Dead by Morning (28 page)
“He never mentioned Griffin Powell by name,” Browning said.
“What about the agency?”
“No. The name Powell never came up, not the man or his agency.”
“Then the only name the copycat ever mentioned was Noah Laborde?”
“That’s right.”
Once again, Browning had given her information that was all but useless.
“Did you ever suspect or did the copycat ever imply that he was a professional, that he was working for someone else?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Browning stretched languidly, rotating his shoulders slowly and then twisting his head from side to side.
“What’s the going exchange rate between sixty-four thousand and my tears?” she asked, knowing what he wanted.
“A few more insights into the real Maleah Perdue,” he said. “And one small stipulation.”
“What small stipulation?”
“I want to taste them.”
“You want to taste what?” Dear God, he couldn’t mean what she thought he did.
“Your tears. I want you to come close enough for me to wipe away your tears with my tongue.”
No way in hell was this monster going to put his mouth on her!
“It’s not going to happen,” she told him.
He shrugged. “It’s your choice. But I can answer your question with certainty. And maybe, just maybe, I can give you even more.”
She didn’t believe him about the even more part and wasn’t sure she believed that he could or would answer her question. But she was close, so very close, to ending this. She couldn’t stop when she had made it almost to the finish line.
“If I cry, then you tell me what I want to know first and if your answers are worth anything to me, you can use your fingertip to wipe my tears.”
“Hmm . . . a compromise.” He nodded. “Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Sit back down, Maleah. Let’s get all comfy cozy.”
She sat, crossed her ankles, and folded her hands together in her lap. She didn’t try to hide her apprehension. Allowing her emotions free rein was the only way she could give Browning what he wanted. A large part of the pleasure he was seeking would come from knowing how difficult it would be for her to relinquish control over her emotions.
“Your stepfather, did he beat your mother?”
“Yes, I believe he did. I know he slapped her quite often whenever she did anything that displeased him.”
“And what do you think it was like for her during sex? Did you ever think about how he must have brutalized her? I’ll bet you could hear her crying, couldn’t you?”
Memories that she had kept buried deep inside her subconscious broke through the barrier of her iron control, memories that she didn’t want to recall.
“Yes, I heard her crying, but . . . I was too young and innocent at the time to know why.”
“But when you were older and you knew all about sex, about what goes on between a man and a woman—”
“I tried not to think about it.”
“No, of course not. You wouldn’t let yourself, would you? No man would ever hurt you. No man would ever dominate you, control you, beat you into submission.” He paused, as if waiting to see if one of his accusatory arrows had hit their mark. “And yet here you are giving me something you’ve never given another man.”
She clenched her teeth, hating Browning, hating herself.
Finish it. Give him everything he wants. Pay the price. And then get the hell away from him.
Maleah brought the memory up from the dark corners of her soul. Her naked mother running down the hall, her face bloody and bruised. Nolan catching her, shoving her down on the floor and—
Thirteen-year-old Maleah had heard her mother’s screams, gotten out of bed and opened her door. Jack had been gone for only a few weeks. He had joined the army and left her all alone in the family’s house of horrors.
Maleah hadn’t realized she was crying, not until she heard Browning’s deep intake of breath, so satisfied, so pleased with himself.
She looked at him through her tears.
“Did you ever try to help your mother?” Browning asked.
“No.”
After all these years, she still felt guilty that she hadn’t done more to save her mother. But even as a teenager, she had been terrified of Nolan Reeves, of the threats he had made to kill both her and her mother if she ever interfered or told anyone “lies” about him.
“Your stepfather beat your mother, raped her repeatedly, abused her terribly and you did nothing,” Browning said.
Tears threatened to choke Maleah. Emotions long bottled up inside her rose to the surface. It took all of her energy to hold them at bay.
Enough!
She had paid his price. She had given him her tears. Now, by God, he’d give her whatever information he had or . . . Or what?
“Tell me,” she managed to say, her voice a mere whisper.
