Condemned Read online

  “Did you have a good birthday?” He asked, spinning me to face him. Our bodies only a whisper apart, I couldn’t breathe without inhaling great, dizzying lungfuls of his scent, a woody, spiced aftershave mingled with his natural musk.

  “It was perfect,” I sighed, losing my train of thought as I locked onto his emerald eyes. He gazed back at me with knee trembling intensity. My whole body sparked. His hand ran down my arm.

  “Are you cold?” He frowned, as he brushed the goose prickles lining my skin.

  “No.”

  He cupped his hand behind my head, lacing his fingers through my coiffed hair. This was it, my first ever kiss. It couldn’t be more romantic, under the stars, the tide lapping at our feet. His lips moved to mine, I closed my eyes. His breath warmed my face as he moved in, his lips scarcely brushing mine. Fireworks exploded behind in my mind. He pulled me to him, stooping down for better reach. Our lips joined. My breath escaped me. Against his chest, his muscular body hard against my soft curves, my heart pounded.

  His tongue pushed into my mouth, he dropped his hand from my head, running it down my spine, his feathery touch lighting every nerve with need.

  First kisses aren’t supposed to be like this. As a solitary, bookish type, I knew this from my very first YA romance novels. They were supposed to be awkward, punctuated with clashing teeth, drool and interlocking braces. Your knees aren’t supposed to weaken, your skin isn’t supposed to tingle, desire isn’t supposed to pulse through your core. You’re not supposed to open your eyes to gaze into his emerald eyes, lose yourself in their beauty.

  I was swept off my feet, literally. He lowered us to the soft white sand, his arms either side of my body, caging me in his embrace, his weight holding me down, anchoring me in the sand. The cool ocean water licked at our intertwined feet. Our lips remained locked together, we explored each other for the first time.

  “Are you okay?” He asked, brushing his thumbs over my flaming cheeks. Okay? I was breathless, consumed with a cacophony of unfamiliar sensations. Butterflies danced in my centre. My heart spiked. I was more than okay.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “You’re shaking.”

  Was I? I hadn’t noticed. A flurry of goosebumps prickled my skin as he ran his hand the length of my smooth leg, inching towards the too-high hem of my borrowed mini-dress. His kisses lowered, moving down my neck to the curve of my shoulder, over my cleavage.

  I was naked under this dress. He’d stolen me from my room, dressed for bed in my shorts and vest, nothing else. I held my breath, his hand moved under my dress, his knees pressed at my legs, easing them open. What else would be stolen tonight?

  Oh, God. His hand reached my virgin mound, his thumb teased my clit, the intense sensation, confusing, my untouched nub so sensitive I was caught somewhere between pleasure and pain.

  “You don’t like that?” He asked as my legs involuntarily slammed closed around his hand.

  “Yes.”

  I think I did.

  “If you don’t want this, I can take you home but only if you promise to meet me for lunch tomorrow?”

  “I want this.”

  I did want this. More than wanted it, my body needed it. There might never be another chance. And I’d never meet anyone more perfect.

  He hitched my dress up around my waist, lowering the neckline, it clung like a belt around my middle, exposing my breasts and virginal pussy to this Adonis.

  “I want this to be perfect for you. If anything doesn’t feel good, tell me.”

  This was perfect. He was perfect. My Prince charming, who rescued me from the awful grasp of Gorilla Man. I’d remember this moment forever, it would be ingrained in my mind, my happy place, somewhere I could drift off to in my dreams when reality became too harsh and unforgiving.

  He nudged my thighs apart. I winced as he moved his hand back to my clit. He grazed the aching ball of nerves, running his thumb in circles around the edge. My body melted into the sand, all of the anxiety I’d been filled with ebbed away with his expert touch. Instinctively, I reached for him, wrapping my arms around his neck, steepling my fingers through his long, dirty blonde hair. He grinned down at me, my grip tightening around his neck, my fingernails raking into his scalp. My breath came in deep, hungry rasps. I struggled to fill my lungs. The intensity of the sensations running through my body tensed every muscle, my toes curled. If the pressure building in my core didn’t ease soon, I was certain I’d explode.

