Jack sat up on the edge of the mattress. “Sydney, you have to listen to me. You’re in a lot of danger.”
“No shit!”
“What I’m trying to say is that you need more help than your lawyer can give you. Where are you now?”
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone!”
“We need to get you protection.”
“Yeah, like the whole world wants to bend over backward to help me, Jack.”
“Listen to me. My fiancee is an FBI agent. She’s here with me. I can put her on the phone right now to talk if-”
“No! If you give her that phone, I’m hanging up.”
“All right, don’t hang up. But I want you to memorize her number,” he said, and then he gave it to her.
“I’m not calling the FBI. You’re my lawyer. You have to protect my not-guilty verdict. Please, please. I’m begging you. I can’t come back for another trial.”
“Maybe you can come back, if you call the FBI.” He blurted out Andie’s number again.
“I can’t! You have to do whatever it takes to stop that judge from throwing out the verdict. No way can I put myself in a courtroom or any other box where he can find me.”
“Who is this guy?”
“His name is Merselus.”
“Merciless?”
“Might as well be.” She spelled it.
“What’s his last name?”
“That is his last name. Or maybe not. I don’t know. He just goes by Merselus. He found me when I was in jail, said he was a Hollywood agent. When he actually followed through and got the money for the private airplane to my father, we figured he was legit. Or at least I thought my fucking dad would have checked him out to make sure he wasn’t just another crazy son of a bitch with a hard-on for Shot Mom.”
“Your father-”
“I gotta go. I gotta go right now!”
“Sydney, wait!”
“Just help me, okay? He tried to strangle me, Jack! Don’t you get it?”
Jack started to reply, but she was gone. He put the phone on the nightstand and glanced at Andie. She’d heard only one side of the conversation, and Jack wasn’t ready to share the other half. He was thinking of Celeste. And Rene. Then he touched his own neck, recalling his personal encounter with this Merselus.
Yeah, Sydney. I do get it.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Merselus entered his apartment and locked the door-two deadbolts and a chain. It was dark inside, save for the faint glow from the closet, and the room smelled of mildew from the afternoon rain. A forty-year-old roof was no match for Miami’s summer cloudbursts. Merselus could have afforded a much nicer place, but he preferred the anonymity that came with a cheap apartment, no questions asked. He didn’t need a team of Ritz-Carlton servants trying to memorize how he liked his eggs in the morning, what newspaper he preferred, or what time he wanted his bed turned down. The longer-lease apartments in his complex faced the river, but his week-to-week rental was on the street side, directly across from a nightclub. Even on the third floor, his boarded window was no barrier to the urban-jungle noise rising up from the sidewalk outside the club. Men growled like lions with an aching sack, the modern-day version of chest beating. Women laughed like hyenas in heat-some way too loud, giving away their eagerness. The pulsating music from a passing set of gangsta wheels was familiar to him, and Merselus fudged a lyric here and there until the song came clear in his head: “Not Afraid” by Eminem.
Definitely not afraid.
Merselus placed his phone on the nightstand and plugged in the charger. The glowing crystals said 2:32 A.M. He was tired, but he couldn’t lie down and close his eyes. There was something he needed more than sleep. Much more.
How Sydney had slipped through his fingers-literally-was beyond him. Prior to her release, they’d spoken to each other only on the jailhouse telephone, and she’d totally bought the Hollywood-agent story he’d fed her. Selling the movie rights to her trial was only the beginning. Sydney wanted to be a star, and her first performance had proved her a natural-that passionate embrace on the runway, as if she were reuniting with a long-lost lover, exactly the way he’d choreographed it.
In your face, Swyteck.
After three years in jail, Shot Mom would have jumped on the casting couch with the first guy to throw money at her. It was their second night together when her pants had come off. He remembered how she loved his hands, his huge strong hands, and how he’d worked her so hot that she was tasting herself from his long, wet fingers. And then he’d made his move. One hand still working her loins into a frenzy, as he remembered it, and the other rising up from her breasts to her neck. Gently at first, his hand slipped into position. Then his fingers closed around her throat, but not too much pressure, nothing too alarming, just enough to bring about the enhanced sensation of genital stimulation and oxygen deprivation. Months of planning were on the verge of becoming reality, working Sydney with both hands. There was a fine line to maintain, and it wasn’t between her wanting it and fearing it. Merselus knew from experience: They wanted it because they feared it. The line not to cross was fearing it too much. That line would be crossed only when he so chose, when it was no longer her moment, but his, for the taking. At least that had been the plan. Somehow, he’d pushed Sydney too far, too soon, and when she scratched him like a cat across the face, he instinctively let her have a taste of what he’d given Celeste Laramore. Not enough to send Sydney into a coma, but enough to put her out for at least an hour-at least as long as Swyteck had lain unconscious alongside Main Highway. Thirty minutes later, when he’d returned to check on her, he discovered how badly he’d miscalculated-how she’d fooled him. Sydney was gone.
It wasn’t surprising, he supposed, the way he’d undershot on the application of pressure to Sydney’s carotid sinus. Just two days before, he’d pushed it too far with Celeste Laramore, sending her into a coma. He’d overcorrected on Sydney and pulled back too much, allowing her to recover too fast. This was an art, not an exact science. It was all a matter of touch. He wondered if he was losing his.
No way.
Merselus got his laptop computer from the closet and carried it to the bed. He removed his shirt and opened his pants. With a click of the mouse, he entered the dark side of the Internet, the world of file swapping and peer-to-peer trading. Return to the virtual world was risky. If he weren’t careful, he could exhaust himself and chill his drive to conquer the real thing. That very possibility made him all the more angry with Sydney. It was her fault. She had left him this way, left him with no choice but to go back to this place. It was easy to get caught up, to stay here night after night, till the rage subsided.
This time, just a quickie.
Merselus knew the exact file he was looking for, and he found some loser in Budapest offering it for swap. It was cumbersome for Merselus to put himself in the position of having to trade to get his own videos back. But releasing his work to a peer-to-peer network, where it would be traded thousands of times on computers around the globe, put a safe distance between Merselus the creator, and Merselus the consumer. No one in law enforcement could ever unravel the chain of custody and trace the obscene file back to its creator. It was the pornographic version of laundering money.
Merselus clicked DOWNLOAD, and the thumbnail came into focus. At first he could see the top of a woman’s head, her chestnut hair. Then her face came into view, eyes wide with fright. Then her long, slender neck wrapped in a leather collar. She was on her knees, hands and feet bound, naked except for the collar and spiked harness that was strapped so tightly below her breasts that she was bruised and bleeding at the ribs. The image was a bit grainy, which was a good thing. It made her face a little fuzzy.