“Thank you, Maleah.” Jerome Browning leaned back his head, closed his eyes, and released a heavy, orgasmic sigh. “It’s been a long time since a woman has given me so much pleasure.”
Every instinct she possessed urged her to attack, to rip out the monster’s heart and throw it to a pack of wild dogs. At that very moment, she hated Jerome Browning almost as much as she had hated Nolan Reeves.
“Tell me, damn it,” Maleah demanded.
“Of course, my dear. I am an honorable man who always pays his debts. You give to me and I give to you.”
“Then give, you sick son of a bitch.”
“He referred to himself as a death technician and an international contractor. I like those terms, don’t you?” Browning’s gaze sparkled with amusement, but he didn’t smile when he said, “As a professional courtesy, one skilled death technician to another, the man you refer to as the Copycat Carver did not deny it when I asked him if he was a professional hit man. As far as I’m concerned, his silence was a confirmation. He knew that as well as I did.”
Maleah swiped the tears trickling down her cheeks.
“Save just a taste for me,” Browning reminded her and then ran his tongue across his upper lip.
Ignoring his comment and gesture, she asked, “Do you know anything at all about who hired him and why?”
“Perhaps.”
“I’ve paid you in full, so don’t try to play me. Not now. It’s too late in the game,” she reminded him. “You still owe me.”
Browning hesitated for a moment before replying. “Why would you think he would have shared that kind of information with anyone, even with me? He is no sloppy amateur. He kills people for a living. And he’s quite good at it, isn’t he?”
Instinct told her that Browning did know something else and she was determined he share that info with her, no matter how insignificant. “I want the rest of the information I paid for.”
“Yes, of course. A deal is a deal.” He couldn’t take his gaze off the tears clinging to her lashes and seeping from the corners of her eyes. “Sometimes, during his visits, we talked philosophy, past experiences, things like that. We exchanged confidences the way people in the same profession do. It’s not often that you meet someone who is your equal, perhaps even slightly superior. Of course, he didn’t mention names, but . . .”
Maleah waited, allowing him this one final moment of victory.
He savored the moment, let it drag on and on, and she knew what he wanted.
“But what, Jerome?” She jumped up, leaned over him and glanced at the guard out of the corner of her eye, trying to nonverbally ask him to stay put. “You can’t tell me anything, can you? You’ve been stringing me along all this time. You really are a son of a bitch, aren’t you? And I hate you.” She balled her hands into fists and held them in his face, letting him see how much she wanted to pummel him. “I hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you!” she shouted.
“My copycat is a very proud man and if he has one flaw, it’s that he’s boastful.” The words flowed out of Browning like water from a dam that had just burst wide open. “He liked to brag about how rich and powerful those who have employed him are. As I said before, he couldn’t mention names, but he did tell me that he has worked for political leaders and crime bosses throughout the U.S., Europe, and around the world. That makes him an international contractor. His current employer is a billionaire who owns a private island retreat where he enjoys some of the perks of his business.”
A billionaire? A private island retreat.
“Exactly what are those perks?”
“Human trafficking,” Browning said with such delight that it was all Maleah could do to stop herself from actually striking him. “A smorgasbord of human delights. Whatever your pleasure. Male or female. Child, teen or adult. Dark or fair. Experienced or virginal.”
The description of a billionaire who made his fortune from human trafficking and who owned an island retreat sounded all too familiar.
Malcolm York.
The real Malcolm York.
But that isn’t possible.
The real York is dead, has been dead for sixteen years.
“A deal’s a deal.” Maleah leaned close enough for Browning to touch her.
Smiling, he lifted his cuffed hands, and then slowly and very tenderly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. As she lifted her head, she watched as he placed his index finger on his tongue, licked his finger and then sucked it into his mouth.
Maleah turned and, without a backward glance, walked away.
When she reached the guard who had been assigned to escort her to and from the interview, he opened the door for her. At that precise moment, Browning called her name.