  The hand he held my face with dropped away, fumbling with his belt. I was about to lose my virginity, to American college grad, laid under the stars. And it was perfect. This was turning out to be the best birthday I’d ever had. One doubt niggled at the back of my mind, I was falling in love, with a man I’d never see after the end of the week. He’d return to his native Texas, to the job as a construction engineer he’d secured. I’d be locked back up in my father’s compound, probably tethered to Angel for life. It was more than I could bear.

  He wriggled out of his jeans, a condom gripped between his teeth.

  “I didn’t plan this,” he explained. “I just want you to know that. You’re just too damn irresistible. We all carry a condom. It’s better to have one and not need one. I’m still willing to stop, no hard feelings?”

  “No,” the whine that escaped my lips, pitiful and desperate with need. If he stopped I’d burst.

  His thumb still ran rings around my clit, sending intense, blinding hot energy racing through me. He rolled the condom on. I kept my eyes on his. This was happening and I needed it to.

  The spongy tip of his manhood pressed at my entrance, his hips rocked smoothly, easing his length inside me slowly. Oh fuck. It hurt, he stretched my tight channel, nudging in deeper with every flick of his hips. It was agonising and good, oh so good.

  My back arched into the sand. He tipped his head down, running his tongue over a pebbled nipple, teasing it gently between his teeth. It was too much, too much sensation, pleasure, pain, pressure. I burst with the intensity of a million fireworks all going off at once. My sex gripped his manhood, pulsing around him. Animalistic mewls slipped from my gasping lips.

  Jesus. His lips locked on mine, I came down from my high slowly, my body loose, exhausted and craving more of him all at once. He twitched inside me, his teeth clenched together, his eyes rolling into his head, spilling his seed into the condom.

  I was no longer a virgin. He straightened out my dress, kissing the tip of my nose before he pulled his jeans back up. We sat under the stars, listening to the waves tumble over the sands until the sun began to peek over the horizon.

  “We’d better get home before someone reports you missing,” he sighed.

  “Rescue me, properly rescue me,” the words slipped unbidden from my mouth.

  “Tell me what you need?”

  “To go to college in America, away from my dad. I don’t know how to do it.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  He made me recite his email address over and over until it was burned forever into my brain. I’d apply to colleges, he’d help me find a job and accommodation, help with my application for a student visa. I was an adult now, my father didn’t need to grant his permission. He couldn’t stop me leaving, he wouldn’t be able to bring me back. That was his plan. He didn’t know my father. He’d bring me back, hunt me down until he found me, drag me back home, killing anyone who stood in my way. It was my only chance. I had to try.

  ◆◆◆

  He walked me back to my window, still open from last night. Angel was nowhere in sight. I’d managed to get away with it.

  “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  His flavour hung on my lips as I changed back into shorts and vest combo, hiding the dress in the bottom of my case, piling dirty laundry over the top of it.

  Awake all night, my body ached, but my mind buzzed too loud to allow sleep. I headed into the lounge, praying Angel was still sleeping off his hangover.

  It wasn�
��t Angel waiting for me. It was a nightmare. A nightmare that would haunt me forever more.

  Chapter One

  Danica

  The creak of the door chilled me to the bone. Each footstep bouncing off the rotting floorboards a knife to my soul, tearing it apart strip by strip. His weight pressed into the flimsy stained mattress. My body prickled, fear coursed my veins. A clammy, filthy hand reached beneath the tatty blanket, snaking up my bare thigh.

  “You're mine, he didn’t pay. You belong to us now.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, praying he’d leave me in peace if he believed I was sleeping. He liked it when I screamed, begged for an end to the nightmare he’d trapped me in. The sleeping don’t scream. My prayers went unanswered.

