Shocking Pink by Erica Spindler

Author:Erica Spindler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychological, Thrillers, Fiction
ISBN: 9781459228269
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

42

Much later, Raven sat alone in her dark bedroom. She huddled in a corner, her three-hundred-dollar silk skirt bunched up around her thighs, her back pressed against the wall, remembering.

She was fifteen again, hidden in the cramped closet of the empty house, peering through the inch-wide crack between the door and the jamb. Waiting. Heart thundering. Afraid. Excited.

She moved closer to the sliver of space, anxious to catch a glimpse of him, Mr. X. She trembled. She prayed, the waiting interminable.

Finally, she heard his voice. David’s voice. Deep and silky smooth. Powerful. Raven’s heart leaped; she pressed closer to the door.

He had come. The woman was with him. He told Mrs. X what he expected her to do, quietly, brooking no disobedience. The rope awaited, its end tied into a noose. Beneath it a step stool, her lifeline.

Mrs. X was naked. Blindfolded, her hands bound in front of her. Raven saw her trembling. She pleaded for mercy.

David told her again what he wanted, this time sharply, as if annoyed. Mrs. X stepped onto the stool, sobbing now. Begging for her life.

For all her tears and pleading, however, she was a willing lamb. She did as he asked without a fight.

Murmuring words of love, of praise, David slipped the noose over her head, then fitted it around her neck. He tightened it to the point it caused discomfort, Raven saw. Tightened it to the point that the slightest move constricted her windpipe, cutting off her breath.

Then he made love to her, with his hands and mouth. Mrs. X cried out in pleasure, and pain, as he brought her to orgasm again and again, until, Raven saw, she hardly had the strength to stand.

Raven pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, fighting back the memory, knowing how it would end, with Mrs. X’s body twitching with her last breath of life.

She didn’t want to go there, not again.

She didn’t have a choice. The past had sought her out.

Raven dropped her hands. She opened her right. On her palm lay a circle of gold, a symbol of eternity, of everlasting love. A wedding ring. Mrs. X’s wedding ring.

That last day, Raven had seen it there, lying on the dresser. It had caught the light, seeming to wink at her. In one of those decisions made without conscious thought, she had grabbed it and tucked it into her shorts’ pocket. As a prize, she supposed. A memento.

Now it could be so much more.

David Sadler was Mr. X. The man the police had been wanting for fifteen years. The man who had haunted Raven’s thoughts and dreams for that same amount of time. She had looked for him every day of each one of those years, expecting to see him on a crowded sidewalk or across a busy restaurant.

Instead, he had found her. Raven dropped her hands and rested her head against the wall. Mr. X. The only man she had ever felt a real connection with. From him she had learned what

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