Profile of Evil (20 page)

Watching from a stand of trees in the wooded area outside the cottage, he peered through the scope of his assault rifle, as his mouth spread into a thin-lipped grin. What were the chances of having all three Chase brothers in his sight at the same time? He'd give anything to be able to hear what they were talking about and was tempted to move closer, but immediately, he dismissed the idea. Taking risks were a turn-on, but he wasn't suicidal. He'd be a fool to think he could take on four armed law enforcement officers at the same time. He'd much rather pick them off one-by-one, savoring each experience. Killing had become orgasmic. The very thought of it made him hot.

Leaning against a tree, he remembered something that had happened the previous year. He'd just finished burying a slave in his favorite body dump in the wooded area on Wally Johnson's farm. His body coated with dirt and sweat, he made his way through the woods with the help of a flashlight. Soon he came upon the dirt lane off a graveled country road where he'd parked his truck, and found a late model, steamed-windowed, Chevy Impala parked next to him. Inside were two teenagers immersed in a make-out session. Just as he'd lifted his gun to take them out, a county sheriff car, with lights blazing, pulled up. Retreating within the woods and hiding behind a huge oak tree, he'd watched as a burly officer lectured the teens. Moments later, both vehicles left, and he thanked his lucky stars the officer did not notice his truck or run the plates.

He was a lucky and smart sonofabitch. Just look how long it'd taken the idiot sheriff to find his shallow graves. It'd been four years since he'd dug his first grave there. If it hadn't been for those kids playing in the woods, they might never have found them. He wondered if the remains they'd taken from his graves had been identified. Not that he cared. He was way too clever and smart for these county sheriff hicks. There was no way they'd find anything to connect him to the victims. That was the beauty of it. He was, indeed, the Master.

Not that his current slaves, Alison and Jasmine, seemed to think of him as their Master. They were disappointments like many of the others. Neither of them had yet to start calling him Master as he demanded when he beat them. Slow-learning bitches.

One of them would have to die soon, anyway, to make room for his new plaything, Amber Patterson, who was itching to hook up with his online persona.

<><><>

Erin ambled around the old farmhouse. She'd already cleaned and swept each room and fed the slaves in the basement. Jasmine, the African-American slave, didn't look so good. The Master had given her quite a whipping the night before. The other slave, Alison, was pitching a bitch about it. Erin wanted to tell her brother about it right away, but the Master forbade her from calling his cell phone. So she'd wait until he came home. He was an hour late. Where was he, anyway?

Plopping down on the living room sofa, she gazed out the front window. It was nearly dark, but she could still see rows of corn growing in the field across the road from the house. Familiar boredom filled her. She was only twenty-six-years-old. What was she doing wasting away out in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana? Then she remembered what her brother had done for her years earlier, and felt a wave of shame sweep over her for having such ungrateful thoughts.

Erin owed her brother a great deal for rescuing her from a nightmarish existence in Utah where they'd lived with their pathetic mother and violent father, the town drunk. Though her brother had suffered frequent harsh beatings, she was the one that Daddy savagely raped and used as a human punching bag. Her eyes filled with tears, she shuddered as she recalled the attacks which had started when she was only eight-years-old.

Once in junior high school, her teacher pulled her aside to talk to her privately. She asked about the bruises covering Erin's face and arms. Erin did what she was taught to do. What happens at home stays at home. She lied to her teacher, saying she'd gotten the injuries from a nasty fall down their basement stairs. Though her teacher let it go, Erin knew she didn't believe her story. But like the rest of the adults in her young life, she didn't report the abuse.

That last night at home had been like no other. Around midnight, Daddy had come home so drunk he passed her bedroom, going to his own, and collapsing on the bed next to her mother. A short time later, her brother came to her. He was running away and asked Erin if she'd like to join him. Jumping at the chance, she threw some clothes into a duffle bag, crept out of the house, and got into his old Ford Mustang.

Slipping the key into the ignition, her brother paused, turned to her and said, "Erin, do you want me to kill him?" He asked the question as nonchalantly as he would ask what she needed at the grocery store.

Only considering his question for a second, Erin responded, "May I watch?"

Going back into the house, they stopped in the kitchen where her brother withdrew her mother's sharpest butcher knife from the silverware drawer. Turning to Erin, he whispered, "What about Mommy?"

"It would be cruel to let her live. How would she survive? She's depended on the bastard for years," she'd responded. "It's almost like a mercy killing."

On tiptoes, they crept down a small hallway until they reached their parents' room and quietly opened the door. On the bed, illuminated by a wash of light from the nightlight in the adjoining bathroom, their two parents slept, unaware that their time on earth was about to end. Her brother slid next to the bed and his arm shot up in a blur, coming down again and again as the butcher knife sliced into Mommy's chest and neck. In a drunken stupor, her father didn't even stir as their mother's body thrashed about in the throes of death.

As her brother moved to her father's side of the bed, Erin followed him and stood so close she could feel the heat of his body, her heart pumping wildly in her chest. He stood over their father for only a moment and then made a clean sweep with the knife, cutting his throat from ear-to-ear. It was the most gratifying experience of her life, and she'd relived it again and again in her dreams.

Her brother became her hero and Master that night, saving her from a demon who would never hurt her again.

The slam of a car door outside pulled her out of her reverie. The Master was home.

<><><>

Brody and Carly were cleaning up in the kitchen and were nearly finished when Carly backed him up against the refrigerator.

"Just so you know, I'm not a big fan of waiting," she whispered.

Pressing against him until he could feel the hard nipples of her breasts, Carly pulled him into a hungry kiss that turned into a full contact, wet-tongued, tonsil-probing kiss that made his head reel.