“Maleah?”
She paused, but didn’t turn around or look back.
“It was good for me,” he told her. “Was it good for you?”
The sound of his laughter followed her as she hurried away from him as fast as she could.
Chapter 28
The moment he saw Maleah, Derek sensed she was on the verge of collapse. Not that anyone else would even notice. She managed to hide her emotional stress remarkably well, especially considering what he suspected she had just endured at Browning’s cunningly cruel hands. What Derek wanted to do and what he did were two entirely different things. He wanted to grab her, hold her, and tell her it was all right to fall apart because he’d be there to take care of her. What he actually did was walk over to her, give her a casual glance, and ask her if she was ready to leave.
“Yes, I’m ready,” she told him, her voice deceptively calm.
They both shook hands with Warden Holland and thanked him.
“Will you be scheduling another interview?” the warden asked.
Derek wanted to shout “no way in hell.”
“No. This was the final interview,” Maleah said, absolute certainty in her voice.
As they walked together out into the parking area, he waited for Maleah to speak first and was prepared to take his cue from her on how to proceed. If she wanted to talk, he’d talk. If she wanted to be quiet, he’d keep his mouth shut. If she needed time alone when they returned to Vidalia, then he would give her some time alone. But within a few hours, he would have to tell her about Saxon Chappelle’s niece. Only sixteen.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.
He hoped the lyrics to that old song weren’t true in Poppy’s case. He hoped the girl had been kissed at least once by a young boy who had made her toes curl.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.
He hoped the lyrics to that old song weren’t true in Poppy’s case. He hoped the girl had been kissed at least once by a young boy who had made her toes curl.
Sixteen was far too young to die.
As Derek and Maleah approached her Equinox, she pulled her keychain out of her pocket and tossed it to him. He caught the chain mid-air, keys jangling together when he grasped the large silver “M” to which the chain was fastened.
“You drive, okay?” Maleah did not make eye contact.
“Yeah, sure,” Derek said.
For a woman who usually insisted on driving her own car and even the rental cars they had used in the past, a woman hell-bent on always being in control, handing over her keys and asking him to drive meant only one thing. Maleah didn’t trust herself to drive. Outwardly she appeared to be completely fine, but it was obvious to Derek that she was far from all right.
This was the second time she had asked him to drive after a visit with Browning. The first time, her request had taken him by surprise. This time, he had known she would ask. He had expected her to come out of this final interview in bad shape. What he didn’t know was just how bad it really was.
He unlocked the doors before they reached the SUV, and then he opened her door. But he stopped himself just short of actually touching her, despite wanting to hug her to him and then ease her gently into the passenger seat. By the time he rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel, Maleah had put on her seatbelt and sat there ramrod straight, her fisted hands crossed at the wrists and resting in her lap.
As soon as they were on the road, he asked, “Want some music?”
“Not especially.”
“Want to stop for—”
“No, please, I don’t want anything. Not right now. Nothing except peace and quiet. All right?” She leaned back her head and closed her eyes.
“Yeah, sure.”
They spent the next twenty-one miles in complete silence. Derek kept his eyes on the road, not once glancing at Maleah. But she was all he could think about. If only she’d make a sound. A gasp or a sigh or even a hiccup or a sneeze. It was as if she had hit some sort of mute button inside her.
Less than thirty minutes after leaving the penitentiary, Derek turned in at the Vidalia Hampton Inn, parked the SUV and killed the engine. When Maleah didn’t open her eyes or say anything, he came damn close to grabbing her and shaking her. But the minute he looked at her, really looked at her, his heart stopped. God in heaven!
“It’s going to be okay, Blondie,” he told her in the calmest, most reassuring tone he could muster. “It’s going to be okay.”
