Brian Freeman - Stalked

The circular bed in the center of the room was draped to the floor in red silk, which was cool and slippery on her nude skin. She spent ten minutes alone before the others joined her. The alpha girl was always first, Sonia said. Do what you want. Drink wine. Listen to the music. Sleep. Touch yourself. Maggie simply squirmed on the silk and thought about running far, far away.

She had allowed Eric to pull her into this world because he said he wanted it so badly. Do this for me, let me see you like that. With other people. It was his ultimate fantasy. Looking back, she couldn't believe she had done it. Her face grew hot with humiliation.

They were so pathetic as they filed in and shed their robes. It was like going to the beach and realizing that, underneath everyone's clothes, naked flesh was the great equalizer. Models made their money because they were so rare. The sex club was a parade of paunchy rolls, cellulite, drooping breasts, and double chins. There were beautiful bodies among them, but en masse, the impression of so much skin was nauseating and ugly. She wondered again what she was doing there and why she had ever thought this was a way to be close to Eric. Or why she thought it mattered.

Most of the time, she kept her eyes closed. She had recollections of soft lips and sweet breath from one woman, garlic and cold hands from a man, panting and sweat, sounds of moaning, none of it hers. When she opened her eyes once, she saw Eric, standing in the shadows, rapt, with his hand around his stiff member. Then she closed her eyes again and felt time drag out through more sensations of rough fingers, tongues leaving wet trails like snails on her skin, and men who came and went quickly.

She wanted to pretend that she had simply climbed aboard the roller coaster and hung on for dear life, but that was a lie. Some of the dips and valleys excited her. Sonia was surprisingly talented. So was Mitchell Brandt. For a few moments in the midst of a closed-eyed nightmare, she found herself not caring what was going on around her, because she was into what was being done to her. Enough to climb the heights and come back down. She felt guilty, but she couldn't take it back. On some level, she had enjoyed it.

That was one of the reasons she didn't report the rape when it happened a few weeks later. She knew what Serena had told her about the questions she got from men who didn't know any better. Did you enjoy what Blue Dog did to you? If she went public, the sex club would be exposed, and people would talk about what she did that night, and somewhere along the line someone would wonder. Did she enjoy it? Was she asking to be raped?

"Fuck you, Eric," she said aloud.

She was angry that he had left these memories in her brain. She couldn't separate the sex club and the rape in her mind, and she blamed Eric for both. For an instant, she was glad that he was dead, and she wished she had been the one to pull the trigger that night.

Maggie wanted to be out on the street, not alone here at home, dwelling on her mistakes. She should have been in the car with Stride, not Abel Teitscher. She wanted to be there to track this bastard and catch him and see what his face really looked like. She wanted to know what Eric had found and how he had found it.

And who Helen Danning was.

She thought about Helen Danning and looked over to see her Black-Berry on the coffee table, its red light flashing. She had e-mail.

No one had sent her e-mail lately. Since the cloud of the murder began hanging over her head, she was a nonperson.

With a shiver, Maggie unwound her body from the couch, slid the PDA out of its case, and clicked over to her in-box. She had one unread message, and the return address was "The Lady in Me."

Maggie opened the message and saw a single sentence:

Stop trying to find me. HD.

Serena watched Mitchell Brandt and knew something was very wrong. His muscles rippled with tension on his chest and down his legs. He clenched and unclenched his fists. His mask made it hard for her to see his eyes, but she could see that his head never swiveled away from Kathy Lassiter to stare at the other naked women in the room, even as some of those women caressed themselves, used vibrators, or had sex with their partners on the soft rugs spread around the floor. Brandt focused on Lassiter as if it were him and her alone in the temple.

She felt a bad vibe emanating from the way he held himself. He looked like a racehorse, snorting and pawing at the ground, anxious to break free from the gate. Lassiter already had her limbs entwined with another man, but she stared back at Brandt, no more than six feet away, and something electric and scary passed between them.

The nudity in front of her had long ago lost its novelty. She was self-conscious at first, even hidden behind the mirror, but after a while, she became numb to it. Her unease became boredom. There was so much sex that none of it was enticing, as if she had wandered onto the set of a low-budget porn flick.

A naked man approached the mirror and stood directly in front of the glass, distracting her. She took a step backward involuntarily and held her breath. He was in his mid-forties, tall and bony, with a matte of graying hair on his chest. He sucked in his stomach and touched himself. Serena wanted to close her eyes.

Sonia came up next to the man. Her pale skin glowed with sweat. She had been the first to have sex with Kathy Lassiter, and since then, Serena had seen Sonia take turns with two other men in the room and a husband-and-wife duo at the same time. Sonia looked breathless and exhilarated. She was drinking a lot, too. So were most of the others.

"Just imagine if someone were on the other side of the mirror, watching us," Sonia told the man.

Serena watched a smile glint on the corner of Sonia's lips.

"Hell, yes," he said.

"Let's put on a show," Sonia told him.

Sonia pushed on the man's shoulders, and he didn't need further encouragement to lie on his back on the thick carpet. Sonia straddled him in front of the mirror and leered directly at Serena as she lowered herself onto his body. She moaned loudly for effect and leaned forward so that her contorted face was nearly glazing the surface of the glass.

Serena shook her head. "What a bitch," she whispered.

She wanted to pound the wall and let them all know she was there.

She tore her eyes away from the frenzied coupling in front of her. Behind Sonia, another drama was playing out, and Serena didn't like it.

Kathy Lassiter was alone on the bed now, propped up on her elbows. Mitchell Brandt, naked and solidly built, approached and stood over her, but he made no move to climb on the bed. Lassiter turned over onto all fours, crawled across the rumpled sheets, and began performing oral sex on him. Brandt didn't react at all. His passiveness made Lassiter work harder, but she may as well have been giving her attention to a stone. He looked down at the top of her head, and the deadness in his lower face made Serena's insides lurch with unease.

What the hell was he doing?

Brandt took hold of her shoulders and separated himself from her. With both hands, he shoved Lassiter so hard that she flew upward and backward, landing on the far side of the bed with her hair mussed and her legs splayed. Her mask came askew, and Serena saw her eyes now, which were confused and afraid. Brandt climbed onto the bed and moved toward her on his knees. Lassiter scrambled away from him.

Serena took two steps toward the door, trying to decide if this was a game.

Inches away, Sonia was still having sex by the mirror. The others watched her. No one noticed Brandt and Lassiter.

Brandt leaped forward like a cat and locked Lassiter's wrists in his hands. He yanked her up, her hair twirling. He took the mask, ripped it off her face, and threw it on the floor. In a single motion, he moved his hands to her hips, lifted her bodily off the bed, and crushed her against his chest. His lips moved as he whispered in her ear. Lassiter shook her head violently and struggled to get away, but Brandt held on, trapping her arms so she couldn't wrestle free. When she tried to speak, he choked her mouth with a brutal kiss.