Soultaker

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jordan was asleep on the sofa in her living room. Overwhelmed by exhaustion and anguish, she’d collapsed there moments after ejecting Bridget from her apartment. Her body twitched and her throat produced a series of mumbled words and moans. Noise from the apartment next door pushed through the wall of sleep, sounds of distress that complemented an already disturbing dream. The shrieks that came from Todd Monroe in the moments before his death changed the tenor of the dream. What had previously been just a disturbing bit of eroticism became a horror show, and Jordan’s moans of pleasure became frightened whimpers.

Jordan awoke with a scream. She sat up, gasping for breath, her heart racing, her mind awash in pornographic images. She put a hand to her chest, willing her heart to return to a calmer pace. Despite its awful ending, the dream had been powerfully erotic, and she felt a lingering arousal. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that Bridget Flanagan had played a starring role in the dream.

Jordan experienced a flare of self-disgust. But the erotic images were so vivid, so compelling, that the arousal refused to go away. Even now she could almost feel Bridget’s tongue on her clit. She toyed with the idea of masturbating, of indulging in a fantasy about Bridget. But the tide of self-loathing that rose up at this thought stifled the urge.

She sniffed. “I hate you sometimes, Jordan Harper.”

She was on the brink of a crying jag, the kind of pity party she had no tolerance for in others. What a dark day in her life this was. A brittle facade of strength had been smashed to bits. There was no way to put a positive spin on it. Her life was a mess. The rough road ahead of her, which she’d contemplated with such conviction before finding Bridget in her apartment, now seemed daunting.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she made no effort to wipe them away. Her distress made her oblivious to the new sounds emanating from Todd’s apartment. At first. Then she began to perceive something. A blunt, flat sound, like some sort of heavy object striking something repeatedly. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Thunk. Thunk. THUNK.

God, it simply wouldn’t end.

Jordan frowned.

She’d looked after Todd’s cat, a brown tabby named Willow, once while he was away for a week over the Christmas holiday season. She spent hours at a time there, watching his DVDs and poking through his stuff. She felt some guilt over the snooping, but told herself it was harmless. It made her feel a bit naughty, and she sometimes liked doing things she wasn’t supposed to do. She discovered no deep, dark secrets. Todd had no secret cache of naked kid pictures, no drug stash, no telltale hint of secret lunacy, no bomb-making materials, or Far Right pamphlets. About the worst you could say about Todd was that he was terminally geeky. The guy had a massive comics collection, and what Jordan imagined must be the world’s largest collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer memorabilia.

Jordan figured she knew Todd as well as you could know a person without actually being friends with them. And there was one thing of which she was absolutely certain-Todd was not the handyman type. The idea that he was over there hammering away at something struck her as unlikely.

The sound came again.

THUNK.

And again, louder.

THUNK!

Another dim sound from next door deepened her frown.

It was laughter. And it had a certain quality that made her uneasy. Then the sound came again, rising in pitch as the hammering continued.

Her stomach clenched.

It was female laughter.

For some reason she thought of Bridget. But that was ridiculous. And paranoid. The laughing girl could be anybody. But it troubled her nonetheless. Todd hadn’t had a girlfriend the entire time she’d known him. She rarely saw him in the company of females at all. But maybe his luck had changed. She hoped so. He’d always seemed so lonely. Hell, at least maybe somebody’s life had taken a turn for the better.

She thought of the sad state of her own life and darkness encroached. Fuck. She didn’t want to think about other people being happy. Not now. The sounds from Todd’s apartment taunted her, reminded her of a buoyancy of spirit she’d felt so often, even as recently as yesterday. She went to her bathroom and found a package of earplugs. Then she returned to the sofa and lay down for another nap.

