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Behind Closed Doors
Tara Taylor Quinn
Closing the door doesn't always keep you safe…Laura Elizabeth Clark saw herself as a peacemaker. Until the day she went against her parents' wishes and married Harry Kendall, a brilliant history professor who happens to be black.But happily-ever-after goes horribly wrong one night when an intruder forces his way into their bedroom and commits an unthinkable crime. The police say it was a random act of violence, but Harry will never forget those words whispered in the darkness: "White should stay with white."Seeking justice means confronting a group of white supremacists–the Ivory Nation–with its hush-hush ties to political power. Suddenly, opening the door on truth could threaten not just Harry and Laura's love, but their lives…
Praise for the novels of
TARA TAYLOR QUINN
“Character-driven suspense at its best with rapid-fire pacing that makes you feel as if the pages are turning themselves. I inhaled it in two sittings.”
—Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel, on In Plain Sight
“Powerful, controversial and beautifully paced, this chilling, riveting tale frightens because its dangers hit much closer to home.”
—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal, on In Plain Sight
“Lisa Jackson fans will fall hard for Quinn’s unique ability to explore edgy subjects with mesmerizing style.”
—BookReporter.com on In Plain Sight
“Slick, sexy and fast-paced, Quinn’s latest is a top-notch, topical thriller. It keeps the reader on edge from start to finish.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on In Plain Sight
“This story leaves no stone unturned and is deeply satisfying.”
—The Romance Reader Connection on In Plain Sight
“Quinn has outdone herself in her latest release. You can’t help but be pulled into the book with its intense content and compelling scenes…. A definite read for any romantic suspense fan.”
—Romancejunkies.com on In Plain Sight
“One of the skills that has served Quinn best is her ability to explore edgier subjects.”
—Publishers Weekly
Dear Reader,
Last fall I introduced you to Janet McNeil and Simon Green—two regular folks who took up the challenge and went the distance in an attempt to bring to justice a white supremacist group that was infiltrating their neighborhood.
Their lives were torn apart by the things they experienced and learned, and now their lives will be forever different. In the end, they saw justice done. But only on a small scale. Bobby Donahue, leader of the (fictional) Ivory Nation, escaped accountability. His organization continues to thrive.
And now we have a victim. Two of them—Laura and Harry Kendall. An ordinary couple in Tucson, Arizona. She’s a botanist. He’s a history professor at the University of Arizona. And late one night, while they slept behind closed doors, life changed for them. Irrevocably. Forever.
But they didn’t die. So they have a choice: either to give in to fear and become paranoid and unhappy, or to fight back. Not only to fight the outside sources of their fears—an invisible, far-reaching and eminently powerful organization—but to fight their inner demons, as well. Either battle could destroy them.
Laura and Harry didn’t ask for what happened to them. Nor could they prevent it. They are middle-class people doing their best to be good to those around them, to love each other, and have a family. They are you and me. And then they aren’t…
This is their story.
Tara Taylor Quinn
P.S. I love getting feedback from those who share my books. You can reach me at P.O. Box 13584, Mesa, Arizona 85216 or at www.tarataylorquinn.com.
Behind Closed Doors
Tara Taylor Quinn
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For all women who have suffered abuse, physical or emotional. May we always find something to hope for, love in our hearts and the strength to fight back.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
1
Thursday, June 7, 2007, 2:03 a.m.
Tucson, Arizona
T he red LED lights swam, cleared, blurred again. Every muscle tense, Harry lay in bed, listening. Something had awakened him. And it wasn’t Laura. Her hand was still half clutched in his under the covers, and she slept on, despite whatever had interrupted his own sleep.
2:04. There it was again. A sort of swishing. Not a footstep. But movement. He recognized it immediately as the sound that had just jerked him abruptly out of a dream—a dream about his botanist wife snipping bits of cactus from a garden that had appeared in the middle of their bedroom…
The sound came again. Was it closer? Harry couldn’t tell. And he couldn’t identify it. It was like moving air. Not from the vent in the ceiling, but lower. Thinking of the unloaded pistol—inheritance from his uncle—in the back of his closet, Harry slid his hand from Laura’s, moving so slowly he almost wasn’t.
He wanted to believe he was imagining things, but Harry wasn’t prone to an overactive imagination. Someone…or something…was in their house.
Without disturbing Laura, he slipped one bare leg out of the covers. Then the second…
He froze. There was a shadow on Laura’s side of the bed, the shape of a man bending down, reaching toward her. Harry’s arms shot out to grab the bastard around the neck but he was caught from behind. He bellowed in pain and rage, the sound immediately muffled by a leather-gloved hand against his mouth.
