Page 304 of Love Bites

CHAPTER23

Son of a bitch!I wiggled my hands, testing the rope holding my wrists hostage.

This couldn’t be the end for Violet Lynn Parker. Not so soon. Not before I got to ride roller coasters with my kids, swim naked in the Caribbean, have sex on the top of Mount Rushmore, run with scissors.

Oh, no. There was no way in hell I was going to die in a violet wallpapered room while wearing green underwear.

Tugging and pulling on the rope, I watched Wolfgang’s back as he hauled a Piggly Wiggly shopping bag from the closet.

“Ah, Violet.” Wolfgang pulled a can of lighter fluid from the bag. “My beautiful Venus with tresses of gold. Your hair is so much like hers, you know.”

Like whose? The dead girls sharing the table with me?

“How I hate to do this to you.” He popped open the cap.

I paused, my wrists stinging, my breathing shallow, my eyes locked on the can in his hands. “Do what?”

He dumped lighter fluid over the dried corpse across the table from me. “Burn you.”

The fuel’s pungent odor covered the stench of decomposing flesh and seared my nose. I cowered into my chair, trembling so hard my teeth chattered. I couldn’t become a human torch. The smell of burning hair always made me gag. “How about we skip the barbecue? Charred meat has been linked to cancer, you know.”

Chuckling, he moved to the sleeping girl on my right. “Always the jester. That’s one of the things I love about you.”

“You should see me juggle.” I reared back, trying to avoid being splashed as he squeezed out the last of the can’s contents. “Untie my hands and I’ll show you.”

He set the empty container on the dresser next to the cake. “Do you believe in love at first sight, Violet?”

No, but I’d experienced lust at first light. Did that count? My eyes began to water. “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“Me, too.” He reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a second can of lighter fluid.

A soprano voice in my head screeched in terror. I twisted my wrists with new purpose, ignoring the burning and tearing of my skin.

“I knew the first moment I saw your golden curls on your postcard that you were the one.”

Notthe oneagain. I decided to play dumb, buy more time. “The one what?”

How aboutthe one who got away? I was all for that.

“The one I will love forever.” He added a couple of more squirts to the sleeping girl.

Finally, a man who would spend eternity pining for me and he was going to turn me into a shish kabob. I coughed on the fumes, my throat tingling, my lungs aching.

“The one who would free me from her,” Wolfgang added, showering the third corpse with lighter fluid.

“Her?” The rope felt slicker now, wet, sticky. I told myself it was just sweat, but the tearing pain on my wrists said otherwise. I pulled at my right wrist, my shoulder cramping. Looser. Closer. “Are you talking about your mom?”

“Mother?” The harshness of his laugh made me flinch. “She was an angry, old bitch.”

“Angry at you?” I should’ve taken more notes in Psych 101.

He tipped the can of lighter fluid upright, the top still open, and set it on the dresser next to the other empty can. “Angry at death, for stealing her daughter and leaving her son.”

I stopped struggling whenever his gaze was on me. “Did she hurt you?”

“Hurt? Ha!” His grin scared me as much as my dead tea party mates did. “She told me every day how she wished I’d died instead of Wilda. She plastered the walls of my room with rose-covered wallpaper, made me wear dresses and play with dolls, buried my toys in the backyard.”

“So that rusted toy train Layne found …”

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