needed emptying. The redhead looked at her watch and said nervously, 'My husband will be back in a half hour, so let's make this fast, okay? It'd be better for everyone if you got what you needed and got out of here before he gets back. I don't want any trouble.'
'Fine by me, lady,' Unger said imperiously. 'You just give me what I want.'
She sat down at the computer and brought up Lipton's credit card information.
'This card belongs to a Sarah Lipton,' Unger said.
The redhead shrugged. 'It works. It's worked for the past three years. As long as I get paid, I don't care whose name is on the card.'
'Where's this?' he asked, pointing to the billing address. 'Where's Selton?'
'Up I-35 toward Houston,' she told him hesitantly. 'It's a little town near the Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir. I grew up near there.'
Unger allowed himself a beaming smile. This would be news to Bolinger. He'd been frantically trying to find out where Lipton had been hiding and now Unger had it. He tore off a piece of paper from a sheet on the desk and jotted the information down.
'That's all I need,' he said, turning to leave.
'You don't need to talk to his girl?'
'No,' Unger said dismissively. 'I've got everything right here.'
'You won't tell him you got it from me,' she said, worriedly sucking in her lower lip.
Unger saw Dean appear in the main office looking rumpled and bewildered.
Unger turned from his friend to the whore and said, 'Maybe you comp me and my friend for the night and this whole thing never happened. How does that sound?'
The old whore spit out her lip and nodded in assent.
'Good,' he said sternly. He ushered his friend into the elevator, and as it went down his spirit soared.
When they hit the street, he turned to his questioning friend and said with a grin, 'I can't believe I just did that.'
CHAPTER 26
'Hey!'
Casey heard the shout from the corner of her dark elevator. There were footsteps running across the concrete, another shout and more footsteps, and the deafening roar of gunfire. The sound of the shots reverberated through the concrete containment. Casey bolted from the back corner of the car to the narrow wall adjacent to the open door. She pressed herself against the elevator's dead panel of buttons, hoping it gave her more protection.
Silence: A dim ghost of fluorescent light spilled into the car. Casey felt her heart thumping at a breakneck pace. Then more footsteps clacking along on concrete, moving more slowly this time, but deliberate and coming her way. Her mind spun. Should she scramble from her hiding place? Whoever had cut the power must know she was there. But there had been a distraction, someone running, someone being shot at. Was it the security guard or Tony? Either way, it might have given her time to flee from her small, dark prison. The steps continued to echo toward her.
She would wait, wait until he came to her, then spring on him with all the fight she had. Casey crouched, trembling, acutely aware of her overwhelming sensation of having to use the bathroom. The footsteps were twenty feet away… now ten. They stopped, and Casey thought she would scream. The faint sound of a man's heavy breathing froze her soul. She thought of all the things she had done and all the things she still wanted to do. She was too young to die. She had to wait. If she sprang now, she'd lose her only chance, the only opportunity at surprise, no matter how slight.
'Casey?'
The man's voice was low and rough, but quiet.
'Casey, I know you're there.'
Trembling, ready to explode, Casey crouched even lower to the floor.
'Casey it's me Don Sales,' came the voice 'He's gone. Lipton's gone. He ran. You're safe. Come out, Casey'
Casey felt her limbs go limp. She slumped down to the elevator floor, shaking.
'Casey?'
'I'm here,' she said softly.
Donald Sales knelt beside her, pulling her head to his chest. She felt his hand, big and strong, moving in slow, comforting circles on her back.
'It's all right,' he told her. 'He's gone.'
After a minute, Casey regained her composure and rose to her feet, gently separating herself from him. She sniffed and brushed the hair back from her face.
'I'm fine,' she said, somewhat embarrassed.
'You have to stay with me,' he told her. 'He'll get you if you don't. You've got to help me, Casey. I can stop him, but you've got to tell me everything you know.'
'I will,' she said. She could see that now, too. As crazy as it might sound, as crazy as it might be, she needed him. Things were out of control, and he seemed to be the only thing solid right now that she could grab on to. 'How did you know I was here?'
Sales shrugged. 'I followed you. After I left my uncle's, I went right to West Lake Hills to watch the entrance to your development. I knew he would come for you. He's obsessed… Shit, I can't believe he got away.' Sales slapped the leg of his jeans.
'How did he do that to the elevator?' Casey asked. They were outside the elevator now, and despite Sales's presence, the garage was still eerie.
