Target (15 page)

H
e ripped the tape from her wrists and threw her, face-down, into the taller bushes. Aurelie closed numb hands around clumps of plants and held on. Her mind raced and her eyes stung.

“Don't turn around,” he said, and, shoving at her neck, he tore the sack from her head. Then he was gone, as silently as he'd come, and she lay, swallowing air.

Crashing in the trees.
He would come back and kill her after all.

No
.

She covered her head.

Aurelie gradually pulled the heels of her hands from her ears.

Not another sound but for the critters.

Her bruised body throbbed.

Pulling her clothes together as best she could, Aurelie struggled to her feet. It was too dark to see what injuries he'd inflicted; she touched her nose and just as quickly pulled her hand away. She tasted blood.

This time she would do things her way. There would be no asking advice or permission from the family. They would only slow her down and try to change her mind. Aurelie knew what must be done.

Stumbling, moving as fast as she could, she reached the Hummer.

Her keys?
They were in her jacket pocket, she was sure of it, but she didn't know where the jacket was.

She couldn't go back.

Aurelie looked over her shoulder and the trees felt as if they had closed the pathway behind her.

Desperate, she tried Nick's Audi. Even if she could take it, she wouldn't. She shoved her hands in her pants pockets—and found her own keys.

“Hurry up,” she told herself, trembling with relief. “Hurry.” She threw open the driver's door on her vehicle, clambered inside and turned it on. In seconds she drove from the grounds at Place Lafource, her tires screeching.

All the way to town she repeatedly checked the rearview mirror but didn't see any following lights. And she opened her window, took her foot off the gas and didn't hear another engine.

Driving faster than she ever drove, she made it to the strip mall, parked as close as she could to the door beside the salon, the door leading up to her new apartment. She shot from the vehicle, locked it, and then used the key Frances Brossard had given her for the apartment door.

Inside, she put on the dead bolt and chain, and took the stairs so fast she tripped repeatedly all the way to a tiny, square landing at the top.

The apartment consisted of two fairly small rooms. And a tight bathroom off the bedroom. The kitchen and dining nook were part of the living room. In the bedroom, she locked the door from the inside. She already had two bags of personal things there and within minutes she stood under hot, if slightly rusty, water in the shower, washing herself with an existing bar of plain soap. The stream stung her bruised body. Scratches and small puncture wounds traversed her belly and ribs. More wounds the size of large pinpricks surrounded her nipples and she still couldn't touch her face—which she had yet to look at in the mirror.

A new bottle of glow-in-the-dark orange-colored shampoo stood in the shower pan and she drenched her hair with it, wrinkling her nose at the strong tangerine scent.

Rinsing with a blast of water, she tried to control her racing heart and the thundering at her temples.

She would not waver in what she had decided to do.

Gingerly, she patted dry and smoothed antibacterial cream over a good deal of her body. She pulled on clothes, a blue T-shirt that looked as if it had been cut on the bias and bleach-spotted jeans.

In front of the mirror, she leaned forward to survey her face. What a mess. The jab beside her right eye had made a quarter-inch wound that probably needed a butterfly dressing. Her nose had swollen. Carefully, she touched the bone, but although it felt bruised it didn't seem displaced. She wiped off a few specks of blood but felt sorry for herself when a thin, pink stream started to flow from her left nostril.

Moving as quickly as pain allowed, she raked at her hair with a wide-toothed comb, grimacing each time it tore at tangles. Eventually her thick black curls made a triangular shape from her crown to the ends. She tossed down the comb and returned to the bedroom.

This was it. All the subterfuge was over. It was up to her to save the people she loved from their own folly.

Holding a wad of tissues to her nose, she left the apartment again, this time with the gun she hadn't told anyone she owned. Stuffing it into the waistband of her jeans, she pulled the T-shirt over the top. She had a license to carry and it was her business.

She didn't make a phone call until she was behind the wheel of the Hummer and driving. A woman on the desk at the police station answered. “How can I help you?”

“This is Aurelie Board. I'm coming there now. I need to speak with Matt Boudreaux and I think he'd want to talk to me.”

“Yes, Aurelie. This is Officer Carly Gibson. Matt's here, would you like to speak with him?”

No, she didn't want any opportunity to change her mind about what she'd decided to do. “I'll be there in a few minutes. I'll talk to him then. Thanks.”

She made it to the station in record time and, still driving too fast, bumped over exposed tree roots in the parking lot. The Hummer had great suspension, but the bouncing pulled at her injured skin. The engine scarcely died before she was out and running for the building.

“Aurelie!” Carly Gibson looked up and hurried from behind a desk. “What's happened? Has there been an accident?”

“You could say that,” Aurelie said. At last the adrenaline ebbed and she felt weak. She trembled inside and put a hand on Carly's solid shoulder.

“Sit down,” Carly said. Worn in a single braid, her blond hair hung down her back and swung when she walked. She reminded Aurelie of a pretty, well-padded Dutch girl.

“I need Matt,” she said in a wobbly voice. “I'm sorry for roaring in like this.”

He must have heard the commotion because Matt appeared with Buck Dupiere behind him. The two of them approached her swiftly. Matt took her by the shoulders and looked closely at her face. “Someone punched you, didn't they?”

She nodded.

“Any idea where he is now?”

“No.”

Buck put a hand to her chin and turned it. “This is a puncture wound,” he said of the cut by her eye. “Did he stab you with something?”

Aurelie nodded again.

“Rat,” Carly said. “Wish I'd been there, but he probably wouldn't have picked on someone his own size.”

