"No, I"m sorry, I should have-"
"There are lots of things you should have done. Could have done, but it"s too late. You know it."
"No! I can"t believe-"
"That"s right, you can"t can"t and therein lies the problem. I hope that you know what you experienced is sacred and as such it"s never to be talked about. Can you keep your tongue? Can you?" and therein lies the problem. I hope that you know what you experienced is sacred and as such it"s never to be talked about. Can you keep your tongue? Can you?"
"Yes!"
"There is a chance then, a slim one, but a chance that you will be forgiven."
Her heart did a stupid little flip. She thought he might be lying again, tantalizing her in order to keep her from going to the police or campus security.
"But if you say a word, then I can"t keep you safe."
"You"re threatening me?"
"I"m warning you."
Dear G.o.d. Tears welled in her eyes, clogged her throat. Misery surrounded her heart. She couldn"t give him up. Tears welled in her eyes, clogged her throat. Misery surrounded her heart. She couldn"t give him up.
"I love you."
He paused a minute, the silence heavy, then said, "I know."
The phone went dead. She stared at it a minute, the pent-up tears sliding down her cheeks, falling onto her chest. This was wrong, so wrong. She loved him. LOVED him. "No," she wailed softly, feeling as if someone had ripped out her very soul. She was hollow inside without his love. Empty. A useless vessel.
She was sobbing now, hiccuping even as she tried all sorts of mental panaceas.
There are other men.
"But not like him," she said aloud, "not like him." She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked herself, cradling her body. She tried not to dwell on the realization that she would never kiss him again, never touch him, never make love to him, but the thought was always at the back of her mind. Through her tears she gazed across the thick pile of her carpet to the corner that housed her desk.
On top of the desk she saw her computer, a few pictures, not of him-he wouldn"t stand for it-but of two of her friends. Beside the framed photographs was a potted Christmas cactus still in bloom and a cup that held pencils, pens, and a pair of scissors. Sharp scissors.
She bit her lip. Did she have the nerve to end it all?
He"s not worth it.
"Yes, he is." She could sacrifice herself, show him just how much she loved him, spill her own d.a.m.ned blood!
If only she had trusted him blindly, if only she was like the others, if only...if only she hadn"t drawn Kristi Bentz into this. He would still love her. Still caress her. Still tell her she was beautiful.
She squeezed her eyes shut and fell to the floor, where she curled into a fetal position. Again she rocked herself on the thick carpet, but it was no use. When she opened her eyes again, she was focused on the scissors. Twin snipping blades that could easily slice through her skin and open a vein or an artery.
The irony didn"t escape her.
Had she been willing to trade her jeweled cross for a vial of her own blood, she wouldn"t now be contemplating suicide and dying for her love.
The microwave dinged loudly. A few kernels kept popping, sounding like gunfire. Jay had been silent, processing for long minutes, as had Kristi.
"You"ve worried me," he finally said. "I think I should leave Bruno with you."
Kristi managed a half laugh. She"d wanted him to hear her, believe her, but she didn"t need another d.a.m.n savior. Her father was enough. "Mrs. Calloway would love love that monster in here. I can"t have pets." She walked to the microwave and gingerly removed the plump, slightly burned bag. that monster in here. I can"t have pets." She walked to the microwave and gingerly removed the plump, slightly burned bag.
He glanced pointedly over to the water and food dishes on the floor near the refrigerator. "Looks like you already do."
She opened the bag and steam escaped in a b.u.t.tery cloud. "Houdini is a stray. He doesn"t live here, really." She noticed the skepticism in his expression and added, "I don"t have a litter box. So the answer is a big N-O to the dog, but thanks, just the same."
"Then I"ll stay."
She sucked in a quick breath. "Uh..." Her eyes met his again. "I don"t think that would be such a hot idea. And what would be a worse one is if you had any thoughts, any thoughts at all, of explaining this to my dad."
"He might be able to help."
"Not yet," she insisted, pouring the popped corn and blackened unpopped kernels into a bowl. "Later."
Rubbing the back of his neck, Jay looked out the window toward the campus. Just then he heard the sound of the chapel bells tolling off the hour through one slightly open window.
Midnight.
The witching hour.
"On top of everything else, I don"t like the fact that you"re living in Tara At.w.a.ter"s apartment. That"s too coincidental to me."
