And kept Owen from slipping away.
Angela smiled back. “Sure thing, Barry. Can do.”
THREE
In the late hour the rain and drizzle had trailed off, leaving behind a potent quality to the air saturated with the sharp smell of rain, pine trees, and dirt. It was a primal aroma, the scent worn by Mother Earth herself, absent mankind’s touch. The elemental fragrance was a refreshing contrast to the unsavory collection of man-made smells in the bar.
With the rain ended, fog had crept into the valley to nap for the night. It was the thick, intimate kind of fog, the kind that reminded Angela of the feeling she got when someone stood too close, invading her personal space. She wished she could push it back away from her. The oppressive quality of it served to put her nerves further on edge.
Although she could smell the pines and balsam firs, the trees across the road were invisible beyond the soft gray wall of fog. She could barely see the silent road. This time of night there were few if any cars. Anyone out this late would be up in town either carousing, working night shifts, or going home from partying.
Her pickup stood all alone in the parking lot, like a phantom in the mist. Barry’s car was always parked around in back.
Owen was standing beside her truck.
She had known he would be there.
In gray primer, the older, regular-cab Chevy pickup didn’t look like much. But looks were deceiving. The lowered truck had an LS3 crate engine, Wilwood brakes, and a lot of suspension mods.
A tattoo artist she knew had all the work done by a reputable shop. His intention had been to paint it something wild to advertise his tattoo shop, but he lost interest in it when he fell for a panel truck that he thought would better serve his purpose. After doing the tattoo across her throat, he sold the pickup to Angela for a good price because, as he’d said, she was the only one he knew who was “badass enough to drive such a bitchin’ truck.”
He offered to have the truck painted for her, but Angela wanted to keep it in primer gray. She liked the lack of color. The flat gray matched her feelings about life. Dyeing her hair vivid colors, along with her piercings and tattoos, was her way of concealing her colorless existence within.
It was rare for her emotions to flash to life, to rise up from those inner, dark depths. But, unexpectedly, they had this night. This was one of those exceptional times when everything sizzled with meaning. Every sound was sharper, every sight more vivid, every nuance more significant, every word laced with danger. This was a night when life itself hung in the balance.
Owen unfolded his arms and with a knuckle rapped the square magnetic sign stuck on the truck’s gray-primer door. “ ‘Angela’s Messenger Service, Give your package wings.’ I figure this had to be you.”
“Good guess, genius.”
Even as she kept her voice from sounding interested, her nerves felt electric. Everything around her seemed to crackle. She stared into his dark eyes, letting the wickedness she saw there wash over her.
It had been too long.
“What’s with the messenger service?”
Since her name meant “messenger from God,” Angela thought it appropriate that her courier service be called Angela’s Messenger Service. She liked the play on words.
“There’s not a lot of work around here. I like being a courier and it fills in the dead spots when I’m not tending bar.”
“So, you’re a drug dealer,” he said with a knowing smirk.
Angela’s brow drew down. “That’s about the last thing in the world I’d ever do.”
He dismissed her denial with a shrug of one shoulder. “If you say so.”
“I do,” she said.
He stepped aside for her to unlock the door, swaying on his feet a little.
“Good night, Owen.”
“Okay, fine, so you don’t deal drugs. That narrows it down. Escort service … suck some cock to fill in the dead spots when you’re not earning a buck tending bar?”
She shot him a dark look. “I said, good night.”
“I was thinking that you could give me a lift.” He shrugged again but this time he added a stupid grin. “It was easier walking down the hill than it will be walking back up.”
“The walk will do you good.”
He wasn’t about to be discouraged. “Think of me as a package to deliver. Besides, I’ve seen the kind of girls up at the motel. I bet you’ve spent enough time on your back in the rooms up there.”
She let it go without taking the bait. His smile wasn’t sincere, it was a calculating provocation.
She could see the contempt in his eyes. Women were all the same to Owen. They were all whores and that was all they were good for. She didn’t know what had brought him to that attitude in life and she didn’t really care. All that mattered to her was that his hardened convictions governed his thoughts and those thoughts resulted in deeds.
“Come on, give me a ride?”
Angela straightened after unlocking the door. “I said no.”
She knew quite well by what flashed in his eyes that Owen didn’t like the word “no.” Not one bit.
He abruptly grabbed her by her upper arm, spun her around, slammed her up against the truck, and gritted his teeth. “Said I’d like a ride.”
There he was. There, at last, was the real Owen showing himself.
His breath stank of corn chips soaked in alcohol. His powerful fingers felt like they might crush the bone in her arm.
With the heel of a hand to his chest she shoved him back. “I told you, I don’t date normal guys.”
He slammed her up against the truck again and forced a hard kiss against her mouth. She noted his preference. She let him have his way for a moment lest he get more violent right then and there, before she had found out what she wanted to know.
“I’m a lot more than you think,” he said, breathlessly, as he pulled back. “I’m the kind of guy you get all wet for.”
“Bullshit.”
