He bent over her, felt for a pulse. Steady and strong. Good, she was alive.
Grabbing her feet, he dragged her heedlessly deeper into the interior. For good measure he kicked her once in the ribs. The blow roused her for a moment, and she groaned weakly, rolling into a fetal position.
He jerked her flat on her back on the rumpled blanket he’d spread on the dirt. Wouldn’t want to get his own clothing dirty.
Bitch! Miss Self-righteous Angie Hunt, always looking down her nose at reliable, productive members of the community. Favoring the scum she surrounded herself with. He felt the familiar rage roil inside his gut, remembered his father’s disparaging words.
Straddling her, his knees on either side of her hips, he looked down at her bruised face, the gouges and cuts on her arms. He felt the first stirrings of arousal at the sight of her helplessness – not sexual – he wouldn’t screw a diseased whore like her if his life depended on it.
But a thrill at the sight of her fragile, thin neck – the cords standing out like chicken bones – made him hard. Thinking about how easy he could snap it – a twig in a child’s hand – aroused him. The utter vulnerability of the woman and the absolute power he had over her made him shudder with sexual promise.
He wrapped a hand around her throat. He could break her scrawny neck with one twist. He spread his fingers widely and felt another pulse of anticipation jitter through his body. Felt her pulse skitter beneath his touch.
She coughed and sputtered her eyes open, staring at him with round black pits in her chocolate face. “You?” she choked out. “I thought – ” Pure unadulterated hatred, mingled with fear, contorted her face.
He could hardly hear her weak words, but laughed anyway. “Yeah, what a bitch, huh?”
Her eyelids fluttered wildly as she tried to shake her head. Her eyes rolled back, showing only the whites, stark against her brown skin.
He wrapped both hands together around her throat, thumbs hooking at her larynx.
Squeezing slowly, watching her eyes jerk and close – open, jerk, and close as she gasped for air – he brought her almost to death. Then the next moment he allowed her to gasp back to life in a spate of wheezing and coughing. He repeated the actions, excited by the perverted intensity of the act. He began a third time.
All at once with a sudden burst of strength, Angie came to life, fought him, her skinny fingers clawing at his hands, desperately trying to break loose from his iron grip. Her legs kicked, her hips bucked beneath him, but he continued the rhythm – tighten and release, tighten and release.
At last the exquisite pleasure was too much and he exploded, spasmed in a jerk that bowed his body backward. Sweat dripped down his face onto her rictus of repulsion. He collapsed on her, rolled off and trembled with the greatest sense of release he’d ever felt.
That was good. He bathed in the pleasure of the moment until his sweat cooled in the dim cave. Finally he stood, stared at the corpse. His heart slowed down, his brain sprang alive, and he aimed one last kick at the lifeless body.
She didn’t flinch or move. He smiled with thin, cruel lips.
What a rush! And he didn’t even have to screw her.
The killer rolled her onto the dirt floor and tossed the blanket over her body, looked around. They were so deep inside the cave she wouldn’t be found for years and years.
It was the last phone call Frankie ever expected to receive.
“He what?” she nearly shouted into the phone.
The neutral voice on the other end of the line didn’t belong to a medical person. Frankie knew by the tone – brusque and military sounding. “He’s been transferred to Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, the ICU. You’re the only person listed in his files, but you’ll need picture ID to see him. He’s under guarded lock-down.”
She dropped the land line. It fell lopsided onto its cradle. Her father was in critical condition in a trauma center. That meant he might not survive the night. The automaton-like voice had given few details on his condition. She’d have to visit the hospital herself for a status report from a physician.
Involuntarily, Frankie glanced at the stairs winding up to the second level bedroom where Cole Hansen recuperated from his bullet wound. He was getting better every hour, but still ran a low-grade fever.
She didn’t dare leave her patient, but she had to see her father. Learn for herself how critical his condition was. What had happened to him in Folsom Prison? And why?
Did it have anything to do with her?
Chapter 52
“Both of them can hide out at my place,” Slater offered as he and Cruz sat in the Sheriff’s office discussing the case. “No one would suspect the Bigler County Sheriff of harboring an ex-con on the loose and a pretty prison doctor.”
“Who said Frankie’s pretty?” Cruz asked.