A Profiler's Case for Seduction

chapter 17



Dora regained consciousness in agonizing increments of sensation. Her head ached with a nauseating intensity that kept her eyes closed for several long moments.

She became aware of an ache in her arms, an unnatural position of her legs and a general heaviness in her body. What had happened? What was wrong with her?

She tried to open her mouth, to ask for help, and it was only when she realized she couldn’t open her mouth that full consciousness claimed her, along with a sense of panic that nearly stopped her heart.

Ben. She now remembered Ben coming to her door and the cloth that had been pressed against her nose and mouth and the plunge into darkness.

She needed to run. She had to escape, and yet she couldn’t move. Her eyes finally flickered open and she couldn’t make sense of anything.

Her brain felt wrapped in cotton, unclear and foggy. It was an effort to keep her half-slitted eyes open. She remembered this horrible feeling from the days when she’d drunk herself into a stupor.

Was that what she had done? No, it had been Ben. He’d done something to her. He’d drugged her and slapped duct tape over her mouth so she couldn’t scream for help.

She hovered above a crowd of people, her brain trying to make sense of things. Was this was it was like to die? Was she having an out-of-body experience and watching the people left behind as her soul ascended to heaven?

That didn’t make sense. She was certain that when a soul left the world, it didn’t go with duct tape across the mouth. Her head felt heavy and she suddenly realized there was something on it, a helmet.

She lowered her gaze and saw that she wore a blue football jersey and long blue pants. Who had dressed her like this? And why? She fought against the drowsiness that threatened to pull her into darkness.

As the layer of cotton that wrapped her brain parted a little bit, horror shot an arctic wind through her and she frantically tried to move. But Ben had done a good job. Her arms were outstretched to either side, tied in several places along the pole that made a cross, and whatever drug he’d given her made it difficult for her to even attempt to get free.

She was lashed to a tall pole by her arms, around her chest and waist, at her knees and feet. Below her the crowd awaited the traditional lighting of the bonfire. The noise was so loud that even if she could scream for help nobody would be able to discern her cry for help among the revelers.

She was in the center of the bonfire pit.

Oh, God, as all the pieces finally fell into place she screamed beneath the duct tape.

They were going to light the fire to burn the effigy of the opposing team player.

She was the effigy.

* * *

The crowd was huge. People jostled against Mark, drunken alumni and students falling into him, clapping him on the back in good-old-boy fashion as he tried to find Ben or Melinda in the throng of people.

Too many people, he thought frantically. He weaved his way around a table where several kegs of beer were set up to be sold by the glassful along with hot dogs and marshmallows.

The effigy was already in place above the crowd and it wouldn’t be long before the fire would be set. So, where were Ben and Melinda? They had to be here someplace. And where on earth was Dora?

Mark wanted to weep in despair. He wanted to run to the bench where he’d first encountered Dora after class and sit there and wait for her to emerge from the building, safe and sound and so achingly beautiful to him.

He needed to have her in his arms right now, her heart beating against the frantic beat of his own. Melinda might have deemed her sister a failure, but Mark knew the strength that flowed through Dora’s veins, the determination that would see her through the rest of her life. She wasn’t a failure and he had to find her now.

In the distance he saw the flash of an FBI windbreaker and Joseph Garcia’s dark hair. He worked his way toward the fellow agent and when he reached him he saw that Joseph’s eyes were as dark as Mark felt his heart had become.

“No sighting of either suspect yet,” Joseph said. “I’ve had a kid vomit on my feet, a hot dog shoved in my face and an inebriated woman flash her boobs at me, but I haven’t been able to find anyone who knows where Ben or Melinda might be.”

Mark knew the only way to find Dora was to find the two murderers. Otherwise, he had no idea where to search, where she might be stashed...or already buried.

“Some of the deputies checked out the area where the other three murder victims were found,” Joseph continued, “and there were no signs that anything had been disturbed or a new grave had been added.”

Mark found little relief in the information. “There’s no way Ben and Melinda can know we’re on to them. There’s no way for them to know about the evidence found in the box at Amanda’s apartment. So, they should be in business-as-usual mode.”

Joseph frowned. “This isn’t a night of business as usual for anyone.”

The two men parted to continue the search. Despite the ever-growing throng of people and the increasing noise level, Mark could hear the stutter of his heartbeat inside his head.

We have to find her.

We have to find her.

It was a mantra that ticked to the beat of his heart.