  The anguished scream tearing from own mouth rescued me from my nightmare. The same nightmare haunted me night after night. They were getting worse, they often did when something big was changing. I hated change. Routine kept me safe, banished the nightmares behind a cloud of monotony. My eyes moved to the digital clock by the strange bed. Four forty-five. Sleep wouldn’t come for hours, once it did, the alarm would be blaring. I sighed, dragging myself, exhausted, from the bed.

  The temp on the shower maxed out, steam filled the room. No matter how hot the water, it’d never wash away what they did, what they made me. I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. His touch still lingered, staining me, marking me as a victim, the one thing I swore I’d never allow myself to become. Fucking nightmares. They leave me unsettled for days afterwards, I'm thrust back into a living Hell, trapped somewhere between life and death, praying for the latter.

  Four hours left before I started my new job, if I spent them here, I’d wear a hole in the carpet, I’d be driven insane by own tormenting thoughts. I threw on my running gear and headed for the door, tucking my pepper spray into my sports bra, my taser into my pants. Never again would I allow myself to be taken. I wasn’t a weak, naïve teenage. I was a mother-fucking, ass-kicking detective. Detective Danica Milano, cross me at your own risk.

  My feet pounded the tarmac, hot, dry air whipped my skin. I raced faster and faster through the strange streets.

  This move was a step up the ladder. A good thing. I’d flown through the ranks after graduating the academy. My lungs burned, my feet ached, my muscles turned to jelly, still I ran, trying to outrun the nightmare. Running always helped clear my head, it chased away the dusty remains of my tortured past. By the time I returned to my apartment, my body laced with sweat, I felt almost human. I hit the shower again.

  ◆◆◆

  Fuelled only by coffee, I hit the road. Focused on my breathing, I wound my station wagon through the streets of Houston. My heart pounding, I pulled my car into the car lot. The station here dwarfed the one I’d grown to know as home. So many people, so much potential for my past to ruin my future if I was recognised.

  “You can do this, Dani,” I muttered, forcing myself from the car.

  I took a deep, shaking breath, held my head high and strode towards the intimidating building.

  “Dani.”

  Oh, God. That accent, drawling my name in that way. My body jumped to high alert. I turned deliberately slowly.

  “Dani? Dani Milano?”

  A balding middle-aged man with a bulging waistline and donut sugar coated lips held out a sticky hand.

  “Danica,” I replied sourly, grimacing at the hand. I couldn’t face hearing that name in that accent. He wiped the remains of the donut he’d been scarfing on his brown pants.

  “Sorry, love.”

  Ugh. Some people just begged for a bullet to the face. This buffoon was one those of people.

  “I’m your new partner. Detective Aaron Schilling.”

  Awesome, just awesome. I missed Pasadena already.

  Schilling followed me, talking incessantly at me, quizzing me on life in Pasadena. He had an Aunt who lived there. Susan, she had three children. One would be around my age.

  “I didn’t grow up in Pasadena.”

  It was a relief when we finally made it to the office and I was paraded in front of my new colleagues like a cattle at market. At least it stopped the talking. It's never fun, being the new girl.

  The show over, my colleagues having studied me, the Police Chief dragged me and Schilling into his office.

  “You remember the Roman case?” He asked Schilling.

  “Like it was yesterday,” Schilling scowled, “that asshole dead yet?”

  “No. His attorneys are filing appeals. The bastard still claims he’s innocent. They’re claiming they have new evidence, an email from the imaginary girlfriend. I want you to head over to Polunsky Unit, go over everything one last time and check this email out. After the whole mess with the Sanchez case, the Governor wants to make sure we have all our t’s crossed and i’s dotted.”

  The Sanchez case, I knew that one. A serial rapist and murderer, he terrorised half of Texas, travelling the entire state, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, including three in Pasadena. He went to his death claiming his innocence.

