“Your name again?”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
With infuriating calm, she began again with the question about his name. Cursing, he tossed his phone onto the seat of the pickup so he could use both hands to steer around a slow-moving minivan. He blasted through a red light, blaring the pickup’s horn.
Ray’s luck had changed, and it was on account of him killing Moody.
There had to be a correlation, because that was when things had started going good for him.
First, he’d escaped the two cops who’d showed up at his place. One’s blood was still on his clothes, along with the splotches Moody had sprayed on him. He didn’t think he’d killed the cop, but he hadn’t hung around to find out.
Dodging the second cop’s bullet—another stroke of luck—he’d barreled his way through his duplex and out the back even as other squad cars were squealing to a halt in front.
He’d lived in the neighborhood for a long time, so he knew the twisty streets well, knew which ones were dead ends and which provided a quick way out of the maze, even for someone traveling on foot.
Yes sirree. Luck had definitely been on his side. Running between houses and going over fences, he’d made it to the back of a strip center where there was a doc-in-the-box.
Knowing that the staffs of these minor emergency clinics usually worked long shifts and figuring that this early in the morning one would be starting, he deduced that a stolen car wouldn’t be missed for hours. He’d waited behind a Dumpster until a young woman dressed in scrubs parked in the employee lot and entered through a back door. Breaking into her car had been a piece of cake.
Was he one lucky bastard, or what? Within minutes of leaving his duplex, he’d been miles away from it. Pumped. Exhilarated. Wanting to spill more blood. Bellamy Price’s blood.
Ever since her old man’s death, she’d been staying with her stepmother in the family mansion. Ray made that his destination, reasoning that she would eventually turn up there. Driving past it throughout the day also gave him an opportunity to plan how he might get through the gate and onto the property.
It was going to be doubly difficult now that a patrol car was posted outside the gate.
But, again, luck smiled on him.
He just happened to be on one of his reconnaissance drive-bys when he saw Dent’s red Corvette leaving through the gate. He was alone, meaning that Bellamy was inside and, for the time being, inaccessible.
Ray decided to follow Dent. And when he parked his car and went into a Starbucks, Ray realized that he wasn’t just lucky, he was brilliant, because he saw the answer to the problem of how to get past that damn gate.
He left the car he’d stolen earlier in an adjacent parking lot and helped himself to Dent Carter’s sweet ride. And, as if good fortune wasn’t already with him, it began to rain buckets, which would make it difficult for the policemen at the gate to see who was behind the wheel of the Vette. To make it even more difficult for them to see into the car, Ray turned the headlights on high beam.
It was so easy he’d wanted to laugh. The two cops who’d waved to Dent when he drove out waved to Ray when he pulled up to the gate, which opened even before he came to a full stop. Abraca-fucking-dabra. He figured the cops had been given a transmitter so they could control who went in and out.
Getting inside the house posed no problem. Bellamy herself ran out to greet him. He had her in an inescapable bear hug before she realized he wasn’t Dent.
She seemed too shocked even to scream, which was good. It saved him from having to hit her. He didn’t want her unconscious. He wanted her awake and terrified.
But as he lifted her off her feet and started up the front steps with her, she began to struggle. “No, please, my stepmother is upstairs.”
“I’ll get to her. Two for the price of one. But you first.”
She doubled her efforts to wiggle out of his grip and kicked him solidly in the shin. It hurt so bad that as soon as they were across the threshold and he’d pushed the front door closed, he thrust her from him so hard she went hurtling forward and landed on the stone-tile floor.
Splintering pain shot from Bellamy’s
shoulder and hip, which had sustained most of the impact. But she had no time to dwell on the pain because Ray was whipping a knife from its scabbard.
He brandished it at her, and she saw that the blade was already streaked with dried blood. Moody’s? Bile filled the back of her throat as the image of his open neck flashed into her mind. That was what Ray would do to her if she didn’t prevent it.
He grinned down at her and took two lumbering steps forward.
She put a hand up. “Listen, Ray, you don’t want to do this.”
“Hell I don’t. You killed Susan and let…”
“No. No I didn’t.”