She carried the bowl to the desk and shoved aside her paper clip cup to make room for it. "I found the apartment over the Internet. I called and rented it before I even knew Tara had lived here, or that I was going to get so involved." She plucked a few popped kernels from the bowl and plopped them into her mouth, holding the bowl toward Jay, silently inviting him to join in. He took a small handful. "At the time I didn"t even know Tara At.w.a.ter"s name, or that she was one of the missing coeds. I mean, I"d vaguely heard about them, of course. My dad had brought up the fact that some of the students might have disappeared, and there was a bit about them on the news, not a lot, or not a lot that I was aware of. At the time, I thought it was all conjecture. No one knew for certain they"d been abducted. I mean, no one still does. The fact that I ended up with one of the apartments is probably because most people already had their leases set for the school year. I signed up for January cla.s.ses, so I was looking in December, when there weren"t a lot of apartments available."
"You sound as if you"re trying to convince yourself."
She smiled faintly. "Okay...it"s a little freaky, yeah. But if you think about it logically, it really is just a coincidence."
"Uh-huh. And then you just happen just happen to end up living here in Tara At.w.a.ter"s apartment and then you to end up living here in Tara At.w.a.ter"s apartment and then you just happen just happen to a.s.sign yourself the duty of becoming Nancy Drew in The Case of the Missing Coeds?" to a.s.sign yourself the duty of becoming Nancy Drew in The Case of the Missing Coeds?"
"I was interested anyway and then Lucretia asked for my help."
"Lucretia? Lucretia...." He frowned, thinking back to place the name. "Didn"t you have a roommate you hated named-"
"Yep. She"s one and the same." Kristi explained about running into Lucretia, how she was worried about the missing girls but was afraid to say anything because she"d just been hired by members of the administration who were taking the stance that nothing was wrong. "I told Lucretia I"d look into it," she finished.
"I still don"t like you living here alone." It felt to Jay like everything was slipping a little, "off" in a way he couldn"t define.
"It"s just an apartment. Sorry, the dog can"t stay. Neither can you. End of story." She motioned to her charts again, then pointed to the poster dedicated to Tara At.w.a.ter. "Back to the colors. Tara"s in pink, Monique is green, and Rylee is in blue. You can see that I"ve listed places, people, and things that they might have in common, then connected them. The connections show two or three or four colors."
He took in all the information. The overlapping data, where the colored lines converged, aside from a few stray friends or places, was the missing girls" cla.s.s schedules. Every one of them had been English majors and they all had taken cla.s.ses from a handful of professors here at the university.
Kristi said, "These girls didn"t have a lot of friends and their family life was negligible. I tried to reach the parents and pretty much came up with nothing. They had the att.i.tude of "no news is good news." All the girls had been in some kind of trouble. Drugs or alcohol or boyfriend problems, and their families gave up on them."
"What about girlfriends? You know, the BFF thing on all text messages?"
"If any of them had a Best Friend Forever, I have yet to locate her. Even Lucretia wouldn"t cop to being close to any of them." Kristi frowned, puzzled, little lines forming between her eyebrows. "I"ve tried to call Lucretia a couple of times since then, and she hasn"t called back."
"Why?"
"That"s the million-dollar question," Kristi said, picking up a pen and twirling it in her fingers as she thought. "It"s almost as if she felt like she had to do some something, so she told me about it and that was the end of it."
"She pa.s.sed the ball. Got rid of feeling guilty for thinking something was wrong, and then put it on you."
"Or she regrets even mentioning it to me."
Kristi had set the bowl back on the desk and now Jay absently reached for it. "So these girls were basically loners. Or, at least alone in the world."
"I"ve talked to people in their cla.s.ses and some coworkers, and what they said over and over again was, "I didn"t really know her," or "she was pretty closed off," or "she kept to herself," that sort of thing."
Jay studied her charts again, focusing on the areas where the lines met and intertwined. He pointed to the cla.s.s schedules. "Each of them took writing from Preston, Shakespeare from Emmerson, journalism from Senegal, and The Influence of Vampyrism from Grotto?" He felt a chill slide through him. "Christ, Kristi, this is your your schedule." schedule."
"I know."
"You know?"
She shrugged. "It"s really not that odd. Or unique. The college curriculum is set up through computers, right? Block scheduling. Depending upon your major. So these aren"t the only students who had this curriculum, not by a long shot. And there are some variables. For example, Tara took forensics from your predecessor, Dr. Monroe, and both Monique and Rylee took a literature cla.s.s from Dr. Croft, the head of the English Department, just before they went missing. Oh, and here..." She pointed to Dionne"s schedule and tapped the notation. "Dionne took religion from Father Tony and Introduction to Criminal Justice from Professor Hollister along with the other cla.s.ses."
