Danjermond looked up at her, as if he had expected some response to his statement. He had taken the time to change out of his tuxedo and neatly bandage the hand he had cut during the fight. He was now in black jeans, boots, and a loose-fitting black shirt, an outfit that made him look like a modern-day warlock.
He had spread a blanket out on the floor so as not to get Jack's blood on the Oriental hall runner, and he checked and double-checked the bindings on his unconscious prisoner to make certain they were tight enough to hold but not so tight as to make impressions beneath the padding he had used first. The Bayou Strangler's victims were the ones who were to have bruises on their wrists, not the Strangler himself.
Laurel's gaze kept slipping down to Jack. She wasn't certain he was breathing. He had been unconscious nearly half an hour. Utterly motionless. Blood, sticky and brilliant red, matted his hair and glazed his temple and cheek like candy on an apple, but she couldn't tell whether or not he was still bleeding. Dead men don't bleed. She stared at his chest, willed it to move.
"I would rather have brought him to trial," Danjermond went on. He rose gracefully and picked up a glass of burgundy from the hall table, sipping at it thoughtfully, savoring the wine. "That was my intent all along. A murderer on a spree in Acadiana, running unchecked, no one able to stop him-until he reached Partout Parish. That was why I left the bodies where they could be found. There are, of course, many ways of disposing of bodies so as not to leave a trace. A man can get away with murder again and again if he is intelligent, careful, coolheaded."
He finished his drink. The grandfather clock chimed the hour. Eleven. Jack still didn't move.
With a sigh, Danjermond hauled him up off the blanket and maneuvered him into a fireman's lift. Without a word to Laurel, he went down the hall, toward the kitchen. She heard the back door open and close, then silence.
Oh, God, Jack, please be alive, please come around. I don't want to die alone.
Alone. As Savannah had been, as Annie had been, as all those other women had been. God knew how many. He had left six bodies to be found because that suited his plans. There could have been dozens more, all of them gone without a trace, swallowed up by the Atchafalaya, never to be seen again, the victims' cries for pity heard only by the swamp.
The numbness began to fade, and fear took its place. Tears rose to burn the backs of her eyes.
A vision of Savannah's face floated through her mind. The scents of formaldehyde and ammonia with death lingering, cloyingly sweet, beneath it all. The stainless steel table. The draped figure. Prejean murmuring something apologetic. Savannah's face-not as it had been in life, but as death and its aftermath had distorted it.
The back door opened and closed again. Footsteps sounded in the kitchen, in the hall. She bit down hard on the gag and tried to beat back the tears with her lashes. Don't show fear. He feeds on fear. It gives him power.
"All right, Laurel," Danjermond said, kneeling down to untie her feet. "We're going to go for a little drive." He looked up at her and smiled like a snake. "To my little place in the country."
Laurel knew the action was both futile and foolish, but she kicked him anyway, as hard as she could with her bare foot, catching him square in the diaphragm. He fell back, wheezing as the air punched out of his lungs, the look on his face worth whatever price he would make her pay.
Coughing, he rolled onto his knees and forced himself to his feet with one arm banded across his belly. He leaned against the hall table, sending her a sideways glare of pure, cold hate.
"You'll pay for that, Laurel," he ground out between short, painful gasps.
She met his glare evenly. Don't show fear. It gives him power.
"Defiant little bitch," he said, straightening slowly. A fire lit in his clear green eyes, glowing bright as he came toward her. "Just as your sister was," he said, smiling. "Right up to the end. She defied me. Dared me. I think she quite liked being tortured. There was a certain… exultant quality to her screams.
"And she laughed," he said softly, bending over her, careful to stay to the side. He brought his face down even with hers so she could see the wicked pleasure on his features as he spoke. "She laughed as I took my blade and cut her breasts."
Slowly, he reached out and cupped her breast with his long, elegant hand, testing its weight, molding its shape. He rubbed his thumb over the hard nub of her nipple, around and around, his gaze locked on hers, then began to tighten his fingers, squeezing and squeezing until she could no longer hold back the whimper of pain.
"She was completely insane by the end," he whispered.
Laurel shuddered, trembling with revulsion as much as fear. She had expected him to strike back at her physically, but this was much worse. Psychological torment, giving her the intimate details of her sister's murder. She would rather have been beaten. And he knew it.
"She wanted the sex," he said, untying her wrists from the arm of the chair. "Even when she knew I was going to kill her, she had an orgasm. Even as I tightened the scarf around her throat, she had an orgasm as powerful as any I've ever experienced." He met her eyes once again, that slight smile curling the corners of his wide, sensual mouth. "But then they say death is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Perhaps you'll experience that kind of ecstasy, as well, Laurel."
She was shaking uncontrollably as he hauled her up out of the chair and tied her hands behind her back. Thoughts of Savannah flashed through her mind. Thoughts of the two of them as children, before Ross had entered their lives and twisted the paths they would take. In that moment she hated him as much as she hated Stephen Danjermond. More. But it wasn't going to do any good to dwell on the past. The present held a clear and imminent danger. She was going to need all her energy, all her strength-physical and mental-directed to getting out of this alive.
Danjermond guided her out of the house the back way and took her around the side to an old carriage house that now served as a garage. They bypassed the Jaguar in favor of an old brown Chevy Blazer. He stuffed Laurel in the passenger's side and closed the door.
While he walked around the hood, she twisted around awkwardly to see Jack facedown on the seat behind her. He lay motionless, body bent at an awkward angle, feet on the floor behind the driver's seat. The dark blanket had been tossed carelessly over him and covered him from chin to boots.
In minutes they were driving out of town without having passed a car or a pedestrian who might have taken notice of them. When they were well beyond the town limits, alone on the bayou road, Danjermond pulled over and untied the gag.
Laurel spat the wad of cloth out of her mouth, glaring at him in the gloom of the cab. "You won't get away with this," she charged hoarsely, her throat and mouth parched.
Danjermond flicked a brow upward as he slid the Blazer into gear and started them on their journey once again. "What a trite line, Laurel. And ridiculous. Of course I'll get away with it. I've been getting away with it since I was nineteen."
He chuckled at her involuntary gasp of horror, like an indulgent adult amused at the naivete of a child. "I was a college student," he began, leaning over to push a cassette into the tape player. Mozart whispered out of the speakers, orderly and serene. "I was an excellent student, naturally, with a great future ahead of me. But I had certain sexual appetites that required discretion.
"My father introduced me to the pleasures of the darker side of sex-indirectly. As a boy I once followed him on a visit to his mistress, and watched them through a window, fascinated and aroused by the games they played. I followed him many times after that before I realized he knew. When I was fourteen, he allowed me to visit her myself. To be properly initiated.
"I learned the privileges of wealth and the wisdom of discretion early on. So I knew better than to appease myself with a coed. Whores are much better at pleasing a man, anyway, and so much more expendable. I got carried away with one. Strangled her while we were in the throes of passion.
"No one ever suspected me. Why would they? I was the handsome, talented son of a prominent family, and she was just another whore who fell victim to a professional hazard."