Mark stepped beneath a tree to catch his breath, his gaze sweeping the people, seeking a sleek-haired, tall and beautiful woman. Melinda had to be here someplace. She would thrive on the chaos, the primal elements that whirled in the air.

He leaned back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. The sound of the crowd faded as he went deep inside his head, as he attempted to access the minds of the killers.

He dismissed Ben, for he knew the grad student was nothing more than Melinda’s inferior partner. Melinda would be the mastermind of everything. She was the Sociopath in Society.

She’d probably seduced the three dead men at some point in time and it had been easy for her to call them to the place where they met their death. She would revel in the power of the kill. She would find pleasure in knowing that she was smarter than everyone else, that she not only had managed to provide herself an alibi, but also had enjoyed labeling the men as a species substandard to herself.

Liar. Cheater. Thief. And failure.

The first three murders had been shocking. He frowned, trying to crawl deeper inside her mind. There was no way she’d go off someplace quietly to kill Dora. She would want shocking drama, horrifying theater, and tonight she had a huge audience to play to.

His eyes snapped open and he stared up and straight ahead to the effigy. Melinda would need more than what she’d gotten when she’d killed those men. Her thrill level would need to be raised. She would want... She would need to make a big statement with Dora’s death.

Was it possible? From this distance the effigy looked like what it was supposed to be, a straw-stuffed football player from the opposing team. But he was too far away to be sure.

With his heart renewing a beat of frantic fear, he started forward, needing to get closer to the fire pit, closer to the figure hanging on the cross like a witch ready to be burned at the stake.

Surely it wasn’t possible. His brain attempted to deny the thought that tried to take hold. It would be the height of madness. It would be a horrific crime that would haunt the campus for decades to come. And Melinda would like that, a little voice whispered.

Moving quicker now, he shoved people aside, unmindful of anything but getting closer. The crowd was thicker the closer he got to the pit, and frustration gnawed him as he struggled to make forward progress.

He had to be wrong, he told himself as he advanced closer and closer. He finally reached the edge of the pit and peered up. It was virtually impossible to see what might be under the helmet from his vantage point.

He scanned the body, seeking some clue that the effigy might be something other than what it was supposed to be. Straw hung out of the end of the long-sleeved blue jersey that covered the torso and in the midst of the straw Mark spied the pale white skin of a hand...a human hand.

Dora! Her name screamed inside his head as he threw himself into the pit. At that moment Melinda and Ben appeared on the side, a lit torch held in Melinda’s hand.

Everything happened simultaneously. Mark ran for the pole that held Dora, the crowd quieted and Ben lifted a megaphone to his mouth. “Let the fun begin,” he shouted at the same time that Melinda touched the torch to the dry tinder at the base of the pit, and flames instantly licked upward, eager to devour whatever might be in their path.

The cheers turned to screams as people became aware of Mark in the center of the flames that were quickly building. Heat surrounded him along with the sting of smoke in his eyes.

The smoke rose like a killing column up the sides of the pole that held Dora. Mark gasped. He finally reached her feet and frantically tugged at the ropes that bound her. Too tight. The ropes were thick and tied in knot after knot. It would take him hours to unravel them to get her free and he didn’t have hours. He had only minutes before the fire consumed them both.

“Mark! Hey, Mark?”

Mark tore his gaze from the rope to peer beyond the flames that inched steadily closer and higher. He saw Joseph standing at the very edge. Joseph held up an ax and as Mark watched he threw it into the pit near Mark’s feet. Mark didn’t stop to wonder who in the crowd might have provided the ax; he grabbed it and began to chop at the ropes that held Dora captive.

The fire burned the bottoms of his feet through the soles of his shoes as he choked and gasped in the smoke. When he had freed her feet he reached up to chop at the next rope.

He had no idea if she was dead or not. He only knew she did nothing to aid him. He was vaguely aware of people screaming, not in revelry but in horror.

He was never going to get her down in time. The hungry flames now licked at the back of his legs, the intense heat searing through him. He paused long enough to reach down and slap his pants where flames had jumped to greedily consume the material.

Realizing he didn’t have the time to chop at all the ropes that held her upright, knowing he couldn’t reach her upper body without a ladder, he began to push on the pole, needing it to fall and praying that somehow, if she was still alive, the fall wouldn’t kill her.

He didn’t know if it was the smoke or the agony of his heart that shot tears streaming down his face; he only knew that he was the failure. He wasn’t going to be able to save her from the flames.

