The Woman Who Couldn't Scream

  No answer.

  That meant nothing. He might be out …

  But why hadn’t he called her last night, ordered her to come over? Why wasn’t he answering her texts? Since the news about the slashing, her worry had grown.

  She gave the door a push and with a rusty creak, it opened.

  The foyer was dark, but at the back of the house, she saw a light.

  He never would leave a light on, a light that would betray his presence … she swallowed hard and tiptoed across the floor, glancing at every shadow, fearing every sound.

  The kitchen. The light was in the kitchen. Not much of a light; it was dim and growing dimmer. A flashlight, set on the table at the precise angle to illuminate—Carl Klineman, sprawled on the floor, his arms flung out and his body skewed sideways while pools of dark blood congealed underneath it.

  Remember, Helen, you cannot scream.

  But she tried.

  She clutched her throat and made herself stop straining to produce a sound to express her horror. Even if she could … she should not betray her presence by any sound.

  Flies buzzed. The body … smelled.

  She turned to leave, to flee.

  But Carl’s head was turned toward her, his dark eyes were open and staring, his finger, smeared with blood, had … had written something on the floor.

  She crept closer. She read what he had written.

  Then she heard a noise behind her, whipped around and threw a turning side kick at the man who loomed in the doorway.

  The kick never landed.

  Benedict Howard blocked her, grabbed her wrist, brought her close and said, “What are you doing here?” He looked beyond her. “And what have you done?”

  * * *

  “Come on.” Benedict unlocked the door to the carriage house. “Come in here.”

  She shook her head. Her face was swollen, her eyes were red and she couldn’t breathe from crying so hard. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her hoodie.

  Still she looked gorgeous to him. “You don’t want to go in the house, to your rooms. You don’t want anyone to see you now.”

  His porch light illuminated her as she signed, “I can’t come in. I need locks on the door. My locks.” She looked toward her car. “I should leave, drive away, never come back.”

  He couldn’t let her leave. “Will you be safe if you do that?”

  She shook her head. Shook her head again.

  “All right. We’ll go to your rooms. But there will be people around so don’t”—he pulled out his handkerchief and blotted her face—“don’t cry. Eyes straight ahead. Walk.” Putting his arm around her waist, he walked her through the back door.

  In the kitchen, they saw Phoebe.

  Benedict said hello.

  Phoebe asked what was wrong.

  He said Merida had fallen and cut herself.

  Phoebe asked if there was anything she could do, asked if they needed a Band-Aid, advised them to go to the hospital and get stitches.

  He thanked her. They walked on.

  In the entry, they spotted the newlyweds heading up the stairs to their room.

  Benedict gave them a hearty, encouraging, go-for-it wave and a smile.

  Merida pulled up her hoodie and furtively searched her pocket.

  She couldn’t have looked more guilty.

  Benedict took her key and unlocked the door, then asked, “What’s the code?”

  She didn’t hesitate; she told him and he took that as a sign of trust, the first he’d seen from her. After he had entered the code, she used her thumbprint to get them through the final security device.

  He opened the door and held it for her.

  She walked in and collapsed on the ottoman in front of the leather easy chair. “I didn’t do it,” she signed.

  “I know.” When he had verified the identity of the corpse, everything had changed. They were in trouble.

  “I found him … dead.” Her fingers trembled violently.

  “I know,” Benedict said again. He locked the door behind them, and not just so she’d feel a sense of security. Finding that body next door had thoroughly spooked him. Add that to the murders around town and the discrepancies in his business accounts, and he suddenly felt as if he were playing the lead in a horror movie. And this room: a long dining table flanked by weapons on the wall, by rows of empty, iron-clad suits of armor … at least he hoped they were empty. He didn’t believe in coincidences, and he didn’t like the number of corpses piling up around them.

  “I’m going to check the other rooms.” He walked into the next room, up the stairs, through the bedrooms and bathrooms, making sure every lock was secure, noting how she had augmented the safety measures in every room.

