Praise for the novels of
TARA TAYLOR QUINN

“Character-driven suspense at its best with rapid-fire pacing that makes you feel as if the pages are turning themselves. I inhaled it in two sittings.”

—Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel, on In Plain Sight

“Powerful, controversial and beautifully paced, this chilling, riveting tale frightens because its dangers hit much closer to home.”

—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal, on In Plain Sight

“Lisa Jackson fans will fall hard for Quinn’s unique ability to explore edgy subjects with mesmerizing style.”

—BookReporter.com on In Plain Sight

“Slick, sexy and fast-paced, Quinn’s latest is a top-notch, topical thriller. It keeps the reader on edge from start to finish.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on In Plain Sight

“This story leaves no stone unturned and is deeply satisfying.”

—The Romance Reader Connection on In Plain Sight

“Quinn has outdone herself in her latest release. You can’t help but be pulled into the book with its intense content and compelling scenes…. A definite read for any romantic suspense fan.”

—Romancejunkies.com on In Plain Sight

“One of the skills that has served Quinn best is her ability to explore edgier subjects.”

—Publishers Weekly

Dear Reader,

Last fall I introduced you to Janet McNeil and Simon Green—two regular folks who took up the challenge and went the distance in an attempt to bring to justice a white supremacist group that was infiltrating their neighborhood.

Their lives were torn apart by the things they experienced and learned, and now their lives will be forever different. In the end, they saw justice done. But only on a small scale. Bobby Donahue, leader of the (fictional) Ivory Nation, escaped accountability. His organization continues to thrive.

And now we have a victim. Two of them—Laura and Harry Kendall. An ordinary couple in Tucson, Arizona. She’s a botanist. He’s a history professor at the University of Arizona. And late one night, while they slept behind closed doors, life changed for them. Irrevocably. Forever.

But they didn’t die. So they have a choice: either to give in to fear and become paranoid and unhappy, or to fight back. Not only to fight the outside sources of their fears—an invisible, far-reaching and eminently powerful organization—but to fight their inner demons, as well. Either battle could destroy them.

Laura and Harry didn’t ask for what happened to them. Nor could they prevent it. They are middle-class people doing their best to be good to those around them, to love each other, and have a family. They are you and me. And then they aren’t…

This is their story.

Tara Taylor Quinn

P.S. I love getting feedback from those who share my books. You can reach me at P.O. Box 13584, Mesa, Arizona 85216 or at www.tarataylorquinn.com.

Behind Closed Doors
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For all women who have suffered abuse, physical or emotional. May we always find something to hope for, love in our hearts and the strength to fight back.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

1

Thursday, June 7, 2007, 2:03 a.m.

Tucson, Arizona

T he red LED lights swam, cleared, blurred again. Every muscle tense, Harry lay in bed, listening. Something had awakened him. And it wasn’t Laura. Her hand was still half clutched in his under the covers, and she slept on, despite whatever had interrupted his own sleep.

2:04. There it was again. A sort of swishing. Not a footstep. But movement. He recognized it immediately as the sound that had just jerked him abruptly out of a dream—a dream about his botanist wife snipping bits of cactus from a garden that had appeared in the middle of their bedroom…

The sound came again. Was it closer? Harry couldn’t tell. And he couldn’t identify it. It was like moving air. Not from the vent in the ceiling, but lower. Thinking of the unloaded pistol—inheritance from his uncle—in the back of his closet, Harry slid his hand from Laura’s, moving so slowly he almost wasn’t.

He wanted to believe he was imagining things, but Harry wasn’t prone to an overactive imagination. Someone…or something…was in their house.

Without disturbing Laura, he slipped one bare leg out of the covers. Then the second…

He froze. There was a shadow on Laura’s side of the bed, the shape of a man bending down, reaching toward her. Harry’s arms shot out to grab the bastard around the neck but he was caught from behind. He bellowed in pain and rage, the sound immediately muffled by a leather-gloved hand against his mouth.

His wife’s eyes opened—instantly wide—staring at him in the darkness. He read the fear there, the desperate plea for him to do something. And saw a man gag her.

Infused with frantic strength, Harry alternately yanked his arms, trying to free them from his captor’s hold, and hit back against him. A hand grabbed the waistband of his briefs and yanked him backward. He bit and tasted leather, bit again and had a piece of leather on his tongue. He couldn’t spit it out. Couldn’t swallow.

“Do not move and you won’t be injured.”

Laura was hauled up, the strap of her pink gown falling down one shoulder. She tried to right it but before she could, her hands were pulled forcibly behind her and restrained. Her whimper sent him over the bounds of sanity.