And then Joseph was next to him, helping him push against the pole, and Lori stepped into the fray, manning a handheld fire extinguisher that cleared the area around the base of the pole.

Mark cried out with effort as he and Joseph shoved on the pole and felt it teetering, ready to fall. The crowd of people behind the pole began chanting and Mark realized they intended to break the fall, to catch Dora.

The tears that now raced down his face were a mixture of emotions. She wasn’t going to be burned alive...but was she already dead? She hadn’t given any indication of consciousness since he’d begun working to get her down.

As the pole fell backward, several men caught it and eased it to the ground. Mark and Joseph jumped out of the fire. He had no thoughts other than those for Dora. As he pulled the helmet off her head, Joseph worked the last of the ropes that held her to the pole.

“Please...please...” Mark repeated over and over again, pulling the silver tape from her mouth and checking the pulse in her neck. He nearly sagged into a puddle as he felt the beat against his fingers. “She’s alive,” he yelled to nobody and everyone.

“An ambulance is on the way,” Lori said as she squatted down next to Mark and Dora. Mark nodded absently, his focus solely on the woman he now held in his arms.

“You have to be okay,” he whispered to her, unmindful of the people gathering around. “Dora, hang on. Help is coming.” As if summoned by his words, the sound of a siren filled the air.

It was only when Dora was loaded into the back of an ambulance and driven away that the rage took hold of Mark. He looked around at the crowd, his heart beating the thunder of anger. The flames from the fire pit burned bright, torching red and yellow colors on the faces of the spectators.

What had happened to Ben and Melinda? He’d been so intent on making sure he got Dora down that he didn’t know what the rest of the team and the local law enforcement had been doing in the meantime.

He spied Richard standing at the edge of the people and beside him was a handcuffed Melinda. He fisted his hands at his sides as he stalked toward the woman who had nearly taken away Dora’s life.

“I thought you might like to have a word with her,” Richard said as Mark approached.

“Where’s Ben?”

“On his way to the sheriff’s office in matching bracelets.”

“It was Ben’s fault,” Melinda said, tears streaking mascara down her cheeks. “He killed those men. He put Dora on the stake. I didn’t know anything about it all. He’s crazy.”

Mark raised his hands and clapped them together three times. “Stunning performance, Melinda. You should have majored in drama,” he said.

“You have to believe me. I had nothing to do with any of this,” she exclaimed.

“I’ve got your tin box.”

Her eyes narrowed and glinted with a hard stare that reminded him of his nightmares of her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The photos on the camera speak for themselves,” Mark replied. “Maybe you can teach some classes from the prison cell where you’ll spend the rest of your life.” He looked at Richard. “I’m done with her,” he said with obvious disgust. “She’s a complete failure.”

As he walked away he heard Melinda raging behind him, telling him that Dora was the failure and calling him a loser. The last thing he cared about was what a sociopathic killer thought of him and Dora.

All he wanted to do now was get to the hospital as quickly as possible and be there when Dora opened her eyes. He needed to assure himself that she was going to pull through and that the nightmare that had struck the small town of Vengeance, Texas, and her was finally over.

* * *

Dora awoke in a hospital bed alone in the room. The ache in her muscles competed with the pounding of her head. But she was safe. She was alive.

She turned her head slightly toward the window in the room, noticing by the sun that it was apparently afternoon. She’d been unconscious for the entire night and most of the day.

Flashes of memories of the night before played in her mind, the heaviness of the helmet on her head, the horror of finding herself on a stake in the center of the fire pit. Flames licking closer and the smoke choking and Mark appearing like an avenging wraith in the dark, it was all like a dream.

But it hadn’t been a dream. It had been a nightmare orchestrated by the sister she’d admired and her assistant. Melinda had not only taught courses about sociopaths, she was one.

Mark. Dora jerked up, a hand on the side of her pounding head as she searched for a button that would summon the nurse. Was Mark okay? He had been instrumental in saving her, but at what cost to himself? Was he here in this same hospital burned half to death by his heroic efforts?

Before she could find the button to summon a nurse, a tall older man walked into the room and introduced himself as Special Agent Richard Sinclair. Dora knew he was not only Mark’s superior but also his friend.

“Mark?” she asked before he could say anything else. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine.” Richard pulled up a chair next to her bed as she slumped back against the pillows. “He was here with you all night and I finally pulled him out of here and sent him back to Dallas to debrief and file his reports. I’m sure he’ll be in touch with you when he finishes up there.”

