Skin Page 3

  And then suddenly she realized it was too late to do anything.

  The music segued into a different tune as her sister sashayed off the stage.

  Lilith set down her drink and forced herself to her feet. Her gaze went to the left of the stage, to a scantily clad dancer coming through a doorway. Not Hannah. But surely that was the entrance to the dressing rooms.

  Her stomach fisted. She ignored the eyes that followed her as she made her way to that doorway. She was almost there, within a few yards, when a big guy in a tux stepped between it and her. She tried to waltz around him, but he was fast for someone so big. Still...

  “I need to get back there,” she said with a plastic smile.

  “Not without an invitation.”

  He didn’t have to work to look threatening, but Lilith was pretty sure she could take him if she put her mind to it.

  Adrenaline rushed hot along her limbs, but her heart was pounding, and she could hardly breathe. Part of her wanted to get to the dressing rooms at all costs. The other part wanted to run and never look back.

  Forget the whole thing.

  But forget Hannah?

  Isn’t that what she’d done all those years ago?

  Another scantily clad dancer came through the doorway into the club. When she saw Lilith, a cunning smile turned up her mouth.

  “Lap dance, honey?” She licked her lips provocatively. “Or did you have something more personal in mind?”

  Men all around her were staring again. Their gazes felt disgusting, like bugs crawling over her. Men waiting for her answer.

  “You’d better get back to your seat, Miss,” the bouncer said, his tone kind.

  Sucking in air, Lilith nodded and backed away as the dancer whispered something to the bouncer and then laughed.

  Face hot with her humiliation, Lilith turned and fled toward the club’s exit.

  She glanced back once only to be caught by the man who’d identified himself as Michael Wyndham. His intense gaze was pinned to her all the way across the room as she escaped into the night.

  oOo

  Chapter 3

  FRESHENING HER MAKEUP, Hannah shook off the weird feeling that she’d seen a ghost. She’d only gotten a glimpse of the lone woman near the bar, but seeing her had given Hannah a start. So when she went back into the club to look around for someone she knew would be good for at least a C-note, she was searching for the woman, as well. Or maybe instead. Though she scanned the room, the dark-haired woman was nowhere to be seen.

  Jerked out of her thoughts by a hand clamping down on her arm, she forced a smile to her lips when she saw it was Paul Ensdorf.

  “Hey, sexy, how you doin’ tonight?” she murmured as she stopped before Melinda’s brother.

  “I’ll be better if you give me a lap dance.”

  “Mmm,” she murmured, moving in closer, her thighs spread over his.

  Other than to give them tips, the men weren’t allowed to touch the dancers. But after Paul slipped that C-note in her bra, she let him brush his knuckles across her flesh and ran her tongue over her full lips like it was some kind of promise.

  Paul practically salivated. And Hannah smiled with satisfaction as she gyrated to the music – an imitation of the sex act.

  She liked the mastery she had over men. The music ended, and she slid back, her gaze once more roaming the room.

  Paul asked, “What are you doing Monday?”

  “You tell me,” she said distractedly.

  “High tea – very classy, just like you.”

  Sighing, she gave him her full attention and wondered how much that would be worth to him. “Then I guess I’ll like it.”

  “Afterward, we can come back to my place. Grandmother will be visiting friends at the nursing home.”

  Hannah ignored her stomach tightening at being alone with him in that old mausoleum of a building again. Melinda had warned her about going there. She’d said their grandmother was an old bitch from hell and was keeping Paul’s balls for him. Paul was more than a little weird, but so what? A mortician made big bucks, and no way would Hannah turn him down if he wanted to spend more money on her away from the club. A girl needed some good times to get her mind off the bad, and after all, she didn’t actually sleep with him.

  “Monday, then,” she murmured.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Throwing him a kiss, Hannah floated away as if she was in heaven because he’d asked her out.

  Then forgot him the minute the next customer waved a wad of money at her.

  WHAT NOW?

  A bench at the bus stop right across the street from the club gave Lilith a place to sit and think quietly. The street was nearly deserted. Other businesses were closed. All the action was coming from Club Paradise. Bits of music and raised men’s voices drifted to her across the street. Part of her wanted to leave. To get on a bus and forget what she had seen.

  But how could she even think of it?

  She remembered Hannah as she’d once been. Remembered the days when her sister followed her around, annoying her, amusing her, and above all loving her. They had been each other’s comfort in a household ruled by the devil himself.

  No way could she leave, not now, not without meeting the woman. Not without facing her sister and telling her how much she loved and missed her.

  She’d lived with guilt for twelve long years. She wouldn’t add another regret to the list.

  So Lilith waited until men began to leave, some alone, others in twos and threes, most laughing, enjoying themselves, but some grim as if the entertainment had only reminded them of how empty their lives were.

  How empty Hannah’s life must be, she thought.

  There were many forms of abuse, including the kind of objectification the dancers tolerated. Whether or not they agreed, the dancers were victims, perhaps not of violent crimes, but victims nonetheless. And who was to say the victimization would stop there? Two women connected with the club had been murdered. Who would be next? The place was dangerous. Surely Hannah realized that.