Harry’s foot connected with flesh and bone. His nails scraped leather and denim. The elbow punch he landed resulted in a loud smack in the too-quiet room.

And then, his arms wrenched behind his back, pulling the left one half out of its socket, he felt something thin and hard being twisted around his wrists, cutting into his flesh.

“Unless you want more than a dislocated AC, you’ll keep still,” the deep voice muttered. He could hear it clearly despite Laura’s high, terrified moans.

Tears streamed down her face.

Shoving against his captor with both legs, Harry broke free, kicked again and again, landing some blows. The shadow was doing something to Laura at the bedpost and Harry lashed out like a madman, needing to annihilate his own unseen force so he could get to her.

He couldn’t.

Laura’s captor joined Harry’s and just as Harry realized his wife had been tied to the bedpost, he was attacked by two male bodies at once. He kicked. He bit. He pummeled with the hands tied behind his back, hardly aware of the pain that shot through his shoulder with every wrench. The pain was good; it kept him alive and feeling, aware.

Harry was strong, athletic—a black man who knew how to defend himself—but he was no street fighter.

He landed a kick to one guy’s head. The guy fell. And the other was there, smashing his fist into the right side of Harry’s face. Stars swam before his eyes at the sudden, excruciating pain in his nose. The fallen man got up. Swung. A crack reverberated inside Harry’s head. A second punch made it hard to think. Only the staccato whimpers of his wife’s fear kept him conscious. Fighting.

They dragged the antique desk chair to his side of the bed. Harry fought with everything he had, but the two men were bigger, stronger—and less injured. They grabbed his shoulders, numbing his left arm. He felt the edge of the hard wooden chair shove into the backs of his knees.

He continued to fight, to kick and thrash and jerk his body, in spite of the rope securing his hips and then his ankles to the chair. The grunts rising from his throat were unrecognizable—the sounds of a man enduring a nightmare worse than hell.

And knowing it was going to get worse.

Thursday, June 7, 2007. 2:09 a.m.

Flagstaff, Arizona

Luke’s cries woke him. Jumping out of bed, Bobby Donahue wiped sleep from his eyes and hurried in to check on his three-year-old son.

“What’s up, buddy?” he called as he entered the room lit by the soft glow of the angel night-light above the dresser. He instantly swept the space with sharp, alert eyes. Finding it empty, he switched from automatic defensive mode to compassion for his upset son.

“No boogy man, here, pal,” he said, reaching the boy.

Luke stood at the bars of the crib he still slept in, arms outstretched, and Bobby scooped him up.

“You’re soaked,” he said, holding the toddler against him anyway. “Is that what woke you?”

“Mama!” Luke’s wail pierced Bobby’s emotions more than his eardrums.

“I know, pal. I miss Mama, too.”

Holding the boy until his sobs subsided to hiccups, Bobby drew in the child’s warmth. His nearness.

Luke and the world his son would inhabit in the future were Bobby’s reason for being. His son, and all the other pure children. Every breath he took, every decision he made, was for the children of God.

“Your mama loved watching Blue with you, did you know that?”

Changing the diaper the boy wore only at night now and the damp summer-weight pajamas, Bobby snapped Blue’s Clues bottoms into a matching short-sleeved top.

“Can you remember how she used to scrunch up her nose just like him?”

Luke shook his head, reaching out to Bobby again.

Taking his son in his arms, Bobby headed back toward the crib, but when the boy’s arms clasped his neck, he chose the rocker Amanda had loved.

It had been a year since the car accident from which Amanda—Luke’s mother, the love of Bobby’s life—had disappeared. A year of grieving, of missing her, of not knowing whether she was dead or alive, but assuming the worst. A year to recover.

Luke still had dreams about her.

And Bobby continued to draw strength from the living warmth of their son. He liked to believe Amanda remained with them. She’d been his angel on earth, and it wasn’t such a far cry to think that she was watching over them from the heavenly place she inhabited now.

He rocked Luke for the few minutes it took to get the little boy back to sleep and then, with a gentle kiss on his son’s forehead, he laid him in his crib again, checking the monitor to make sure he’d hear any sounds coming from the boy’s room during the rest of the night.

Amanda had insisted on the monitor when Luke was born. And now it gave Bobby great security. He’d die if he lost Luke, too.

Back in his room, Bobby sat propped against the pillows, staring out into the darkness. Some days he was too busy, too filled with the intensity of his work, to think about Amanda much. But on nights like this, the pain of her loss was almost debilitating.

Doing what he’d learned to do at a very young age, Bobby endured as much of the pain as he could, then traveled to other places in his mind, focused on things that felt good. Positive things.