He undid his seatbelt, got out, pocketed the keys, and rushed around to her side of the SUV. When he opened the door, she sat there unmoving. He reached in, unhooked her belt, and very gently reached down and peeled back the clenched fingers of her right hand. She had clutched her hand so tightly that her short, neat nails had dug into her flesh so deeply that her palm was bleeding. He repeated the process with her left hand and found it to be in the same condition.
“Ah, Maleah, sweetheart . . .” He pulled a white monogrammed handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket, wiped the bright red droplets of blood from each palm and wrapped the handkerchief around her right hand. “Come on, let’s get you out of here and into the hotel.”
When he grasped her shoulders and turned her sideways, she opened her eyes and stared at him. After slipping his arm around her waist, he lifted her up, pulled her out of the SUV and straight into his arms. Then he eased her down onto her feet.
She looked up at him. “Thank you.”
Keeping his right arm around her waist, he caressed her cheek with a gentle backward swipe of his left hand. “You’re welcome. Come on. You need to lie down and rest for a while.”
She nodded and then followed him into the hotel and down the corridor to the elevator. He kept his arm around her, supporting her, sensing that without him, she would spiral down to the floor and curl up in a ball. He didn’t bother asking her for the key to her room; instead he walked her straight to his room. He unlocked the door and led her over to his freshly made bed. She didn’t protest when he eased her down onto the edge of the bed. But when he moved away from her, intending to take off her shoes before getting a washcloth to clean her hands, she reached out and grabbed him. The bloody handkerchief wrapped loosely around her right hand slipped off just as she gripped his shoulders.
“Don’t leave me, Derek. Stay, please. I—I . . .”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “I just want to take off your shoes so you can lie back and relax. Then I’m going to get a warm washcloth and wash your hands. Okay?”
“I won the game,” she said. “Browning told me everything he knows.”
Derek lifted a stray tendril of glossy blond hair that had escaped from the soft bun atop her head and wrapped it behind her ear. “I never doubted for a minute that you would beat him at his own game.”
But at what price to you, Maleah?
But at what price to you, Maleah?
“I need to tell you what he said, everything about—”
Derek tapped his index finger over her lips, effectively silencing her. She gazed up at him with questioning eyes.
“You can tell me everything. Just not right now. You need to rest for a few minutes. You need to let me take care of you. Just this one time. All right?”
She nodded. “All right. Just this one time.”
He smiled. “That’s my girl.” And in that moment, Derek Lawrence admitted an undeniable truth—he thought of Maleah as his. His girl. His woman. His to care for and protect.
Heaven help us both!
Derek knelt in front of her, removed her sensible pumps, set them under the bed, and then lifted her feet and legs. He turned back the covers at the head of the bed, stacked one pillow on top of the other and gently eased Maleah down until her head rested on the double pillows.
“I’ll be right back,” he told her.
A few minutes later, he returned with a warm, damp washcloth and his shaving kit. He sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly washed her hands. And then he took out a tube of salve from his kit and rubbed the soothing cream into the shallow nicks her nails had made in her palms.
She lifted her hands, one at a time, inspected them and said, “Thank you. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I was just trying so damn hard not to fall apart.”
He leaned down, kissed her forehead and said, “I know, Blondie. I know.”
“I’m all right. Really. I’m just a little shell-shocked.”
He set his shaving kit on the floor, dumped the washcloth on top of it, and then turned his attention back to Maleah. “Tell me what you want right now. Tell me what you need.”
“What I want and what I need aren’t the same,” she told him. “I want to forget everything Browning said to me, every question he asked, every innuendo, all the memories he made me dredge up from my childhood. I want to pretend that I didn’t let all those horrible memories make me feel the way I did when I was a child and a teenager. Helpless. Frustrated. Frightened.” She grabbed Derek’s hands and curled her fingers around them. “What I
need
is to exorcise whatever remains of those old demons. I thought I’d done that in my twenties during a few years of therapy sessions, but apparently, the roots of those memories were buried a little deeper than I realized.”
need
is to exorcise whatever remains of those old demons. I thought I’d done that in my twenties during a few years of therapy sessions, but apparently, the roots of those memories were buried a little deeper than I realized.”
