Obsession

19

DREW WASN’T SURE what had hit him. All he knew was that when he opened a bleary eye, he was lying facedown first on the kitchen floor, the tile cool against his cheek.

He felt the back of his head, his fingers coming away with dark liquid. Damn, but that hurt.

He attempted to get up, only to feel the floor shift under him again and force him back down. Oh, boy. This wasn’t good. He remembered the open front door.

Josie…

JOSIE WAS INSTANTLY AWARE of how open she was to the man looking at her as if he had a right to. Her legs were spread, her breasts bare.

She quickly lifted to a sitting position and pulled the top sheet to cover herself.

“Philippe! What are you doing here?”

She smoothed her hand over her hair, looking around.

“Has something happened? Is something wrong?”

He hadn’t answered her and his silence made her heartbeat kick up a notch.

She started to get up from the bed, suddenly not comfortable in the prone position while he continued to look at her. “Jesus, Philippe, what’s going on?”

Before she could stand, he was knocking her back down on the bed.

Josie gasped, struggling to turn to face him, but he seemed just as determined to keep her facedown, his weight threatening against her.

“You just wouldn’t do what I wanted you to do, would you, Josie?” he asked, his voice low and menacing.

Fear quick and sure spread through her with alarming rapidity.

“What are you talking about?” She fought to keep the panic out of her voice. “Philippe, let me go, for God’s sake.”

He chuckled into her ear but there was no humor in the sound. “Oh, no, Josie. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

She felt the evidence of his arousal against her bottom. Bile rose up in her throat.

“I…I don’t understand,” she said. “What have you asked me to do that I didn’t do?” She knew she was grasping at straws, but she needed to understand why someone she had thought her friend was attacking her in her own bed.

She thought of Drew down in the kitchen. Surely, he should have returned by now. Had Philippe done something-

“You wouldn’t sell the Josephine.”

The warmth disappeared from Josie’s blood.

“That’s right. That’s the whole reason I was here. Why I ever took a job in this godforsaken place. I was hired to convince you to sell to Dick Rove.”

The name on the envelopes that arrived every week like clockwork.

“But no, you wouldn’t listen to reason. Even as you sank deeper into debt, you held on to this hole-in-the-wall dump.”

He moved to strip the sheet from her body while still holding her down.

“God damn it, Philippe, what are you doing?” She thrashed against him, alarm growing. “You’re gay.”

Again the laugh.

“Rape is about power, Josie. Not sex.” She fought to hold on to the sheet as he struggled to take it from her. “Not that I am gay, mind you. I just knew that when Samuel died, you would be leery of strangers. An easygoing gay guy who still lived with his mother seemed to be just what you were in the market for.” His words sounded closer to her ear. “Well, I don’t live with my mother. And, as you’re about to find out, I’m not gay.”

Josie wasn’t capable of hearing his words. She was all too aware that she was losing the battle with the sheet and that given his larger size and greater strength, she would be no match against him.

He shoved her face into the linens and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about how he was about to sully the beauty of what she and Drew had spent the night doing.

Blindly, she reached a hand out in front of herself. Her heart filled with hope when she felt the edge of the end table, then the base of a candleholder. Grasping it, and praying that the wick was still burning, she swung it in his direction.

He made a shrill sound and then his hands were no longer on her.

Josie struggled immediately to the other side of the bed and off, glancing over to see melted wax from the candle cooling on his face. He swiped at it, his eyes closed.

The sheet was twisted under his knees so she left it, snatching the sheath she’d been wearing earlier from the floor as she bolted for the door and out into the drawing room beyond. She heard an inhuman roar, then Philippe was crashing against her, toppling her to the floor and taking the table holding the single white candle with them.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” he growled.

He roughly turned her over and tried to force her legs open with his knee.

“This place is falling down around your ears, not even prostitutes want to stay here, except that dead bitch Frederique, and yet there you are, still determined to make it.”

He thrust his hand against her throat, choking off air and causing her to cough. But his mention of Frederique sparked a memory. He’d opted out of cleaning room 2B earlier, claiming that someone needed to man the front desk.