He immediately thought of Tony Littleton. His young college-age friend, a new convert the year before, had left his mother’s home the previous summer and moved in with Bobby, helping him care for Luke. He’d also proven to be a loyal and trusted brother of the Ivory Nation.

Tony was in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, where he was being mentored by an influential Ivory Nation brother and studying political science at Bobby’s behest, but he still made it home most weekends. Which meant he’d be there by dinnertime the following day.

Bobby couldn’t wait that long.

Picking up the phone, he dialed Tony’s cell, knowing the boy slept with it right beside him for occasions like this. A true and loyal brother.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang again. Where the hell was Tony at 2:36 in the morning?

For a moment, as Tony’s voice mail picked up, Bobby felt the blood drain from his face. Another car accident. Could God be so cruel?

And then a conversation he’d had with Tony the weekend before sprang to mind and Bobby smiled. There was a girl on campus Tony had the hots for. A beautiful white daughter of wealthy Republican parents. Replaying the advice he’d given his dedicated recruit, Bobby had no doubt where Tony was tonight.

And he looked forward to the next evening, after Luke was down for the night, when he’d hear all the details.

Please God, let a baby be made tonight. A white baby boy…

Thursday, June 7, 2:37 a.m.

Tucson, Arizona

Jerking his head against the gloved hand at his neck and the other buried in his hair, Harry closed his eyes. They could force him to sit there, to hear, to face the bed where his shy, beautiful wife lay, her gown up around her ribs, but they couldn’t force him to watch.

Laura’s muffled shriek tore through him and his eyes flew open, quickly adjusting to the dark. To the shadows. The man who’d originally captured Harry was between his wife’s knees, pumping frantically in and out. The man’s hands were in Laura’s long blond hair.

Her face was turned away.

Stay sane, he told himself. Over and over.

Get evidence.

He tried to focus his mind in a way that could help him. But his head hurt so much he couldn’t think straight, his entire being consumed by a rage he couldn’t control.

There were two dark, mostly indistinguishable hooded shapes. One with his wife. The other, shorter one, stood behind him, hands hotly gripping the sides of Harry’s face.

The man raping Laura was white. His penis was the only flesh showing but even in the shadows, Harry could tell. He couldn’t get beyond the vision of what it was doing to his wife.

He hollered, in spite of the gag in his mouth, needing Laura to know he was there, alive, loving her.

With another jerk of his head, he managed to get a gloved finger in his mouth, bit hard. The man behind him didn’t even seem to notice.

His original captor slowed and Harry held his breath.

Please God, let them be done. Take them away from my wife, from my home.

Still inside Laura, the man lifted a hand, slid it beneath her gown and grabbed her breast.

Harry saw her body lurch. Laura’s injured cry was the only sound in the room—other than the ugly slamming of the rapist’s flesh against hers. Harry watched as the man further exposed his wife’s glistening white skin and tears pooled in his eyes.

Trying to swallow, he choked. His jailor’s grip didn’t loosen.

The man on top of his wife shuddered, jerked a couple of times. There was no huge sigh, no taunts or threats or gloats of victory, no sound at all to accompany the dirty releasing of fluid inside Harry’s wife.

Sliding away from Laura, leaving her body exposed to the air-conditioned room, the man zipped his fly and Harry got a smidgeon of satisfaction when the bastard bit back a low curse as, with gloved fingers and haste, he caught his still-engorged penis in the zipper.

Harry hoped he’d drawn blood.

Other than his original grunt of pain, the taller intruder hardly seemed to notice what he’d done to himself as he walked behind Harry, placing his hands, like a vice, at the base of Harry’s neck and around his jawbone. He was the stronger of the two. And all business.

And when he felt those hands settle on him, Harry knew they weren’t finished yet. Laura legs were crossed, her hands tied at the wrists and fastened to one bedpost. Still facing the wall, she was sobbing. He could see the shudders wracking her slim body.

The smaller man approached her slowly. His hands together at the waistband of his pants, the bastard left no doubt about what he was going to do.

A little more tentative than his partner, he pulled down his zipper, his hard white cock falling out. Laura locked her ankles together when he tried to spread her knees. The man hesitated and from behind him Harry heard a whisper. Something about white, he thought, but couldn’t be certain, not with the roaring in his ears.

That communication changed the smaller man’s bearing completely. With more force than the first intruder had used, he pried Laura’s legs apart. Not glancing, even for a second, toward her face, he stared at her crotch, touched it with a gloved hand. He seemed to like it when she jerked back as far as her constraints would allow. And then, without further warning, he plunged inside her.

Afraid he was going to have a heart attack before he could get to his wife, Harry sat there, trying to ignore the heavy pounding in his chest, tasting blood and bile on his tongue. And leather. Holding the piece of glove he’d bitten off inside his mouth, Harry promised himself they’d get these guys.

