At his request, she’d met him at Coney Island—he’d provided a limo. Since he’d steered her almost immediately to the House of Horrors, she assumed he wanted the adrenaline rush, and a female who’d gasp and cling.
So she gasped, and she clung, and remembered to tremble when he worked up the nerve to kiss her.
“It all seems so real!”
“It’s a favorite of mine,” he whispered in her ear.
Something howled in the dark, and with it, on a rattle of chains, something shambled closer.
“It’s coming!”
“This way.” He tugged her along, keeping her close as overhead came the flutter of bat wings. The wind from them stirred her hair.
A holo-image of a monster wielding a bloodied ax leaped forward and she felt the air from the strike shiver by her shoulder. He yanked her through a door that clanged shut behind them. On a yelp of surprise and disgust, she swiped at cobwebs. Caught up, she spun to try to escape them, and came face-to-face with a severed head on a spike.
Her scream, completely genuine, ripped out as she stumbled back. She managed a nervous laugh.
“God, who thinks of this stuff?”
She thought fleetingly that her last date had been a romp on silk sheets with a follow-up in an indoor wave pool. But no one knew better than Ava that it took all kinds.
And this kind got his kicks in the torture chamber of an amusement park.
The light fluttered, a dozen guttering candles with the red glow of a fire where a hooded man, stripped to the waist, heated an iron spike.
The air stank, she thought. They’d made it just a little too real, so it reeked of sweat and piss and what she thought was blood. The scream and prayers of the tortured and the damned crowded the room where stones dripped and the eyes of rats glowed in the corners.
A woman begged for mercy as her body stretched horribly on the rack. A man shrieked at the lash of a barbed whip.
And her date for the evening watched her with avid eyes.
Okay, she thought, she got the drift.
“You want to hurt me? Do you want me to like it?”
He smiled a little shyly as he came toward her. But the pace of his breathing had increased. “Don’t fight.”
“You’re stronger. I’d never win.” Playing the game, she let him back her into a shadowy corner behind a figure moaning as it turned on a spit. “I’ll do anything you want.” She worked some fear into her voice. “Anything. I’m your prisoner.”
“I paid for you.”
“And your slave.” She watched pleasure darken his eyes, kept her voice low, throaty. “What do you want me to do?” Let her breath catch. “What are you going to do to me?”
“What I brought you here to do. Now be very still.”
He pressed against her as he reached in his pocket, into the sheath hugging his thigh.
He kissed her once, squeezed his free hand on her breast to feel her heart pump against his palm.
She heard something, a slide, a click. “What’s that?”
“Death,” he said, and stepping back drove the blade into that pumping heart.
7
WITH HER MIND CROWDED WITH DATA AND theories, Eve crawled into bed. Her body clock yearned to be wound down, turned off, and rebooted after a solid downtime. She curved into Roarke as his arm came around her, felt everything in her give in, relax.
She closed her eyes.
Her ’link signaled.
“Hell. Lights on, ten percent. Block video.” She shoved herself up, answered. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. See the officer, Coney Island, House of Horrors, main entrance. Possible homicide.
“Acknowledged. Contact Peabody, Detective Delia. Probability of connection with Houston investigation?”
Unclear, but flagged.
“On my way. Shit,” she said as she cut transmission.
“I’ll drive.” Roarke stood, shook his head when she frowned. “I’ve a business interest in the park, as you know. I’ll be contacted—” He broke off when his ’link signaled. “Now, I’d say.”
She didn’t argue. He’d probably be handy.
She dressed, programmed a couple of coffees to go.
And said nothing when he chose one of his topless toys to zing them through the warm summer night. The wind and the caffeine would clear her brain and reboot the body clock a few hours ahead of schedule.
“What kind of security’s on that place?” she asked him.
“Minimal as it’s an amusement. Standard scanners at the entrances to the park, a network of cams and alarms throughout. Security personnel do routine sweeps.”
“A night like this, it’s probably packed.”
“From a business standpoint, one hopes. We’ve had very little trouble since we opened, and that on the minor side.” He flicked a glance in her direction. “I’m no happier to have a dead body there than you are.”
“Dead body’s less happy than both of us.”
“No doubt.” But it troubled him on an elemental level, not only because it was primarily his, but because it was meant to be a place for fun, for families, for children to be dazzled and entertained.
It was meant to be safe and, of course, he knew no place was really safe. Not a pretty Irish wood, not an amusement park.
“Security’s duping the discs now,” he told her. “You’ll have the originals, and they’ll scan the copies. They’ll be enhanced, as the lighting in that amusement is deliberately low, and there are sections with fog or other effects. We use droids, anitrons, and holos,” he said before she could ask. “There’s no live performers.”
“The stuff runs on a timer?”
“No. It’s motion activated, programmed to follow the customer’s movements. As for timing, there’s a feature that funnels customers in their groups, or individually if they come in alone, into different areas to enhance and personalize the experience.”
“So the victim and killer, if they came in together, could and would have been alone—at least for a portion of the ride, or whatever it is.”
“Sensory experience. There are sections inaccessible to minors under fifteen to conform with codes.”
“You’ve been through it.”
“Yes, several times during the design and construction stages. It’s appropriately gruesome and terrifying.”
“Won’t scare me. I have the gruesome and the terrifying greet me at the door every freaking day.” She smiled to herself, thinking it was too bad Summerset wasn’t around to hear her get that one off.
The lights shimmered and sparkled against the night sky, and music vied with the happy screams of people zooming on the curves and loops of the coasters, spinning on wheels that flashed and boomed.
She didn’t much see the appeal of paying for something that tore screams out of your throat.
On the midway, people paid good money to try to win enormous stuffed animals or big-eyed dolls she considered less appealing than rides that tore screams out of the throat. They shot, tossed, blasted, and hammered with abandon or strolled around with soy dogs or cream cones or sleeves of fries and whopping drinks.
It smelled a little like candy-coated sweat.
The House of Horrors was just that, a huge, spooky-looking house with lights flickering in the windows where the occasional ghoul, ghost, or ax murderer would pop out to snarl or howl.
A big, burly uniform and a skinny civilian secured the entrance.
“Officer.”
“Lieutenant. We’ve got the building secured. One officer, one park security inside with the DB. We’ve got a guard on every egress. Did an e-scan. No civilians left inside.”
“Why is it still running?” she asked, studying the door knocker in the form of a bat with shivering, papery wings and glowing red eyes.
“I didn’t want to make the determination to shut down, considering you might have wanted to go through as the vic had.”
It was a reasonable call. “We’ll do a replay when and if. For now, shut it down.”
“I can do that from the box.” The skinny guy glanced at Eve, then sent Roarke a sorrowful look. “Sir. I have no idea how this could’ve happened.”
“We’ll want to find that out. For now, shut it down.”
“I need to go inside,” the civilian said to Eve. “Just inside to the box.”
“Show me.” She nodded to the uniform, who uncoded the door.