Could he have killed Frederique? Unlike the general public, he had full knowledge of how the first victim, Claire Laraway had been murdered, right down to how she’d been positioned on the bed. Had he orchestrated a copycat killing, taking care of two birds with one stone by doing away with someone helping Josie and guaranteeing the scandal would chase away any others thinking about staying there?

It seemed so far-fetched.

Then again, what he was doing right now would have seemed the same ten minutes ago.

Her throat burned from the pressure he applied. She started coughing hard, tears coming to her eyes.

Strangely, he loosened his grip slightly. Josie dragged in deep breaths of air.

“Frederique,” she croaked. “What did you do to her?”

The candle on the table they’d overturned during their fall ignited the white tablecloth. The flash of yellow light threw his features into relief as he grinned at her malevolently. “The same that I’m about to do to you.”

The Quarter Killer.

Was it possible that Philippe had committed both the murders of Claire Laraway and Frederique? But Claude had indicated that even though the murders had the same MO on the surface, there were many differences. The first being the rape. The second, the choice of weapon. Claire’s throat had been cut with a clean-edged knife, while Frederique’s flesh had been roughly slit with a duller blade.

Philippe was again trying to pry Josie’s legs apart despite the growing yellow ball of flame to her right. The burning tablecloth had acted like a wick, leading the fire to the curtains. Peripherally, she saw one of the curtains burn from the support poll and land on the settee, where it would most likely set that afire as well.

The Josephine.

She fought against her captor doubly hard.

“Damn you, Philippe! Damn you. May you rot in hell for what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done is nothing compared to what I’m going to do.”

She thrashed her legs, sending him off balance. “Your boss won’t like it if you burn the place down.”

“My boss will probably give me a bonus.”

Josie’s throat was raw with pain where he continued to grip her. “How much is he paying you? I’ll double the amount.”

His full-bodied laugh made her shudder. “With what, Josie? Your good looks?” His gaze scanned her naked frame. “It might have been tempting, once. But since I’m already going to take what you would have given me-”

“Money! I have money,” she cried. “Lots of it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who’s trying to con who now?”

“I’m telling the truth. I went to the bank today and took out a mortgage. The hotel was paid for, free and clear, and I took out a loan to help me get her back up and running again. To bridge the time between now and when business returns.”

She’d also done a lot more to guarantee the Josephine’s survival, but all he needed to know was that she had cash on hand. Lots of it.

“You’re lying.”

“On my grandmother’s grave, I have it.”

He released her neck. She tried to struggle up to a less vulnerable position.

“Where is it?”

“Downstairs. At the front desk.”

He stared at her, apparently unaware of the fire that was growling next to them. “Liar. You wouldn’t keep that kind of money downstairs with the doors open.”

“Think about it. That’s exactly where I would keep the money. Like you, that’s the last place anyone would look for it.”

He removed his weight and lifted her with a hand at the back of her neck. Josie gasped as he shoved her toward the door. She just managed to grab her white sheath before she was stumbling down the stairs. An ominous whoosh sounded behind her as the fire greedily ate everything in its path in her private rooms, fed by the air circulating through the hotel. Air that had been meant to cleanse the structure of any bad karma.

Air that was now helping in the destruction of the Josephine.

She’d managed to get the sheath over herself just as Philippe shoved her down the last remaining stairs into the lobby. She fought to keep her footing and ran for the desk and the shotgun that was behind it.

He caught the back of her hair, pulling hard. Hot tears flooded her eyes and shards of pain shot up her scalp. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

He shoved her to the side, keeping a hand on her as he procured the cash lockbox and the key for it that she kept in a drawer.

Josie used his distraction to edge a little closer to the desk, to the gun. As he awkwardly attempted to open the box with one hand, he released his grip on her slightly.

She took full advantage of the opportunity and shoved him to the side, grabbing for the gun she’d left unlocked.

It wasn’t there…

A loud click sounded.

“Looking for this?” Drew said, the muzzle of the weapon pressed against Philippe’s temple.