  Young, attractive, successful, Sanchez, a charismatic father of four, wasn't your typical serial killer. The media fawned over him. It blew up epically when a fresh victim, with all the hallmarks of Sanchez, turned up a week after he’d been executed. It turned out to be an unrelated crime. A domestic homicide. The murderous husband displayed his wife in the unique elaborate way Sanchez laid out his victims, hoping to get away with murder. He was caught less than a week later, confessed to everything. It didn’t stop the media questioning Sanchez’s innocence or prevent several anti-capital punishment charities filing lawsuits against the state of Texas on behalf of the deceased. The whole debacle was one mega shit storm that no-one wanted repeating.

  “Take Detective Milano with you. Fill her in on the case on the way.”

  “Sure thing, Boss.”

  Brilliant. I’m spending my day stuck in a car with this stinking idiot.

  Schilling brought me upto speed on the Roman case as he drove.

  A double killer, he’d been found, covered in the blood of his victims, passed out in a drugged, drunken stupor. The murder weapon, a baseball bat, lay the sofa next to him, his bloody fingerprints dotted around the handle.

  The victims, his live-in girlfriend and her eight-year-old daughter, both lay naked in their beds, traces of his semen in and around their genitals. Their DNA was all over him. There’d never been a more open and shut case. The perp himself admitted he had no memory of the incident. His last vivid memory was downing vodka in a local strip club hours earlier.

  “Seems a straightforward case to me,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was. The guy is as guilty as they come. Forensics found searches for sex slavery on his computer dating back years. The prosecution argued that he wanted to sell the kid and her mum to a sex ring. They think he’d been abusing the kid, the mom caught him, he panicked and flipped, killed ‘em both.”

  “So, why we looking at this again?”

  A prison was the last place I wanted to be in my current state.

  “Dunno,” Schilling shrugged. “All the way through the case he’s denied everything. Reckons the searches were about an ex he was hunting down, some holiday fling. Says the girl was kidnapped and sold into slavery, he was looking for her. He thinks the people who took her framed him to silence him. Thing is he doesn’t have the chick’s name. He expected a jury to believe he’s spent the last ten years of his life hunting down a woman whose name he doesn’t even know.”

  Ah, the imaginary girlfriend. The one who emailed him.

  “His file’s back there,” Schilling waved towards the backseat, “knock yourself out if you need to know more.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Pictures of slain children always left me queasy. They somehow seemed worse in print than in real life. My own personal horrors still fresh in my mind, my grisly nightmares needed no more fuel.

  The prison loomed on the horizon, it’s imposing gun towers coming int
o sight first. I hated prisons. They stunk of desperation and oppression. And there was a bigger chance in a place full of felons, murderers and dealers, than anywhere of me being recognised. That’s the last thing I wanted. I’d have to explain my past. People would look at me that way I despise, with pity in their eyes. I’d be treated like a fine china doll. The hushed whispers would start up again. The cases I’d work would be carefully selected, to minimise any trauma. It’s why I left Pasadena.

  ◆◆◆

  “You ready to go?” Schilling asked, flinging open the driver’s door.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I sighed.

  Schilling led the way, confidently stalking into the intimidating, redbrick building.

  “Detectives Schilling and Milano. We have an interview with death row inmate Leopold Roman,” Schilling told the stony-faced guard at the reception, flashing our badges.

  We had to hand over our guns and cell phones. Schilling held onto the small tape recorder.

  “Who the fuck calls a baby Leopold?” I hissed. The thick, steel security door clicked open. The sound sent shivers down my spine.

  “The fuck kinda people who raise paedophiles I guess.”

  Led through the prison by an elderly, silver-haired guard, I kept my head down.

  “He’s in there, with his lawyers,” the guard instructed.

  “Thanks,” Schilling nodded.

  He pushed me through the door first. Leopold Roman, child killer and paedophile, sat hunched over a desk, studying a pile of papers. His long, messy blonde hair hung over his face. Chains snaked from his cuffed wrists to a heavy belt around his waist. His feet, I guessed, would be shackled too.

  The lawyer, a young brunette, whispered into her client’s ear. It sickened me the way these lawyers talked to their scum of the earth clients. How did they sleep at night, knowing they’d spent the day helping pure born evil walk free?