His breathing ragged, Brody lifted his head to gaze down at her, before crushing her mouth with his, spinning her around so that she was now pressed against the refrigerator. A rush of desire clawed and clutched at his insides as Carly tugged at his shirt and worked her hands beneath it, pressing her long fingers into the ropes of muscle in his back. A little purr that sounded in her throat enticed him to draw the kiss out.

Pausing to tame his rapid breathing and heartbeat, he picked her up and carried her to the kitchen table and struggled with the buttons on her shirt as she did the same with his, until they were skin against skin with her long legs wrapped around his hips, his throbbing cock aligned perfectly against her sex. He wasn't sure where he began and she left off. But there was one thing he was absolutely certain of. He wanted her like he'd wanted no other woman. Brody kissed her ribs, her cleavage, each sweet breast, and finally her mouth, kissing her with toe-curling determination as his erection throbbed like a toothache.

Pulling the zipper of her pants, he lowered them to her ankles, threw them to the floor, and then made quick work of his jeans. Carly worked her hands behind her back to unfasten her bra, and Brody rewarded her efforts by drawing on her nipples, sucking, tonguing, and teasing until she threw her head back and moaned aloud with erotic pleasure.

His thoughts fragmented as her hands and lips continued their hungry search of his body. In a raw act of possession, Carly tilted her hips to receive him and took his rock-hard, velvet-like steel into her fingers and led him to her.

An electric shock seared through his body as he entered her. He heard a tiny moan catch in her throat as he grasped her bottom. Her nails digging into his shoulders, Carly arched hungrily up to meet his next thrust, and his next, clinging to him, sinking into his body as the hot tide of passion raged through them both. Thrill after thrill shot through him as he possessed her body. Never had he experienced such intense chemistry before. The sexual tension built and built until the earth fell away, and he went with her to that place of rapture, utterly consumed.

<><><>

Chapter Eight

In the early morning light, Brody lay next to Carly and watched her as she slept. She'd rocked his world the night before, again and again. Loving her physically had already led to loving her emotionally. Carly had awakened something within him that hadn't been touched in years. The more time he spent with her, the harder it was going to be to let her leave at the end of her job, if that's what she chose to do.

Brushing some silken strands of hair from her eyes, he watched as eyelashes fluttered and a smile spread across her face. She cuddled closer to him and ran a smooth hand down his back.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," he whispered, as he kissed the top of her head. Levering himself up on his elbow, he traced the shape of her face with his finger.

"Good morning, Brody," Carly said with a smile that lit up her face. "May I ask you a question?"

"Like I could stop your inquisitive mind if I wanted to," Brody replied, as he kissed her forehead. "What do you want to know?"

Propped up on her elbow, she asked, "How do you feel about me?"

"Do you mean besides the mind-blowing sex and the fact I can't keep my hands off your unbelievably sexy body?" He asked with a slow, sensual smile, as he snaked a strong arm around her waist to press her against his hard body.

"I'm serious, Brody," she returned.

"Sorry. Talking about my feelings is not my forte," he said as he lay back and stared at the ceiling.

"How do you feel about me?" Carly asked again.

"I think I'm falling in love with you, and it scares the crap out of me. How's that for honesty?" Brody said as he turned on his side and ran his hand down her back to her bottom. "What about you?"

"I'm way past thinking about it. I
know
I'm in love with you," whispered Carly, as she stared into his eyes, as if she were trying to determine what he was thinking. "And it scares the crap out of me, too."

"I guess you'll be making a big decision at the end of the job — go back to Florida or stay here with me in Indiana," Brody said as he rolled on top of her, bracing his weight on his elbows and subtly shifting so the hot, hard ridge of his erection was cradled snugly between her thighs.

"Just so you know," he said in a husky whisper as he looked down into her eyes. "I can be very, very persuasive."

<><><>

Erin lay quietly in her bed listening to her brother slam cabinet doors, along with pots and pans in the kitchen. He'd never been a morning person and could be especially nasty, so she pretended to sleep until he left the house for work.

The night before she'd told him there might be something wrong with one of the slaves. Flippantly, he replied, "Why don't you tell somebody who cares?" Claiming he was dead-tired, he'd taken a shower and gone straight to bed.

Maybe the girl was better this morning, she thought. Sometimes all it took was a good night's sleep. Daddy had beaten her just as hard, and she'd survived it.

Once she heard the back door slam, signaling her brother had left for work, she got out of bed to make breakfast. Getting into the refrigerator, she pulled out a carton of eggs and a container of bacon. After pouring herself a cup of coffee, she fried up scrambled eggs and bacon and scooped them into two plastic containers and on a plate for herself.

Sitting at the small kitchen table, she ate her breakfast looking out the window and wondering how she'd fill her lonely day. She was tiring of spending her days out in the sticks with no one to talk to. One would think after five years, she'd be used to it.

There were times when she thought about having conversations with the slaves, but then she reconsidered. That would make her as stupid as her brother often told her she was. People were often identified as committing crimes by their voices alone, her brother had warned her. So she kept her mouth shut and stayed away from the slaves. Besides, she didn't want to have another little incident like the one that resulted in her shooting two of them.

Erin wanted a job — any job that would get her out of the house and off the farm. Her brother, the Master, vehemently disagreed. He said he could support his little sister and didn't want her to have to work, but Erin reasoned he didn't trust her to have friends at work she might confide in. Friends could find out things they shouldn't know and contact the police. Then she and her brother would find themselves spending the rest of their lives in prison or on the wrong side of a needle.