'Over here,' he said, pointing to a utility room whose gray steel door was ajar.
Casey turned to him and asked desperately, 'Why do you say he'll come back?'
'Because he will,' Sales said unequivocally.
'So what do we do?' Casey asked, trying without success to smooth the anxious edge in her voice.
'Help me find him,' Sales urged. 'He's got to have a place he's hiding that's nearby. You've got to tell me where.'
'I can't,' she told him desperately. 'I don't know where he is! I have no idea!'
'He was your client!' Sales argued.
'I've got his disk,' she said, touching her pocket. 'I'll let you see the whole thing, but just get me out of here.'
CHAPTER 27
Lipton became suddenly aware of the tension in his face, and he tried consciously to relax each muscle, one at a time. He drove carefully through the streets, checking his rearview mirror for signs of whoever it was who had drawn a gun on him. He doubted a cop would have been in the next room with a hooker and presumed it was just some do-gooder who certainly didn't have the balls to shoot anyone.
A smile crossed his face. Lately, he'd acquired the marvelous sensation that no one could kill him. He felt impervious to the rest of mankind, somehow above them all. He could hunt and kill what he needed and have his whores perform for him. The cycle seemed to be strengthening him.
He felt his face tightening again. It wasn't really the whore he'd been mad at. It was the predicament. He'd used the last remnants of his powder, and as he had feared, it hadn't been enough for him to perform. No, the whore herself was the one he always used, wonderfully docile. She had simpered and begged as submissively as she always did. In fact, since he'd been released after the trial, he'd had an exceptional run of bouts with her to make up for his time in isolation.
But the run was so exceptional that he'd used up every bit of his powerful aphrodisiac. And Casey wasn't going to be an easy victim. The gated community made it difficult to get to her at home. Although he'd scoped it out thoroughly, it would be a risky venture to try to take her from the parking garage; someone could see him and then he'd be trapped. He had abandoned that idea several days ago. He needed to be patient. It would happen in its own time. That much he knew.
He felt her spirit calling to him. All during the trial, her imperious mannerisms had left him dreaming of her at night. She needed him to crush the life from her. She needed him as much as he needed her. She needed to give up her essence to him so he could perform the sexual acts that kept his circle of power intact. It was those acts, he knew after years of experience, that were compounding to generate his invincibility. It was her destiny as much as his.
His own destiny had become clearer and clearer each passing day over the last sixteen years. His first taste of killing hadn't even been something he'd planned. The first had been a student in the audience of his seminar in New York City. She had stared shamelessly at him throughout his talk. Later that night, at the hotel bar in the midst of all his colleagues, she came on to him in a way that no other young woman had before. He'd always heard the stories, and sometimes even seen colleagues who found themselves the amorous objects of nubile young students. And although he suspected there were a number of students who might have given in to his advances, none until then had ever come right out and aggressively pursued him.
Despite his good looks, the girl in New York had been his first experience of a woman actually throwing herself at him. She drank too much, of course, and began to drape herself shamelessly over him, whispering nasty snippets into his ear. Once she'd even brushed her fingertips over his crotch. But back in his hotel room he was unable to perform, despite her unabashed oral attempts at rousing his manhood. And then she mocked him. Her words echoed through the back of his mind to this day. His sexual arousal had always been inconsistent, and his unsatisfying love life had never included a domineering woman. They seemed to affect him more adversely than most. It wasn't just that he'd failed as a lover. It was what she did afterward that put him over the edge. Frustrated and wanting another drink, he decided to go back downstairs. When he arrived, he was acutely aware of the whispering and the smirks on his colleagues' faces. His stomach sank with shame, and he hoped against hope that his fears were unfounded. Then he spotted her, right at the bar where he'd met her.
With a drunken laugh, she pointed at him and shouted for everyone to hear, 'Hey, it's Professor Lipton, or I guess I should say professor limp-dick! At least we know there's one lawyer who won't be screwing anyone!'
That night was the most humiliating experience of Lipton's life, and before he'd reached the sanctuary of his room, he knew that he would be back.
Lipton returned to Texas obsessed with revenge. He would show her that he was more of a man than she could ever guess. He painstakingly researched the world's most powerful aphrodisiacs. Most striking to him were the accounts he read about the use of powdered gall bladder taken from the Asian black bear. The sexual
