The Lighthouse by Bill K

CHAPTER THREE: "Mystery From Across The Ocean"

        Dennis Flynn grabbed Loharo by the arm and roughly shoved her into the room. By the time she landed against the sofa, he already had the front door closed and locked. Loharo caught herself against the sofa, but couldn't prevent the jarring impact. She whirled around, anger and indignation momentarily superseding the cautious attitude she'd previously had. In the scant moments it took to face him, the intruder had his .38 up and leveled at her forehead.
        
        "Ye were about to say something, Missus?" Dennis said in a low, even, yet still menacing tone.

        "No," Loharo replied, reining in her emotions in the face of certain destruction.
        
        "I think ye were," Dennis said, his lips pulling away slightly to bare his teeth. "I think ye were about to say, 'Oh, maybe I should just cross me hands behind me back before this great picture of a man blows me brains clear across the room'. Wasn't that about it?"
        
        There was a war going on in Loharo's brain. Part of her wanted oh so desperately to lunge at this preening little ferret of a man and somehow do some sort of bodily damage to him. He had kidnapped Donna Young; no telling what he'd done to her. Now he was here, invading her home and threatening her, and most of all enjoying it. She wanted to end his little reign of terror with some of the pain he caused shoved right back into his face, just the way her older sister Vantossa used to do to all the boys who'd picked on her when they were girls.
        
        But the logical side said any move she made that was short of cooperation would result in her immediate death or disfigurement. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but the logical side won, as it so often did. Loharo turned around slowly so her back was to him and crossed her hands behind her. She tried to surpress her fear, though, to deny him that at least.
        
        This man, who she didn't know as Dennis Flynn, was a familiar type to her, though he was clearly from Ireland originally. He was mainly unremarkable: Thin black hair, raw-boned looks and a wiry frame that was fit, but unathletic and unimpressive. He was a weasel, long and lean and sinister, but for his eyes. They were the key to him. The smoldering anger in his eyes that burned when he was happy and when he was amorous and burned brightest of all when he was angry told his story. It was the type of eyes that probably betrayed him to any woman he tried to pick up who was smart enough to pick up on the signal. It was the type of eyes that made a person disbelieve any amiable demeanor quick handshake. It was the type of eyes that told you he could kill you in a heartbeat without a moment's hesitation. In fact, he'd probably enjoy it.
        
        She felt his hand jerk her arms down and together more roughly than necessary. She felt thin cord wind around her wrists, surround them and cut into the flesh when pulled tight. Suddenly a wave of panic flooded over her. Loharo realized that, as dangerous as resistance was, being tied and helpless and in the same room with this man was just as dangerous. She began to pull away. Dennis responded by seizing a handful of her african braids and jerking back on them.
        
        "Let's us try to be as sociable as possible, eh Missus?" Dennis rumbled. "Ye just be nice and cooperative and ye may yet get to tell yer grandkids of the sparkling adventure ye once had."
        
        While Dennis drew rope across her outthrust chest and back behind her to pin her arms, Loharo searched for a means out of the worsening situation. Nothing presented itself. She had two choices and both of them were bad. The cord tightened around her chest, digging deep furrows into the red checked shirt she wore.
        
        Dennis led her to the sofa and then shoved her down. While she sat watching him, hoping for an opening, Dennis positioned her feet together and bound them with cord. For a moment he thought about repeating the exercise on her knees, but decided against it. Loharo squirmed in the tight grip of the ropes. She felt tremendously exposed despite being in black jeans and her work shirt. For his part, Dennis took a seat on the coffee table in front of the sofa and pulled the .38 out of his belt. His victim eyed him warily. She judged him as one of those men who felt naked without his weapon and empowered with it, which was bad for her.
        
        "So tell me, Missus," Dennis smiled insincerely, his brogue thick and mocking, "what is it ye do around here? I somehow doubt yer a native."
        
        "I'm a marine biologist assigned here by the Environmental Protection Agency," the black woman replied.
        
        "Are ye, now? College lass, or did ye sleep yer way to this soft position?"
        
        "Why don't you tell me what you want here," Loharo replied thinly, her anger management slipping.
        
        "Yer different," he said, rubbing the barrel of his pistol against his cheek, "and I'm not talking about yer color, either. I bust in on some women, truss `em up, they don't react like ye. They're all `take what you want, please don't kill me, please don't hurt me'! Honestly, it gets so tedious after a while." Dennis grinned at her, a chilling grin that froze Loharo. "Not so tedious that I don't keep doing it, mind ye. But yer not like the rest. Yer trying to keep control of a situation ye've got no control over. Trying to get out with yer life and yer dignity. It's certainly refreshing."        