And make them pay for what they were doing to Laura. Make them pay and pay and pay.

Her left breast was exposed, and he focused on that, so vulnerable and so sweet.

The smaller man drew out once and plunged back in, and Harry prayed that Laura could last through another onslaught. Then, before the thought was even coherent, the man had shuddered. And pulled out.

It occurred to Harry that now was the time to fear most. Either they were going to torture Laura or him or…what? Did he really expect them to let him and Laura live?

For what purpose?

The smaller man softly repeated the words Harry’s guard had issued earlier. White stays with white. Laura didn’t show any reaction, any sense that she’d been spoken to.

But then, Harry could only imagine the hell his wife must be occupying.

Maybe it would be better if the rapists simply killed them. At this point death almost seemed a mercy.

He grunted a fierce warning, because he couldn’t sit there complacently, just accepting what the bastards had done. The grip on his neck tightened and Harry’s head swam with blackness.

Were they going to finish with Laura after they broke his neck? He couldn’t leave her to them…

Harry’s flesh cooled, the red behind his eyes dissipating, before he realized that the gloved fingers around his neck were gone. He opened his eyes.

He and Laura were alone.

She’d twisted herself around until her lower body was under the covers. Her body shook with sobs.

Tears blinding him, pain in his nose and head and shoulder keeping him sane, Harry threw himself upward and over, hopping the chair inch by inch toward the bedpost where they’d tied Laura’s hands. And half an hour later, with his back to the post, using the numbed tips of his fingers, he had unfastened the ropes, sickened by the wetness he felt.

Blood? Or sweat?

Laura grunted, a deep, unfeminine sound that he couldn’t decipher. But in seconds she was at his wrists, releasing them. He went for his gag next.

“Oh, my love, I’m so sorry,” he said even before he’d untied his feet and faced her.

He assumed she’d untied her own gag as well. He couldn’t be sure. She didn’t say a word. And didn’t stick around for anything else he might have said or done.

Before he’d freed one ankle, Harry heard the bathroom door behind him slam.

And lock.

2

S he had to get them off her. Now. Away. Off her. Gone.

Hearing nothing except the internal voice hollering for cleanliness, Laura ripped at her gown. Her arms were weak, her hands shaking so badly she couldn’t grip. Pinching the fabric between her fingers she pulled, pinched and pulled, but she couldn’t get free.

Get this off me!

Her mind wouldn’t quiet yet couldn’t help.

With tears running off her chin, she stomped her feet, pulling at the garment. Trying to see, to focus on what she was doing.

Pinch and pull. Pinch and pull. And then, almost miraculously, she managed to get a handful of the thin cotton in one fist.

No! Get off me!

Clutching the material, Laura ripped for all she was worth. And stumbling, falling against the counter, she climbed through the tear she’d made down the middle of the gown, leaving the offensive material in a pool on the floor. The blurred image swam before her, blending with the light beige and blue of the tile. It couldn’t stay there.

Couldn’t stain her space with its filth. And she couldn’t touch it again. The disease it carried would crawl through her fingertips, up her arm and, like a spike of poison, slice straight through her heart.

The fuzziness in her mind, the haze surrounding her, enclosing her, allowed only one image at a time to intrude. And her focus was one-hundred percent on that image. The shard of poison—she could see it piercing her heart. Could feel it.

And do nothing.

Then she recognized the gown again. In a heap on the floor. Inches from her bare feet.

Feet that had touched dirt many times. All those summer days she’d walked barefoot as a kid. As she envisioned her toes sliding toward the gown, picking it up, dropping it in the plastic-lined trash can by the toilet, she thought she could do it.

Laura had no idea how long she stood there before she moved. And when she did, she caught a glimpse of her body in the mirror.

She was completely naked. Exposed. Her breast was discolored.

With a shriek, she grabbed a fistful of toilet paper. Using it, she picked up the gown, tossed it in the toilet, flushed and waited. It didn’t go all the way down. She flushed again.

And when the toilet water started to rise, she kicked at the handle behind the seat until it shut off, stopping all flow inside the tank.

The gown floated uselessly in the bowl, half down the drain, captive. It was sewage now.

As quickly as she could, Laura slammed the seat down.

Detective Daniel Boyd stared at his computer screen at the Tucson precinct, thinking about the cinnamon twist Danish he was going to get out of the machine just as soon as he’d finished checking the next hundred names and times and phone numbers on his list. He was looking for a call made from a cell phone in Tucson at the same time as one made from a phone booth in Phoenix. He could be home in bed. His shift had long since ended.

