That realization produced a fresh wave of wrath, but he mastered it. Despite a brief image that flashed through his mind, he knew he would leave the room. He refused to become one of those pathetic creatures who raped with objects-a sure sign of emasculation. He would never let that be said of him.
Perhaps Donovan was right. She had lost her appeal. That must be it. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced it was true. And perhaps he had strayed too far from his original purpose for her. Things were not working out as they should. He sheathed the knife, closed the phone, and thought about this in the near darkness.
Another cough came from Violet’s room, interrupting his thoughts. He again used the light from the phone to navigate his way into the bathroom, then to the door on the other side. He opened it and stepped through, closing the door quietly behind him.
Donovan said Irene could care for the sick. Well, he seemed to be running a damned hospital in here.
Violet was clearly awake. He could have turned on the lights. But he continued to use the phone, enjoying the widening of her eyes when she realized who was leaning over her bed. She was blinking rapidly, one of her occasional tics, exacerbated by fear, he thought. He had asked Kai if she could communicate answers to yes or no questions by blinking, but Kai had said no, the blinking was uncontrolled. “The doctor tried to get her to do that after she fell,” Kai had said. “Kept trying from the time when she was first conscious again, but it didn’t work.”
“Are you keeping secrets, Violet?” Parrish asked her now. “I’m damned sure that was no ordinary fall down the stairs. How long did you lie there, I wonder, before he could bring a friend home to ‘discover’ you?”
The rapid blinking continued. Parrish smiled at her, then leaned over and took her mouth with his. She lay passively, having no real choice to do otherwise. She could have moved her head or bitten him, he supposed, but she let him do as he liked, until he moved a hand to one of her breasts.
She made inarticulate gurgling sounds.
He drew back, angry.
Memories of the seemingly endless hours in which he had lain paralyzed flooded his mind. Memories of making that same gurgling sound. A time when he had first suffered head and spinal injuries, thanks to Irene Kelly.
Infuriated, he moved toward the room in which Irene lay asleep and thought of smothering her to death. Thought of choking her to death with his hands. Let that fucking bitch gurgle!
No. Nothing so quick for her.
Some slight rustling sound, one of the few small shoulder movements Violet could manage, brought his attention back to her.
“Your son has been shot,” he told her and saw her close her eyes. He took her jaw in a strong hand and pressed hard, until she opened her eyes again. “Be good and I’ll try to see that he lives.”
She closed her eyes again, and this time he let go. “I’ve brought a new nurse for you,” he said, but she kept her eyes closed. Ah well. Time enough to have fun with that.
He checked on Kai, who was sleeping soundly, looking more boyish than usual. What a troublesome lad you’ve turned out to be. Parrish recognized a flicker of some strange response to watching him sleep. Not fatherly love. Not even parental affection, really. Perhaps Donovan had said it best-curiosity. What of himself was there in Kai? Would Kai grow, as he aged, to be more like his father?
Or would Kai fail to conquer his impulsiveness?
There was a legacy to protect here, and that brought Parrish’s thoughts back to Irene Kelly.
He suddenly realized that by going out through Violet’s room, he had not locked the door between Irene’s room and the hall. He hurriedly checked to see that she was still there. She was, still sleeping soundly. The windowless room was stuffy. He would come back later, when the drugs had worn off enough to bring her to awareness. No use terrifying someone who would not remember being terrified.
THIRTY-TWO
I awoke in a dimly lit room, in a bed that was large and comfortable-and not mine. I felt muzzy, as if I had a hangover. It slowly dawned on me that I was dressed in a sweater and sweatpants that were not mine.
I rolled over and found myself face-to-face with Nick Parrish.
For a brief moment I lay paralyzed, too frightened even to draw breath for a scream. Then he smiled at me. I scrambled out of the bed in horror, coming quickly to my feet, and was hit with a wave of dizziness and nausea. I saw an open door and stumbled through it, slamming it behind me and fumbling the lock until it clicked into place.
By the light of the night-light, I found a wall switch and flipped it up.
And jumped as I saw someone next to me-my own life-sized reflection.
I was in a bathroom.
I held my weight against the door, frantically looking for something to set against it to create more of a barrier than the flimsy lock. Unless I got the time and tools together to disassemble the toilet or the sink, there was nothing in the bathroom with enough weight to make even a slight difference.
There was another door, on the opposite side of the room, and I thought of trying to escape through it. But I hesitated, not knowing if it really would be an escape. Who or what might be on the other side? I carefully checked that the other door was locked and hurried back to lean against the one between me and Parrish.
I heard him moving around the room. I tried to stop panicking, which was nearly impossible. It’s all well and good to tell yourself that freaking out won’t help, but I was discovering that when you wake up in a strange place with a serial killer lying next to you, it takes a while to get a grip.
Eventually I was able to think about defending myself, beyond leaning against a door. I was still feeling confused about where I was and how I got there, but given my immediate danger, I set that aside and surveyed the room for possible makeshift weapons.
There were some toiletries on the vanity counter that looked as if they had been taken from a hotel. The thought of sharpening the end of the toothbrush into a weapon occurred to me. Alas, the toothbrush looked too flimsy to withstand whittling. But I’d see what I could do with it.
A quick look in the cabinet under the sink didn’t reveal any cleaning supplies, which dashed my hope of throwing a chemical into Parrish’s face before running past him.
As I was considering breaking the vanity into pieces to be used as a barricade between the toilet and the door, he knocked, startling me.
“I’m going to leave you for a while, Irene.” He laughed. “But don’t worry, I’ll continue where we left off.”
I heard him move toward the bedroom door, heard it open and close, heard the sound of a dead-bolt lock clicking into place.
And didn’t trust that he had left the room.
I sat down on the toilet and tried to gather my wits. That was difficult, because the last thing I clearly remembered was listening to Donovan tell me about his missing daughter. To go from that to waking up in bed with Parrish… I shuddered.
What had happened to me?
What had been done to me?
I didn’t feel any pain or discomfort other than a bad headache and mild queasiness-but that was far from enough to reassure me. I had a vague recollection of being told to take a shower…
Obviously, I had been drugged. But after that?
It wasn’t hard to figure out that the person who had drugged me was Donovan, and that he had given me a roofie or something else that had wiped out my memories of most of what had happened to me in the time since. How much time? I had no way of knowing. I could have spent hours under the control of Nick Parrish.
A combination of fear and revulsion made my stomach clench.
I told myself to calm down, that I didn’t have enough facts to know what had happened to me, and no matter what had happened, there was nothing I could do about it now. I was alive. I wasn’t tied up. I wasn’t, for that matter, nude. The sweater and sweatpants were a little big on me, and not mine, but I was clothed.