Dora nodded, although she had a feeling she wouldn’t be hearing from Mark again. He was back in his space now, the place where he belonged. She remembered that he’d planned time for his daughter the next day and by then he’d recognize that there was nothing for him here in Vengeance.

“If you’re feeling up to it, I’ve got some follow-up questions to ask you about what happened to you last night,” Richard said.

She nodded and for the next half hour she and Richard went over everything she could remember from the moment Ben had stepped into her house the day before until she’d opened her eyes just before Richard had arrived.

Their conversation was interrupted once by a doctor who stepped in to check on her and confirmed that she had been drugged with a heavy dose of tranquilizers administered through a needle. The doctor proclaimed her ready for release and Richard offered to take her home.

An hour later Dora sat in Richard’s passenger seat as he drove her from the hospital to her house. Although the doctor had assured Dora that she’d slept off the effects of the drugs, a bone weariness made her want nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep for hours...for days.

Her sister had tried to kill her and Mark was gone. She looked at Richard and still tried to make sense of everything that had happened. “Melinda killed those three men?”

Richard nodded. “Along with Ben’s help.”

“But why?” Somehow she needed to make sense of this.

Richard didn’t reply until he’d parked at her curb. He shut off the engine and turned to look at her, a hint of compassion in his eyes. “I believe she orchestrated her own kidnapping and then the murders because she could and for little other reason. She got a kick out of watching all of us scramble around like headless ants, unable to figure out the pieces to put the puzzle together.”

“How did Mark know I was in the fire pit? That I was going to be burned to death?”

A smile curved Richard’s lips. “Because he’s a special man and somehow he managed to get into Melinda’s head and anticipate what her next move might be.”

Dora shifted her gaze out the front window. “She and Ben left cards on the other victims. Was there a card for me?” She turned back to look at Richard, who frowned. “There was, wasn’t there. What did it say?”

“Melinda had a card in her pocket that said ‘failure.’ We believe she intended to place it on you sometime after the fire went out and before anyone realized that the effigy was a murder victim.”

Failure. She waited for the word to find purchase in her heart, for her to embrace what her sister had apparently believed about her. She waited for the fracture of self-confidence to occur, and when it didn’t, she knew that she had truly moved away from her past.

“Thank you, Agent Sinclair,” she said as she opened the passenger car door.

“Dora, you’ve been very brave through all of this. You should be proud of yourself,” Richard said.

She got out of the car and leaned down to smile at him. “I am,” she replied.

Richard had told her that her house had been locked up by officers who had been there to process the scene for evidence. She had been taken from the house without her purse or keys but had told Richard she had a key hidden outside that she could use to get back in.

As she approached her front door, she tried to blank her mind. Monday morning, life would return to whatever the new normal would be. All she had to do was get through the rest of today and tomorrow and then it would be back to business as usual.

While digging into the bottom of a planter on her porch for her spare key, she wondered who would be teaching Melinda’s courses. Would they bring somebody in from another college to cover for the professor killer?

Her sister, the killer.

As she stepped into her house, the silence surrounded her, threatened to consume her. Her thoughts continued to play in her head.

Samuel and Melinda had obviously been cut from the same cloth, choosing to walk the path of monsters while Dora and Micah had made the decision to navigate through the murky waters of life with a conscience.

She thought about calling Micah to tell him everything that had happened, but instead she sank down on her sofa with memories of Mark filling her head. She hated that she hadn’t had an opportunity to thank him for being smart enough, special enough to save her life. She hated that she hadn’t had a chance to tell him goodbye.

He was a special man who deserved a special woman, and she wasn’t that woman. Yes, he was back in Dallas where he belonged, hopefully being a father to his little girl, and where he would eventually find the woman who could keep the darkness away from him, who could be his safe place to fall.

Wearily she closed her eyes and fell asleep and dreamed of a life with Mark, and when she finally awoke it was with the trace of tears on her face.

* * *

Sunday might have been a long day if not for the surprising support that came from faculty and students for Dora. Her doorbell rang at a steady pace as people stopped by to bring her casseroles and flowers.

She hadn’t realized how many lives she had touched working in the bookstore and attending classes; she hadn’t realized how many friends she’d made on campus.

By the time five o’clock came she was tired, but it was an exhaustion brought on by pleasant conversation and interaction with sympathetic and supportive people.

Just after five her doorbell rang again and she looked out her window to see Amanda Burns standing on her porch. Dora opened the door and Amanda nearly fell into her arms, crying about how sorry she was for what Dora had suffered.