But if he didn’t get this done tonight, he’d have to do it in the morning. And the work was boring as hell.

It also was going to point him to Sherry O’Connor’s rapist—before that vile excuse for a human being struck again. The Phoenix cops had caught his counterpart that afternoon—a wimp who’d blabbed like a baby as soon as they’d brought him in, telling how the two men who’d never met had called a third, the coordinator, who’d arranged it so they’d both be raping teenage girls at the same time. They’d all connected through the Internet, the third man offering to set up time, place and opportunity in exchange for detailed accounts. It got the rapists off, knowing they were both doing it at once.

Sick. Sick. Sick.

Too bad their Phoenix perp hadn’t known the name of his Tucson partner in crime. Phoenix police were still trying to trace the coordinator.

And that was for them to handle. Daniel had Sherry O’Connor’s rapist to worry about. As soon as he put a name to the number and time, he’d have his man.

“Go home, Boyd, it’s three in the morning.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Slouched in his chair, he didn’t even look up as Robert Miller, a twenty-year veteran officer and Daniel’s partner for the past five, walked by. God knew, Miller wouldn’t work an extra minute if it was up to him. They’d just come in from a desert crime scene—a young boy whose body had begun to decompose, but luckily for forensic purposes, hadn’t been found by coyotes. From an old break in the jawbone, they’d been able to tentatively identify the remains as those of Matthew Frazier, a twelve-year-old who’d gone missing four months earlier on his way home from school. Just hours afterward, they’d found the boy’s pants in some bushes about a mile from his home. They were stained with semen from two different men—which made it Daniel and Robert’s case.

He’d track down the bastard responsible for the boy’s death now that he had a body—concrete evidence. He couldn’t save the life.

But this one…

Even after five years in the sex crimes bureau, Daniel couldn’t just go home and rest when he was close to solving a case. Taking a break might mean the difference between a young woman living with strength and confidence—and one constantly having to fight fear and panic to recover the slightest hint of peace.

As always, memories of Sheila, or at least an awareness of those memories, kept him awake and working, even if that meant missing a night’s sleep. He rarely thought consciously about his older sister. Couldn’t allow himself to get that close. But history had taught him that this near the end of a case, he’d miss his sleep one way or another—either working though the long night hours or lying alone in the dark, remembering.

Daniel’s phone rang. There’d been another rape. Grabbing his jacket, Daniel called out to his partner who was just leaving, dispatched a forensics team to the crime scene and headed for the hospital.

“Laura! Honey! Open the door!” Harry rattled the doorknob, overwhelmed by helplessness. “Please?”

Wiping dried blood from his nose, which he figured probably wasn’t broken, he stared at the door separating him from his wife. “Laura?”

Getting the same response he’d been receiving for the past five minutes—none—Harry slumped his good shoulder against the frame, his swollen face an inch from the jamb.

He could hear movement, the toilet flushing, sniffling.

“Honey?” Shaking with the need to get to her, Harry tried not to feel the throbbing in his face and head.

“Laura? Don’t shower. We have to get you to a doctor, baby.”

Should he storm the door?

And have her think he was violent, too?

Laura, a botanist who studied the medicinal properties of desert plants, had locked herself in with her closet full of remedies.

Please, God, don’t let her be destroying evidence.

“I called the police. They’re on their way.” They were going to scout the area, as well, in case anyone wearing black leather gloves and a hood happened to be hanging around. That wasn’t too damn likely, he supposed, but he wanted them to look.

“They got in through the sliding glass door in the family room,” he continued. Talking because it was the only connection he had to her.

“They lifted if off the track, although I have no idea how. It’s back on and I’ve got a broom handle in the track. The officer said that would keep intruders out.”

More movement in the bathroom. He listened carefully, hoping, but the sound wasn’t coming closer.

“They assured me that the chances of anyone trying to get in again tonight are almost nonexistent.”

Didn’t make him feel any better.

“Laura? Please?” He drew out the last word until his voice broke.

And then he heard the shower.

She hid her nakedness behind the curtain, aware of the water pulsing down around her. Little cold pellets. Striking her skin. She should turn the dial, heat up the water.

But didn’t care enough to bend down.

Or have enough strength to do so.

Just then, a warm flood hit her inner thigh, galvanizing her into action. She had to get that vile stuff off her. Out of her. Dripping, she hurried over to the cupboard for a new bar of soap—unable to touch the bar she and Harry had both used the morning before. She tore off the paper, dropping it on the floor, and started scrubbing her skin before she was even back beneath the spray. She scrubbed until her skin hurt. Scrubbed everywhere. Her arms, her neck and face. Places they’d touched. And places they hadn’t.

They’d touched her. They’d left traces of themselves behind.