  Lilith made her way back to the box office, where the employee behind the glass was locking up for the night.

  “We’re closed.”

  “I’m here to meet one of the dancers. Anna Youngheart. Can you get a message to her? Tell her Lilith is here and wants to see her?”

  “Look, lady, I’m busy. If you want to hook up with Anna... Well, maybe you’re her type. The dancers leave through the stage door in the alley.”

  “When?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have no schedules, okay?”

  Lilith noticed a sign she’d missed earlier. WAITRESS WANTED. To replace the one that had been killed?

  She went around to the alley and stood there for a moment, trying to decide what to do until a big guy, flushed with drink, approached her.

  “Hey, honey, looking for a date?”

  Lilith backed away from him, hoping he would leave her alone. “Not interested.”

  “How much?”

  “I’m not for sale.” She only hoped he didn’t try to make a move on her, or he would end up on the alley pavement with her foot on his throat.

  “I know you dancers. I got money enough even for the likes of you.”

  Even as she prepared to defend herself, a familiar voice said, “Leave the lady be. She’s with me.”

  The big guy practically snarled as he looked over her shoulder, but then he seemed to think better of his attitude and backed off.

  Lilith’s pulse was racing as she turned to face Michael Wyndham. “I’m not with you, either,” she said.

  “No worries.” He splayed his hands and kept his distance. “I was just trying to do you a favor is all. I thought you needed some backup.”

  He really had saved her some discomfort – not that she wouldn’t have been able to take care of herself. “Thanks, then.”

  He nodded and turned away, glancing back once at her before disappearing around the corner.

  Finding the stage d
oor and settling herself in the shadows on the opposite side of the alley, she didn’t have long to wait. The women exiting the club were something of a surprise. Dressed down, makeup removed, they could be just anyone. The woman next door. She’d been there perhaps for fifteen minutes when a young woman with dark hair pulled into a ponytail exited.

  Lilith’s pulse began to race. “Hannah?”

  The face that turned to her as she stepped out of the shadows was as familiar as her own but was pulled into an expression of distrust.

  “What do you want?”

  “Hannah, it’s me, Lilith.”

  Though she didn’t expect her sister to run into her arms, Lilith was disappointed at the lack of any reaction. Hannah looked at her wide-eyed, the way she used to when she was just a kid. But now there was no adoration. No anticipation. No nothing.

  Lilith swept a stiff Hannah into her arms. “I found you. Finally, I found you.”

  Hannah pushed her away. “I’m sure you tried real hard. It’s been how long?”

  “Years. And I spent them all looking for you.”

  Hannah didn’t say anything. She just stared as if she were wondering what to believe.

  “Can we get out of here? Go someplace to talk?”

  For a breath-holding second, Lilith thought Hannah would refuse. Then her sister shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure. We can go to my place. Car’s over there.”

  Over there being a row of diagonal parking spots against the back of the building. Hannah unlocked the door to not just a car but a Jaguar convertible that must have cost enough to pay for a good part of law school.

  Tension wired between them as Hannah drove fast and a little too carelessly. Lilith hung onto the handle in the door and prayed they would get to her sister’s place in one piece. When Hannah turned down a dead-end street and pulled up to what looked like an old manufacturing building set along the Chicago River, Lilith asked, “Where are we?” and Hannah said, “Home.”

  Home was a conversion. One of only several units in the building. A soft loft of tremendous proportions and with an incredible view of the river. The windows on that side ran floor to ceiling. Lilith looked around her and willed her jaw not to drop. Her own walk-up flat could fit into one corner of the massive double-storied main room. The furnishings were sparse but expensive. Leather upholstery, mahogany furniture, real Oriental rugs.

  “We have a dock on the river, too. I’m thinking of getting myself a boat next year,” Hannah said airily. “If I’m still here.”

  “The rent on this place must be out of this world.”

  “What makes you think I rent it? Because of what I do? I make good money, Lilith. Great money.” She waited a beat. “Yeah, okay, I rent it, but only because I get bored easily and might decide I don’t like things and that I want to move on.”

  Undoubtedly the reason she’d been impossible to find.

  “What do you like, Hannah?”

  “I like living here in luxury. I like driving a fast car, wearing nice clothes, going to the best restaurants.”

  “What about what you do to get all that?”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Your sister, who is concerned about you.”

  “My sister abandoned me.”

  Even as her stomach tightened, Lilith shook her head in denial. “It wasn’t like that, Hannah. I just went away to school so I could get a good job and take care of us.”

  “I know it’s been twelve years, but if I remember correctly, when you were getting ready to leave, I asked you to take me with you, and you said no.”

  “I was seventeen!”

  “And I was twelve. You left me there, knowing.”

  “I didn’t think he would hit you, Hannah. You weren’t like me. I was the one with the big mouth. I was the one who stepped between him and Mama.” She could see Mama now, bruised arms, blackened eye. Horrified that had happened to Hannah, as well – her mother never admitted to the abuse going on in their home – she said, “You were the quiet one, the mouse.”

  “When you left, someone had to protect Delores.”

  Why was Hannah calling their mother by her first name? Had Hannah cut them both out of her heart?

