Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(15)
One of the men came toward her. Square Head. His face was silhouetted and she couldn’t see his expression. For some reason, she felt glad of that. She didn’t want to see their faces.
The sound of the wind was deadened inside the space, and Livia could hear the man breathing heavily, see it in the rise and fall of his chest. He said in Thai, “Get on your knees.”
Livia didn’t understand. She had been terrified the men were going to do to her the thing that made babies. The thing she and all the Lahu children saw dogs doing, and sometimes heard their parents doing. But then why would he want her on her knees?
She knelt and started to cry. She hoped the men couldn’t see it.
Square Head pulled open his pants. Livia shook her head, not understanding.
Square Head pointed to her mouth, then to himself, then to her mouth again.
A wave of nausea coursed through her. No. He couldn’t want her to . . . what, kiss him? There? It was disgusting, why would anyone want that?
She thought of her parents, of her father gripping the handful of baht, and cried harder.
Square Head stepped closer. He smelled like curry, a spice Livia had always liked but which was suddenly repulsive.
“Mouth,” he said in Thai. “Mouth.”
She closed her eyes and held her breath and tried to do what he wanted. But it was all so sickening that she gagged again and again until finally she jerked her head away and threw up. He waited a moment and then made her continue, holding her hair and thrusting himself in and out of her mouth while she squeezed her eyes shut and tried desperately to conjure something good, a happy memory, some secret imagining these men couldn’t know or reach. But nothing came. So she gagged and sobbed and thought of Nason, of how much worse it would be if this were happening to her little bird instead of to herself. She clung to that thought and endured one second to the next, not knowing when it would end or how.
Finally, the man moaned as though he was hurt and something squirted out of him, something hot and slick and slimy. Livia gagged and tried to pull away, but he held her hair tightly and kept moving. When he finally let her go, she leaned over and threw up again.
It was the same with Dirty Beard, and then with Skull Face. When they were all done, Livia collapsed to her side, retching, her stomach convulsing but with nothing left to throw up.
The men lit cigarettes and watched her. After a few minutes, her roiling stomach subsided. She spat until there was nothing left to spit and sat up.
Skull Face smiled at her. “You fun,” he said. “So fun. You stay fun, and we won’t do this with your sister, okay?”
Livia was too exhausted to respond. But amid the horror and revulsion, she felt a tiny sliver of hope. She had protected Nason. She could do it again, if she had to. To protect her sister, she would do anything.
She didn’t know that, in the end, it wouldn’t be enough.
7—NOW
Livia woke after only an hour, before the alarm went off. She had been too excited to sleep deeply—from killing Barnett, of course, but even more because of everything that was going to happen next.
She rolled out of bed, opened a window, and inhaled the air of a spring morning far too glorious for the Jeep. She rode the Ducati to headquarters, tossing the contractor bag near a homeless encampment under the interstate along the way.
She was at her desk well before roll call—her usual practice, and it was important not to do anything out of the ordinary immediately after a kill. No news about Barnett, but it was still early. Probably Marysville PD hadn’t even had time to positively identify the body. She wouldn’t be surprised if Hammerhead learned of his demise before word reached Seattle PD. It didn’t matter. People would be talking about it soon enough either way.
In lieu of anything on Barnett, she worked her usual caseload. In the last week, she’d arrested a peeper in Ballard and a man exposing himself in Olympic Hills, so things were momentarily light. But she also had a sex worker victim, raped by a john out by Sea-Tac. The prosecuting attorney wasn’t going to like this one—not a good victim, meaning not sufficiently sympathetic to a jury, as though only nuns and candy stripers could be raped—and Livia knew she needed an unusually strong case if she was going to persuade the prosecutor to go to trial. She’d already identified a suspect, and was now looking for ways to connect him with similar attacks. There had to have been others—it was just too unlikely this was the first time the guy had decided to attack a sex worker. If Livia could find his other victims and persuade them to come forward, it would go a long way toward getting the prosecutor off his politically calculating ass and putting a serial rapist behind bars.
Sometimes, she almost wanted the prosecutor to say no, or to plea the charges down. It was a reason, an excuse, to do it her way instead. But she knew she had to be careful of that temptation. There was a balance. She respected the system, but she wouldn’t be a slave to it. Her real allegiance was to her victims, and if the system didn’t get them justice, she would get them justice another way.
She’d been at it for close to forty minutes when her lieutenant came in—short, brown hair neat, expression wide awake despite the early hour. Donna Strangeland. A Brooklyn transplant with an accent to match, and a damn good cop. It was odd—some of the women on the force dealt with discrimination by identifying with the men, competing with their sister cops, putting them down, trying to step over them like crabs in a bucket. But a few dealt with it through mutual support and solidarity. Donna was in the latter camp. Beyond which, Livia had never seen a better interrogator. The woman could project incredible levels of compassion and understanding even to the most vile criminals. Murderers. Child rapists. Sadists. She made her suspects feel she understood them, and that if they would only explain to her, be honest with her, open up to her, she could forgive them. Something about her made them crave understanding, the possibility of forgiveness, to the point where Livia had seen her get people to sign confessions stained with their own tears. She was like some kind of surrogate mother, persuading her suspects to trade honesty for the chimera of her love.