Angela watched his face as he considered yet another snub. The alcohol was confusing his thinking, but it was also loosening his inhibitions and as a result, she knew, it would loosen his tongue.
“It’s true,” he argued. “I’m not some average guy like you think.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Owen. I don’t think you’re average. I think you’re a pussy.”
Anger flashed in his bloodshot eyes. His brow drew tight. He swayed on his feet a little as he glared at her, considering. He finally broke the gaze to glance around to see if they were alone.
“Give me a ride and I’ll tell you about it.”
She appraised his dark eyes for a moment, enduring what she saw in them, letting it wash through her like gasoline sloshing over glowing embers.
She had a gun, but it was in the compartment under the center armrest of her truck.
Finally, Angela let out a heavy breath.
“All right, Owen. I suppose I can at least give you a ride. It’s not like you’re dangerous or anything. It would be kind of exciting if you were, but you aren’t.”
His expression briefly turned murderous before he went around to wait on the passenger side for her to get in, reach across, and unlock the door. Finally granted entrance, he quickly climbed up into the truck.
Once settled in the driver’s seat, Angela twisted the key and the engine rumbled to life. The windows glittered with trembling droplets of water. She turned on the wipers to clear the windshield.
“All you’re getting out of me is a ride.” She looked over at him. “Got it?”
“Sure,” he said, grinning with a world of dark intent. “That’s all I’m after—nothing else.”
Angela didn’t believe a word of it.
FOUR
Every once in a while on the half-mile ride up the winding road a streetlight appeared out of the fog, looking like a hovering alien spacecraft. The dark, featureless mass of woods glided by to either side. The yellow center line and the stripe along edge of the road seemed like t
he only things grounded in the real world.
As they drove by ever more houses at the edge of Milford Falls proper, Owen rested an elbow on the armrest. Her gun was under the lid of that armrest. With him leaning on it, she knew she would never be able to get to it.
When the neon sign for the Riley Motel began to materialize out of the fog, his left hand reached down to gently clasp her bare right knee. As she turned in to the motel’s parking lot, the hand slid up the inside of her thigh to her crotch. When she put the truck in park, he twisted toward her and shoved his big right hand down inside the top of her low-rise shorts.
Before he could worm his fingers into her, and without making a fuss about it, she simply put her wrist under his and levered his hand back out, as if to say she considered him nothing more than a harmless oaf.
“You feel nice down there,” he said, speaking from a daze of desire. “I like a natural pussy, not shaved bald like whores do today. I like the way you left a patch of hair.”
“Glad you approve,” she said in an icy tone. “We’re here. Get out.”
“Why don’t you come on in and we can finish what we started.”
She knew he was speaking from within the fantasy he had already begun to construct.
“We didn’t start anything. Like I said, you’re not my type. Ordinary guys are a turnoff.”
“Come on—”
“No.”
He sat back, the stern finality of the word yanking him out of his trance. He blinked.
“I’m no ordinary guy,” he said, rather defiantly.
“Bullshit. You’re halfway decent looking, but I already told you, I’m into bad boys and you aren’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that you haven’t got what it takes to be the kind of guy I go for. You’re a gutless nobody, a poser, trying to talk yourself up and playing the part of a badass to impress me. I’ve met a hundred guys like you. You’re all the same. You’re ordinary, like them.”
His eyes flashed with anger. “I’m not ordinary. I’ve killed people.”
Deliberately showing no reaction, Angela looked over at him for a long moment. She rolled her eyes as she shook her head in disgust.
“You haven’t got the balls to kill anyone. You’d wet your pants if you tried to grab someone and they told you to fuck off.”
“I’m not kidding.” He lowered his voice as he leaned in. “I’ve killed people,” he said again.
“Yeah, right. You’ve killed people. Good for you.” By her tone, she let him know that she didn’t believe him, even though she knew it was true. “Now get out.”
“Did you hear about that whore who disappeared? Carrie something …”
Angela knew who he was talking about. Carrie Stratton was no whore. She was a nurse who worked at the hospital.
The hospital usually used overnight-delivery services, but if it was after the cutoff time for a pickup and there was urgent need, the hospital sometimes used a courier service, and Angela’s courier service was usually their choice to rush specimens to one of several labs in bigger cities. On rare occasions they had even sent her to specialty labs in Buffalo, Newark, or New York City.
It wasn’t a big hospital, so she knew a number of the people who worked there. She’d briefly met Carrie Stratton a couple of times. Carrie had a son and daughter not yet in their teens. Her husband worked for the power company.
Carrie had taken the night shift to earn extra money for her family. Everyone liked her. Angela had picked up a specimen a few days back and Carrie had been the one who checked it out.
It had been late at night and they told her it was critical that she get it to a special lab for testing first thing in the morning. When she was pulled over by a state trooper on I-86, she showed him the package from the hospital marked “urgent” and got out of a speeding ticket with a stern warning. Angela didn’t heed the warning but she did get the sample to the lab on time.
That was the night before Carrie had vanished.
