The Avenger
The Watcher
By Jo Robertson
The Avenger
By Jo Robertson
Copyright 2011 Jo Robertson
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Acknowledgments
Thanks, as always, to the lovely women writers known as The Romance Bandits (www.romancebandits.blogspot.com). A special nod to my critique partners Kelly Kerns and Cindy Munoz (Loucinda McGary) and to my husband Boyd, as well as my excellent copy editor Megan Banks.
Here's to many, many Happy, Happy Fun Days with my girls – Shannon, Kennan, Megan, and Sandra.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my oldest daughter Shannon Elizabeth Spicer, who's read everything I've written multiple times and deserves the highest praise for her insightful comments and unfailing support.
Table of Contents
Oakland, California, Seventeen Years Ago
Prologue
Fourteen year old Livvie Morse didn't believe in true love. All that stuff she'd read about in fairy tales when she was a kid was dumb, she thought.
The prince didn't rescue the princess, waking her up from a
pretend
death with a magical kiss. Or climb up the strong strands of her braided hair – oh yeah, that made sense, hair like
rope
– to whisk her from the tower prison. Or fit a glass slipper on her tiny foot to prove she's the only girl in the kingdom for him.
Anyway, wouldn't that shoe break all the hell to pieces with the first step the princess took?
Stupid. Dumb. Nonsense.
No, Livvie didn't believe in the true love of fairy tales. What she knew all about was the real-life monsters that lurked in the dark crannies of her nightmares and the dim hallway outside her bedroom. The ones that came out when her mother wasn't around. That crept down the hall and tapped on her door when they knew she was alone.
But that spring night proved her wrong about fairy tales and true love.
Livvie's mother worked the graveyard shift at Mercy General Hospital in east Oakland while her stepfather Roger Strong watched Letterman and guzzled his eleventy-millionth bottle of beer. When her mother left at ten-thirty, Livvie locked herself in her bedroom, a kitchen chair pushed beneath the door knob for good measure.
The chair wouldn't keep Roger out if he really wanted to break down the door, but maybe he'd be drunk enough to give up if the knob didn't budge with his first sneaky twist. The trick had worked before.
Livvie frowned and pressed her ear to the door.
Silence, except for the muffled drone of the television and the faint percussion of the radiator.
Stripping down to her panties, she rummaged through her dresser until she found a faded blue pullover and the oversized tee shirt that had belonged to her long-gone father. She pulled a sweatshirt on top of the two shirts and stepped into jeans and bulky sweats. She felt like a friggin' snowman, but the layers of clothing made her feel safe. Roger would have to rip off a lot of stuff if he wanted to get at her.
She giggled nervously, then clapped her hand over her mouth as panic rose like birds' wings in the cavern of her chest. Grabbing a pair of scissors from her nightstand drawer, she switched off the light and crawled under the covers. She sat with her back propped against the scarred headboard, the scissors hidden beneath the blanket and the covers pulled up around her neck.
She thought about the poem they'd studied today in Mrs. Wright's tenth-grade English class. Dylan Thomas. Livvie sure as hell wasn't going to go gentle into any old damn, dark night. Rage, rage. Rage against the monster called Roger. She smiled grimly and slunk deeper into the bedcovers.
Hours later the soft rattling of the doorknob woke her with a start. Adrenaline pumped through her body like a jolt of electricity, and right behind it, cold slippery fear. She jerked up and peered through the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
After long moments, her heart roaring in her ears, she tossed back the bedcovers, padded on bare feet across the room, and pressed her ear to the door. She willed the noise in her head to stop and drew in a deep breath, holding it as she strained to hear the sound again.
Nothing.
She waited endlessly, hot and sweaty inside the layers of clothing, the scissors glued to her hand.
Finally she heard shallow, ragged breathing through the thin particle board. Roger! The damn son of a bitch hovered inches from where she stood, slithering outside her door like the snake he was. The tremor started in her hand and traveled up her arm, downward to her knees until her whole body shook like an earthquake.
She listened to the raspy breathing for a long minute, her helplessness something sour at the back of her throat. Did Roger mean business this time? Had he decided tonight was the night his step-daughter needed the "lesson" he always threatened to give her?
She clamped down on her lip and ran her tongue over the coppery taste of blood. Suddenly she felt foolish, a child playing at being a kung fu girl-warrior. Even if she could get a stab in before he overpowered her, she'd only make him madder. She pictured the red puckering of his face and imagined those paws of his cuffing her head. "Smack you up-side the head," he'd bluster in his menacing tone.
