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  “Josey, you are in a lot of danger.” His hands clasped so tightly before him that his knuckles turned white. “I thought I got you out in time but I didn’t. Someone saw you and Will at the ceremony. They also know that I wasn’t there and that the two of you work for me so now it is my problem.”

  “Where’s Will?” This time she lifted her chin when she asked the question. “What have you done with him?”

  Rafe’s gaze never wavered. He never blinked.

  “Nothing yet. His fate is in your lovely hands, Josey.”

  “What do you mean?” Joey’s heart started hammering in her chest.

  “Normally those who view the ritual uninvited… disappear.” His spooky hazel eyes moved over her face and settled on her lips for just an instant. “I know how you feel about Will. I know you wouldn’t want anything like that to happen to him.”

  “And I can avoid that how?” Her hand slid slowly up toward the crystal vase at the corner of the tray.

  Rafe smiled again, only this time his eyes were wild and the calm façade he worked so hard to maintain slipped. He looked like a madman.

  “You must stay here with me,” he explained. “I can protect you. As long as you are with me they won’t touch you. You’ll be safe.”

  “They,” she repeated slowly, tracing the fine pattern of the crystal vase with her fingers. “Since those who see the ritual uninvited disappear, and you know all about it and you’re still here, am I to assume that you are one of them?”

  “Yes.” His voice was small and tight.

  Rafe raked his hand through his hair, his lips pressed into a tight line.

  “If I stay with you would I become one of them too?”

  “Josey.” Rafe’s voice was gentle as he moved to sit next to her on the bed, taking her right hand in both of his. “I did it for you. For us. It’s not as bad as you think. As long as you go to the ceremony just once a month you can stay just as you are. Beautiful as you are now. You won’t age any more. You won’t get sick this time, Josey, ever. We’ll never be parted again.”

  Oh, yeah. He’s gone. This was a bit more involved than thinking she had a cute ass. Rafe did it for us? What us? We’ll never be parted again? He thought she was someone else. Someone he’d lost? Joey didn’t know. And she couldn’t care. No, she had to get the hell out of here. The fingers of her left hand curled around the neck of the vase. But she had to wait. She needed to know about Will, where she could find him.

  “As long as Will won’t be… hurt.” Joey spoke slowly and smiled at him, trying to play along. “I -- I’d feel terrible.”

  Rafe exhaled, relaxing just a little. The muscles of his hands eased slightly and his fingers began to lightly caress her hand now trapped between them. Joey would have liked nothing better than to yank her hand away. His touch was repulsive to her, like spiders crawling over her hand.

  “Will won’t be hurt if you stay with me,” Rafe assured her, the wild look in his eyes filling her with alarm. “I promise you. He will be perfected.”

  “What do you mean?” Joey wanted to know. “Perfected?”

  “He will no longer feel any pain or fear,” Rafe explained. “That’s what the ritual will do for him. It will relieve him of all those annoying fears and anxieties. Never again will he experience doubt or insecurity or any emotion that prevents otherwise brilliant people from realizing their full potential every day. There will be nothing he can’t accomplish.”

  Oh my God! “So he’ll feel nothing? He’ll be robbed of all emotion?”

  Rafe’s eyes were hauntingly vacant. “His life will be better.”

  His life would be better as an emotionless husk? No way!

  “Wait. You’re one of them. You seem to have emotions,” Joey pointed out.

  “I am a follower, Josey,” Rafe explained. “It doesn’t work that way. We participate in the ritual and partake of the power. But we aren’t required to be offerings in the rite.”

  “Seems if it were such a wonderful thing you guys would want to do it,” Joey shot back.

  Rafe shook his head impatiently and leaned closer like he was moving in to kiss her. “The choice is yours, Josey.”

  She didn’t know who Josey was, but two things were pretty clear; Rafe thought she was Josey and he was threatening to kill Will unless she agreed to stay with him. And if she agreed to stay with him, Will would live, but turn into a blazer-wearing super-geek.

  Screw that!

