Blood Red (6 page)

Ben sat silently and listened. He nodded from time to time, but otherwise, he said nothing at all until she had finished crying herself numb. She rested her head against his chest and he wiped at her tears, missing a few but getting most of the trails off her face.

Then he leaned down and kissed her temple with the same sort of affection her father had always shown her when she screwed up colossally.

“So, I’ll get it all back.”

“What?” She sat up fast, the world getting fuzzy for a second as she looked at his face. Ben was looking across the park, his eyes tracking a couple of crows talking smack to each other in a language that only crows know.

“I’ll get it back.” He said the words so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that she could almost believe he meant them.

“No, Ben.” She shook her head, visions of what Brian Freemont would do to a kid the size of Ben dancing in her mind. “He’d tear you in half.”

Ben got a strange little smile on his face and shook his head. “I didn’t say how I’d get it back.”

“Ben, I mean it. He’d probably kill you as soon as he’d look at you.”

Ben finally looked her way and shot her a quick wink. “Just shows what you know, Danni.” He stood up and stretched, his narrow waist exposed to the cold air as his shirt lifted.

“Ben, seriously. Thanks for everything, thanks for being here and listening, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”

That little smile again and then he was walking, looking over his shoulder for a second to shoot her another wink. “I’ll get it back.”

He seemed so calm and that was what scared her. Ben was maybe too calm; the sort of calm that always precedes the worst storms.

Maggie leaned forward, her forehead resting against the interior door of the confessional, her eyes half closed as she stifled a moan. Father Flannery sat behind her, his hands on her waist, barely moving. He gasped and then rested his head between her shoulders. His skin felt like warm marble as she moved, slowly, gently rocking back and forth, making the moment last as long as she could. There was something almost sweetly innocent about the man she seduced and wickedly delicious about the act they were engaged in. For the first time in a very long while, she felt something more than merely physically active.

His teeth scraped the back of her neck, and his breaths lashed at her skin. His hands were actually trembling, his fingers clutching at her sides as she continued to slowly increase the tempo of their dance.

Just on the other side of the vestibule door, she could hear people moving, and through the small crack that separated the door from its jamb, she could make out three parishioners walking down the main aisle of the church, heading for the pulpit.

Flannery’s body was almost perfectly rigid under her, and she knew he heard them, too. Despite the gravity of the situation, or maybe because of it, she felt a smile playing at her lips as she moved his hand from her waist until she could nibble on his index finger. His other hand moved of its own will and cupped her breast through the simple white blouse, so reminiscent of the uniforms she’d worn back at Sacred Hearts.

He said a small blasphemy as she pushed herself back against his body and started moving faster, in short, tight circles over him. Getting him into the confessional for a different sort of activity had been amazingly easy. One look, three sentences, and a condom in her hand, and he had been putty.

She just hadn’t expected to enjoy this anywhere near as much as she was. Forbidden fruit was sweet, after all.

His teeth clamped down harder and for the first time he started moving in reaction to every motion she offered. His actions were frantic and she knew he was about to come.

Maggie bit down harder on the priest’s finger, sucking at the skin caught between her teeth as he bucked beneath her, whimpering and sweating and maybe dying a little.

She bit harder still as she climaxed, the feelings hitting her hard and with completely unexpected intensity. The skin between her teeth broke and the flavor of his blood danced across her tongue. He mumbled another blasphemy into her neck and she managed to hold back her own sounds through sheer force of will.

It was almost twenty more minutes before the church was empty and they could safely leave the confessional. He came at least twice more in that time and Maggie gave up trying to count hers.

She left the church a short while later, her body still echoing the pleasures she’d just had. She wore a smile for the rest of the day and into the night.

No town ever truly sleeps. No matter what size, no matter where it’s located, no town ever truly knows rest. There are always a few souls who can’t manage a good eight hours, or whose jobs force them to stay up through the most insane schedules. Throw a college campus or two into the equation and, just like that, you can guarantee that the town will probably have insomnia.

Father Michael Harris suffered from insomnia most nights. He had since he was a young man, and he doubted that would ever change, at least not without the occasional dose of medicinal brandy.

There was too much going on in his world. He needed a vacation and knew good and well that he wasn’t likely to get one. Of course, he was supposed to actually request one from time to time, but he just never trusted that everything would get done if he wasn’t there to double-check all the details.

Take the day he’d just spent as a perfect example. Father Donald Wilson was his superior, but despite a good heart, the man just wasn’t capable of accomplishing anything in a timely fashion. The only exception was his sermons. Don was one of the best when it came to writing a rousing speech, and he could bring tears to the eyes of an unrelenting sinner. But once you got past that stage of the day, he was effectively useless. So who do you suppose had handled the details for the upcoming pumpkin sales? Who else? He had.

Normally he could have counted on at least a little help from Patrick Flannery, but the lad had been distracted throughout the day, as shaken and twitchy as a cat at a dog show. Mike Harris had tried several times to get the younger priest to open up to him, but it wasn’t meant to be.

So he prescribed himself a small snifter of brandy and settled in to read a few pages of the latest by Ed McBain. It might not have been a brand-new book, but it was new to him.

It was after midnight before he finally managed to get to sleep.

He didn’t know just how much later it was when he discovered he wasn’t alone. The warm mouth covering his penis was the first hint.

Mike sat up fast, gasping, his hands reaching for the source of what was happening to him, and gasped again when the young woman at the edge of his bed looked in his direction and smiled around the prize she’d captured between her lips.

There was a second when he was almost certain that she would bite down and he froze, petrified by the very notion. Then she slowly drew her head back and freed him.