  True, she was the widow of a wealthy man. But this was excessive, a special paranoia. And he was afraid he knew why.

  As he came back into the dining room, he stomped and coughed so she wasn’t startled.

  He found her with her head in her hands, silently crying, rocking back and forth. “Everything is secure,” he told her. Using his cell phone, he made a call to the police. “There’s a body in the abandoned house on Mariana Avenue.” He hung up, fast, for all the good it would do him.

  * * *

  A light knock on her office door. “Kateri.”

  Kateri looked up from the paperwork, saw the expression on Bergen’s face and said, “You have got to be shitting me. Another one?”

  * * *

  Getting a bottle of water out of the little refrigerator, Benedict sat on the floor in front of Merida and offered it to her. “The police will trace the call, but that’s not going to be the first thing on their agenda. At least, I hope not, because this makes me the prime suspect.”

  She pointed to herself.

  “Yes, you, too.” He watched her, grim-faced. “That body was Carl Klineman, Nauplius’s bodyguard.”

  She took the bottle of water. She nodded.

  “Explain to me what he was doing in Virtue Falls.”

  Merida was still crying, but she could sign. “He, uh … I was running one day and he pulled me through the hedge.”

  Benedict ran his finger down his own face, indicating he remembered the scratch.

  Merida gestured, agitated, trying to convey the words. “Yes. That. He followed me here. He had rented that place.”

  “Because it was next door to the B and B?”

  Merida pressed her finger to her nose. She signed, “He said … he said he always wanted to protect me, but my husband … Carl said he loved me. He said my husband…” Merida tried to open the bottle. Tried again. Couldn’t break the seal.

  Benedict took it from her, opened the top. “Look. I’m not without sympathy. But damn it, you used me.”

  Merida started to protest.

  He pushed her hands down. “You used me to help keep you safe. Did you think I didn’t realize that? Then, although I gave you every opportunity, you never confided in me. You kept vital information from me.”

  Merida took the bottle and drank.

  God, the woman had a way of ignoring what she didn’t want to address. She maddened him, and he wouldn’t have it. “What did Carl say about your husband?”

  She took a last sip of water. “Nauplius was abusive. Jealous. He used to tie my hands so I couldn’t speak.” Throwing back her head, she laughed without sound. “I’m actually quite good at getting out of any kind of binding.” She stopped laughing so suddenly, Benedict chilled at the transformation. With slow, careful gestures, she said, “It’s a skill set I wish I’d never had to learn.”

  He repeated his question. “What did Carl tell you about your husband?”

  “Carl said in that last year, he took Nauplius to the doctor for tests, he didn’t know for what. But when Nauplius came out, he was mad and he was scared, so Carl poked around in his medical records.” Her signing increased in speed.

  In the last few days, Benedict had learned a lot. He kept up.

  She continued, “Naupli
us had received the diagnosis that he was likely to die suddenly, and soon. What scared Carl then was—Nauplius started investigating killers. Carl knew how Nauplius felt about me, that I was his creation.”

  “How were you his creation? Is the story that you were a beautiful orphaned daughter of missionaries untrue?”

  Merida looked at him, head cocked, eyes narrowed.

  “I suspected,” he said, “when I could find no one who remembered you or your parents in Nepal, or your aunt and uncle in the south.”

  “You investigated me?”

  “I proved who you were not. I never discovered who you were.”

  She sat back and viewed him as if trying to see the real man.

  Uncomfortable; he sometimes thought he didn’t know the real man, that he had allowed his aunt and uncle to create him in their images: in reflections of greed, gluttony and self-interest. If that was true … she should be afraid.

  Merida made some kind of inner decision and sat up straight. She was no longer crying. She signed briskly and matter-of-factly. “I was in an accident. My face was badly damaged. Badly. I was unrecognizable and … grotesque. Nauplius arranged for me to … look like a normal person again in exchange for my service as his wife.”

  “Wow.” That explained a lot in a horrible way.

  “I signed a contract.”

  “You were an indentured servant.”