  Lilith shook her head. Someone always had to protect Mama. Someone always had to take care of her. That’s why she’d married Marlon Aldrich when Lilith had been fourteen, Hannah nine. That’s how they’d gotten to this place. Lilith fought buried feelings of resentment and betrayal for her mother from surfacing.

  “Have you seen Mama lately?” Lilith asked, wondering if she had known where Hannah was but hadn’t told her.

  “Go back to that house? What are you on?”

  “She just won’t leave. I keep trying to convince her–”

  ”Why bother any more?”

  “Because she is our mother.”

  “Mothers take care of their children,” Hannah said. “They make sure they’re safe. Not the other way around.”

  Lilith didn’t say anything. As long as she’d had to deal with it, she still didn’t know why. Why had Mama stayed with a man who used his fists on her? Who used his fists on her daughters? Their real father hadn’t been like that. He’d been gentle and kind, a dreamer as Mama had always told them.

  “You were like my mother once,” Hannah admitted. “But you turned out to be no better than she was.”

  The back of Lilith’s throat thickened. “So you hate us both?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “I didn’t make you do this.”

  “Oh, this. You mean strip. That’s the difference between us, Lilith. I like what I do.”

  “I’m not judging you. I realize you had to take care of yourself.”

  “I do more than take care of myself. I make terrific money. Look around you to see what it buys.”

  Lilith’s gaze skimmed over the expensive furnishings. “These are nice things,” she agreed.

  “Things that have value.”

  “People have value.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Lilith regretted them. She couldn’t stand the hurt on her sister’s face.

  Then Hannah laughed. “Oh, yeah. Let me count how many worthwhile people I know.” She looked directly at Lilith when she said, “I guess maybe that’s zero, because they all disappoint you in the end.”

  Meaning she had disappointed Hannah, Lilith knew. “I wanted to make a better life for us.”

  “You wanted out.”

  “For all three of us!” Lilith insisted. “I was seventeen and had only a high school degree. What could I do with that? I couldn’t have gotten a job to support us. That’s why I went away to school, to get an education so that I could.”

  Not listening to reason, Hannah said, “You were tired of the arguments and the beatings and you took the first opportunity to leave all that – to leave me – behind.”

  “I would have come back for you.” The weekly phone calls with Hannah begging to be with her had gotten to Lilith. “I was coming back for the summer after the semester was over.”

  “After Marlon broke me the way he did Delores? The first time he beat me, I had a concussion. The second time a broken arm. And Delores lied to the police for him.”

  Hot tears seared the back of Lilith’s eyelids. “Mama told me about what Marlon did after you’d left.” She hadn’t said she’d lied to the authorities, of course. That hadn’t been necessary. It had been her pattern of denial.

  “I wasn’t waiting for a third time. I wasn’t waiting for him to break me. Or kill me. You can’t hide from abuse when it’s in your own house, Lilith. You know that. And I guess I was trying to be like you.” On the heels of that announcement, Hannah said, “You know, I think you’d better leave.”

  Like her? Hannah had been nothing like her, Lilith thought, swallowing a lump too large for her throat. “But we have so much to talk about.”

  “We have nothing in common, Lilith. You’re still you and I’m, well, I’m Anna Youngheart now.”

&n
bsp; “You don’t have to be. I can help you. We can figure something out together.”

  “You think you’re going to walk back into my life after all these years and I’m simply going to give up everything because you disapprove?” Hannah opened the door and indicated she should leave. “Get real.”

  Lilith knew she’d handled this all wrong. Having her sister back in her life was more important than what she did for a living. She took out her business card, scribbled her home phone number on the back and left it on the table. “I’m leaving you my work and home phone numbers, Hannah. I want to see you again, and I hope you’ll want to see me, too, when you get done being mad at me.”

  “You don’t have that long.”

  Lilith might have believed her. Might have believed that there was no hope for the hard bitter young woman who was giving her the boot. But at the last minute, when she took one final look around, and Hannah was standing in the doorway, in the light, Lilith finally saw it.

  Hannah was still wearing the heart-half.

  oOo

  HE SLAMMED INTO his special place where no one could find him and stood surveying the center of his power. A cabinet snugged against one wall housed well-cared-for tools of destruction. Rifles. Handguns. Knives. Opposite were reminders of his prowess. Several stuffed animal heads with glass eyes reigned near the ceiling. Beneath the remains of deer and moose and bear, he’d hung likenesses of the real prizes.

  Pictures of women.

  Beautiful, dark-haired women. Three of them. So far. Starting with her, the one woman he could not touch.

  And next to the carefully framed photographs stood his souvenir case of teak and glass with red velvet-lined shelves. Only the best for his mementos, tokens of the women he’d slain.

  Skin.

  He was ready to add to the meager collection.

  Whipping the photograph from beneath his jacket, he stared at the slut’s face. She could be her, he thought, and soon she would be for him, if only for a short while.

  He hadn’t expected the need to resurface so soon. That worried him. What if it meant he’d lost control? The possibility made him almost as angry as she did. It was her fault those women were dead. Her fault that he was ready to strike again. For if he couldn’t punish the woman who really deserved it...