have to admit,” he says, eyes wild with fevered craze. “You’re in a very tempting position. I could fuck you raw right now and not a damn thing you could do about it.”
“Get off,” I wheeze, my vision starting to go blurry.
He ignores me, shifts his weight. For a brief and blessed moment, his hand relaxes and I drag in air that feels like razors against my bruised neck. But he merely moves his casted arm upward and places it at the base my throat and presses down. My hands release his wrist and move to the cast, trying to push him off. “But I don’t have time for that. I’ve got bigger problems . . . namely that you’re a major threat to my existence. Why you haven’t gone to the cops yet is beyond me, but fuck if I’ll take that chance now.”
He leans his weight on me. A gray haze starts to crowd my peripheral vision and an image of Beck’s face flashes before me.
“One more thing I want you to know before I end you,” JT says in a soft voice . . . almost lovingly. “Surely you know you’re not my first, and definitely weren’t my last. In these next few moments, when I’m choking the life out of you, I want you to go with the knowledge that you’re not the only girl of Beck’s who caught my attention. Sweet Caroline was a lovely piece that I just couldn’t resist, and she put up a much bigger fight than you ever did, which made it all the better for me.”
My eyes flare wide and a surge of anger pulses through me as I understand what he’s saying.
God . . . JT raped Caroline? He’s Ally’s father?
“That’s right,” he says with a laugh as he reads the expression on my face. “Slipped her a little Rohypnol in her drink at her parents’ Christmas party, followed her home, and when her date dropped her off, she was easy pickings.”
I growl against the weight of his cast on my throat, narrowing my eyes at him with hatred. As incomprehensible as it is, I have no choice but to believe him. I try to pull in air but get nothing. My hands release my hold on his cast, and I start to flail in a desperate attempt to do something. Find something to help me live through this, and avenge not only myself but Caroline as well.
But as the lack of oxygen starts to shut my body down, the gray gets darker, I feel myself starting to give in to the pull of oblivion.
Chapter 24
Beck
I glance at the clock on the mantel for maybe the hundredth time, the nauseating feeling of unease that’s been steadily increasing over the last hour threatening to expel the Michael Mina scallops. I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Sela again. It rings only twice before going directly to voice mail, but I don’t bother leaving another message. She’ll get the point I’m worried when she listens to the other two I’ve left.
I have no clue where she is or why she hasn’t responded to me, but this is what I do know. Her last class got out at 1 p.m., just about the time I was with Dennis. She had told me that morning she had planned to come back to the condo and do some studying here, and we knew that Caroline and Ally would be arriving roughly around four thirty or so, depending on the drive after Caroline got off work and picked Ally up from preschool. When I got home around two thirty, it was to an empty condo.
Fine. No problem. Maybe Sela decided to study at Golden Gate’s library. She does that sometimes. Or maybe she went to the grocery store. Not out of the realm of possibility, although we tend to eat out more than we cook in.
Still, plausible possibilities and I know I shouldn’t worry.
Except I am, because the one thing Sela wouldn’t do is ignore my calls. She would have texted me her change of plans. And if she was unable to take my first call for some reason, she absolutely would have called me back once she got my first message, which was left almost two hours ago.
Something’s wrong. I can feel it deep in my gut. It actually makes my bones ache.
Add on top of that, I haven’t heard a peep from JT today, and my trouble radar is going