“Her blood won’t cure my damn brain cancer!” Daniel trembled in rage now.
“Yes it will,” the man in control whispered.
Daniel took a few long breaths. Then, he let a small reassuring smile show. “Listen, you know why I did that? I was trying to protect you too. Her blood is tainted. She told me.”
“What? No, it isn’t.”
“She told me. She somehow managed to push the gag out. I went to the bathroom, and she was laughing. She said her blood is corrosive. She has HIV.”
“No. You’re lying!”
Daniel’s eyes widened, filled with hurt, and the man in control felt a stab of guilt.
“Would I lie to you?” Daniel asked, his voice barely a whisper.
No, of course he wouldn’t. Daniel had never lied to him. “I’m sorry.”
“You can’t drink her blood. It will kill you.”
His world was coming apart. No! It couldn’t be. He’d tasted her; she was so pure. “I need to make sure she doesn’t scream again,” he said weakly.
He went back to the bathroom, knelt by the wheezing woman. The blood still trickled from her neck, though not in copious amounts. He was about to place the gag in her mouth, when she croaked, her words impossible to understand.
“What?”
“I didn’t tell him that,” she rasped. “I don’t have HIV.”
Well, of course she would say that. She wanted him to get sick. But then . . . he’d tasted her. He’d know if . . .
It was the tumor. It was Rod Glover.
The tumor would have no problem lying to him. It wanted him dead as well. For a second he glanced back, scared he’d see the tumor behind him, a viscous blob of corrupted brain cells, slithering on the floor.
But all he could see was Daniel, still in the kitchen, pressing the towel to the back of his head.
“Can you get me some water?” the woman gasped.
He nodded and got a glass of water from the tap. He put down the bloody scalpel and helped her drink, holding the glass to her lips, tipping it slowly. She gulped some, and then, as the glass tipped too much, she coughed again. He took the glass away.
“More?” he asked when she stopped coughing.
She shook her head. Behind him, he heard a door slamming. He glanced back, saw Daniel had returned to his room, shutting the door behind him.
“You can’t let him near me,” she said. “He’ll kill me.”
“I won’t let him. He knows that he shouldn’t.”
“Just don’t let him near me.”
He took the gag and placed it in her mouth. Then, unable to stop himself, he bent forward and licked the blood off her neck. It was sublime. How could he have thought the blood was corrupted? He licked it all, until her skin was clean; then he sucked the remnants of blood from her shirt collar. She groaned, tried to get away from him, but it was no use.
Her skin was hot. “You have a fever,” he muttered.
There was nothing in the house to treat a fever. He’d have to buy something tomorrow.
But could he leave her alone with the tumor?
CHAPTER 54
Zoe was back in the motel, sitting on her bed. She read her notes, scrolling through the images on her laptop. She’d decided that Rhea’s abduction was a good enough reason to break her promise to Tatum and work into the night.
It had taken her and Albert four hours to go through all the pictures. He hadn’t recognized all the people in the photos, but he’d been familiar with the majority. He’d also managed to find phone numbers for thirteen of them. Catherine’s phone would have many of them as contacts, and Zoe could work with that tomorrow.
Now she did what she could to find the rest of the members’ names. The tall bald guy, who in two separate images was talking to Rod Glover, was unnamed. But he appeared in seven different images with a man named Donald Holcomb. After a quick search, she found Holcomb’s profile on Facebook. And there was the unnamed tall guy, listed as one of Holcomb’s 147 friends. His name, according to Facebook, was Bobby Cross. And she could glean a lot from both of Holcomb’s and Cross’s profiles. Age, other friends. Cross was single, Holcomb married with a fourteen-year-old daughter. She scribbled in her notebook, her mind already mapping the likelihood of any of those men being the killer. And Cross had another of the unnamed people as his friend.