The float didn’t stop. The crowd kept yelling. The band played even louder.
The man—he had on a Mardi Gras mask, too. A mask and a tux, as if he were going to one of the Mardi Gras balls—balls that seemed to occur at a near constant rate during this time of the year. The woman was struggling in his arms, her glittering, gold evening gown twisting with her movements. It was that glittering gown that had caught Ivy’s attention. It sparkled so brightly in the dark.
Almost as brightly as the knife in the man’s hand.
“Stop!” Ivy shouted again. No one was listening to her. “Get away from her!” Ivy yelled to that man out there.
Did he laugh? She couldn’t tell for sure. It seemed that he might be staring right at her.
He plunged the knife into the woman’s side.
“No!” And the parade float wasn’t stopping. The driver down below probably didn’t even hear her. No one seemed to hear her.
There was no choice. Ivy couldn’t just watch the woman die.
The masked man drove the knife into her side again.
Ivy jumped right over the side of her sea monster. When she hit the pavement, she stumbled to her knees and her palms scraped over the pavement. The crowd gasped, no doubt because the people on the floats weren’t supposed to fly off them.
And people in the crowd aren’t supposed to be murdered!
Men and women stared at her in shock as Ivy rushed toward the barricades. She had to get to that woman! She had to help her. Voices were rising behind Ivy. Her friends from the float were shouting her name.
“He’s killing her!” Ivy yelled back. Then she looked at the crowd. “Let me pass! We have to stop him!”
A horse galloped up behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the mounted police officer. “Help me!” Her plea was desperate as she scaled the barricade that had been put up to separate the spectators from the rolling floats. “I saw a man—he was attacking a woman!”
The cop’s face hardened. People nearby weren’t watching the parade any longer. They were watching Ivy and the cop. Ivy finally got over that barricade. She raced toward the spot where that poor woman had been, and she—
Empty.
No one was standing there. No man in a white mask. No woman in a gown that glittered like gold.
Ivy spun around, stunned, lost. Where had they gone? And where was the blood? The knife?
“Ma’am…” A cop grabbed her arm. Not the cop who’d been mounted on the horse. Another one. A guy wearing a uniform and sporting a shiny badge near his breast pocket. “Ma’am, what the hell are you doing?”
“I—” She looked around again, but a sea of people surrounded her. The parade was still going. One crazy woman jumping from a float hadn’t stopped it. Screams and music filled the air. “A woman was in trouble,” Ivy tried to explain. “A man was stabbing her.”
The cop’s hold tightened on her arm. “Have you been drinking?” He brought his face in closer to hers. Probably the better to sniff her for the scent of alcohol.
Her back teeth clenched. “Not tonight, I haven’t.” She glared at him. “I saw them! We have to find the woman! She needs help.”
Music boomed from the street.
“She needs help,” Ivy said again as she tried to search through the crowd. “I know what I saw. I know…”
Only there was no victim. There was no attacker. There was nothing.
***
He kept his hand over her sweet mouth. Not that it mattered, not then. She wasn’t fighting anymore. Actually, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
He and his lovely prey were inside the abandoned building, just a few feet away from the cop and the would-be rescuer.
She still had her mask on, but he could see the heavy mass of her dark hair, falling around her shoulders. She was a small woman, petite, almost delicate, but curved in all of the ways that he enjoyed.
A small woman like her—she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.
They never do.
The cop wasn’t buying her story. Through the crack in the boarded-up window, he had a perfect view of the cop—and the woman who’d leapt from that float.
I didn’t expect that move.
She’d seen him. She’d watched while he’d driven the knife into his victim’s tender flesh. No one had watched before.
A little thrill still coursed through him.
She saw me.
But now the uniformed cop was tugging her away from the scene. He was muttering about rich women who drank too much. Everyone knew the people on the floats liked to party during the parade. The cop wouldn’t even check the area. He was just walking away and probably heading off to lock up the brunette.
“See,” he whispered into the dead woman’s ear. “No one gives a damn about you. I was the only one. You should have appreciated me when you had the chance.”