Everyone at the hospital was upset over the disappearance of the young nurse. They knew that she wasn’t the sort to run off or something. Her car was still in the parking lot. Everyone feared she had been abducted. Even though lots of people were looking for her, hoping to find her safe and sound, everyone was grimly aware that the search might not end happily.
Right up until the moment Owen had walked into the bar a couple of hours earlier and she’d looked into his eyes, Angela hadn’t known, either, what had happened to Carrie Stratton.
“I think I heard something about a woman people were looking for,” Angela said. “What about her?”
Owen leaned in a little, lowering his voice. “I killed her.”
“Knock it off, Owen,” she said as she scanned the wet cars in the dark lot. “People say she ran away with a new lover.”
“I was her new lover,” he said, snorting a laugh. “But she didn’t run away. I fucked the bitch. Fucked her good and hard. She told me that she could identify me and that I was going to go to prison. For what? Fucking a whore? So, I killed her.”
Angela let out an impatient sigh. “You’re a goddamn liar, Owen, trying to play like you’re a badass.”
Owen cocked his head to the side. “If I was telling you the truth?”
Angela appraised him in the reddish light from the motel sign. “If you really had the balls … but I don’t believe—”
“I can prove it.”
Angela rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“No, really. I can fucking prove it.”
“How?”
“I can show you where I put her body.”
“You could show me her body?” Angela ran a black fingernail down his arm as she let her lips spread in a smile. “I’ve never been with a man who killed someone. Well—other than that guy who killed a man in a bar fight, but that was more of an accident than anything. It wasn’t deliberate. It would take some kind of man to set out to do something like that.”
“Did you ever watch someone die?” he asked as he stared into the memory. “Watch the life go out of them?” He looked back at Angela. “An ordinary guy wouldn’t have the nerve. They couldn’t do it.”
She knew he was driven to dominate women, to hurt them. He liked to watch them die. It aroused him sexually. That lust was growing ever stronger, and there was less time between his kills. It wouldn’t be long before he was aching to kill again. Just recalling it was making him ache to kill again.
“Maybe I had you wrong.”
“Come on up to my room.”
“Come up to your room?” She withdrew her hand. “Okay, I get it. You heard about the disappearance on the news and now you’re trying to take credit. You think it will get you laid if you say you’re the guy who killed her. Nice try, asshole. I gave you the ride you wanted, now get the fuck out.”
“No really, I wasted the bitch. I killed her and dumped her body.” Owen waved a hand in a northerly direction. “Up that way. Up the road that way.”
Angela knew that the police and a lot of volunteers were conducting an extensive search of the area around Milford Falls. They hadn’t found anything yet.
The first instant she had looked into his eyes when he’d come into the bar, Angela had known exactly what Owen had done. Carrie hadn’t told him that she could identify him and he was going to go to jail. That was his just his excuse to justify killing her. In her mind’s eye, Angela saw Carrie begging, promising not to say anything if he let her go. She told him that she had two children who needed her. She had cried and begged for her life. She had shown him their photos in a locket. Carrie couldn’t know what Angela knew—that begging for her life only amped Owen up.
That was when he felt the most powerful. It got him hard.
Angela had seen all of that. But because it had been so dark and foggy, she hadn’t been quite able to discern in her vision the location of where he’d dumped the body.
She tapped the side of her thumb on the steering wh
eel. “How far up that way?”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” Owen said, getting a little surly that she wouldn’t simply take his word for it. “Far enough that they won’t likely find her for a long time, if ever.”
“How far is that?”
“From here? From the motel?” He stared off into the fog. “Thirty-one miles,” he finally said.
He knew exactly how far it was to where he’d left Carrie’s body when he had finished with her. Killers could usually return to the exact spot without any difficulty. Sometimes they visited the corpse to help them relive the excitement of the kill. Sometimes they were curious if anyone had found the body, so they would keep it under surveillance. On occasion they would even volunteer to be part of the search party.
With a tilt of her head, Angela gestured toward the motel sign. “Lots of people passing through stay at the Riley Motel. The police would question those kinds of people. How come the police didn’t question you?”
“They did.” His smile turned sly. “I stayed around long enough to make sure they did.”
“You wanted them to question you? If you really did kill her, and the police questioned you, they would figure out that you did it.”
He leaned back and gestured his superiority with a flick of a hand. “Cops are stupid. They don’t have a fucking clue. Especially with someone who knows what they’re doing.
“They don’t got a witness or a body. They don’t got shit. I wanted to stick around and see the looks on their faces. They always get this serious look when they’re searching for a killer, but they don’t know they’re looking right at him. Know what I mean? I’m right there in front of them and it’s like they’re fucking blind. Kind of like you were until I told you. You looked right at me, just like the police did, and you didn’t believe I could be a guy who could kill someone.”
For Owen, the game with the police was part of the thrill. Killing was the rush, but it faded. He thought he was smarter than the police. Playing games with authorities was his way of keeping the excitement going. That and drinking.