To his relief, the house did not smell of cigarettes. There was a lingering aroma of grilled meat. Hamburgers. A bag of buns sat out on a table the size of a postage stamp along with a bag of potato chips. He didn’t eat meat, and he didn’t like the smell of it, but he didn’t find it as offensive as cigarettes.
He opened the apartment-sized refrigerator and took an inventory. Condiments, skim milk, Diet Coke, eggs, margarine, cans of chocolate Slim Fast. He would make note of these things when he got home.
On the counter between the kitchen and living room lay the caricature he had done of the nurses at breakfast. Pleased, he picked up a pencil from the notepad by her phone and added the day’s date beneath his initials. She would probably never notice it, but it amused him to leave a sign that he had been there in her home.
In the living area was a floral-print love seat, a pair of white plastic chairs that matched the ones outdoors, and a glass-topped coffee table piled with women’s magazines and catalogs. The television looked like a recent purchase. The VCR attached to it sat on the floor on top of the box it had come in.
On top of the VCR lay two videos in their rental sleeves:
He liked that. Sweet girl. Young girl. Younger than she really was.
The excitement began to stir in his blood.
She had left her bed unmade, a tangle of flowered sheets. He could picture her lying there naked, looking up at him with her heart-shaped face and shy smile, the dimple winking in her left cheek. He pictured her body moving, slowly writhing as she stared up at him as she touched herself.
He stripped his clothes off and went to the bed to join her. Naked, he rolled against the mattress, rubbing his body over the sheets, over the pillows. He breathed in the delicate scent of her.
Open-mouthed, he kissed her pillow as if it was her face, thrusting his tongue against it until the pillowcase was wet with his saliva. Then he pulled the pillow down his body and thrust his cock against the wet spot, fucking it the way he would fuck her—hard, fast, violently.
He dug his fingers against the mattress the way he would dig them into her small breasts, pinching the bedding between his fingertips the way he would pinch her nipples—hard, until she cried out in pain.
As the fear came into her eyes, his excitement built, taking him to a higher level, filling him with a sense of power. He would fuck her harder, as if his cock was a battering ram and his intent was splitting her in two. She would try to fight against him then. He would have to teach her a lesson. She wouldn’t like it. But he would.
His climax was explosive. He felt like a volcano erupting. Afterward, he lay on the bed like a corpse until the sweat had dried on his skin and dried on the sheets. A deep sense of calm came over him.
He didn’t question any of it. He didn’t wonder why he had the fantasies he had. They had been a part of him for as long as he could remember. He didn’t believe he was a freak. He didn’t feel ashamed of himself. He accepted himself entirely. In fact, he felt superior to most people. He felt that in fully embracing who he was, he was more fully alive than most people could ever hope to be.
He left Denise Garland’s bed the way he had found it—a pile of rumpled sheets. He went into her tiny bathroom and washed himself. He used her toothbrush to brush his teeth. Then he put his clothes back on and left the house the same way he had come in, a pair of her dirty underpants stuffed in his pants pocket for a souvenir.
31
Lauren clutched the note so hard her hands began to tremble. She couldn’t breathe. Her emotions were like a trio of whips striking her, one, then the next, then the next. Over and over and over.
She was upset. She was angry. She was frightened.
It upset her that he could so easily reach out and, with four simple words, make her blood run cold. It made her angry he had that kind of power over her. And it frightened her that there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
What was she supposed to do? Call Mendez? And tell him what? Someone had left a note in her mailbox? She couldn’t prove Ballencoa had left it. It was ridiculous to think he would be so foolish as to leave something with his fingerprints on it. And what if he had? It wasn’t a threat. What could Mendez do? Arrest him for not using a stamp on the envelope?
She could call Greg Hewitt and hire him back to watch over her. An idea she rejected immediately, mortified at the idea of facing him again.
She was upset. She was angry. She was frightened.
How had he found her here? Only a few people had this address. She had been vague with the few people she had told about the move to Oak Knoll. She had said they needed a change of scenery, but that they hadn’t settled, didn’t have a permanent location, weren’t sure when they would be coming back. She had alienated so many of her former friends, none had pressed her for details. For a certainty, they had been relieved to have her gone.
How had Roland Ballencoa known? When had he seen her? When had he followed her? Had he followed her home from the shooting range? How could she not have known? How could she not have seen him? How could she not have sensed he was there? There was one road to this property. If someone had followed her . . . Mendez had followed her that day and she hadn’t noticed.
He was out there. For all she knew, he was watching her this minute. It was one thing for her to know where he lived. It was quite another for him to know where
She dropped the note as if touching it was somehow making a connection to him, as if the card was made of his skin.
She felt desperate in every way she could imagine.
And she was on her own to deal with it.
Once again she thought of Lance. The pain of not having him with her was like a knife to her heart, but instead of blood, hot fury boiled out of the wound.
“God damn you, Lance,” she whispered bitterly. Doubled over, elbows on her thighs, she put her head in her hands. “God damn you. Why couldn’t you stay and fight? Why couldn’t you fight for us?”
The tears that came burned her eyes like acid. The pressure of them made her feel like her head would burst. She was too exhausted to try to hold them back. Now was when she would have given anything to have a pair of strong arms around her, to have a broad shoulder to lean on, to have someone tell her she would be safe and Leah would be safe, and he would take care of everything.
She was so tired of having to be strong.
Now was when she was supposed to ask for help. Now was when she should have called Mendez and let him fill the role of protector. Now was when she could have called Bump Bristol and allowed him to ride over the mountains to her rescue. Now was when she might have once again made use of Greg Hewitt, the only man she’d slept with in two years—if she could have brought herself to face him.
She was so tired. She couldn’t remember the last decent sleep she’d had this week. It was taking a toll on her mentally and physically. Yet she knew there would be no rest tonight either. An overwhelming sense of despair and panic crashed over her at the thought.
As futile as it was to ask, the question still pounded at her:
Why Leslie? Why their family? Why her? Why did it never end? Why could she not let go? Why did she have to feel so guilty for wanting to be done with it?
She was so tired of being upset and angry and frightened. It was exhausting physically, mentally, emotionally. The weight of it pulled on her. Every cell in her body felt filled with lead. She didn’t know how she was able to get
