THREE TIMES A LADY (30 page)

Lost in her self-pitying thoughts, Dana was abruptly jerked out of her reverie by the sickening sound of glass crunching against bone twenty feet away. 

She whipped her head around hard to the right and saw bright red blood gushing down the face of a stunned-looking biker in his early fifties, courtesy of his fellow biker and bar mate.  The wounded party put a hand to his head and came away with a palm-full of blood.  His bloodshot eyes widened briefly in surprise.  Then a slow, ugly smile creased his weathered face.  Obviously, this didn’t mark his first rodeo.

Reaching around to the back pocket of his filthy blue jeans, the man produced a switchblade knife and flipped it open before taking a menacing step toward his adversary.

Even as Dana’s newfound bartender friend was frantically scrambling over the bar to get between the drunken combatants – a short billy club in his right hand to underscore his point that he didn’t especially care for fighting in his establishment – Dana fought every instinct in her body that was screaming out for her to intercede.  Instead, she simply slipped a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill beneath her half-empty beer bottle in order to keep it from blowing away in the breeze before leaving the bar and losing herself in the crowd of suntanned tourists that was strolling through Times Square, the quaint little beach town’s unsubtle homage to New York City.

No reason for Dana to get involved here.  No reason for her to risk her own neck.  She wasn’t law-enforcement any more.  She wasn’t an FBI agent any more.  Hell, she didn’t know
what
she was any more.

Except for broken, of course.

Banks of the White River – Tichnor, Arkansas – 1 a.m.

‘Get some more sandbags over here on the northwest side!  It’s starting to give!’

Covered in full plastic flood-gear from head to toe, Nicholas nodded to the man who was holding the bullhorn and scrambled to take his new place in the relay line.  Torrential rains fell down from the heavens, making it seem as though God Himself had emerged from a long, leisurely bath before pulling the plug on His celestial bathtub without so much as second thought for the insignificant human insects darting around below. 

Rivers of storm-propelled water streamed into Nicholas’s eyes and made it difficult to see.  Lightning zipped across the pitch-black sky and fought for dominance with the pounding thunder.  The sticky brown mud beneath his feet threatened to suck off his boots with each slow, plodding step he took.

Nicholas twisted at his aching hips and took the forty-pound sandbag from his fellow volunteer who was stationed on his left before twisting at his hips again to hand it off to the portly man on his right. 
Twist, hand off, repeat.
  On and on this went for what seemed an eternity, until Nicholas’s back had been turned into a pretzel, until the muscles in his arms sang with exquisite pain.  But what
else
could they do?  Stop?  Wasn’t an option now with the Montgomery Point Lock & Dam this close to bursting.

The bullhorn cut through the cacophony of pounding rain once more.  ‘That’s it, ladies and gentlemen!  Keep up the good work and keep those sandbags coming!  Don’t give up now!  We’ve worked too damn long and too damn hard to just quit now!  We’ve almost got it shored up!  Just a couple hundred more sandbags to go!’

Nicholas ran his stare over the washed-out landscape as he continued to work away with every last ounce of energy left in his exhausted body, which wasn’t much by this point.  The flashing lights of dozens of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances lit up the night sky like a giant pinball arcade – the entire town’s emergency-response force.  Down here on the ground, it seemed as though every last resident of Tichnor, Arkansas, had showed up to lend a helping hand.

Every last resident, that is, except for one.

Nicholas shook his head in disgust as yet
another
heavy sandbag slammed into his arms.  Twisting at his hips, he handed it off to the man on his right before immediately twisting at his hips again to receive the next load.  The most prolific storm in Arkansas’ history – a storm of
apocalyptic
proportions – didn’t appear likely to abate anytime soon and if nothing else, Amber Knightly should have been out here helping them avert certain disaster.  If she didn’t want to participate in the grunt work maybe she could do something else.  Pour some coffee for the exhausted workers.  Pass out dry clothing.  Offer a little bit of encouragement.  Something. 
Anything.
 

