Devoted in Death (In Death 41)

Shame avalanched over the ugly joy, reminded her whatever they did to her, she was still human. She could still feel shame. And pity.

Together they rolled the body over, began to undress the man – no, she saw and the pity heightened. A boy. Younger than she was. Twenty, maybe twenty, and pale as glass.

He stirred a little, moaning. Darryl picked up the sap – they’d cracked at least one of her ribs with that weighted leather bag – and slapped the boy on the side of the head with it. Like you might slap a fly – absently, with a mild annoyance.

“Don’t want him waking up as yet,” Darryl said. “Need to get him situated first.”

“He’s about the whitest thing I’ve seen outside of that snow on the ground outside.” Ella-Loo snickered as she dragged off the boy’s pants.

She dumped out the contents of the pockets while Darryl finished getting him stripped down. And opened the wallet.

“Got less than twenty on him. Shit, and no wrist unit or nothing. Name’s Reed Aaron Mulligan.”

Jayla repeated the name over and over in her head. She’d remember Reed Aaron Mulligan. About twenty, on the skinny side, milk-white skin and some freckles, reddish-blond hair with a sorry-looking goatee on his soft boy’s face.

“Key swipe, few loose credits, nice little pocketknife. One of those – what-d

o-you-call-thems?”

Darryl glanced over. “Multi-tool. Lemme see.” He took it from her, examined it. “It is a nice one,” he said and slipped it into his own pocket.

“Boots’re pretty new, and the coat, too.”

Christmas presents, Jayla imagined. From his parents. His parents would be looking for him soon.

“Too small for you,” Ella-Loo said to Darryl, and standing, tried on the coat. “It’s warm.”

“Not pretty enough for you, baby.”

“I bet we can get something for it, and the boots.” She tossed them, and his pants toward the couch, then studied Reed Aaron Mulligan with her hands on her hips.

“Pecker’s nothing to write home about, but we get some Erotica in him, get the wood going on him, he’ll do all right.”

She turned to Jayla then, smiled that hot, feral smile. “He’s going to rape the shit out of you.”

Jayla wanted to close her eyes, just close them and go away again, but she made herself meet those hard eyes. Made herself stare back into them until Ella-Loo picked up the sap, slapped her once, twice in the crotch.

The pain burst in her center, radiated everywhere.

“There’s a taste for you.” Angling her head, as if considering, she slapped each of Jayla’s breasts in turn.

As Jayla’s body arched and fell, Ella-Loo watched the bruises bloom.

“I never tried any sex stuff with any of them. It gets me hot.”

“Me too.”

She glanced over, saw the gleam in Darryl’s eyes, the way his hand was working between his legs.

“Not yet, baby. Not yet. Let’s get our new friend here situated, like you said. We’re going to want to soften him up a little.”

Jayla crawled into herself, into the tight, dark space where the pain pushed around the edges. After a while, she couldn’t say how long, she heard the awful, almost inhuman high-pitched sound, one she’d heard herself make.

And knew they’d begun to soften up Reed Aaron Mulligan.

Eve read over DeWinter’s very preliminary report, again.

Too early to be conclusive – and that just burned her ass – but DeWinter believed, and Morris concurred – that a number of Melvin Little’s injuries had been inflicted prior to his fall. Some as much as twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior.