Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

It came back in a rush. Fear. Fighting for her life. The hood suffocating her. A tall figure clad in black. A mask. The club hitting her blow after blow after blow.

She had no idea what had happened in the time since she had lost consciousness. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea who had attacked her or why, or what their plans might be for her. Panic went through her like a thousand volts of electricity, jerking her body against its tethers, arching her back up off the bed. Pain went through her in spasms and she sobbed, but she couldn’t seem to stop fighting. She kicked and thrashed until the adrenaline ran out, then she lay there aching, crying softly, feeling the blood drip off her wrists.

Slowly, her surroundings began to penetrate the small sphere that had been her world since coming to. Rough cabin walls. A small window filled with gray light. She could hear the birds singing outside and the snort of a horse. In the cabin there was no sound at all. As far as she could tell, she was alone.

“Where the hell is she?” Bryce demanded, slamming the cordless phone down on the glass-topped table. The juice glasses shuddered and sloshed. No one had answered the phone at Samantha’s house. She wasn’t at the hotel. Most important, she wasn’t in the bed in his guest room. She was gone. That hadn’t been a variable in his plan.

Sharon calmly rescued her croissant from a dousing and dabbed the puddle on the table delicately with her napkin. “She probably caught a ride into town with one of the hands. You said she would have second thoughts.”

“I didn’t think she would leave!”

He paced beside the table, his hands on his narrow hips. He had prepared himself meticulously for breakfast, dressing down in jeans and old boots and a hunter-green oxford shirt, an ancient tooled belt around his waist with six inches of excess leather hanging limply down alongside his fly. He had planned to take a breakfast tray up to Samantha’s rooms, make love to her again, then invite her to go riding-just the two of them. Time alone for them to bond. Time for him to impress upon her what a fine life she could have with him.

Sharon sent him a look as she tore her croissant in two and baptized one end in currant jam. “I knew she would leave,” she muttered. “I just didn’t think it would be so soon. Apparently she has a low threshold for sin.”

Bryce wheeled on her, his eyes bright with fury. “I’m tired of your little asides, Sharon,” he snapped. “I tolerate too much from you, but I have limits, and you’ve just about reached them.”

She rose from her chair like a queen, an icy exterior draped in white silk and a core of hurt that glowed in her eyes. Her hair was slicked back into a knot, the look emphasizing the heavy bone structure of her face. She stared hard at Bryce- down at Bryce, because she had chosen to wear a pair of gold mules with heels, needing to feel superior to him in some way, any way.

“Don’t you threaten me,” she warned, her voice trembling with emotion. “Your little whores will come and go. I will always be here. I know you too well. I know too much. I can make your life hell-and don’t think I won’t.” She narrowed her eyes and smiled, cobralike. “Don’t think for a minute I won’t, you ungrateful son of a bitch.”

Reisa came out onto the terrace with a coffee urn and a vacant look in her eyes. Sharon stalked past her and into the house, trailing a fluttering train of white silk and a cloud of perfume.

“Coffee, Mr. Bryce?”

“Get out of my way,” Bryce snapped. Stepping around the housekeeper, he headed for the side gate and his Mercedes.

Mari expected the tape to be pornographic, the result of a little game of “Candid Camera” in Lucy’s bedroom. A video chronicle of Townsend’s escapades in Lucy’s bed or some other bed or with donkeys or children. Since Lucy was involved, she expected sex to be involved. But as she sat amid the ruins of her friend’s study, her eyes trained on the television that had somehow escaped destruction, sex was not what she got.

The opening shot was taken from horseback. On the trail ahead of the cameraman were Townsend and a small, thin man with a face like a carp and dark hair that looked like thread that had been stitched into his scalp. The two were dressed in safari khaki and camouflage hunting gear. Ahead of them was a rough-looking character with a drooping crumb-duster mustache and a crunched old water-stained cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. There was talk of rifles and scopes and other hunts. Townsend sounded excited. There was a flush on his cheekbones. Someone off-camera said the name “Graf” and the little man swiveled around in his saddle.

Graf . J. Grafton Sheffield. Mari had heard Ben Lucas call him Graf. He didn’t look like the kind of man who could pick up a rifle and kill anything, let alone a human being.

They rode up a trail, thick woods all around. A lot of thrashing sounds and horses snorting. Somewhere in the distance, hounds bayed relentlessly. Townsend talked about trophies, about shooting a grizzly from a helicopter in Alaska. Then the party broke into a clearing and Sheffield’s horse spooked.

The hounds yapped without cease. The camera caught a glimpse of them and their scruffy-looking handlers as it panned the clearing en route to a battered four-by-four with a small flatbed trailer behind it. On the trailer was a stainless steel cage perhaps three feet high and seven or eight feet long. Inside the cage was a full-grown tiger. A magnificent, beautiful creature.

The riding party dismounted and the horses were led away. The cowboy and Townsend busied themselves preparing rifles. The camera slowly circled the tiger’s cage. The animal was breathing heavily through its mouth, saliva dripping off its chin. Its eyes looked glassy and unfocused. One of the dogs was set loose and sprinted for the cage, snapping at the tiger’s long tail that protruded between the bars. The cat let out a startled roar and tried to jump to its feet, but the cage wasn’t tall enough for him to do anything but crouch, his muscles quivering. The dog barked furiously, lunging at the cage, then wheeling away, inciting his cohorts to riot.

Townsend and the cowboy walked off across the clearing, rifles on their shoulders. Yet another scruffy minion climbed atop the tiger cage and pulled the door open. He drove the cat from the cage with a cattle prod. It stumbled down off the trailer and stood swaying on its feet, looking confused. Then the dogs were set loose.

They charged the tiger as a pack, howling madly, teeth bared. Terrified, the cat bolted and tried to run under the four-by-four, but was headed off by a pair of dogs. He shied away and a third dog hit him broadside and sank its teeth into the tiger’s flank, drawing blood. Screaming, the tiger twisted around and knocked the dog ten feet with a single swipe of its paw, then it dashed across the open ground as best it could, heading toward the woods with the rest of the pack in hot pursuit. Once he stumbled drunkenly and went down, the dogs diving at him, tearing at him. But he managed to regain his feet and run on.

Twenty yards from the edge of the woods Townsend took aim and fired twice. The tiger went down in a boneless heap. The dogs were on him instantly, then the flunkies ran out and knocked the dogs back with clubs.

Mari sat on the small couch with tears streaming down her cheeks, her stomach turning over. She watched the cowboy and Sheffield congratulate Townsend. Townsend posed, holding the head of the dead cat up by the ears, a big grin on his face, as if he were genuinely proud of what he had just done. The memory of Townsend’s office played through the back of her mind-the mounted heads, the skins on the wall, the bear rearing and snarling ferociously in the corner. The son of a bitch had shot it from a chopper. He hadn’t confronted the beast face-to-face, as the pose suggested. He had never seen the poor animal do anything but run for its life. And the tiger skin was not the result of some death-defying battle in India. It was the result of slaughter, plain and simple. Not sport, not challenge, no test of manhood.