Shadow Games (2 page)

In the midst of the melee, several ten- and eleven-year-old girls acquainted themselves with sexual frenzy—and liked the feeling so much that they decided to come back for more, meaning the four o'clock performance
Cobey
was scheduled to put on.

Somewhere in the midst of all this had been Kimberly
Conners
, who'd slipped away from her mother so she could get a better position near the stage.

Now, nobody had seen Kimberly for the past three-and-a-half hours and talk—whispers, really—had turned to the
sonofabitch
who'd come into a similar Florida mall last year and taken a three-year-old boy right from the men's room while his dad was in one of the stalls. The bastard had then driven the poor little tyke out to the Keys and molested him and then disemboweled him...

Kimberly's mother was trying real hard not to think about this incident.

Kimberly's mother was trying to convince herself that Kimberly was here somewhere, just wandering around and spending some of the hundred dollars she'd gotten from Grammy Levin last birthday.

Around three o'clock, Mrs.
Conners
called her husband at work. He was an architect and always busy and occasionally hostile when he came on the phone. She didn't like to trouble him unless absolutely necessary. She considered this absolutely necessary.

She explained to him about Kimberly.

Within a minute-and-a-half, he was sliding behind the wheel of the new, blue, family Buick and heading straight for
Windmere
Mall.

II

I
n both grade and high school, Sharon Marie Bowers had been known as "Hairy Sherry" because of the undue amount of silky, black hair that covered her arms and put a faint,
Hitlerian
mustache on her upper lip. Her parents, who were working class, determined to spend all their money if necessary to help their only child. They heard how she sobbed at night after a day of teasing at school, and there's nothing more heartbreaking than hearing such sobbing from the child you love. There's also nothing that makes you feel more helpless.

Thus began a quest that went on for eleven years and ended in failure.

At twenty-four, Sharon Marie Bowers still had all her silky hair, though thanks to the option of long-sleeved shirts that the folks at Federal Security gave their guards, at least nobody had to gape at her arm hair.

There just wasn't much she could do about the mustache despite her best efforts with razors and a myriad of creams.

But you couldn't call Sharon Marie unhappy. True, she didn't have a boyfriend, but she did have a nice, seven-year-old Pontiac rag-top that she took out to the summer park and buffed in the summer sun, and she was newly elected captain of her credit union's bowling team, and her collection of country-western CDs kept growing.

So, despite the way she sometimes twitched and shuddered when she recalled the chant of "Hairy Sherry," and despite the fact that she needed to lose sixty or seventy pounds, and despite the fact that some of the other security guards usually got the more convenient hours, Sharon Marie Bowers was a happy woman, even when people occasionally hinted that she might be gay. Sharon Marie was rip-
snortingly
hetero and just waiting for this crew-cuffed guy at the bowling alley to let her prove it.

She would be even happier by the time this day—April 28—had passed.

Because Sharon Marie Bowers not only found Kimberly
Conners
, she may also have saved her life.

III

A
ny way you looked at it, the whole thing was pretty crazy and after about two hours Kimberly started to realize just how crazy it was.

Just before he'd rushed through the doors that took him to the maze of back hallways that wound through the mall,
Cobey
Daniels had paused a moment—just a fraction of a second, really—and looked right at Kimberly.

Right at her.

With the full force of his blue eyes.

With the full force of his white-capped grin.

With the full force of his number-one-teen-idol aura.

And his eyes and his lips and his aura had said: follow me, Kimberly Jane
Conners
. Follow me into the hallway here and beautiful times will befall us. I promise you.

So, trance-like, she did just that.

She pushed past the screaming, jumping, jostling, pushing girls and, somehow, shoved, angled, wriggled and willed herself past the throng and into the hallway where
Cobey
stood waiting for her.

He didn't say anything.

He simply took her hand and led her away.

She had no idea where they were going and it took nearly fifteen minutes to get there. Obviously,
Cobey
had scoped this whole place out. He knew just which way a given hallway wound, and just where it ended.

His destination was a large, locked door behind an upscale dress shop.
Cobey
, wouldn't you just know, had a key.

He took her inside.

In the spill of light from the hallway, she saw a dozen mannequins. Some were only heads and shoulders. Some were full-bodied and, curiously, obscene. Their eyes stared, dead but knowingly, at Kimberly. They seemed to sense something that she didn't.

Cobey
, ever the clown, went over to one of the full-bodied mannequins and slid his arm around her shoulder, letting his fingers come dangerously close to the modest rise of her breast.

"Meet my best girl," he laughed. "Isn't she pretty?"

Kimberly giggled nervously.

Cobey's
eyes rose from the mannequin's breast then and looked right at Kimberly. "But she isn't half as pretty as you," he said, with knee-weakening simplicity.

From his back pocket, he took a small silver flask, uncapped it, and sipped deeply from it. Kimberly could smell the bourbon fumes all the way over on the other side of the room.