        Loharo watched him the entire time, wondering when and if he'd snap, wondering whether she could somehow move in time to ward off whatever he planned for her. The constriction of the rope across her chest cut into her whenever she took a breath and she realized she was breathing quicker and deeper, as if every breath might be her last.
        
        "To the point, then," Dennis said. "What were ye nosing around that lighthouse for?"
        
        "I was visiting Donna," she said carefully. "The lighthouse keeper. She's my friend."
        
        "And how is yer friend?" Dennis said, seemingly innocently, but Loharo could tell her safety rode on her answer.
        
        "She seemed fine the last time I saw her," Loharo replied.
        
        "Well, I'll give ye credit for saying what ye think I probably want to hear," Dennis smiled mirthlessly. "Because of that, I'll give ye a warning. Keep to yer business, girl. Yer friend's fine. That's all ye have to know. Keep nosing around and it'll get dangerous. Am I making myself clear there, darlin'?"
        
        "Very," Loharo replied with barely concealed rage.
        
        Dennis eyed her very curved, very bound form. Suddenly Loharo shifted uncomfortably.
        
        "I'm not so sure," he said with a predatory glint. "I think some of it needs to be reinforced."
        
        Dennis leaned in, rising up from the coffee table. His right hand was on her left arm. Loharo's eyes shot to his groin. If he was planning what she thought he was, he was going to have to do it with a gigantic bruise. She tensed to kick with her bound legs.
        
        Suddenly there was a knock at the front door. Both people in the room froze. Loharo sucked in air to scream to whoever was out there, but Dennis was quicker and clamped a strong hand over her mouth and braced himself with his other hand behind her head.
        
        "Miss Reeves?" called a woman's voice from behind the door, this voice also colored by a lilting Irish brogue. "I know it's late, but can I speak with ye a moment?"
        
        Loharo squirmed in Dennis's grasp, trying desperately to pull free. She tried to bite his hand, but the pressure of the hand behind her head and the angle of her jaw kept her from opening it. Talking was impossible; breathing was becoming difficult.
        
        "Miss Reeves, I know yer here! Please come to the door! I need to talk to ye! It's vital!"
        It was vital on her end, too. But Dennis already had a cloth out and was stuffing it into her mouth before she could get much more than a gurgle out. She tried to push the packing out, but he drew a piece of the cord he'd tied her with between her teeth to keep it in place and tied it behind her.
        
        Once he was sure Loharo was incapacitated, Dennis sprinted quietly to the door, his gun drawn. Though he preferred to wait silently until this new intruder went away, it didn't look like she was going to go away. That meant proactive actions on his part.

        Besides, three could `party' just as easily as two.

        Loharo squirmed her way around on the sofa to get a good view of the situation. She watched in horror as her captor reached silently to unlock the door, then twisted the knob. The door opened a crack and Dennis pulled back behind it, allowing his victim-to-be do the rest of the work and walk into the trap.

        The door hung limply for a few moments, then cautiously swung open. Framed in the doorway was a woman wearing a red knee-length skirt and a long-sleeve yellow blouse. She had shoulder length copper hair and the most beautiful alabaster skin Loharo had ever seen. The woman was like a five foot seven inch porcelain doll standing in her doorway, right down to her perfect, beautiful doll-like features. Then she broke the illusion by stepping forward, seemingly oblivious to what lay in wait for her.

        Time moved in slow motion for Loharo. The stranger seemed to take two steps before finally noticing her staring over the back of the sofa at her, a gag filling her mouth. When Loharo saw that she saw her, she looked quickly to Dennis. He was behind the door, moving to pounce, his gun at the ready. But the woman had followed Loharo's gaze and caught sight of Dennis just as he moved out into the open.

        Her tapered hands, hands that seemed to belong to a fashion model, locked around Dennis's gun hand, taking control of it and pointing it away from her. At once her foot lashed out and a three-inch high heel buried itself into Dennis's middle. She pulled away with her hands as Dennis was driven back and the gun was ripped from his hand. It tumbled through the air and landed by Loharo's phone stand, the impact triggering a loud report from the gun. Plaster tumbled to the floor as the bullet impacted with the ceiling. Loharo buried her head, searching for cover.

        "Faith, and if it isn't old home week," Dennis grinned, regaining his aggressive posture. "Yer a long way from Londonderry, darlin'."

        Instantly Dennis lunged at her, trying to slug the woman. The redhead managed to deflect the blow and shove Dennis past her. By the time he got turned around, she was already facing him and nailed him with two blows to the face before he could redirect the third. She warded off his next punch, but the follow up tagged her and sent the woman reeling. Clearly Dennis had the strength edge, despite the two being approximately the same height and he having only twenty pounds advantage in weight. As she staggered, he moved in for the kill. Loharo looked on anxiously.