  Joey’s mind was spinning. How could she get him to tell her where to find Will?

  “Before I agree to anything I want to see Will.” Joey knew it was too much to hope that he would actually take her to see Will, but she had to try. “I need to see him.”

  Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

  Joey yanked her right hand away from him. The fingers of her left hand tightened around the vase.

  “Rafe, I’m serious. Unless I have absolute proof that he’s alive I’m not agreeing to anything.”

  Joey’s heart began thumping so loudly he must have heard it as she watched his face color in anger, his eyes darting to the vase she held. With a fierce sweep of his forearm the tray of food and everything on it went flying across the room. Everything but the vase. That she held on to for dear life as she sprang off the bed.

  The floor rushed up at her as she landed on it with a bone-jarring thump. Rafe came around the bed as she tried to climb to her feet, shaken and hurting. Sharp pain raced up her right leg from her ankle and it was then she noticed the manacle around it. He’d chained her to the bed!

  With a growl he hauled her up from the floor and threw her back across the bed, trying to wrest the vase from her hand as he pressed her into the mattress with his body. Joey fought him with everything she had, trying for his groin with her knee, trying to free the hand with the vase so she could use it against him.

  But she was losing. In no time he’d trapped her legs beneath him and collared her wrists in his strong hands. Rafe pulled back to look at her as she struggled, began to grind the heat of his erection against her silk covered thighs.

  “Josey,” he whispered as he gazed down into her eyes. “Don’t you know me? Don’t you remember me?”

  Joey went limp beneath him. The pleading in his voice, the pain she read in his hazel eyes made her pause. The woman she represented meant so much to him. It was obvious that he would do anything to make her his. In a small corner of her heart she felt pity for him.

  But his guard was down and in that instant Joey pulled her left wrist up hard where his thumb met his fingers, the weakest point of his grip. She brought the vase down hard and it struck his head with a dull thud. Rafe’s eyes widened but he didn’t have time to act before she dealt him another blow, this one causing the crystal to shatter and his full weight to drop on her.

  Joey winced in pain and lifted her hand to see the red slash across the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt like hell. But it was worth it because she’d knocked him out.

  Chapter Four

  Joey didn’t remember being as afraid when she was stationed in Afghanistan as she was scrambling to roll Rafe’s heavy, limp body off her. He was twice her size and it took several mighty heaves but she finally managed to shove him off her and the bed. He hit the hardwood floor with a satisfying thud.

  How do you like it, asshole?

  Though she was sore from the sex, sore from her struggle with Rafe, she sprang into motion. Rafe could come to at any time and she needed to make sure that he wasn’t going anywhere until she could find Will and get them out of there. And she had no idea at the moment how she was going to pull that off.

  There was also the little problem of the manacle around her ankle. Shit! Joey yanked up the covers looking for the other end of the chain and found that it was attached to the bed, the chain coming from a specially made footboard. Rafe was into some weird shit!

  The chain was no more than three feet in length, not nearly long enough for her to reach anything but the window and
the bedside table. The clock! Joey crawled up the bed, snatched the clock and hurled it to the floor as hard as she could. Fear had her leaping back across the bed to see if the crash had awakened Rafe, but he was right where she had left him amidst the scrambled eggs and tiger lilies.

  Jumping off the bed on the other side, she winced as she stepped on a small piece from the clock. Lifting her foot to brush off the small golden wheel she squatted over the smashed timepiece looking for something, anything to pick the lock at her ankle. The minute hand caught her eye, slender and straight. Frantically she sifted through the other scattered parts until she found the hour hand. Now she was in business!

  Hauling up the ice blue negligee, she sat on the floor and turned the manacle until the lock was at her inner ankle. She had no idea what she was doing when she inserted the two metal pieces into the lock but she worked them for all she was worth. Her heart pounded in her chest as she listened for any sign the lock was releasing. Finally she did hear a click and she stopped her work to try to pull the metal collar off, but it wouldn’t budge. Shit!

