Page 93 of Whispers at Dusk
“I have no intention of doing so,” she said aloud.
Stephan Dante frowned. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
She laughed softly. “Not to worry, I’m talking to my imaginary friend. I’m assuring him you can cut my heart out, and I won’t give you the satisfaction of a whimper!”
“Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we? You’re not screaming now. Oh, that’s right! You’re the eternal savior, the angel of mercy. Oh, how dramatic! ‘I have taken an oath. If I lose my life, it’s one thing, but I won’t let a sweet innocent die!’” He moved closer to her, lifting her chin. “You won’t do anything until I finally get you to the girls, will you?”
“No,” she said flatly.
He grinned again. “Well, I know your comrades have taken over the shack where you and Special Agent Tall Man shot my buddy, the Midnight Slasher.”
“His name was William Temple, if I remember correctly.”
“He was the Midnight Slasher. He was my creation.”
“You haven’t been doing so well with your...creations. Anyway, whoever or whatever he was, he’s William Temple, deceased now, and so un-famous that he’s leaving the collective memory as we speak. Just as one day... Well, never mind. Yes, I want to see the young women you kidnapped and have tied up somewhere. So, no. I won’t fight you.”
“Ah, but Special Agent Carter, Mr. Tall Man is out there somewhere, right? And a slew of idiots who think they might know the bayou better than me.”
Della stopped walking, hoping to get him to say more.
“Wherearewe going?” Della demanded irritably, swatting a large mosquito that found her hand as she tried to brush branches aside. “There isn’t going to be any blood left in me for you if I come across any more mosquitos!”
He paused to laugh. “Oh, the skeeters will leave me enough. And the answer to that reminds me of being a kid—that’s for me to know, and you to find out!” Dante said, enjoying his own joke. He glanced back at her as he led the way. “I knew you and your so-called team would set up cops everywhere to try and take me down. But I know this place better than any cop. I know how to disappear in the trees and brush like no one else, trust me.”
“I know youthinkyou know everything,”
“Ah, but often, I do.”
“Which makes this all sadder.”
“What’s sad? I’ve taken a few idiots out of the world?”
“What makes you judge young women just beginning their lives as idiots?”
“Easy pickups. I told you. I’ve spared them. They’d just turn into teasing bitches, crying foul constantly, teasing men...thinking they’re all-powerful because of their sex and beauty. Hey, I’ve made them all angels.”
“Oh, please. They might have grown up to do good things. When you take them, they’re just young and having fun, something young people do,” Della said.
“Idiots—no one who would have done anything for the world.”
“Like you’re doing?” she asked.
“Honey, come on now. You must agree. You’re here with me. I am ruling the world. Look around you. Do you see any of the dozens of the cops running around in here? No. And you won’t.”
She might not see dozens, Della thought.
But she would see one—or three. Her team was behind her.
And Dante would have no idea Mason, while not having grown up in the area, had studied everything about it when he had followed Mason’s trainee, the Midnight Slasher, to Louisiana. And he and the others now had a map in their hands of the acreage that had once belonged to his family.
“Hey, you know, the world is alike in one thing. I don’t know of a group of any kind out there that doesn’t have a few imperfect eggs.”
“You’re making excuses for your cops? A bunch of them good ole Louisiana boys born in the bayou?”
“Well, they didn’t own the place at one time,” she said reflectively.
A branch he had moved slapped back in her face. She had startled him.