“Then talk to me. Let’s dig up those roots and burn them to ashes.”
“If anyone had ever told me that I’d be asking you, of all people, to be my father confessor, I never would have believed it,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in an almost smile.
He eased his hands from her death grip, tapped her playfully on the nose, and then sat down beside her. He focused on her eyes. “Anything you say will stay between the two of us for as long as we live. You already know my ugly secrets. You know that I despise my own mother, my money-grubbing, social climbing mother who drove my weak, spineless father to drink and eventually to suicide. And she’s never felt guilty about it a day in her life. And you know that when I was young and stupid, I did some pretty awful things. You know that I’ve killed people.”
He took her hands in his and held them so loosely that she could easily pull away. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel trapped by his superior male strength.
“Nothing you ever did could be half as bad as what I did.” He lifted her right hand, kissed it, then lifted the left and kissed it.
She pulled her hands out of his and eased up into a sitting position, her back against the headboard. “When my father was alive, we were all so happy. Mama and Daddy and Jackson and me. Then my father died when I was just a little girl. And my mother, my weak, lonely, needy mother, married a monster.”
“My mother was married three times, but both of my stepfathers were decent guys. I sort of felt sorry for them. If anyone was a monster in those marriages, it was my mother.”
“Nolan Reeves was a sadist.” Maleah clutched the sheet on either side of her hips. “He abused my mother every way a man can abuse a woman—physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. And he beat Jack unmercifully for years, until Jack got big enough to stand up for himself. I think by the time Jack left home and joined the army, Nolan was halfway afraid of him. He wasn’t as mean to Mama for a couple of years before Jack left. But then, later, when Jack was gone . . .”
Derek circled her wrists, moved his hands downward and opened her clenched fists. He held her hands. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“When I was thirteen, I saw them,” Maleah said. “I saw my mother running from Nolan. She was naked, her body and face were bloody and bruised and . . .” She gulped several times. “He caught her and threw her on the floor and . . . and . . .”
Derek squeezed her hands tenderly.
“I didn’t do anything. I just stood there in my bedroom door, frozen to the spot and scared out of my mind,” Maleah told him. “I closed the door, got back in bed and covered my head with a pillow so I couldn’t hear her crying while he raped her.”
Tears trickled down Maleah’s cheeks.
“You were a child, even at thirteen. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know that. As an adult, I know. But on an emotional level, that thirteen-year-old girl blames herself for not trying to stop him.” Her gaze locked with Derek’s. “He . . . he told me that if I ever interfered in what was a private matter between my mother and him or if I ever told anyone our family’s private business, he would kill Mama and me.”
Derek pulled her gently into his arms and held her. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. And while she cried, he tenderly stroked her back and whispered reassurances.
“That’s it, honey. Let it all out. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. No one can hurt you.” More than anything, he wanted to take away her pain. If he could, he would suffer it for her.
During their flight from Knoxville to London on the Powell jet, Meredith had, thus far, kept to herself as much as possible. Her escort, Saxon Chappelle, had not pressed her to carry on a conversation, not even when they had eaten a meal together. She greatly appreciated how considerate he was. From the moment he had shaken her hand and said, “Please, call me Saxon,” she had sensed that he was a good man. She instinctively trusted him and felt at ease around him, neither of which was true when it came to a great many people.
She suspected that he had been told enough about her so that he knew when she touched him she would be able to “read him” to a certain extent. And that’s why he had immediately shaken hands with her, to reassure her, to let her know he was a decent human being.
Even when she couldn’t see Saxon and wasn’t touching him, she occasionally could pick up on his fleeting thoughts, flashes of memory, and even his feelings. And the same held true for the pilot and co-pilot. Saxon loved his mother and worried about her. A young girl named Poppy kept slipping in and out of his thoughts. She was his niece and he worried about her, too.
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