“We’ve pulled all the info on this that we can find, Rowdy.” Natches straightened in his chair and reach for the pizza. “We’ve been working on it since it happened, trying to figure out who the bastard was.”
“And?” If anyone could figure it out, it was Dawg and Natches.
“Not much,” Natches admitted. “We’ve had four other rapes in surrounding counties over the last two years. All anal rapes, beatings, cuts, much more severe than Kelly’s. She got lucky. Her neighbor’s boyfriend heard the single scream she was able to get out. The boyfriend was a tough guy, broke in and tried to apprehend the bastard, but once he caught sight of Kell he let the guy go to help her.”
“All this shit going on at home and neither one of you were good enough to tell me what the f**k was happening?” Rowdy snapped.
He had talked to both of them over the past year and never realized that the distance he had felt had been something they were hiding rather than his own impatience to finish his tour.
“What could you have done, man?” Dawg tilted his head to the side and stared back at him questioningly. “We didn’t want the trouble of hiding an AWOL Marine the rest of our natural lives and didn’t figure Kelly needed that on top of everything else. We took care of her until you could get home.”
“Were there any rapes after Kelly?” He asked.
“Nothing with the same M.O.” Dawg shook his head. “It’s like the son of a bitch just disappeared. I’m hoping he did.”
“Ray keeps us up-to-date on Kelly though,” Natches sighed. “And we take turns being here at the marina when she’s working. She’s retreated so far into herself that sometimes I’ve wondered if we could find the girl she used to be. The closest I’ve seen was when you had her backed into the counter this afternoon.” Natches’s lips twitched at the memory. “She looked real comfortable there, Rowdy.”
“Asshole,” Rowdy grunted.
Rowdy stared at the other two men as he wiped his hand over his face and considered the situation for long moments.
“He’s not gone,” he finally sighed. “I want to believe he is, I really do. But I can feel it. He’s waiting.”
“Are you two free?” He looked at them and knew they would be, whatever it took. “We’re free. We made sure of it.” Natches nodded firmly. “How do you want to play it?”
“I need one of you watching our back whenever we’re away from the house. I can feel that bastard watching her. I felt it today when she was on the boat, like a damned itch just under my skin.”
Dawg frowned at that. “There’s been no sign of him, Rowdy. We’ve been watching her every second that we’ve been able to. No phone calls, no strange accidents. Nothing.”
Rowdy clenched his jaw at Dawg’s argument.
“Rowdy’s right,” Natches muttered over the music. “I’ve felt it all evening, especially since we came up here. That’s a feeling you never forget, Dawg. I’ve had a bead on me in the service enough times to know the feeling.”
“Hell, and here I was hoping it was just my overactive imagination,” Dawg grunted. “But if he’s watching, it’s the first time he’s watched close. I’ve only had the willies once or twice since all this hit the fan.”
The willies. It was the perfect description for that odd, warning tingle at the back of the neck, the knowledge that something, or someone, intended to take your head off if they had the right chance.
“Dawg and I made sure we were both fairly free this summer,” Natches stated. “We’re staying on the boats. We’ll watch for unusual movement or watchers. We haven’t seen anything so far, but with crazies like this, who the hell knows what set them off.”
They knew each other too well sometimes, Rowdy thought. His cousins had already anticipated what he would need.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dawg said, his voice graveled, suspicious, “whoever he is, he has to know her. Kelly’s not a creature of habit. She’s impulsive, unpredictable, and never where you expect her to be. He knew she would be home. He knew she liked to crack her window at night. You can’t tell it’s cracked from the street. He had to have known.”
“He studies his women,” Natches said. “Gets to know them somehow. We’ve been talking about this.” He nodded to the others. “Playing it out. I think he’s local.”
“Why?”
“The rapes are in a four-county radius around Somerset. Until Kelly, Somerset hadn’t been hit. She fits the profile of the other girls, though. The others he’ll call every now and then from what the detectives on the case told me, and ask if they’re being ‘good girls,’ but he hasn’t called Kelly. The only reason he wouldn’t call her, is because he’s close enough to watch her,” Natches pointed out.
“The guy lost it when he was interrupted. The others”—Dawg cleared his throat, fury flashing in his eyes—“he made them beg. First to live, and then for him. Kelly wouldn’t beg—”
“And he was interrupted—Shit!” Rowdy ran his hands over his head.
“But she’s still a ‘good girl,’” Natches pointed out. “When she stops being a good girl, what will he do?”
Rowdy felt his stomach pitch at the thought of that. This was why Ray was so pissed at his son’s return. Because he knew Rowdy had returned to claim Kelly, which was most likely the one thing guaranteed to push her stalker over the edge.
“The redneck code, cowboys,” Natches drawled. “You don’t f**k the good girls unless you mean it. He doesn’t rape them normally, he takes them anally. He’s not serious ’bout them. And he’s not going to ‘dirty’ a ‘good girl.’”
It was sickening, and the truly horrifying part was it all made sense. There were unwritten rules sometimes, a code, a way of dealing with women. Good girls versus “bad” girls and the rules of engagement. This ra**st was twisting those rules. Perverting them in ways guaranteed to give a sane man nightmares. He was targeting good girls, or his perception of a good girl.
And Kelly gave the impression of the perfect good girl. But she was his naughty girl. He had seen it in her eyes eight years ago; he saw it there now. She wasn’t a fool, and she might very well be a virgin, but Rowdy knew that his naughty girl was in there, waiting for him. And he was going to claim her, love her, protect her.