And she couldn’t get rid of them.

Because they weren’t just on the outside.

Yerba Mansa.

Out of the shower again, standing in front of the linen closet across from the toilet, Laura snatched the jar of dried, crushed root and the douche bag. She filled the bag with hot water, then opened the jar and inhaled the herb’s eucalyptus odor.

Calm. It will make you calm.

Hands shaking, she spilled as much of the precious, healing powder as she managed to pour into the bag’s opening, screwed on the applicator lid and listened to her mind repeat pages of botanical facts about the root, let it take care of her as she lay in the bathtub, with the cold water still stinging her skin, and applied the mixture.

Mixture of this root with a cup of hot water, injected vaginally, treats venereal disease, uterine cancer and stops excessive bleeding after childbirth. A sitz bath with yerba mansa will heal tearing….

The muscles in her arm twitched, but she held on to the bag until she’d completed the dose. And then, as if this last effort had taken every ounce of strength and determination left in her, Laura curled into the fetal position, closed her eyes and waited to die.

Harry’s entire upper body throbbed. Standing outside the bathroom door he struggled to concentrate, to focus only on the here-and-now.

He realized all movement in the room had stopped. He could still hear the shower but no Laura.

He couldn’t wait any longer. Dignity and respect were secondary to more immediate concerns. Like Laura’s safety. Her life. His chances of breaking down the door with his injured shoulder weren’t great, so Harry hurried out to the garage for an Allen wrench that would be thin enough to let him pick the lock.

Minutes later, the door gave way and Harry stumbled inside.

The police were going to be there soon.

“Laura?”

With one panicked glance, he took in the sight. The floor was soaked. Some kind of powered herb littered the countertop and spilled into the sink.

He couldn’t see Laura’s shape in the shadows behind the shower curtain. Yanking it open so forcefully he ripped one of the plastic-lined holes holding it in place, Harry spotted Laura immediately.

Oh, God. “No!”

Down on his knees, completely uncaring about the cold water that was spitting on them, he hauled his beautiful wife out of the tub and onto his lap on the floor.

“Laura?” he cried softly, hating the weakness in his voice, his limbs, his heart.

She was breathing. And conscious if the tears were any indication.

“Oh sweet baby, we’ll take care of you, I promise,” he said, conviction behind every word. “We’re going to make this better. We’ll get them.”

He didn’t know how, but he knew, in that second, that he’d keep this promise to her.

Harder sobs were Laura’s only response to his vow—to his presence in general. Tears streamed from beneath her closed lids. She wouldn’t even look at him.

Harry prayed to God she was still in there. Laura was a peacemaker, always had been. A gentle, loving person.

Had they wreaked irrevocable damage on that precious spirit he loved so completely? Broken her?

“Come on, sweetie,” he said. He pulled a blanket from the bottom shelf of the still-open linen closet, wrapped it around her shivering, limp body and hugged her to his chest. The pain in his shoulder was growing more noticeable, yet he welcomed it—needed the immediate feeling to focus on. He had to get away from the horror, the fear of what this night had done to Laura, if he was going to get them through these next hours.

“It’s okay now, love,” he crooned, his bruised face close to her neck. “I’m here, I have you. You’re safe.”

He didn’t know if her shiver was from the cold or in reaction to him. God, he needed her to talk. To yell at him, to whisper her fear or blame him for not being man enough to protect her. In their own home, their own bed.

“You’re strong, Laura.” He had no idea where the words came from, but he couldn’t stop them. “You know that. Anytime a fight’s been necessary in your life, you were ready for it. You stood up to your parents when you fell in love with me, fought like crazy to be a black man’s wife.”

“Y-y-y-our…. wife…”

Tears prickled his eyes again as he heard that soft voice. The love of his life was still here with him.

With a silent oath, Harry once again dedicated himself to finding out who’d done this to Laura—and to making sure they were locked up and put away forever. If all he could give her was peace of mind from knowing that they’d never be able to get her again, then he’d risk whatever it cost to see that she had it.

And anything else she needed.

By the time the two forensics officers from the investigative services bureau, sex crimes division, were at their door, Laura was calm and dressed in sweatpants, T-shirt and a jacket zipped up to her chin—in spite of Tucson’s June heat. Clinging to Harry’s arm, she went with him to the door. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He couldn’t seem to let go of her, either.

“Can you describe what happened?” Jim Mendoza, the older of the two officers, asked before they were even in the door.

As succinctly as possible, Harry did as they asked, somehow getting words past the emotion.

“Did you recognize either one of them?” The speaker barely glanced at Laura, though his question was clearly directed at her.

She shook her head.

“Can you describe them?”

