Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(72)

“Yes. Thank you.” Tears filled the woman’s eyes. She grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers in mute gratitude, and I was suddenly terrified that she’d know I’d used her lotion. Then she turned and raced out of the room, headed for the stairs.

Her driver opened the back door for Pagano, who came in and pressed a button on his remote. The light over the rear door flashed, and he waved me forward. “Someone will be by shortly to collect the rest of the sensors,” he said to the driver. “Please thank your boss for his business and let us know if he requires any further services.”

He. Pagano had no idea who’d hired me or why.

The driver locked the door behind us.

“That was fast,” Pagano said as he cuffed me to my seat in the van. His gaze scanned what he could see of my face and limbs, then settled on the hand-shaped bruises on my arms. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No.” I stared at the house through the windshield as he circled the van, then slid into the driver’s seat, and I wondered what the woman inside was doing. How long would it take the ambulance to arrive? Would she call one, or would she just let him beat himself to death?

“Who lives in that house?” Who are Bruce and Sarah Aaron, that she could afford Vandekamp’s services. Surely surgeons don’t make that much money.

Pagano shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

“They’re going to make me forget anyway. What does it matter?”

“Delilah...”

I glanced at the number on the bricked mailbox as he pulled the van out of the long driveway and onto the deserted street. “Please. Who am I going to tell?”

He sighed and met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “That was the home of Senator Bruce Aaron, chairman of some kind of committee up in Washington. Evidently a very powerful man. He attended a couple of events a few weeks ago and must have taken a liking to you then.”

A senator. Some kind of political bigwig. And Vandekamp had accepted money to let me put him out of business.

“Well, he won’t be a repeat customer.”





Delilah

“How did it go?” Vandekamp demanded the second Pagano closed the door, leaving me alone with the boss in his office, handcuffed, but otherwise unrestrained.

“How many times have you erased my memory?”

He sat on the edge of his desk and picked up his remote control, but surely the implied threat was empty. If he silenced me, I couldn’t answer his questions, and he couldn’t shock me without hurting the baby he obviously wanted to protect.

I shrugged. “You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

“No, you answer my question, or I’ll lock you in a room with no window for the next month and make sure your boyfriend suffers in the ring.” He gave me a moment to let that sink in, and I could only clench my fists at my back.

“Is he dead?” Vandekamp pressed.

“Who? Bruce Aaron?” I asked, and his brows rose. I shrugged. “He left his ID lying around. Why would you want a United States senator to kill himself?”

“So, he is dead?”

Another shrug. “When I left, he was beating his own head against a door frame. Whether or not his wife chooses to call an ambulance is up to her.”

His cold smile was the most genuine emotional reaction I’d seen from the owner of the Savage Spectacle. No doubt he only let me see it because I wouldn’t remember it.

“Why erase my memory? Who am I going to tell? The next client? A party guest?”

Vandekamp circled his desk and made a note on a sticky pad.

“Are all my private engagements like this? Just...vengeance?” Nothing that could get me pregnant?

He continued scribbling.

“Do I always come here afterward? Are we always alone?” Was I looking at the father of my unborn child?

“Are you going to make me silence you?”

“Is that what you like? Women who can’t say no?”

He finally looked up, his gaze narrowed. “Do not assume I share my clientele’s fetishes.”

Was that a yes or a no? Was he saying one of his clients had done this to me?

My eyes watered. I swallowed compulsively, trying to hold back words that would show him how desperate I was for information. But the pressure was too much. The opportunity was too rare. “What don’t I remember?”

Vandekamp put his pen down and looked up at me, as if he suddenly found my questions fascinating.

“Tell me what I’m missing,” I demanded through clenched teeth. “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to know what you’ve done? What’s been done to you?”

“You’re saying ignorance isn’t bliss?” That odd smile was back, and I realized he was studying my pain, like a scientist conducting research. Yet enjoying it like a psychopath. He came around the desk again and looked down at me from inches away. “You’re upset because you can’t remember all the time we’ve spent together? All these private meetings?” He ran one hand boldly down my arm, and there wasn’t even a hint of fear in his gaze. He knew I couldn’t hurt him unless I saw him hurt someone else.

He wasn’t afraid of me.

“You know, most people think cryptids raised free are harder to control than the rest, but I think it’s just a matter of pressing the right button. And you have so many buttons.”