Leslie Parrish - Pitch Black

Though not much of a drinker, she wouldn’t refuse the offer. Not only so she could toast to him, but also because she needed to calm her nerves. So she poured. And she sipped. She had never liked champagne, and she liked this dry, bitter stuff even less. Still, she drank again, swallowing until she’d downed the glass, feeling the bubbles tickle her nose and the effervescent alcohol hit her stomach.

Feeling fortified, she closed the grated door with a clang of metal, screwed her courage tight, and followed Rafe’s operating instructions. Nothing happened at first; then the steel enclosure finally creaked to life. With a grinding of gears, the elevator began to move.

Funny, the world already seemed to be lighter, somehow. As she slowly began to rise, she began to feel light, weightless. As if she were floating. Which was as it should be. She was being released from the darkness of her dreary, average life. Unencumbered, free.

Up she went. Higher. Toward the heavens. And toward her destiny.

Almost as if she were flying.

His little bird was unconscious before she reached the fifteenth floor.

Wanting to ensure Wendy Cramer’s arrival would go exactly the way he’d planned it, Darwin had watched her every move from the nanny-cam teddy bear he’d left for her. So he witnessed the precise moment of the woman’s collapse. Perfect timing .

So far, she had not disappointed him, reacting exactly as he’d expected her to. From her accepting his urgent invitation, to her nervousness building as he kept her waiting, to her downing a glass of champagne to combat her fear, everything had gone as planned.

“You are so shockingly predictable,” he said when the elevator finally came to a stop on his level. She might have thought she’d started its ascent, using his directions, but she hadn’t. Wanting to delay her after she’d consumed the champagne, to give the ketamine a few extra moments to do its job, he had lied in the note, and used the landing call station on this level to get the elevator moving. “You had so many chances to avoid this fate and squandered them all.”

She could have refused to come, of course. Only an utter fool would believe the nonsense he’d been spoon-feeding her for weeks. A member of an anonymous royal family in hiding? A prince falling passionately in love with a timid operator he’d never even seen? God, it was a wonder the idiotic woman had survived to adulthood.

“How foolish you were to not even question the name on the phone.” He’d intentionally called her with that telephone, for a number of reasons. Not least of which was to give her another chance to defy his opinion of her, develop some modicum of good sense, and back away.

She’d blazed forward instead. Despite the name. Despite the sound of his voice-not an accented word. Right past a sign identifying the under-construction building as the new headquarters for a major local shipping company.

No penthouse. No condos. No royal investment.

“And any teenage girl knows better than to drink from an unattended bottle someone else opened. You stupid, awful woman. Didn’t you notice the taste?”

She moaned. Though he had allowed adequate time, he moved quickly. The drug was very fast-acting, but he hadn’t wanted her out for long. And despite the bitter taste, he hadn’t been sure the twit would drink only one glass, so he couldn’t lace the champagne too heavily.

Good thing he had expected her to fib about her weight. He’d dosed her for a woman twenty pounds heavier than she portrayed herself to be. By his calculations, one glass would keep her down for about an hour.

One hour should suffice for what he had to do. Ten or fifteen minutes at most here, leaving plenty of time to get out of the area. He would take up his position at the vantage point he’d selected earlier, a perfect spot to watch what happened.

“I kept my promise, didn’t I?” he told her as he dragged her outside. “No walls, no doors. You can be seen by anyone looking in the right direction, as long as they’re at the appropriate height.”

He was counting on it.

As he had told her on the phone, he had been busy preparing for her arrival. He had severed the security netting and covered the safety lights. The tape was brand-new, the knife sharpened. He had only to get her ready and depart.

The steely blade of the knife glittered in the darkness. Cutting off her clothes, he took care not to let it nick her plump flesh, not wanting to hurt her.

He didn’t want to do anything to her. He just wanted her to stop polluting his world with her presence. Having no godlike delusions, he couldn’t make the choice between life or death. He could only put her in the position of having to do it herself. She could adapt, or she could die.

So far, she was on a direct course for death. But she might surprise him yet.

Once he’d stripped her bare, he rolled her onto her stomach. Grabbing the duct tape with one gloved hand, he wrapped it around her wrists, securing them together behind her back. More tape for her eyes-he wound it around her head several times, so it stuck to itself, to her hair, to her skin.

She moaned again. “Shh, my dear,” he murmured, not worried. She might be fighting to regain consciousness, but there was only so much a body could do against an unfamiliar narcotic.

The wind howled wildly through the top floor of the building, which swayed a little under its power. He couldn’t have chosen more perfect weather. The shriek the air made as it rushed past the metal frame was reminiscent of a woman’s scream. It would disconcert her-terrify her even more.

“I do wish I could stay and say hello to you in person, after all this time. But it wouldn’t be prudent to wait until things are over to take my leave.” He stared down at her naked body, pale and helpless in the moonlight, wondering why he felt no pity. Why he never felt pity, never experienced remorse or concern for a single one of them. His victims. His sheep.

He’d been born without the gene, he supposed.

“I’m not merciless,” he told her. “You have a chance. Don’t lose your head; use your brain for once and you might survive this. Embarrassed in the light of day when you’re found by the construction crew, but otherwise safe and sound.”

As long as she didn’t lose her head.

With a smile and a softly blown kiss, he took his leave of her. He tucked the tape and the knife into his knapsack, along with the minilaptop into which he had plugged the nanny-cam receiver, and entered the elevator. During its long descent, he removed everything-the note, the bear, the roses, and the candles. He even looked for clumps of wax or a random flower petal. Though he had no confidence in the FBI agents who pursued him, there was no point in making things easy for them. The phone had been clue enough.

Reaching the ground floor, he watched for any sign of life, then quickly strode across the deserted street. He glanced at his watch-another forty minutes, at least, before she awoke.

He had parked down a side alley, a few blocks away, and, once inside his vehicle, made his way out of the area. Careful to stay away from intersections with cameras that might record his passing, he took backstreets, avoiding streetlights in favor of stop signs.

Everything went perfectly. At ten twenty, he entered the upscale hotel on the opposite side of the harbor. He’d checked in earlier, booking a room on the twenty-fifth floor, facing the water, due south. Once in his room, he didn’t turn on the light, moving across the darkness to the window. He had already set up the telescope, training it on his point of interest. Within seconds, he was looking into the top floor of the site he’d left a short time ago.

From here, he had an excellent vantage point of the perimeter along the north- and east-facing sides. The west portion of the building, which fronted the street and was out of his line of sight, was blocked by a temporary wall, nowhere for her to go.