But the stranger proved resourceful. She scooped up an umbrella Loharo kept near the door and, using it like a staff, blocked the next three blows Dennis threw at her. Growing frustrated, the Irishman lunged wildly at her. She parried the thrust with the body of the umbrella and swung the handle around hard against the back of Dennis's head. He tumbled to the floor, his rage building.

        With unexpected quickness, Dennis lunged at the woman's legs, tackling her. She fell down in a heap with him on top of her, her hands thrust out against his face to keep him at bay. Dennis inexorably thrust his hands down until they closed around the woman's throat. When he got a handhold, he began squeezing. The strain was instantly evident on the redhead's face. She kept trying to push him off, but he wasn't going to budge. A sadistic smile of triumph grew on the man's face.

        Then just as suddenly as everything else that had happened, Dennis found himself flying backward through the air, propelled by his intended victim's leg. The man landed awkwardly in the doorway, just over the woman's head. Both combatants took a moment to recover. They began to rise together. Dennis got to his feet and turned tail, racing down the hall to the stairs. The strange redhead started to pursue him.

        "MMMMMMPPH!" howled Loharo.

        She turned back to the bound woman, hesitated a moment, then raced over to her. The woman lingered just long enough to undo the knots around Loharo's wrists. Loharo heard her leave as she wriggled out of the ropes over her chest. When she looked back, she was alone. In the distance was the siren of one of Constable Harrington's police cars. Loharo pulled the rope out of her mouth, eased the packing out, and touched the tender corners of her mouth. When she finished freeing her feet, Constable Harrington himself was standing in her doorway, flanked by four of her neighbors, peering in curiously.

        "Now do you believe me?" Loharo asked, too weak in the knees to get up.

        "What exactly did he say?" Harrington asked again. He was knelt down over the gun on the floor, picking it up with a pencil stuck in the barrel so as not to smudge fingerprints.

        "I already told you," Loharo replied irritably.

        "Tell me again. Consider me slow on the uptake."

        "That won't be hard," muttered Loharo. "He told me not to go
nosing around the lighthouse anymore. He said that it could get dangerous for me if I did."

        "Then what?" Harrington was standing on a chair, fishing the bullet out of the ceiling with a pocketknife.

        "Then he decided as long as he was here he'd try to rape me."

        "And that's when the woman showed up. So where is she?"

        "Gone after him, I guess! Why do you have such a hard time believing me?"

        "I can only go by what the evidence tells me, Miss Reeves," Harrington exhaled with the exhaustion of a long day. "It's obvious someone was here. It's obvious he tied you up. It's obvious he had a gun. Neighbors report hearing a struggle and if you were tied up it must have been with a third party. But I don't have any evidence supporting anything beyond that and I'm not going to go jumping to conclusions."

        "What about what he said?" demanded Loharo.

        "What you say he said."

        "You think I made it up?"

        "I don't know what to think. After all, just this afternoon you thought you saw Donna Young bound and gagged by intruders. You spent all afternoon trying to convince anyone who would listen that it happened." He hesitated, reluctant to say what he was thinking next. Loharo continued to glare at him. "The possibility exists that everything you've told me today is true. The possibility also exists that you and someone else manufactured this entire incident just now..."

        "Don't you even go there!" snapped Loharo.

        "To bolster your credibility in other people's eyes," Harrington continued. "Until I check out this gun and bullet and the description of the two strangers you gave me, I don't know what's true or not." He started to go, but stopped, wanting somehow to not come across as a heartless law enforcement officer. "I'll stop by Doc Englehart's on the way back. Ask her to drop by and see if you're all right."

        "To see if I'm crazy?" Loharo asked venomously.

        "To see if you have any physical injuries from this traumatic experience," Harrington replied, not completely hiding the sting he received from her last jab, "ma'am."

        Harrington left, closing the door behind him. Loharo instantly regretted her last remark. At the same time, she felt so frustrated and scared it was no wonder she was lashing out. Donna was clearly in the midst of something deadly, something big enough to produce a duplicate of her and big enough to recruit sadistic killers as henchmen. And now they were after her.

        Loharo slid to the floor, her back against the back of her sofa. Abandoning Donna was not an option for her, but what could she do? She felt in over her head. There was no one she could trust. There was no one who could help her. What she needed was a plan.

        Tears began to stream down her face. Loharo's breath came out in shudders. A plan was what she needed. She'd come up with a plan, a good plan--right after she had a good cry.

Continued...

Story is (c)2000 by Bill Kropfhauser

Chapter four.

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