  “Exactly. Drink?” She offered him the bottle.

  He took it and drank, appreciating the fact that she shared something lovers shared. Perhaps he was optimistic, but he would read her gesture as belief in him and his good intentions.

  She signed, “Carl heard Nauplius say that a wife’s life ended with her husband’s death. Carl said he believed Nauplius put out a contract on my life, to be executed upon Nauplius’s own death.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  Merida waved her arm up and down her figure, then around her face, and nodded.

  “Yes. If he … used your misfortune to create the woman he wanted, then … yes, he was crazy.” Benedict sorted through his thoughts, put some aside to examine when this crisis had ended. For now, the body next door was what mattered. “Do you believe what Carl Klineman told you? That Nauplius had placed a bounty on your head?”

  “For a very long time, I had hoped for the day of Nauplius’s death, and prepared. When it came, I left. Vanished. Within twenty-four hours, a woman on Nauplius’s legal team was gruesomely murdered. Perhaps that means nothing. But she was beautiful and she was slashed to death.” Merida gave an exaggerated shudder. “So yes, I believe Carl.”

  “Unless he did it.”

  Merida nodded, up and down, the motion slow and exaggerated. “Carl said he knew a couple of the assassins Nauplius had investigated, but hadn’t been able to ascertain who was hired. Carl searched, found me here. He said he came after me to protect me. He said he wasn’t the only one who had found me. The contract killer had found me, too.”

  “That’s when the killings started in Virtue Falls. Women. Faces slashed.”

  Again Merida pressed the tip of her nose. “Carl wanted to take me away, help me vanish permanently. I didn’t trust him. How could I? All those years, he did Nauplius’s bidding. He watched me, kept me from escaping even for a moment. I couldn’t go out to shop, to eat, to work out, without Carl trailing after me.”

  “Did you never try to escape?”

  “You knew Nauplius by his reputation. Do you not believe he would somehow have found me and made me suffer? Made me pay for humiliating him in the eyes of the world, the runaway wife who left her aging husband and his fortune behind?”

  “It would never have occurred to me that he would kill you. Although now…” Benedict considered what had happened recently in Virtue Falls. “Yes, Nauplius would have found a way to make you miserable.”

  “So miserable.” She looked down at her hands, then slowly signed, “Also … I did sign the contract in good faith. Nauplius did what he’d promised—he rescued me from a life spent looking like a scary Halloween mask. After our marriage, every year, he put money into an account, showed me the proof, advised me on my investments but allowed me to invest as I wished. I believed it was completely likely I would outlive him and be free to live my life. And Nauplius said, with some justification, that Carl kept me safe. I was, after all, the wife of a very wealthy man and kidnappers are notorious for mutilating and killing their victims.”

  “You believe Carl could have been the killer Nauplius hired—yet every night you sneaked through the hedge to spend time with Carl.”

  She jerked, flung her chin up, as if Benedict had prodded her with an electrode.

  Good. She was shocked. “Yes,” he said. “I saw you. Every night since I’ve arrived, no matter what else you’ve done—worked, visited with your friend Kateri, gone on a date with me—afterward you pulled on your most casual clothes and your black hoodie and visited Carl Klineman.”

  “He could have killed me the first time he pulled me through the hedge, couldn’t he? But he didn’t. So I mostly believed he was sincere. Not enough to go with him, but enough to go to him when he wanted me to…” She erased that with a gesture. “He insisted I train in self-defense. He said if I wasn’t going to listen to him and leave Virtue Falls, I needed to be prepared to defend myself. Carl had taught me a little when Nauplius was alive. He almost got fired for that; Nauplius didn’t approve of a woman who could fight back. But over the last few nights, Carl sharpened my skills. I thought I was safe.” She smiled, but it was wobbly and rueful. “Until I threw a side kick at you and you blocked it.”

  “It was a solid kick. But I’m a third degree black belt. Some nights of working with Carl can’t compete.” Benedict was factual.