This time her sleep was free of dreams, erotic or otherwise, and she slept for hours. When she awoke again, the day had progressed well into the afternoon. She pulled the foam earplugs from her ears and the first thing she heard was loud, thumping music from Todd’s apartment. This, too, was very unlike Todd. He was a considerate neighbor. On the rare occasions when the sound from his stereo bled into her apartment, the volume was too low to be a real nuisance. But this time the music was going full blast. She slammed a fist against her living room wall in protest. She sighed. The music was too loud. She’d have to go knock on his door if this continued much longer.

Her sense of unease returned. She put her ear to the wall and listened to the music. Weird. This wasn’t Todd’s sort of thing at all. He liked alt-pop stuff. Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie. This stuff was club music, some kind of bland techno crap. Well, maybe he was going out of his way to please his female guest.

She smiled.

I hope you get laid, buddy.

God knows you deserve it for putting up with that crappy music.

Jordan put Todd’s mystery girlfriend out of her mind and got to her feet. She stretched and decided she would fill at least some of the remaining daylight hours by giving the apartment a thorough cleaning. She put on a Tori Amos CD to block the noxious club music. But it wasn’t very effective. The mellow Tori songs just couldn’t compete with the ultrapercussive bonehead beats coming from Todd’s apartment.

“Goddammit!”

She paused in the midst of polishing the coffee table and stared at the wall separating her apartment from Todd’s. The dance music was so loud it could have been coming from her own stereo. Tori’s ethereal voice was lost in the musical maelstrom. She tossed aside the cleaning rag, set down the can of Pledge, and got to her feet.

Enough of this.

She strode quickly to her front door, intent on marching over to Todd’s place to put an end to this crap. But she heard something from outside and paused at the door. She listened and recognized the sound as a clatter of footsteps coming up the staircase. Someone in heels. Jordan’s and Todd’s apartments were the only ones accessible via the second-story landing on this side of the building, so one of them was about to have a guest. Jordan looked through the peephole of her door and watched Angela Brooks move into view. Jordan’s eyes widened. Why was one of Bridget’s bitch friends coming to see her now?

Jordan felt sick.

When would Bridget quit playing her stupid little games?

Then Jordan frowned again.

Angela swept past the door to her apartment and disappeared from view. Seconds later she heard the brass knocker rapping against the door to Todd’s apartment. Then she heard the creak of the door opening, followed by the excited squeals of two very vapid females exchanging greetings. Now Jordan knew the identity of Todd’s female guest. Her initial instinct-the one she’d dismissed as paranoia-had been right all along.

Bridget fucking Flanagan.

That voice-so falsely sweet and lilting-was impossible to mistake. The revelation also explained the horrid music pounding out of Todd’s stereo.

It all came together for Jordan in a heartbeat. Bridget had created quite the ruckus upon getting the boot from Jordan, a disturbance which naturally brought Todd running. Jordan could too easily picture what happened next. In her mind, she saw Todd reeling at the sight of a gorgeous naked female outside his apartment. A hot blonde prettier even than the admittedly very fine Buffy Summers. In three-dimensional flesh and blood. He wouldn’t have been able to think properly, the poor bastard, and Bridget would have played him with the finesse of a master symphony musician manipulating her instrument. The bitch was likely assuaging her bruised ego by fucking with the guy’s head to an extreme degree.

The door to Todd’s apartment slammed shut.

Jordan stood there by the door for a long time. She didn’t like the idea of her sweet, geeky neighbor being used by those heartless girls. On the other hand, she didn’t much relish the idea of confronting Bridget again.

An inner voice taunted her: You fucking coward.

Jordan’s expression hardened. “No. I’m not.”

She looked at her door. Saw her hand gripping the knob, then turning it. Her conscience told her a visit to Todd’s place to set him straight on some things was the absolute right thing to do. But then she thought of the smirk on Bridget’s face this morning when the comforter fell away from her breasts. And she thought some about the way Bridget’s body had looked stretched out in the morning sunlight.

She closed her eyes against a fresh welling of tears. “Shit.”

She sighed.

Wiped away her tears.

And went back to her bathroom to find some sleeping pills.