Cobey
came over to Kimberly then and took her hand. In that moment, she knew why he'd brought her here, and knew that she would do whatever he asked. Whatever...

He took her to him gently and touched his lips to hers. "I'm glad you came with me, Kimberly," he said, softly. "We're really going to enjoy ourselves. I promise you."

And, with that, he reached behind her and gave the door a push.

Except for a single, dusty bar of golden sunlight coming through a small, oblong window high up on the west concrete wall, the storeroom was dark and quiet.

Without another word,
Cobey
went over and grabbed a handful of heavy, wine-colored drapes and then spread them out like a bed on the floor.

He sat down and raised his hand to her.

She took it and
Cobey
guided her down to the drapes.

When her neat little bottom had
snugged
into a comfortable position on the drapes,
Cobey
leaned over and kissed her, just the way she'd always dreamed he'd do.

Within a minute-and-a-half, his right hand was inside her white blouse and liberating one of her small, sweet breasts from her bra.

Kimberly
Conners
was so excited—and so terrified—she thought she might, literally, pass out.

"I
wish you'd just touch it, Kimberly. Just once."

"I—I'm scared."

"I thought you liked me."

"I do."

Cobey
laughed. "It won't bite you."

"I know."

He laughed again. "And I keep it real clean. I take it out and wash and wax it every day."

That one made Kimberly laugh, too, the idea of taking it out and washing and waxing it...

They'd been in the storeroom a couple of hours, now. She'd had no idea that you could just keep doing things to each other without ever doing IT. They hadn't done IT yet and Kimberly sincerely hoped they never would, because now some of the headiness had worn off and she realized that she was a) going to be in very big trouble with her parents, her mom in particular, and b)
Cobey
was starting to scare her and she wasn't sure why.

He had felt her breasts and kissed them and licked them
flickingly
; and he had put his hand down between her legs and kept it there for a very long time; and he had then pushed her down on the floor and slid on top of her and begun to work and pump in the way of somebody who was making love.

She stopped him at one point and said that she was a virgin and scared of all the bleeding and maybe this wasn't a really good idea.

After she'd said this a couple times, he reluctantly slid off her and then he sat next to her for a long time in the shadows of the storeroom, with the mannequins watching them so knowingly, and she could tell that if he wasn't mad he was at least profoundly disappointed in her.

Actually, she'd done more than enough already to make her famous among her friends. They didn't even have to do IT to make this the greatest story of all time. Just being with him and letting him touch her in all the places he had was plenty.

She'd be on the phone non-stop for the next eighteen days.

And then she was jolted back to reality because then—

Then he whipped it out.

Just like that. Just sitting there.

And all of a sudden it popped up, big and white, like a jack-in-the-box.

And that was when he took her small white hand and guided it over to him.

Her fingers were only half an inch away from IT...she froze her hand. He couldn't budge it.

"I thought we were friends, Kimberly," he said, sadly.

"I've—I've never touched anybody there before."

"God, Kimberly."

"I'm sorry. I'm just afraid to,
Cobey
." She was almost in tears now.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm—I'm not sure."

He didn't say anything for a time and then he said, "Do you know about a man's needs, Kimberly?"

She was uncertain. "Sort of, I guess. I mean, about coming."

"Do you know what happens when a woman stops a man from corning, Kimberly?"

"I—I suppose it isn't real good."

"It hurts, Kimberly."

"Really?"

"It hurts very much."

"God."

"And," he said, "sometimes it can cause permanent damage."

"Permanent damage?"

"The come gets so hot inside the man that it burns his whole prostate and then he's infertile. He can't have babies, Kimberly. Not ever..."

"God," she said again, though she wasn't sure she believed him. In fact, she was more sure than not that she
didn't
believe him.

"If you'd touch me just a little bit, I'd come."

"You would?"

"You wouldn't have to stroke me, even. Just touch me a little bit. I'm going crazy, Kimberly. I really am. Just touch me a little bit, please?"

"God."

He started to move her hand toward him again.

"Please, Kimberly. Please."

But she froze her hand again, maybe not any more than a quarter inch away from him.

And that was when he slapped her.

Slapped her so hard that everything went starry and then everything went black.

Starry and black and she fell back against one of the mannequins and it went pitching over backwards, white arms akimbo as the whole thing smashed to the floor.

By then Kimberly was crying.

And by then he was on top of her, his hands on her throat, blue, blue eyes crazy as all hell.

IV

A
t this moment, Sharon Marie Bowers was passing by the storeroom door. And she heard Kimberly sobbing. And heard Kimberly gasping for air.

From the considerable belt Sharon Marie Bowers wore around her middle dangled a jangling group of keys unmatched anywhere for sheer bulk and entanglement. But Sharon, being the type of person she was—organized, dutiful, responsible—knew just which door every key unlocked.

So, without hesitation, she called out, "I'll be right there!" to Kimberly, and quickly located the proper key.