Aurelie giggled, then felt stricken at the idea of losing control. “He was a lot bigger than you, Carly.”

A stream of harsh language blasted the air and none of it sounded like Matt Boudreaux's usual vocabulary. His face was set and his usually slow Cajun temper looked to be on the boil. He put an arm around her shoulders and hustled her toward his office—the office that used to belong to Billy Meche.

Quietly he said, “Do we need to think about a rape kit?”

She shook her head, no, and felt sickened.

“Get me a first-aid kit,” Buck said to Carly. “And some coffee and something for the headache she's got. You do have a headache, Aurelie?”

“I hurt all over,” she said, in no mood to be courageous.

“Aurelie?” She heard Nick's voice a moment before she saw him in the office doorway, struggling with Hoover to be first through. “What are you doing…Fuck!”

“Watch your mouth,” Matt said, evidently forgetting the blue barrage he'd just let loose.

Hoover loped rapidly toward her, whimpering all the way. He brushed around her legs, all but knocking her over.

“Look at that,” Buck said. “He knows something's wrong with the boss.”

Stiffness had settled in and Aurelie carefully bent her knees to stroke Hoover—and to take a chewed ballpoint pen from his mouth.

Nick pried her out of Matt's arm and half carried her into the office. He looked from one uncomfortable chair to another and Buck held up a hand. “Just a minute.” He hurried next door, to what had been Matt's office but was now his, and manhandled in an ugly, sagging, red leather recliner. “You don't have to look at it,” he told Aurelie. “Just sit in it and try not to fall asleep yet.”

She sat down. Buck pushed the back so that the foot-rest came up and she sank into the age-softened leather. He was right, she could have slept there—if she didn't hurt in so many places and if she wasn't horribly scared.

“What's happened to you?” Nick said. He knelt down and looked closely at her face. “Who did it?”

“I don't know, but I've got to be ready the next time.”

“Next time?” he said explosively. He held her hand tightly. “No next time. Tell me what he did to you.” His voice dropped and she read fear in his face.

“He beat me up. Scratched me up. Scared the devil out of me. Threatened me. Pushed me around. And did I say he threatened me? Big-time. Do as he wants or he'll pull my insides out a bit at a time.”

“Are you serious?” Matt said.

“No, I'm making it all up for fun. And I inflicted the wounds myself.”

“What did he make the one by your eye with?” Matt asked. He waved Carly in and she put a large first-aid kit on a chair, then pulled the chair close to Aurelie.

She started to answer Matt but stopped. She didn't know the truth for sure.

“Did he have a knife?” Nick said. “It was a man?”

“A man,” she said.

“Aurelie, did he…did he assault you sexually?” Nick said.

“That depends on what you mean by sexually.”

His face lost all color.

The way he cared for her showed. She hoped she was the only one who saw how personal his anger was.

“Spell it out, Rellie,” he said.

“He didn't in the normal sense,” she said. She touched her face. “But he's a sick puppy. I think he did this with a claw from a dead bird.”

Aurelie saw Nick's eyes fix. She looked at the others and they'd stopped moving around. Four disbelieving faces confronted her.

“A bird's claw?” Matt said finally. “Like—” He raised and lowered his arms a couple of times, then quickly crossed them. “You saw this?”

“Yes. No.” She sat up straighter. “He kept talking about a vulture.”

“You're kidding,” Buck said.

“Carly,” Matt said. “Get on to the clinic and see if they can send someone over. Mention dead bird claws and rabies.”

Aurelie's face felt stiff and cold. “I wasn't bitten by a bird. There was no bird. But it felt like he stuck a claw into my face and I think that's what he used to scratch up…other parts of me. He's very sick. His thing is to creep you out and he did a fine job with me.”

“I'm taking you to a hospital,” Nick said.

“No,” Aurelie said patiently. “I'll go to a hospital when I've said what I came here to say. Anyway, a scratch from a dead claw's no big deal.”

Nick's pupils dilated. “You aren't thinking. We're going now.” He stood up and Hoover bayed.

“Shit,” Buck said. “That's a helluva bark.”

“If you touch me, Nick, I'll scream,” Aurelie said. If she'd ever had any control in this situation, she'd lost it. Now she'd get it back again. “I'd like some water, please. And whatever you were going to give me for a headache, Buck.”

“Gotcha,” he said and hurried from the office.

Nick started to speak but Aurelie shushed him. “If the claw—if it was a claw—gave me rabies, I've got plenty of time to start the shots. Even I know that much.”

“I don't want to wait,” he said. “Matt, talk to her.”

“She's right, there's time. Can you give me a description of the guy?”

“No. He put a bag over my head and taped it around my neck. Would you two mind sitting down? It hurts to look so far up.”

Nick and Matt hurriedly pulled up chairs. “Where did this happen?” Nick asked, apparently oblivious to Matt's irritated glances. The cop didn't like the civilian walking on official territory.

“On the path between the house and the guesthouse,” Aurelie said. “You know how it snakes in and out of the trees. He got me way back in. From behind. There wasn't any light. He put me in a hammerlock and bagged my head. He was fast. He taped my wrists together behind my back.”

“What were you doing there?” Nick asked. “You were going to drive right to your apartment.”

“My car was at the guesthouse.”

Nick scrubbed at his face and slowly pulled them down far enough for his eyes to be visible over his fingertips. “Dammit. You shouldn't have walked on that path alone.”

“Did this man speak?” Matt asked.

“Oh, yes. I don't know who he was. I do think he was quite big. And he was strong. He didn't have any trouble picking me up and throwing me.”