  Praying that Rafe was still out, she picked up the clock hands again and resumed trying to pick the lock, trying to do exactly what she had when she heard the click. After a long moment it clicked again. Turning the hour hand ever so slightly, Joey felt something move within the lock and to her great relief the manacle sprang open.

  Joey raced for the bedroom door to find something, anything, to secure Rafe long enough for her to get away. The linoleum of the kitchen floor was cold under her bare feet when she reached it, yanking open drawers, cabinet doors. Large rolls of gray duct tape caught her eye when she pulled open the doors under the sink. There were at least a dozen rolls of the wide tape sitting on top of boxes of black garbage bags. Lots of bags. Unless Rafe secretly worked on a garbage truck he was definitely into some weird shit.

  Grabbing a roll of tape and a sharp carving knife from the wooden holder on the counter she sprinted back toward the bedroom, her heart thumping even after she discovered that Rafe still hadn’t moved.

  Had she killed him?

  Pressing her fingers into the warm flesh of his neck, she found his pulse steady and strong. Not wasting a minute she grabbed his wrists and bound them with the duct tape, taking care to loop the tape between his wrists several times. He’ll have a hell of a time getting out of that. For good measure she wound the tape around his head a couple of times too, around his mouth. She didn’t want to make it easy for him to call for help when he did come around.

  Somehow she dragged his body across the floor until she could fasten the manacle around his ankle -- it barely fit. She searched through the pockets of his trousers, his shirt pocket. No keys. Good. The son-of-a-bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

  Glancing down at the ripped blue negligee he’d dressed her in, Joey shook her head. She had to find something else to wear and find Will. Locking Rafe in the bedroom made her feel a little better as she tore through each room until she found a large bedroom decorated in tans and browns. The scientific textbooks and journals led her to believe it was Rafe’s room. Racing for the closet, she threw open the door to reveal a neat line of pressed shirts, trousers -- all way too big for her.

  Joey attacked the drawers of the dresser next, finding a black T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants that swallowed her whole, but at least they had a drawstring to hold them up. Her fingers trembled as she struggled to pull on the pants and tie the string around her waist.

  Where was Will? All Rafe had told her was that his fate was in her hands. If she agreed to stay with him, Will would be handed over to the robe-wearing weirdos. If she didn’t agree to stay with him, Will was dead meat. Well, if Rafe truly had meant that it was her decision, he wouldn’t have given Will over to them yet. If that was true he had Will hidden away. Odds were that meant one of two places -- the house or the lab. Since he’d already had one unconscious person to haul back to his house it was likely Will was still at the lab, but she had to check the house. If anything had happened to Will…

  The faint thumping in the bedroom where she’d left Rafe told her that he was coming around and she prayed that Will wasn’t in that room because she couldn’t bring herself to go back in. There’d been no closet, only a slender wardrobe that a man Will’s size wouldn’t easily fit into. But she frantically searched every other room in the house including the garage and basement. She found nothing, no sign of Will, no sign of her clothes.

  With her heart racing from fear as much as her exertions, she headed for the basement stairs prepared to flee the house. A small framed photograph on a cherry wood table in the nicely finished basement caught her eye and she paused to study it. Joey gasped as she recognized the two people in the small, black and white picture. Rafe looked just as he did now only his hair was styled differently, in an old-fashioned way. He wore a dark suit and his smile was almost boyish.

  The blonde woman by his side smiled at her from the photograph, her face the very image of her own. Her hair was cut short and styled in little pin curls about her face. It reminded her of a style from the 30s.

  Oh, God, oh, God. Is this real? She looks just like me!

  Snatching the picture in her left hand, the carving knife still clutched in her right, she hit the stairs running and didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Linda smiled at Joey when she spotted her speeding up the hallway of Cranford Hall. Joey would have liked to return her smile; she liked the custodian immensely, but her chest felt as if were going to explode. She was lucky that Rafe only lived a couple of blocks away from campus. Still, it had been a challenge to make it to campus on foot, to sprint between buildings and avoid being seen. Not only that, but she felt like she had sandpaper between her legs and her ankle was killing her!