  “So I can’t compete against a black belt. But Carl Klineman was Nauplius’s bodyguard. He was the best. How did someone manage to kill him? Whoever it is—”

  “Is scary.” She had a point, not one that he liked, and she had admitted something she did not intend. “I said you were using me, and I was right. You believed an assassin was after you and you were using me as a shield.”

  “I believed Carl about the assassin, and yes, I used you as a shield.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  He did. “Because I want you. So you trust me not to kill you.”

  She scooted forward on the ottoman, signed with her hands between her face and his. “I also trust you to make me forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Forget everything but you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Merida expected enthusiasm, passion, kissing, sex … forgetfulness.

  Instead Benedict stood, walked to the window and looked out.

  Feeling instantly stupid and rejected, she scrambled to her feet. Maybe, once she’d asked, he was no longer interested. Some men needed the chase. Benedict had not been that way before, but for them, “before” was many years ago.

  Maybe, after hearing the sordid details of her marriage to Nauplius Brassard, he wasn’t interested. Or maybe he intended to kill her now. She wouldn’t have thought so, not without sex, but when it came to Benedict Howard, she had proved herself woefully inadequate in reading his character.

  Still. She stood there, feeling awkward, thinking she should call the police herself, knowing she had just discovered a body, one she could not explain and didn’t dare try.

  Benedict walked to the light switch and flipped it down.

  Now, in the distance, Merida heard police sirens.

  “The police,” Benedict said. “They’ve come to investigate my call.” He turned away from the window and paced toward her across the floor. “And to answer you—yes. I can make you forget.”

  Oh. First he made sure they would be uninterrupted. Then he focused on her.

  This kiss was no hands-off seduction. This was body to body, hands, lips, tongues, a blast furnace that incinerated her fears and memories, lifted her to her toes in a futil
e attempt to get closer to him, to his heat.

  The darkness in the room was city dark: night dimly illuminated by the neighbors’ porch lights, the sky washed by the distant downtown bars, restaurants and stores. Now red and blue lights flashed through the window and she had the sense that they were hiding, she and Benedict, here in the dining room, reaching for each other in the dark.

  He backed her toward the table, lifted her onto the flat surface, onto the ironed linen tablecloth. He stripped off her shoes, her workout pants, her hoodie, T-shirt, bra and panties, and flung them in a wad toward the leather chair. He stepped back and viewed her, perched on the table like a statue of Venus. “My God,” he whispered. “My God.” As if the sight stung him to action, he disposed of his jeans, underwear and shoes in a hurry and without a bit of grace.

  She smiled.

  How flattering.

  He climbed onto the table.

  She scooted back to make room.

  He caught her ankle, spread her legs, slid her and the tablecloth beneath her toward him. Leaning over her, he put his mouth to her clit … and his heat brought her hips off the table. She writhed, she strained, she came. Violently, explosively … silently.

  He was not silent. “That’s it,” he murmured. “That’s what I want for you.”

  Abruptly she was back in the past, years ago, learning to make love, discovering what it was like with a man who reveled in a woman’s response, encouraged it, waited for it …

  She shook her head. No. Don’t remember.

  “Don’t shake your head at me,” Benedict said. “Don’t try to deny me.” He got onto his knees, lifted her bottom and pulled her onto him.

  She was wet and ready, in a hurry and desperate, but it had been a long time for her and the process was long, slow, frustrating … for him.

  She came so often she could hardly call it frustrating …

  When he was finally inside, he began the long, slow strokes that brought them close, broke them apart, brought them close again and earned them intimacy in the most primitive dance of all.

  She panted silently, straining toward another climax, a greater climax, one that would sweep her mind free of every terror, every nightmare, every concern.

  He moaned, his arms and thighs corded with strain, sweat staining his T-shirt over the breastbone. The wash of red and blue across his face turned him alternately demonic and angelic, and she recognized both in him. He demanded more from her than she could give, and when she gave it, he demanded again. “Come on, darling,” he said over and over. “Come again … for me. Come again … with me.”