She should have been out there
suffering
with them. 

Nicholas took another sandbag in his bruised and battered arms and handed it off.  No doubt the famous pop singer who’d put the tiny town of Tichnor on the map for all the wrong reasons thought she was
above
this sort of menial work.   But while the rest of them were out here trying desperately to save her backwater town, the head-shaving, lesbian-kissing, out-of-wedlock-baby-having slut who’d made headlines every bit as much for her train wreck of a personal life as she had for her singing talent (which didn’t seem much, to Nicholas’s ears) – was nowhere to be seen.  What did she care?  She was
rich
. 
She
wasn’t one of hapless commoners who’d lose everything should the dam happen to break. 
She
was on high ground. 
She
was untouchable. 

Or so she probably thought.

A tap on his right shoulder pulled Nicholas out of the wonderful fantasy where he was using his sharp knife to pluck out Amber Knightly’s vocal cords strand by bloody strand.  The man with the bullhorn.

‘Go on home and rest up for a bit,’ the man shouted, squinting against the unceasing rain.  ‘You’ve been out here longer than anybody else already.  We’re going on four-hour shifts and you’ve already been out here for six.  That’s enough.’

Nicholas took another sandbag and handed it off.  ‘You sure?’ he yelled back.  ‘I could probably go another hour or two if you need me.’

The man with the bullhorn shook his head.  ‘Go!’ he ordered.  ‘We don’t need you collapsing out here.  We need all the emergency responders we have to help out with the sandbagging.  If they have to stop working to take care of you, they’re not available to me.  Come back after you’ve warmed up and gotten some sleep.’ 

The man cast his stare up to the stormy heavens above.  ‘I’m sure we’ll still be out here.’

Nicholas nodded, breathing out a grateful sigh of relief as he stepped out of the relay line.  Behind him, the line immediately tightened up to compensate for his absence.  It was a work of art, really.  A well-oiled machine that did whatever it took to get the job done.  ‘OK,’ Nicholas said, his mind continuing to perform the endless
twist, handoff, twist
routine even though his aching muscles had now stopped the maddening repetition, ‘but only if you’re absolutely positive you don’t need me.’

The man pointed to the makeshift parking lot a hundred yards away.  Four hundred muddy cars and pickup trucks dotted the drenched landscape.  ‘Go,’ he said.  ‘Get the hell out of here before I change my mind and put you back to work.’

Unsticking his boots from the mud that had formed around his feet while he’d been talking with the man holding the bullhorn, Nicholas trudged through the primordial muck toward his rental car, pausing to take one final look back at all the dedicated workers behind him.  Seemed like every last resident in Tichnor, Arkansas, had showed up to lend a helping hand.

Every last resident, that is, except for one.

An hour later, Nicholas slipped undetected into Amber Knightly’s house on Sweetbriar Lane; helped along in no small part by the fact that the clinically lazy slut’s home-alarm system had been disabled by the sweeping power outage brought about by the apocalyptic storm still raging on in the heavens.

Making his way quietly upstairs to her bedroom even though stealth wasn’t something he needed to worry about at this point, Nicholas paused and steeled himself for what would come next.  Another murder.  Another step closer to fulfilling his mother’s diabolical plan.  Another step closer to finally becoming a
real
man – even if that long-awaited transition took place now that he’d blossomed into a living, breathing
woman
. 

Thankfully, the god-awful rainstorm drowned out every other possible sound in the universe as he went, masking each muddy step he took up the thickly carpeted staircase.  Brilliant flashes of intermittent lightning illuminated his way.  Once again, as had been the case back in Dinah Leach’s mansion and Penelope Hargrave’s limousine,  all of nature was his friend tonight.

With everybody in town – including law-enforcement –doing their damndest to keep the overworked dam from bursting just two short miles away, Amber Knightly would be alone tonight.  Just as Nicholas had known she would be from the very start.