  And now there she stood on a cold March morning with no shoes, enormous pants and a pretty good-sized knife clutched in her hand behind her back.

  Linda’s look was curious as Joey walked up to her, but all she said was, “Good morning. How are you?”

  Joey panted, fought for breath to answer. She managed to smile, nod.

  “Out exercising this morning, honey?”

  Honey, Josephine, Josey. Hell, she’d answer to anything. Nodding again she pointed at the pocket of the blue smock the woman wore over her clothing.

  Linda’s head ducked to see what Joey was pointing at. “What, honey?”

  “Locked… out,” Joey managed between breaths.

  “Oh, you need to get into Dr. Bowen’s lab?”

  Joey nodded for all she was worth.

  “Well, I’ll let you in there.” Linda beamed at her, fishing a ring of keys from her pocket. Joey scanned the hallway looking for signs of someone following her but Linda didn’t seem to notice. No, she took her time searching key by key for the one she needed to unlock the door.

  Finally she found it. “Here it is.”

  Mouthing “thank you” to the woman, Joey flew into the lab, closing and locking the door behind her.

  The floor of the lab had been swept clean and there was no sign of any broken equipment. The space on the counter where she’d been fucked six ways from Sunday was still conspicuously bare. But she didn’t have time to dwell on that at the moment, disturbing as it all was.

  The need to find Will was all-consuming as she dashed to the heavy metal doors of the prep rooms behind Rafe’s office. The fear in her heart grew as she discovered the warm room empty. Her fingers trembled, she dropped the knife, as she struggled with the combination lock to the cold room that was on the other side of the narrow corridor. Finally she managed to open the door, but no Will.

  A thumping sound drew her attention to the supply closet a few feet away. Joey sprinted toward the door. Her heart pounded harder at the sound of a muffled voice calling from the other side.

  Joey threw open the door of the closet to find Will bound and gagged with duct tape, leaning against the wooden shelves on the hard concrete floor. At least he was dressed and i
n his own clothes.

  Will’s eyes met hers and relief filled them as she scrambled to reclaim the knife she’d dropped to cut his bonds. She sliced through the tape binding his hands and feet easily enough, but let him pull free the tape wound around his head and no doubt stuck in his hair.

  His movements were slow, jerky as his arms lifted to pull the tape away from his mouth. He’d been left there for hours, bound. No matter how sore she thought she was, he had to feel worse.

  “Joey, what the hell happened?” His voice was scratchy. Will winced as he pulled the tape out of his hair. “What’s going on?”

  Joey clasped his broad shoulders in her hands as his gaze raked over her. “I promise to tell you everything I know,” she explained urgently, “once we are out of this place. We have to leave. Now.”

  Will’s hand lifted to her face, his fingers gently brushing her jaw. His deep blue eyes locked with hers and scared as she was her heart still skipped a beat. “How did that happen? Did Bowen hurt you?”

  “Please,” she pleaded with him, not entirely sure of what he’d said. Joey pulled herself to her feet, not letting go of his shoulders and urging him to join her. The light gleamed off the blade of the knife and she bent to snatch it up. “We have to leave.”

  His eyes shifted to the knife and swiftly back to her. Nodding, he said, “Campus police.”

  “No!” The campus police could be in on it. Considering what Rafe had told her they almost had to be. “Trust me on this. We have to leave campus. Fast!”

  The look on his face told Joey that Will’s busy mind was working overtime on their current situation. And they didn’t have time for the myriad of questions she knew was forming there.

  Grabbing his arm, she pulled him behind her out the door of the supply closet and he let her.

  Chapter Five

  Will’s truck was still in the parking lot and he drove them off campus at a moderate speed, almost as if they were going out to lunch and not running away from a bunch of robed rapists and blazer-wearing super-geeks. Joey worked her imaginary gas pedal on the passenger side while her hands fidgeted with the handle of the knife in her lap. If she’d been driving, she would have gunned it.