth to the back of her head. Finally he got off her and shoved her to the floor. In seconds the van was moving again.

She dragged herself up onto the seat, sobbing, trembling. She’d thought her life couldn’t get any worse. It was painfully obvious that it could. And had.

God, what had she done?

1 (#ulink_62a8a061-bbae-5f12-b7e9-ff1d2ab6ce7e)

Whitney Point, New York

Okay. Maybe the bullshit I wrote was a little bit true. If you wanted it, you could have it. There was more to it, of course. But that was the basis of every book I’d ever written. And it seemed like my own bullshit was determined to prove itself to me.

I’d wanted my eyesight back, I’d wanted my brother’s murder solved, I’d wanted to survive the holidays—literally, survive the holidays. And I’d wanted Detective Mason Brown.

I pretty much had all of that now. I could still see. No complications, no rejecting of the donor tissue this time—besides on moral grounds, that is. It did come from a serial killer—my brother’s killer—after all. I had survived the holidays, though it had been a damn close call. The case was solved, sort of. Tommy’s killer was dead. Twice now. And his brother, the aforementioned Detective Dreamboat, was in my bed, if only for an hour or two at a time.

I was actually beginning to believe that the messages of my bestselling books (and calendars, coffee mugs, app and upcoming series of imprinted apparel) were valid. I was actually starting to think, as Mason did, that my unoriginal philosophies on positive thinking and deliberate creation were popular because there was some truth to them, that they were more than just regurgitated new age psycho-spiritual babble. And if I were honest with myself, it felt good to believe that. It felt damn good to think I was serving some kind of higher purpose in the world.

I choked on a sarcastic laugh from my inner bitch, and it sounded like a snort. Higher purpose. Right. Still...I was warming up to the notion that there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere. For me, that’s about as close to a spiritual awakening or an “ah-ha moment” as it’s ever gonna get.

So why was I still kinda miserable?

Mason rolled away from me, sat up and bent forward to pull on his jeans. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand—10:00 p.m. “This has to be some kind of a land speed record.”

He stopped with his hands on his button fly and turned to look back at me. He was the sexiest man in the universe. I am not exaggerating. I didn’t know why women didn’t swarm him in the streets like adolescents mobbing a Jonas brother. (Yes, that’s a dated reference. I’m over thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t say Hansen.)

Mason leaned over and kissed me nice and slow. “Sorry,” he said when I let go of his lips. “But the boys will be home from the movies and—”

I held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s just...”

“Just what?” He knelt on the bed, his jeans still undone, as he buttoned up his shirt. I thought he could’ve been on the cover of a steamy novel. Fifty Shades of Brown. Mason Brown, that is.

“I really have to go,” he said.

“So go, then. You remember the way, right?”

“Don’t be mad.”

I sighed, thinking I was acting like a sophomore pouting over her steady, which was stupid, because this was just the way I wanted it. And because I don’t even like sophomores.

“Don’t be dumb. I’m not mad. You’re the world’s greatest uncle, and you’re also all they have. Besides their grandmother, the queen of cold.”

“Easy, woman.”

I grinned at him, pleased with myself. By insulting his mother, I’d diverted his attention from my petulant little burst of emotional ickiness. “Go on. Tell Josh and Jeremy I said hi.”

He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide whether to say something, or maybe waiting for me to say something more. Then he nodded, kissed me quickly and got up to finish dressing.

“I’ve got that meeting with the chief tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call you right after, tell you what it was about.”

New subject. Nice. I was uncomfortable talking about...relationship stuff. Heavy stuff. Fortunately, so was he. “I already know what it’s about,” I said, crawling halfway out of the bed and pulling the little plastic stairs closer. Myrtle, my bulldog, was still snoring, but now she could join me when she was ready. Moving her doggy stairs away from the bed was essential to having good sex. Otherwise she spent the whole time trying to wriggle her way in between us. It was just wrong, you know?

“Yeah? What’s it about, then?” he asked, though he already knew what I thought.

“The rumors are true. Chief Subrinsky has decided to retire, and he wants you to be his replacement.”

Mason shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. “I don’t think so. This feels different.”

He’d already been wined and dined with Chief Sub in the company of a congressman, everyone from the D.A.’s office, the owner of the Press & Sun-Bulletin and the mayor. He was clearly being groomed for the job, even while insisting he didn’t want it.

I could’ve smacked him. It paid six figures. Low six, but still...

“‘Feels different,’ huh?” I asked. “You’re starting to sound like me, Detective Brown.”