Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) (46 page)

Excerpt from

Ruthless Game

A Captivating Suspense Novel

by

Danielle Girard

Award-winning Author

Prologue

March 17, 1971

The wet fabric started to slip and she held her bound hands to her face and tried not to watch. It was too terrible, too terrible. She just wanted her mommy. Where was her mommy? Where were all their mommies?

"Fourteen is just too many," he growled as he lifted the body of Jimmy Rodriguez and set it next to the others.

There were eleven. She had counted. Eleven times she'd heard them scream, eleven times she'd heard them stop. She was last in line, but he was getting closer. Only Billy and Marcus were before her. He'd be to her soon. She shifted against the cold cement floor, the puddle she'd made like wet ice cream against her skin.

She heard Billy sobbing and she started again, too. She couldn't help it. She kept waiting for someone to come and save them, but no one did. He had killed Mrs. Cooney and Mr. Choy. He walked onto the school bus and shot them. And then he forced each of them to drink a cup of punch. He put something in it. She saw him. And she shook her head when he told her to drink it. But he hit her hard and she knew she had to or he'd shoot her like he did Mrs. Cooney.

He looked at her now and licked his lips. She started to cry harder, pushing herself away from him. "No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

"Can't I save some for later?" he called.

She stopped crying and looked around, peering out of the small gap in her blindfold. Why was he asking them that?

She nodded. Save some for later.

"Tomorrow, I'd be fresh and ready again."

She nodded. "Tomorrow," she whispered. "Tomorrow."

It was quiet for a moment and she moved her head to look out of the corner of her blindfold. She heard feet moving toward her. Was it him? Looking down, she saw white sneakers like Brittany's.

"What do you think you're doing?" he screamed.

She jumped, feeling someone behind her. But his voice was far away. Someone touched her hands and she could feel the rope on her wrists loosening. "Billy?" she whispered, but no one answered.

Then, her hands were free. She rubbed them together. She wanted to pull at her blindfold but she was afraid he would see her so she didn't move.

"I said what do you think you're doing?" he repeated.

She held her hands together as though they were still tied. He was yelling at her. But he wasn't getting closer. Just stay still, she told herself.

"You can't shoot me, for God's sake," he screamed.

Suddenly, someone was behind her again. She heard a loud clacking sound and then it was silent. She whipped her head around but couldn't see. She started to shake.

There was something hard and cold in her hands. It was heavy. She remained silent, feeling her hands shake as she held the heavy thing. She looked out of the corner of her blindfold and saw all white. White with wings, she thought. Wings.

She didn't feel scared, though.

Someone moved her finger and she heard a loud pop. Then another. She dropped the heavy thing and pressed her hands to her ears.

And then it was over.

Chapter 1

Twenty-nine years later

The harsh blare of a car horn pulled Alex Kincaid from sleep, an uncomfortable ache burning in her lower back. Shifting positions, she felt the rough edge of a chair. She must have fallen asleep in the den. It had been years since she'd done that, awakened with an empty bowl of popcorn in her lap and an old rerun of
Taxi
on TV. Her mind meandered through the evening before, but she didn't recall if she had been reading or watching television before bed. She settled back in to sleep a few more minutes.

A car rushed by and she shifted again, wondering when her street had become so noisy. Usually no more than one car passed every twenty minutes, but this morning it sounded like there were a parade going by. No wonder she never slept in the den.

No, that wasn't right. The den was in the back of the house. The cars couldn't be heard from there.

Forcing her eyes open, she stared out her windshield. Her windshield? Confused, she looked at the car around her. Sitting upright, she clutched the steering wheel. What the hell was going on? Above her, the yellow leaves of the fall oak trees sheltered the morning sun, creating patterns of light across her dash.

A cover of dew beaded across her windows. The cool California morning made her shiver. A row of Victorian and Tudor homes stared down at her from the hillside like thick-necked soldiers preparing for attack. What was she doing in her car?

She glanced down at the familiar navy sweat pants and gray Cal T-shirt, trying to remember going to bed the night before.

She'd taken something one of a handful of doctors had given her to help her sleep—Restoril. The endless insomnia had finally driven her to be so exhausted, so totally beat, that she'd regressed to trying the meds again. She'd slept. She'd actually slept. But when had she gotten up? And left her house and driven to—she looked around at the houses—big houses, larger than anything in her neighborhood, all built high off the street, their large windowed fronts staring down at her questioningly.

And where the hell was she?

Leaning forward, she ran her hand over her lopsided ponytail and looked around. There has to be a good explanation for this. Her eyes closed, she rubbed at the pain in her temples. Someone must have called her. Her brain kicked into gear as she tried to picture her phone, tried to remember it ringing. Her mind sputtered and stalled like a dying car. She didn't remember talking to anyone.

Hoping one of the houses would nudge into her memory, she stared back at the imposing facades. The block didn't look remotely familiar.

Cars raced down the street, their drivers dressed in ties and suits. Work! Her fingers searched her wrist for her watch. It wasn't there. But she always wore her watch. Turning the key in the ignition, she glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was nearly seven
a.m
. "Damn it." She was going to be late for work.

She started the car and glanced at a street sign. Yolo Avenue. She'd never heard of that street.

She'd been sleepwalking; that had to be it. She'd never done that before. It had been so long since she'd even slept through the night. And this was worse than sleepwalking—she had sleep-dressed then sleep-driven and who knew what else.

Fighting off the battling anger at not remembering, she steered the car down Yolo until she saw a familiar street sign. Henry. She was in Berkeley, actually only a half dozen blocks from the station. Yolo was on her beat, but she had never come across it before. Ingrained in her subconscious, somewhere, was this street. That was why she'd ended up there. She shook her head and sped across Shattuck to Ashby. That was the last time she was going to take sleeping pills.

Wishing she had a siren, she blared her horn at the slowpoke drivers around her and sped for home. She parked the car in front of the small home on Pine Lane that had once belonged to her mother. The front grass needed cutting. The hedges had grown up and begun to block the front windows, giving them the appearance of shaded limousine windows, only in green. The Spanish-style house needed painting, too. Its pinkish salmon color always looked as if it had been bought on sale. She wanted the house to be white. But until now, she hadn't realized how much she'd let the house go—suddenly, the house was a disaster.

As she locked the car door, she felt both strangely rested and also unnerved. Neither was a sensation with which she was familiar. She brushed the nervousness off. She didn't have patience for catastrophe now. Rushing up the steps, she shivered, her T-shirt much too thin for the cool morning air.

As she moved, she reminded herself of the positives. At least she had awakened in her own car. What if she had found herself in a stranger's house? What if she had done something crazy—like driven into a pole or a dog or a child? What if she had robbed a bank?

What if nothing. Nothing had happened. She opened the door to her house and looked around. Everything was normal here.

The drug had a strange effect on her sleep patterns or something. Alex's sleep patterns, or lack of them, had been a popular subject in her household growing up. Maybe she would have a chance to stop by James's office and ask if he remembered anything like that.

She was a very logical person—calm, cool, collected. She didn't drink heavily, exercised religiously and kept her distance from suspicious people. She walked in the crosswalk and flossed her teeth, for God's sake. Things like waking up on a strange street did
not
happen to her.

A man's face suddenly popped into her mind. He had been in the bagel store yesterday. He had approached her as she was getting bagels and coffee for herself and her partner. He'd used her name and then Greg had come in and she'd turned away. When she looked back, he was gone. She'd never seen him before or since. And why was she thinking about him now?