Dora led the weeping young woman to the sofa where they sat down side by side. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell somebody my suspicions earlier,” Amanda said as she grabbed hold of Dora’s hands. “I should have told Mark everything I felt, everything I feared before he came to me last night and you were in trouble, but I was so afraid.”

Dora squeezed her hands to comfort her. “It’s okay, Amanda. I know what it’s like to be afraid.” She thought of those days when she’d believed she was being stalked, although Mark had assumed the stalker had been his. Dora realized now it had been Ben who had been watching her, checking her schedule and assessing when she would be vulnerable.

She released Amanda’s hands and sat back against the cushion. “At least you gave Mark the information you did in time for him to help me.”

“I just admire you so much,” Amanda said, the words surprising Dora.

“Admire me? Why?”

“Because you’re such a nice person and you’re so smart. I admire that you’re obviously here to better yourself, to better your life by getting a degree.” Amanda frowned. “I thought I wanted to be just like Melinda, so powerful and so in control. But I’d much rather be like you.”

A lump formed in Dora’s throat. “You’ll never know how much that means to me,” she replied. “You know, I admired her, too. I wanted to be just like her...smart and cool and able to command respect from others. But we’re okay, Amanda. You’re a smart woman who has her whole future ahead of her and you don’t have to look up to anyone. Just look inside.”

As Dora spoke the words, she realized that she had reached a place of peace inside herself. She didn’t have to prove a thing to anyone. She had become the woman she was meant to be...strong enough to survive a horrible attack by her sister, the loss of a man she loved, and smart enough to continue her path to her own great future.

Minutes after Amanda left, Dora had just made it back to the sofa when a knock fell on the door. She assumed Amanda had forgotten something. She pulled open the door and her breath caught in her chest.

There he stood, with that darned sexy smile curling his lips and a simmer of something magic in his eyes. “Mark,” she said, half-breathless. “You were the last person I expected to see this evening.”

“And why is that?” He swept past her, his clean male scent eddying in the air around her. She quickly closed the door and hurried after him.

He sat down on the sofa and stretched an arm across the back, looking as if he belonged there. “I just assumed your work was done here,” she said, trying to halt the desperate stuttering of her heart.

“Dora, my work here is far from done,” he replied, and patted the sofa next to him.

She didn’t want to sit next to him. She didn’t want to feel his warmth and smell his familiar scent and know that when he’d tied up all his loose ends he’d be gone. Yet, despite her reluctance, her feet moved her across the room and she sank down on the sofa next to him.

Instantly he leaned toward her and placed his hands on each of her cheeks. He held her gaze with the crazy intensity that made her feel like he was looking inside her very soul.

“Did you really believe I would just leave without seeing you again? Without assuring myself that you were really and truly okay? Did you really believe I would just go and not tell you goodbye?”

Before she realized what he intended, he took her lips with his and she could do nothing but respond to the kiss that fired a thousand emotions inside her.

When he’d finished kissing her soundly, he leaned back slightly, but still held his hands on the sides of her face. “Did you really believe I was just going to leave without a plan for our future together?”

“Future together?” Her heart began to beat like the wings of a hummingbird, fast and frantic to keep her hovering in the air.

He finally dropped his hands from her face and instead grabbed her hands with his, entwining their fingers as if to keep her captive. “You know we belong together, Dora. I love you and I can’t imagine going forward with my life without you in it.”

An automatic protest rose to Dora’s lips and she started to voice it and then stopped. She saw the light shining from Mark’s eyes, a light that didn’t lie. He loved her and she deserved to be loved.

“I love you, Mark.” She said the words tremulously. “But, I don’t know how we go forward from here.”

He stood and pulled her up and into an embrace. “One day at a time. You finish your schooling and I go back to work in Dallas. That’s only a short drive away and every spare minute that we have we can spend together, building something amazing, something that will last forever.”

She believed him. She knew that if they wanted it badly enough they could make it work, and she wanted it...him...badly. “When I graduate I could probably find a job in Dallas,” she said as she gazed up into his beautiful eyes.

He tightened his arms around her. “I’m counting on it, and you can count on me, Dora. If you give me your heart, I vow that I will take good care of it.”

“I never doubted it,” she said just before he claimed her lips once again in a kiss that stole her breath and replaced it with hopes and dreams she’d never thought possible.

She knew that Mark would take good care of her heart, because he was a special man...and because she was his special woman.