“One was taller than the other,” Harry said, the vision imprinted on his brain. He named approximate heights and weights. “They were dressed identically in black jeans, leather jackets that came to just above their hips and black hoods made out of some kind of cotton. The hoods tucked into the jackets. They both wore black leather gloves.” Harry handed over the scrap of leather he’d bitten off.

The younger cop, Bill Warren, got on his cell phone, relaying the information to others in the field.

“We’ll need to get more information from both of you.” Mendoza was moving slowly into the house. “But first, we need to get her to the hospital.” Once again, he barely glanced at Laura.

Or at Harry, either, for that matter. Warren clicked off his cell phone, eyeing them both, his face lined with compassion.

“An ambulance is waiting outside for you, ma’am,” he said to Laura. “An officer will accompany you to the hospital.”

She squeezed Harry’s arm and he looked down to see the fresh tension tightening her upper lip, panic in her eyes.

“I’ll drive her,” he said. The grip on his arm loosened to a more comfortable pressure—notwithstanding the sharp pain shooting from his shoulder to his fingers.

“We’d rather your wife didn’t leave the custody of a police officer,” Warren began. “That’s so—”

“There’s less chance of any claim of evidence tampering that way,” Mendoza inserted.

Laura’s weight fell against him, her shaking intensifying. “Listen, gentlemen,” Harry heard himself saying the words without conscious thought. “We appreciate your position, but right now, my only concern is my wife. She doesn’t want to ride in an ambulance and as she’s not in major physical distress, I’m not going to ask her to do so.”

Mendoza looked at Laura fully for the first time, staring at her hair, still damp from the shower. “You didn’t bathe, did you?” he asked, his voice urgent.

“She did,” Harry told him.

“They didn’t tell you not to?”

Not wanting to waste another second on something that couldn’t be changed, Harry shook his head. “The dispatcher mentioned it, but Laura’s comfort seemed more important.” he said.

Not that those instructions would have mattered. Based on Laura’s somewhat incoherent behavior, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to prevent her from getting in that shower, even if he’d thought of the Allen wrench earlier.

“They’ll still be able to use a rape kit,” Warren said. “You two go on ahead and we’ll talk to the detectives in charge.”

Harry nodded.

“We need to look around here first, though.”

“Fine.” Harry opened the door wider, moving so that his good arm was around Laura as he led her through their house to the garage and saw her safely buckled into the front seat of his car.

He wanted her as far away as he could get her before the police turned their bedroom into a crime scene.

“Did either of you get a glimpse of their faces?”

In a private office at the hospital, Laura tried to concentrate. She had no idea how long it’d been since she and Harry had been whisked through emergency-room protocol and ushered into separate treatment rooms. She’d not only lost track of time, but all sense of herself.

Her body ached everywhere, as though she’d been rolled down a twenty-mile hill of rocks wrapped in burlap. Her wrists were raw and burning in spite of the salve they’d put on them. And she had what felt like menstrual cramps.

The policemen, Detective Boyd and his partner, Robert Miller, were looking at her. So was Harry.

The last she’d heard, Harry had been describing the dark hoods and black leather gloves again.

“Do you have anything to add to what your husband said?” Miller asked, pen poised above a pad of paper.

“That’s all I saw, too,” she said, relieved that she sounded so…human. Sane.

Capable.

She didn’t feel any of those things.

“What about voices?” Boyd asked, his gaze intent as it moved between her and Harry. She liked the way he looked at her, as though she was someone he really cared about. Someone he had faith would be able to help him.

She wanted to help him.

Except that she needed to go. As far and as fast from this night as she could get. And never, ever, ever think about it again.

“Did you notice any identifying features?”

She shook her head. “The smaller one never spoke.”

With a raised eyebrow, Daniel Boyd turned to Harry. “Not a word?”

“He whispered something at the end, but never actually spoke—not so we could identify a voice.” The sight of Harry’s misshapen, swollen face almost made her start to cry again. His shoulder was in a sling.

“What about the other one?”

“He didn’t say much, either,” Harry said. “A warning not to move if I didn’t want to get hurt any worse.”

“Was his voice low or high? Gravelly? Did he have any kind of accent?”

Laura couldn’t even remember hearing the man speak.

“Deep. No accent.” Harry wasn’t as calm as he’d appeared before they’d arrived at the hospital. But he might’ve been putting on an act for her sake. “He said I’d have more than an AC injury if I didn’t keep still.”

“An AC injury?” Miller asked.

Harry nodded. And Laura just felt lost. It was like they were talking about two different incidents in two different rooms. She’d had no idea.

“Some type of medical background?” Miller said to Boyd

“Yeah. AC refers to acromioclavincular,” Harry offered. “I’ve just been told it’s a medical term for shoulder joint. Whether he has medical training or not, the bastard was articulate.”