"Heavy schedule."
"She was fast-tracking, trying to graduate early, I think. The term she went missing she had a load of six cla.s.ses, eighteen credit-hours. And she worked part-time at a local pizza parlor. Here"s a kicker, too. All of the girls, without exception, partic.i.p.ated in Father Mathias"s morality plays, again a.s.sociated with the English Department."
"Morality plays?"
"I know. Kind of out there, isn"t it? Like something out of the Dark Ages. I haven"t really figured them out yet, but I heard a couple of girls in the cla.s.s on vampirism talking about the first one of the term being Sunday night, so I thought I"d check it out. Don"t suppose you want to come?"
"You want me to?"
Did he make it sound like a date? Probably, because Kristi backtracked fast. "No, I"ll go alone. It"ll be better. People might notice you."
"Maybe I should go."
"Nope. I mean it, Jay. This is my deal."
"I don"t like this," he muttered. If she was right, there was a psycho on the loose, abducting women from the campus; if she was wrong, something something was driving the girls away. Four missing coeds within less than two years on a campus this size was more than unusual, more than suspicious. "I can"t believe the university isn"t all over this." was driving the girls away. Four missing coeds within less than two years on a campus this size was more than unusual, more than suspicious. "I can"t believe the university isn"t all over this."
"The administration is trying to sweep it under the rug. Admissions are already down and they don"t want any more bad press. I brought it up with the dean of students and was shuffled right out of her office. Told I was imagining things and treated as if I had the plague."
"But the liability-"
"Only if you recognize it. They"re into the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" mode. Therefore the evil doesn"t exist."
"My a.s.s." He stared at the charts and shook his head. "You have to take this to the police."
"Oh, yeah, right. Think about it." She finished her drink. "Let"s say I stroll into the Baton Rouge Police Station. Who do I talk to?" she asked with a lift of her shoulders. "Probably the Missing Persons Department, right? Maybe I"ll have these charts with me. And then I"ll say...what? That I"m the hotshot New Orleans detective Rick Bentz"s daughter and you"d better pay attention to me? Even if I don"t bring him up, they"ll put two and two together and get all p.i.s.sy about jurisdiction and protocol."
A thin black cat slid through the partially open window over the sink.
"If I did anything so ludicrous, I"d be thrown out on my ear and my dad would be called on to the carpet. No thanks."
She had a point.
"Hey, Houdini," she said as the cat shot off the counter and under the couch. "Getting friendly, aren"t ya?" she joked as the cat peered suspiciously from the shadows.
Jay wasn"t about to allow the subject to be changed. "The authorities need to know what you"ve found. Maybe you could phone your father and explain-"
"Oh, sure. He"d yank me out of here so fast my head would spin."
"He couldn"t do that. You"re an adult."
She glared at him as if he were insane. "Oh, right. You tell him that! He"d either a.s.sign me a d.a.m.ned bodyguard or come and stake out this apartment himself. No, informing Detective Bentz is out of the question. I am am an adult and we"re going to do this my way." an adult and we"re going to do this my way."
"Whatever this this is." is."
"Right." She suddenly smiled at him, sensing his capitulation even though he"d been certain he"d given nothing away.
G.o.d, she was beautiful. He tried not to notice, but there it was as she stared at him with those d.a.m.nable eyes. For half a second he felt a swell of heat rise in his veins, desire tinged with memories of holding her gasping, perspiring body next to his. The back of his throat turned dry and he looked away, jabbed his hands deep into the front pockets of his pants. He set his jaw in an effort to tamp down his stupid urges. Here she was talking about abductions, the potential murder of four students, and he was still responding to her.
Which was just plain ludicrous. "I think I"d better shove off," he said.
"But you"ll help me?"
"As long as you don"t ask me to break any laws."
"Okay, I promise," she said, then blushed and looked as if she was about to bite her tongue.
She didn"t have to say why. He remembered her repeating just those words nearly a decade ago when he"d slid a tiny ring upon her finger.
"Good," he said quickly, as if he didn"t remember. No reason to dig up the past. h.e.l.l, they"d just been kids. "See ya in cla.s.s." And then he left, not even glancing over his shoulder.
Yep, he thought as he descended the stairs, he"d been right. Where Kristi Bentz was concerned he was a bona fide moron.
CHAPTER 13.
For the most part, the chat rooms were a bust.