His wife’s eyes opened—instantly wide—staring at him in the darkness. He read the fear there, the desperate plea for him to do something. And saw a man gag her.
Infused with frantic strength, Harry alternately yanked his arms, trying to free them from his captor’s hold, and hit back against him. A hand grabbed the waistband of his briefs and yanked him backward. He bit and tasted leather, bit again and had a piece of leather on his tongue. He couldn’t spit it out. Couldn’t swallow.
“Do not move and you won’t be injured.”
Laura was hauled up, the strap of her pink gown falling down one shoulder. She tried to right it but before she could, her hands were pulled forcibly behind her and restrained. Her whimper sent him over the bounds of sanity.
Harry’s foot connected with flesh and bone. His nails scraped leather and denim. The elbow punch he landed resulted in a loud smack in the too-quiet room.
And then, his arms wrenched behind his back, pulling the left one half out of its socket, he felt something thin and hard being twisted around his wrists, cutting into his flesh.
“Unless you want more than a dislocated AC, you’ll keep still,” the deep voice muttered. He could hear it clearly despite Laura’s high, terrified moans.
Tears streamed down her face.
Shoving against his captor with both legs, Harry broke free, kicked again and again, landing some blows. The shadow was doing something to Laura at the bedpost and Harry lashed out like a madman, needing to annihilate his own unseen force so he could get to her.
He couldn’t.
Laura’s captor joined Harry’s and just as Harry realized his wife had been tied to the bedpost, he was attacked by two male bodies at once. He kicked. He bit. He pummeled with the hands tied behind his back, hardly aware of the pain that shot through his shoulder with every wrench. The pain was good; it kept him alive and feeling, aware.
Harry was strong, athletic—a black man who knew how to defend himself—but he was no street fighter.
He landed a kick to one guy’s head. The guy fell. And the other was there, smashing his fist into the right side of Harry’s face. Stars swam before his eyes at the sudden, excruciating pain in his nose. The fallen man got up. Swung. A crack reverberated inside Harry’s head. A second punch made it hard to think. Only the staccato whimpers of his wife’s fear kept him conscious. Fighting.
They dragged the antique desk chair to his side of the bed. Harry fought with everything he had, but the two men were bigger, stronger—and less injured. They grabbed his shoulders, numbing his left arm. He felt the edge of the hard wooden chair shove into the backs of his knees.
He continued to fight, to kick and thrash and jerk his body, in spite of the rope securing his hips and then his ankles to the chair. The grunts rising from his throat were unrecognizable—the sounds of a man enduring a nightmare worse than hell.
And knowing it was going to get worse.
Thursday, June 7, 2007. 2:09 a.m.
Flagstaff, Arizona
Luke’s cries woke him. Jumping out of bed, Bobby Donahue wiped sleep from his eyes and hurried in to check on his three-year-old son.
“What’s up, buddy?” he called as he entered the room lit by the soft glow of the angel night-light above the dresser. He instantly swept the space with sharp, alert eyes. Finding it empty, he switched from automatic defensive mode to compassion for his upset son.
“No boogy man, here, pal,” he said, reaching the boy.
Luke stood at the bars of the crib he still slept in, arms outstretched, and Bobby scooped him up.
“You’re soaked,” he said, holding the toddler against him anyway. “Is that what woke you?”
“Mama!” Luke’s wail pierced Bobby’s emotions more than his eardrums.
“I know, pal. I miss Mama, too.”
Holding the boy until his sobs subsided to hiccups, Bobby drew in the child’s warmth. His nearness.
Luke and the world his son would inhabit in the future were Bobby’s reason for being. His son, and all the other pure children. Every breath he took, every decision he made, was for the children of God.
“Your mama loved watching Blue with you, did you know that?”
Changing the diaper the boy wore only at night now and the damp summer-weight pajamas, Bobby snapped Blue’s Clues bottoms into a matching short-sleeved top.
“Can you remember how she used to scrunch up her nose just like him?”
Luke shook his head, reaching out to Bobby again.
Taking his son in his arms, Bobby headed back toward the crib, but when the boy’s arms clasped his neck, he chose the rocker Amanda had loved.
It had been a year since the car accident from which Amanda—Luke’s mother, the love of Bobby’s life—had disappeared. A year of grieving, of missing her, of not knowing whether she was dead or alive, but assuming the worst. A year to recover.
