The Killing Ground

Syd Parker The Killing Ground

“There will be killing till the score is paid.”

— Homer, The Odyssey

Prologue

Icy pellets of windblown rain ticked against the awning, whipped around by the swirling November winds. The woman pulled the collar of her thin raincoat up around her face in a futile attempt to block the onslaught of cold wind. She hadn’t expected the drop in temperatures this early in the season, and her regular evening walk from the office to the house she shared with her wife no longer held its normal appeal. She cast a desperate look at her phone. Call ended. She swore silently. According to the sterile voice on the phone, the wait for a cab was just under ninety minutes. She shoved the phone back into her pocket and cinched the tie of her coat as tightly as she could, but couldn’t quite close the gap entirely. She mentally chided herself for the weight gain since last year. Throwing back her shoulders and burrowing her chin into her chest, she took a tentative step into the icy rain. She knew that she could either wait for the cab, or if she hurried, she could be thirty minutes into a hot bubble bath before the cab even hit the spot where she huddled away from the cold.

Normally, she enjoyed watching the storefronts and buildings as she passed them, but tonight her eyes focused on the ground as the lines disappeared beneath the rapid staccato of her clicking heals. The wind whistled around her, and she cursed her decision to wear a skirt today instead of her standard business slacks. Damn board meeting!

She tugged her coat up against her neck, unsuccessfully trying to burrow deeper into the flimsy layer of protection, almost convincing herself that she wasn’t completely frozen through. She shivered involuntarily, her body’s response to winter’s first bite, and for an eerie moment, she imagined that it wasn’t the cold that chilled her to the bone. She shook the feeling, convinced her own imagination and proclivity for scary movies were playing with her mind. Still she looked around her, even allowing a brief glance behind her, and seeing no one, she smiled at her foolishness.

A quick glance at her surroundings told her she was less than five minutes from home, and she breathed a small sigh of relief. She sped up imperceptibly-the cold biting at her bare skin with unforgiving fierceness. A cold gust whipped around her, and the faint shuffle behind her was lost in the night. She felt cold penetrate her spine, and she held her breath in expectation. She thought to look around her, but once again berated herself for imagining things.

It was at the exact moment, as she expelled a long breath of relief, that she felt an evil chill start deep within in her. She turned around, the fear so real she knew that her mind was not imagining it. She didn’t have to see anything to know that the darkness she felt was very real, and if her senses were right, it was extremely close. In her head, she screamed, but her throat failed to respond, and her silence was lost in the night. She stood rooted to the spot, willing her legs to run, but fear froze her. She watched helplessly as the darkness approached her, evil shining in his black eyes. She finally picked her feet up and managed only a small stumble, her body pitching backwards to the ground below. She felt her body hit the hard pavement. She could feel a crack in her elbow, but felt no pain. Her only thought was the ominous presence that hovered over her.

Images flashed in front of her, her childhood, her lover, pictures that normally made her smile, but tonight in the brief seconds that they flashed before her, felt like sharp knives piercing her heart. She had heard that when a person is close to death, she sees her life flash before her eyes. Days, months, years all condensed into milliseconds. Her whole life reduced to this…a mere blink of the eye.

She felt him grab her arm roughly and jerk her up, dragging her into the dark alley, out of the reach of the lights and prying eyes. He pushed her to the ground and slammed his knee into her back; her rounded stomach smashed into the cold concrete under their combined weight. Her cry of agony disappeared into the night. Her fear grew as she felt him press the cold steel of an unseen knife into the side of her throat, and she knew that her life and her unborn child’s life hung in the balance.

She winced, the pain of the concrete pushing against her distended belly. She tried to turn her body to alleviate the pain, but the knee pushed harder into the small of her back, and the knife at her throat cut deeper. She could feel the warm trickle of her blood rolling down her neck and imagined she could hear it as it hit the pavement. She wavered between clarity and passing out, the oxygen levels severely restricted by the heavy weight atop her. She didn’t move her head for fear the knife would cut deeper, but she blinked rapidly and took several deep breaths, or at least as deep as she could take given her circumstances.

Shortness of breath was standard with pregnancy she had been told, and the truth was she was probably used to it. However, nothing could have prepared her for this. She tried again to gulp in precious breaths, increasingly aware of the fact that she was slowly suffocating. He changed positions, lying prone on top of her. She swallowed bile, even as he pinned her down with his weight, and she felt his hard cock pressing against her buttocks. If her God was merciful, he would let her pass out long before her assailant did what she knew he planned.

“You fucking bitch.” He said in a loathsome voice. “Did you really think you were special?”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. God, she didn’t want to be special. She didn’t want to be the one he had chosen. She couldn’t even fathom why she had been picked. She felt, rather than saw, the knife being pulled away from her neck, and she breathed a premature sigh of relief.

“You fucking women, always trying to play God.” He pulled her skirt up with rough hands, exposing her to the cold air. He cut the thin material of her hose and panties away, divesting her of the final barrier. “If you want a child, you need one of these.”

The cold air hit her squarely, and the scream that she uttered when he entered her forcefully, ripping away her remaining dignity, died in the hand that covered her mouth. Ripples of pain tore through her like broken shards of glass, and she felt her stomach heave. She vomited into his hand. Her head snapped violently when he punched the side of her face as punishment. She felt herself slipping into black murkiness, and with one last thought of her lover and her unborn child, she closed her eyes for the final time.

Chapter 1

Jordan groaned loudly at the interruption and reluctantly pulled her mouth away from the soft lips beneath hers. She had ignored the first six calls, but she recognized Matt Riley’s ring tone and figured it had to be important to bother her at two o’clock in the morning, or at least it had better be important or someone was going to pay. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and flipped it open disgustedly, her voice a low growl. “Gray.”

A soft chuckle was followed by her partner’s voice. “Gray, it’s Matt. Catch you at a bad time?”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “You always do, Matty.” She turned back to the naked body beside her and made lazy circles in her soft curls, still wet from arousal. She slid her fingers lower and couldn’t swallow a groan when she felt wetness envelope her fingers.