What was she thinking? Roger was a burly six-two and outweighed her by more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Did she really imagine she could outmaneuver him? He'd squish her like a bug.
In that instant Livvie made her decision. She retrieved her gym shoes from the closet, tucked the scissors in the waistband of her sweats, and raced to the window. She turned back toward the bedroom door as she heard a series of rat-a-tat-tat knocks and a gravelly voice whispering her name.
"O—liv—ee—uh, O—liv—ee—uh," he taunted her.
Panicked, she clamored awkwardly over the sill and out the window. Slid down the sloped roof. Scraped her butt on the old shingles and landed with a thwack on the damp leaves below. She ran as fast as she could, arms pumping, legs like pistons, gym shoes slapping the wet cement.
Instinct taking over, she raced toward her best friend, the only person who knew her awful secret. The only one she could trust. By the time she reached the corner, her body dripped with cold sweat and she'd lost the scissors.
She rounded left on Granville for another five blocks. Right on Amhearst until she reached the shabby yellow and white house at the end of the street. It abutted a neighboring house on one side and a chain-link fence on the other that separated the Holt property from the abandoned glass factory.
Thunder ravaged her chest and fire burned her legs as she ground to a halt. She hunkered beneath the drooped branches of a low-hanging willow beside the familiar wraparound porch. She glanced over her shoulder. Roger might leap out of the darkness at any moment, drag her back home, and ... her mind shut down.
Livvie wasn't sure what would happen next, but she knew it would be the worst kind of punishment.
One eye on the street behind her, she gathered pebbles and tossed them against Jackie's window until a dim light showed through the blinds. She saw his shaggy head poke out the window, and a minute later the front door opened. She flew into his arms while he held her until the shakes stopped.
"Shh, shh, Squirt. You're okay now," he crooned.
Safe, she thought, finally safe. In Jackie Holt's twin bed, she sank into a fitful sleep, curled up against his strong, young body. Safe, for now, but she knew she'd have to go back.
She woke up with her backside pressed against the hard length of muscled body and a band of iron draped protectively over her chest, a hand curved round her cheek. She sighed and wiggled into the firm strength at her back.
"Livvie, wake up," Jackie whispered at her temple, tickling her ear with his warm breath. "You have to go before your mom finds out you're missing."
"No," she murmured, drugged with sleep and snug in the safe, narrow confines of the bed. "Can't go home yet."
Jackie turned her over and brushed the unruly mass of dark hair from her face. "Come on, Squirt, you can't stay much longer. I'll walk you back and make sure Roger's dead drunk." He grinned and showed strong, white teeth in a dark face. "And if he's not, I'll help him along with a little knock to the head."
She stared up at his suddenly beloved face and felt the seismic shift in her small world. Why hadn't she realized before how beautiful he was? Her face flushed and her heart began an unfamiliar staccato in her chest. She saw the answering emotion in Jackie's eyes and felt a sudden hard thrust against her thigh.
This is what the princess in the fairy tale felt when the prince rescued her, she thought.
Driven by budding confidence and pure instinct, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down on hers. His soft, warm lips opened to hers as a fierce jolt jarred her whole body like fire and ice and floods and desert all jumbled together and centered in her lower body. She kissed his lips and face and neck in a fever accompanied by incoherent words she didn't even understand.
And finally, when she pressed against him and urged him so sweetly, Jackie gave in. He was the one person who could understand her convoluted logic. If she was going to lose her virginity anyway, she didn't want Roger with his grabby hands and stinking breath to be the one.
She wanted her best friend to be the first because maybe – just maybe – she was beginning to believe in that fairy tale after all.
Southeast Africa, Present Day
Chapter One
The Zichecola jungle of southeast Africa's coast lay in dank tangles around the man's crouched, naked body. The susurration of insects and the buzzing of tiny living things sounded loud in the humid silence.
A hunter in search of human prey, Jackson Holt moved stealthily through the forest, the air's heavy moisture slick against his bare flesh. Vines and foliage dangled from trees like the crazed scribbling of a madman. Sweat ran off his muscles and bunched under his armpits and beneath his testicles. His body settled into the familiar, dense wilderness like one who'd returned to his primordial self.
The man-turned-hunter lifted his face to the purpled sky and sniffed cautiously. There, upwind of him. Three hundred meters. A faint whiff of man-odor. Man-sweat. Fear, laden with the subtle tremors of panic. The scent of the quarry awaiting the predator.