Miller and Boyd both wrote in their notebooks.

“Harry’s a professor at U of A,” Laura blurted, in case the detectives failed to take him seriously.

Boyd watched her for a long moment.

“And neither of them spoke again?” he finally asked, his forehead creased as he glanced from one to the other.

She shook her head. And held her breath to stave off her immediate dizziness.

“They each said one more thing,” Harry muttered. “The same thing…”

Blocking out the rest of her husband’s sentence, Laura watched him as though from far away.

“I wasn’t sure about the first time, but afterward, when I heard it again…”

Harry swallowed, and Laura couldn’t look at him anymore.

“Tell me about the first time,” Boyd said, his voice softer.

“When the smaller guy was approaching Laura, he paused, like maybe he wasn’t going to do it….”

Cold as ice, Laura read Boyd’s name tag again, wondering why only the Y had faded.

“…and the guy behind me says ‘white stays with white.’”

What? Laura raised her head, shaking inside all over again. What was Harry saying?

“You’re sure about that?” Detective Boyd asked, writing some more on his little pad.

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear it?” the other detective piped up.

Laura could hardly breathe as Miller looked her right in the eye.

“No,” she said as quickly as she could. She’d already answered his questions once.

“And the second instance?” Detective Boyd asked.

“When he’d finished with Laura, the smaller guy whispered the same thing.”

No. Laura didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She didn’t want to see the pointed glance the detectives exchanged, or think about what it all meant.

“We were targeted because I’m black,” Harry’s words were both a challenge and a cry of pain and tore at Laura’s already raw insides.

“Or it was a random attack by bigoted jerks who, when they found a white woman with a black man, used that to fuel their hunger for violence,” Miller said.

“You don’t think they picked us out ahead of time?” Laura asked him. Please, God, let that be so.

Shrugging, Miller said, “Chances are good they didn’t, but we’ll have a better idea after we go over what we’ve got here, along with whatever our team found at the scene.”

It wasn’t the absolute affirmative answer she’d wanted, but Miller’s words comforted Laura.

Boyd took over then, asking more questions, and she was able to answer him without losing her breath. He was kind, like the doctors and the counselor she’d already seen. Compassionate. Guiding her through the interview as unobtrusively and gently as possible—which was saying something, since he—and the doctors before him—had to intrude in the most intimate ways.

“You’re sure neither one of you noticed anything familiar about either one of them? Think of everyone you’ve seen in the past month. Maybe a gas station cashier? Grocery clerk? Anyone?”

As they shook their heads, Miller asked permission to access their credit card and cell phone records to follow up—just in case they’d missed something.

He really seemed to want to rule out the possibility that the men who’d violated them had known them.

Laura wanted that ruled out, too. Random violence was hard enough to deal with. If she had to fear every single person she smiled at through her day, how could she go on?

Harry got pretty agitated when Boyd reported that so far, they had a disappointing lack of evidence. Desert ground was hard and there were no obvious footprints, although they’d be investigating again in the light of day. The gloves precluded fingerprints. They were checking for similar crimes in the state, but the detectives didn’t expect much there. They’d already know if there’d been any. And since neither Harry nor Laura had noticed any telling characteristics about their attackers, other than approximate height and weight, which could describe thousands of men in the city, they had nothing.

Except a piece of leather glove with Harry’s saliva all over it.

“When you find them,” Harry interrupted and Laura stared at him, wondering if her husband had heard the near-hopelessness of their situation, “look at the larger one’s penis. He got it caught in his zipper and I’m betting he’ll have either a cut or a bruise.”

Eyes narrowed, Boyd studied Harry while Miller wrote. Laura squeezed Harry’s hand. God, she loved this man.

“This won’t help us find him, of course,” Boyd said. “But it could certainly help with a post-arrest identification.”

“Which we’ll need,” Miller said, pushing pen and pad into his shirt pocket. “Our chances of a clear rape kit reading are slim.”

Her holistic healing had destroyed the evidence.

Maybe, if they were lucky, there’d be a hair on the bedclothes, but while that could give them some identifiers—if there was a root—it wouldn’t point to an exact individual.

“We got fibers from under Harry’s fingernails,” Boyd continued. “But no skin. We can only hope there’s semen on the bedclothes that can be processed for a DNA sample.”

Harry’s face blanched at that last piece of information; his hands clenched into fists.

Watching her husband, Laura wanted to tell him it was okay. To let the attackers go and never see or hear of them again. She just wanted to know that she and Harry had been a random pick.

She most certainly didn’t want the intruders to have any reason to seek revenge.

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