He stopped just outside the doorway of her bedroom and simply watched her for a little while.  The pop singer sat in front of an elaborate vanity mirror with her eyes closed, dreamily running a silver-handled brush through her flowing blonde hair.  A solitary, gas-powered lantern cast an eerie yellow glow over both her unlined face and the rest of the sumptuous space.

Smiling, Nicholas came up behind her and rested his hands gently on her shoulders. 

Amber Knightly’s eyes flew open as she was abruptly jerked out of whatever reverie she’d been lost in.  Nicholas’s handsome reflection stared back at her from the mirror.  Try as she might, though, she couldn’t produce even
one
terrified scream before Nicholas jabbed the sleep-drug deep into her neck and depressed the plunger.

Stretching his own neck, Nicholas watched her body slip off the chair and down to the floor.

Then he smiled. 

Time to get back to work.  And he had all the time in the world here, didn’t he?  Of course he did.  No need to worry about anyone interrupting them.

Removing from his waistband the same knife he’d used to slice off Dinah Leach’s breasts and labia in her glamorous Buckhead home, Nicholas turned his wonderful fantasy back at the dam into stomach-turning reality.  Dropping down to his knees over her, he began to pluck at the selfish pop singer’s million-dollar vocal cords like so many strings on a harp.

Strand by bloody strand.

Thirty-six hours later, Nicholas finally had his long-awaited showdown with his mother back home in Chicago. 

This was it.  The day for which he’d been waiting all these years had finally arrived.  The day for which he’d been waiting ever since watching his little brother brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of his shocked and disbelieving eyes.  The day for which he’d been waiting ever since the sadistic bitch had forced him to breathe in his own waste and to taste his own sin.  A day Nicholas had
dreamed
about.

A day he’d never
truly
thought would ever arrive.

Annabeth Preston sat at the kitchen table in their shared home on 969 Turning Oaks Drive, idly flipping through the glossy pages of a gossip magazine.  She didn’t even bother glancing up to acknowledge her son’s presence when Nicholas entered the room behind her.  ‘How’d it go out in Arkansas?’ she asked, wetting a manicured fingertip with her small pink tongue and flipping another page.

Nicholas’s heart pounded in his chest.  His hands trembled.  His armpits flooded with sweat.  His temples throbbed.  His pulse raced.

Annabeth Preston finally turned around when he didn’t immediately answer her.  Her emerald eyes locked onto his, freezing him in her paralysing cobra stare.  ‘I asked you a question, son.  I
said
, how’d it go out in Arkansas?’

Nicholas tried to speak but no words would come out.  His tongue felt too swollen; his vocal cords too tight, the crashing in his brain too loud.

Annabeth Preston studied the sheen of fear in his eyes and rose to her feet.  The belt on her white satin robe fell open at the waist to reveal her beautiful body.  A silver Tiffany heart necklace was cushioned between her ample breasts.  A lacy black bra supported perfect white globes.  A small brown mole winked out at Nicholas from the left side of her chest.  She took a languid step in his direction.

‘You want this, son?’ she cooed, pursing her painted lips and running her fingers through her ink-black hair, letting the strands cascade over her shoulders in a glorious display of seduction.  ‘You want to take your mother to bed and show her what a big, strong man you are?’ 

Annabeth Preston slid a finger teasingly along the elastic waistband of her white satin panties.  ‘Are you ready for me, Nicholas?  Finally ready to do something with that bulge I see in your pants all the time?  Do you
like
what you see, boy?’ 

When Nicholas again failed to answer her, Annabeth Preston laughed.  ‘I know that you and your little brother like me,’ she said, taking another step forward.  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t.  I see the way you two boys have been looking at me lately.  Disgusting, foul little perverts.  Don’t you know that little boys aren’t supposed to look at their mothers that way?  It’s
unholy
.’