unbuttoned her blouse and opened it, exposing her lace see-through Victoria’s Secrets bra. The lights were still on and all Gabby could think was thank God she had put on nice underwear this morning. He ran his warm palms over the lace. ‘Do you like that?’ he asked when her nipples got hard.
She sucked in a breath and nodded.
He pulled his own shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed. His chest was hairless and muscular. Not body-builder cut, but defined. Especially his pecs. Then he bent down and starting from her ankles, ran his hands over her legs and up her entire body, pulling her skirt up as he did, so that it rested on her hips, exposing her sheer panties. He slowly pulled down her pantyhose, leaving her panties on. ‘I said, “Do you like that?”’ he repeated, his voice sharper. ‘I want to hear you say it, Gabriella. Tell me you like it. Tell me you want me to touch you.’
She nodded again. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, but it felt so good. ‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘Yes, I like that, Reid. I like it a lot. I want you to touch me.’
He kissed her again and then he pulled away. In one fast motion, he took the pantyhose and tied it around her mouth, knotting it in the back. Her tongue was trapped and she couldn’t speak. Her heartbeat quickened. A feeling of fright pulsed through her body. ‘That’s all I wanted to hear,’ he whispered.
He walked over to the wall of curtains and pulled back the first curtain. Behind it was a video camera set up on a tripod. Flanking the left side of the video camera were three computer monitors sitting on metal carts. He opened the other curtain, revealing another three monitors on the right — six computers in total. The carts looked like the audiovisual carts teachers used to wheel into classrooms in elementary school when they wanted the class to watch an educational movie. Behind the push carts and video camera was another wall of black curtains. The monitor screens were all on. On each monitor Gabby saw a different person.
‘Hello, Gabby,’ said a man on one of the screens, leaning into the camera.
‘Good evening, pretty,’ said another.
And another. ‘Hey there, Gabriella. That’s a real sexy name you have. I like your hair.’
The man on the first monitor laughed. ‘He likes naturals.’
Gabby’s eyes grew wide with fear. She tried to speak but the gag wouldn’t let her. She pulled hard on the scarf above her, but it only tightened on her wrists, twisting her hands around and around in mid-air. She tried to kick out, but there was nothing to use for leverage. She spun uselessly, her feet barely touching the floor.
Reid turned his attention away from the screens and back to her. He’d put on a tight, black mask that covered his face. Besides an opening for his mouth, the only part visible was his eyes. The flecks of gold in them that Gabby had found so intriguing a few hours earlier danced excitedly.
Gabby tried to scream but couldn’t. She just twisted helplessly around and around, her suspended body jerking about. She thought of her mom and dad and sister in Bloomfield, sleeping in their beds, dreaming nice dreams. She wondered how they would react when they found out she’d been raped by a strange man she’d willingly gone home with. Her mom would break down and cry and scream and probably blame everything on the evil city of New York till her Dad told her to stop. Her Dad, though, would secretly blame Gabby for being a slut and hooking up with someone she’d met in a bar. The tears streamed down Gabby’s face. Then a cold fear stopped her heart as she looked at the excited faces on the computer monitors watching her. Gabby knew then that as sure as the sun would rise in the morning she would never again see it. And she would never see her family, or have to witness her mother scream out in pain, or feel her dad silently condemn her judgment over the next Thanksgiving dinner. Because at that moment she knew she was going to die. Off in the distance, behind the wall, she heard the whir of what sounded like a motor, but it wasn’t a car engine. It was more like a blender. Or a buzz saw. Scenes from every horror movie she’d ever watched flashed through her head.
‘Gabriella, baby,’ Reid said, as he slowly approached her, flashing his model-perfect smile through the mask’s black slit. One arm was outstretched, the other hidden behind his back. ‘You’re about to become so very famous. You’re going to be a star, Gabby. A star. And now I’d like to introduce you to some of your biggest fans …’
4
Miami, May 2011
City of Miami homicide detective Manny Alvarez chomped on a greasy beef empanada and sifted through the awful pictures that covered his squad desk. The crumpled body of a young woman dressed in just a pair of black panties lay inside a dumpster, her long blonde hair tangled in the mound of garbage she’d been found buried in. Only her face was visible in the first series of photos, peeking through piles of rotting food, trash bags, discarded paint cans, and broken furniture, her terrified brown eyes open wide, staring up at what was, ironically enough, a perfect, blue Miami sky. What was left of her lips was twisted into the most grotesque smile Manny had ever seen. The fingers of her left hand, the nails painted pink, reached out from her fetid grave. When Manny had first arrived at the scene with the rest of the crime-scene crowd and the pack of technicians from the Medical Examiner’s office, his first thought — standing on a ladder over that filthy Dumpster, surrounded by blue uniforms and onlookers straining for a peek, sweating his cojones off in the ninety-degree heat — was that it seemed as if something or someone was beneath the poor girl, like in that horror flick, Drag Me to Hell. Pulling her back down into the garbage, back into hell, by her pretty blonde hair while she desperately reached out for someone — anyone — who could help her.
But no one had.
Her name was Holly Skole, her case number was F10-24367, and she was the thirty-fourth homicide of 2011 in the city. Her body had been found by Esteban ‘Papi’ Munoz, the owner of Papito’s Cafeteria, who’d apparently discovered Holly while disposing of spoiled trays of last night’s special. Clutching at his chest, the old man had staggered back through the parking lot towards his restaurant — and straight into the path of an SUV that was pulling into the lot. Fortunately, the two ribs he’d cracked on the fender of a Lexus hadn’t killed him. Unfortunately, the heart attack that was most likely brought on by seeing a dead body in with his leftovers had. It was only after the ambulance had come and carted off the grandpa of sixteen to the hospital morgue, the reports had been written, the rubber-neckers had dispersed, and the tow truck had hauled the Lexus off to impound that someone finally thought to take a good look around and see what had gotten the old abuelo so freaked out. A rookie traffic cop with twenty minutes on the job was the one who’d ultimately lifted the dumpster lid — only to spend the rest of the morning throwing up his Cheerios.
Manny washed down the last chunk of his lunch with a slug of crappy coffee from the machine down the hall as he flipped through the pictures and reviewed his reports. Dumped bodies were never good. Not that he relished a gory domestic or a gang-banger shootout, but usually with dumpers by the time you found them they were in a progressed state of decomposition and they stank and looked terrible. The real crime scene was missing, along with vital evidence. Plus, there was something tragic about a victim who’d been used up, right down to their last ounce of dignity, then their remains tossed away like a piece of trash. It was especially disturbing when the body being thrown out was that of a pretty, nineteen-year-old college coed with her whole life in front of her.
Clipped to the top of a Coral Gables PD missing persons report was a photo of the vivacious University of Miami sophomore from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, with the creamy complexion, infectious grin and honey-blonde hair. A communications