“What are you doing?” His voice was a harsh whisper, not because he was scared of being heard, but because he was having the damnedest time catching his breath.

The moon’s light was shining into the Spartan room, and he watched as she slowly stood up, looking down on him in his vulnerable position.

Her face was familiar, but the dark curls of her hair obscured her features almost as much as the darkness that left her partially hidden from his view. And he was also having trouble looking away from the naked body that the moon was revealing to him.

He was not at all accustomed to seeing beautiful young women in his bedroom. The entire concept was unsettling to him. When he had been younger, he’d been tempted on several occasions, but he’d never given in to the idea of breaking his vows. Oh, there had been many a cold shower, and Mike Harris had certainly entertained all the thoughts that a heterosexual male is bound to have when he sees an attractive member of the opposite sex, but he’d used prayer and faith to keep him from deviating from the course he’d chosen to take.

He swallowed and felt his skin flush. “I said, what are you doing?” His voice was a little stronger when he spoke again, but not nearly as confident as he wanted it to be.

She moved forward, and much as he wanted to flinch away from her, Mike simply stared. His throat was dry and his pulse was thudding along merrily at his temples.

Margaret Preston leaned in closer, and he was shocked to recognize the girl he’d seen in church every Sunday for the last fifteen years.

“Maggie? What are you doing here?” His voice shook and part of the tremble was caused by fear, but there was definitely a healthy dose of lust in there as well.

Maggie lifted one delicate hand and placed a finger against her lips. “Shhhh. I think I made that obvious, Father Harris.” The voice of the young woman in front of him didn’t jibe with the voice he knew from years of Sunday School and the confessional. It wasn’t a child’s tones that she spoke with, though he had always thought of her as a child.

“Maggie, please, just get your clothes on and go home. If you’d like, we can discuss this in the morning.”

She climbed up onto the bed, her face once again lost in the shadows of the room, her body highlighted by the moonlight that painted her in shades of blue and silver.

“No, Father Harris, we won’t talk about this in the morning. We won’t talk about it ever. It’s our little secret.” Her left leg lifted and moved over his body, settling on the other side of his hips. A woman less than half his age was kneeling over him in the bed he had never shared with another soul, and he was both terrified and elated by the idea.

Her weight settled over his body, hardly a burden at all as she leaned in closer to his face, her dark eyes staring into his own.

“Maggie, please . . .” Was he begging? Oh, yes he was. He was definitely begging, because as much as he wanted to cast her away from the bed and scold her for her foolish notions, his body was reacting to her presence and his willpower seemed to have fled into the shadows.

Her hands lifted up to her shoulders, getting lost in her thick dark hair for a moment before they slowly ran down her torso, hiding and then revealing different parts of her perfection before she reached out and touched him. The contact was electrifying and paralyzing.

He wanted her to go away, wanted desperately for her to leave him alone again in the darkness of his one private place in the entire world.

He wanted her to stay, to fulfill the promises he saw in her smile, and the silken touch of her fingers, and the warm kiss she placed on his neck as she leaned over him.

In the end, only one of his wishes was fulfilled. But she was truthful, at least. It was their secret. No one ever had to know.

Ben didn’t go to sleep at all that night. He had other things he wanted to do. No, other things he needed to do.

He sat in front of his window and read the words on his laptop’s monitor, studying details that he shouldn’t have had access to, and making notes in a spiral-bound notebook.

From time to time he yawned, stretched, and took a break to get another cup of coffee, but after each of his short breaks he went back to his computer and searched for more information on his target.

Brian Freemont had three bank accounts, two mortgages, a car that he could barely afford, and a wife, Angela, who was pregnant. Amazing the things you could learn about someone if you knew how to crack a few security codes.

He jotted down the account numbers as he learned them, and made sure to note which bank each of them belonged to. He did the same with all of the credit card numbers, and the mortgages, and he made sure to get the Social Security number for his new obsession. There were phone numbers to consider, both the home phone and the cell. He made a point of copying down all of the numbers that had been called and that had called the Freemont residence.

Every time he started getting tired, he thought of Danni Hopkins crying into his shirt and woke right back up. It was easy to do. Danni was a good person, even if she liked to party a little, and he hated the idea that Brian Freemont might change the rules and decide that Danni needed to pay a second time for his silence. Or a third, or a fourth.

Maybe it was the coffee, but the notion of Brian Freemont walking around with anything that could be used to coerce Danni a second time made his jaws clench together.

By three in the morning, he was ready to begin. Ben took one of the seven pay-as-you-go cell phones that he had purchased earlier in the day and activated as he ate dinner, and he plugged his modem into the jack provided. He worked with the speed and precision of a surgeon and began cutting away pieces of Brian Freemont’s life.

He was done less than an hour later. He carefully wiped down the cell phone and wrapped it in a paper bag before slipping it into his jacket pocket. Then he stepped out of the apartment, looking for a random trashcan and a decent meal.

The good news for him was that there were several diners open, even in the darkest part of the night. He found one without too much difficulty and sat down in one of the booths that were supposed to be reserved for two or more people.

The waitress, Sally, didn’t seem to care that he was breaking the rules, and neither did he. She promised him that the sausage and mushroom omelet was a work of art and he trusted her.

He hadn’t even finished a third of the very early breakfast when Margaret Preston came into the place.

Sally looked at the girl and smiled. “Hey, hon, how’re you tonight?”

“Hi, Sally.” Margaret’s smile was a thing of beauty, and Ben forgot all about the food in his mouth as she walked toward the booth across from his.

“You want your usual?” The woman didn’t wait for an answer, but instead moved to grab a cup of coffee and brought it over to her. “I was just telling Ben over here that the mushroom and sausage was the best omelet in the house.”