Bare Girl: A page-turning serial killer thriller (Detective Erin Bond Book 1) Read online

  Bare Girl

  Bella Forrest

  NightLight Press

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Copyright © 2016 by Bella Forrest

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  The women rustled in the wind.

  They were wrapped around oak trees, their acorn eyes looking out at the dim recesses of the forest, lit only by shafts of moonlight shining through the canopy.

  It was their hair that rustled, their hair of leaves. They no longer had human hair, these women of the trees. That had been shorn off when their skin had been preserved. Now that skin, cured like leather, was proof against the elements. They could hang for many a season.

  The women had achieved immortality.

  The Sculptor had done the work well. The skins had been wrapped around the oak trunks and the bends of the gnarly trees accentuated the curves of their bodies. One arched her back invitingly, others were bent the other way, their bottoms raised up and ready. One hung upside down, her legs splayed.

  A stronger gust blew, and the women’s bodies rustled along with their hair, for their bodies had been stuffed with leaves.

  This, too, the Sculptor had done well. A little extra stuffing here, a smoothing of the skin there, and each of the women had taken on the allure they had so desired in life—full breasts and sweeping hips.

  They hung over several acres of forest, dozens of women. Some had begun to show their age, their skin flaking, their scalps weakened and frayed from having their hair of leaves replaced so many times.

  Even immortality wasn’t forever.

  The women were hung in no pattern, but near the center of the acre they grew more numerous, as if they were a crowd gathering to witness something, or greet someone important.

  At the center of the acre stood a beautiful oak, young and slim with just the barest curves in the trunk. A perfect oak.

  On this oak the Sculptor had painted a red X.

  The Sculptor stood in front of the perfect oak and stared at the red X. This would be the spot for the last one, once the time was ripe.

  And it was almost time.

  Almost time for the masterpiece.

  Chapter 1

  Cameras flashed on either side of Isabel Morales as she strode up the red carpet leading to the front door of Trident Tower in New York City. Reporters and paparazzi screamed out questions, their words running over each other to become an incomprehensible roar. Behind them crowded the fans, all waving pieces of paper or her latest CD they wanted signed. Pushing through these came the protestors, protestors of all stripes—zealots with signs saying, “REPENT WHORE,” feminists screeching, “Traitor!” and, “We are not objects!” and concerned parents shouting, “Think of the children!”

  Isabel couldn’t hear what the protestors were saying any more than she could hear the questions from the photographers and journalists, but she didn’t need to. She’d heard it all before.

  At the foot of the steps she turned, put a hand on her hip, and flashed one of her winning smiles. The cameras went off like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Isabel climbed the five marble steps leading to the front door, held open by a liveried doorman and flanked by a half-dozen security guards with bodies like tanks.

  The superstar turned and faced the crowd again, flashing that famous smile and then bending at the waist to show them some cleavage, giving a little jiggle for the cameras. Everyone went crazy—the paparazzi, the fans, the protestors, sending up a roar of approval and outrage so loud that for a brief moment she wondered if it would break the glass in the windows above her.

  She looked over her shoulder, her long dark hair making a sweep, and gave the security guard directly behind her an alluring smile. The man didn’t respond. She started twerking, the crowd’s reaction getting ever more wild. The police looked like they were having trouble holding back the audience.

  Shaking her ass in front of the guard, she looked for a reaction. None. In fact, he was still scanning the crowd for signs of trouble. Only a bit of redness around his face and neck betrayed the fact that he had, indeed, noticed that America’s most beautiful supermodel and star of the pop charts was giving him a very public show. Other than that he was all business. Good, a professional. She’d need professional security for a press conference like this.

  Isabel looked back at the crowd. She knew a bit about crowd control herself. She could see the pressure of the tightly packed mass of people beginning to bow the police line. She could see the metal barriers being shaken, saw a cop push back a protestor who tried to climb over. To one side she saw the police captain give her a frown and start to move toward her.

  Time to wrap this up. Best to do it before the captain made an appearance. She didn’t want to concede to a man on camera, even though that man was about to give her some wise advice.

  Time to end this.

  With a final wave and a smile that sparkled in the flash of a hundred cameras, she turned and headed through the door.

  A mischievous smile stayed on her lips.

  At the doorway she turned back to the crowd and slipped one strap off of her dress, bringing down the sheer silk to expose a perfect bare breast.

  The police captain’s face took on a look of utter panic. He shouted something, gesturing for her to get into the building and out of sight as the crowd worked itself into a fever pitch. She blew him a kiss, covered herself, and strode into the conference center.

  The difference between the outside and the interior was like night and day. Hotel staff, her own staff, and several policemen milled about, all attention focused on her yet keeping a respectful distance, and while the echoing marble entryway buzzed with excited conversation, it felt peaceful compared to the warzone outside.

  As she followed the red carpet that led to the conference room, she imagined the journalists and paparazzi running in a wide circle to get to the press entrance, all pushing and shoving to get a good seat. They reminded her of the sheep on her grandfather’s farm in Sonora where she’d grown up. Baaa, baaa, baaa.

  Her manager, Sergio Cruz, hurried to her side, looking like he was about to have a panic attack.

  Isabel rolled her eyes. Couldn’t he wait until after the press conference to give her a lecture?

  Of course not. Sergio’s opinions didn’t wait for anything.

  “Darling, the police captain says that if you expose yourself again he’ll arrest you for inciting a rio
t!” Sergio’s voice rose into a panicked screech.

  “Isn’t he going to arrest me for indecent exposure?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Wimp. Everything ready?”

  “Yes, darling, but do be careful, there have been death threats.” Sergio shoved his phone into Isabel’s manicured hands. It was open to the notifications on her Twitter account, run by Sergio’s assistant with only the occasional contribution from herself.

  “@Isabel_Glamor YOU WILL BURN IN HELL!!!!”

  “@Isabel_Glamor You have betrayed the feminist movement. Should be ashamed. #notinwomensname”

  “@Isabel_Glamor Die slut!”

  “@Isabel_Glamor If you’re giving it away, give some to me. Or I’ll come take it. #rapeIsabel”

  Isabel raised an eyebrow as she scrolled down. Nothing she hadn’t seen before, but there was so much of it. Thirty, forty Tweets in the last five minutes, all angry, all outraged.

  She scrolled back to the top to see the new ones. Yep, there she was, standing on the steps with one breast exposed. Wow, that had been less than two minutes ago. Being thirty-four years old, she remembered a time before social media, when the Internet had been agonizingly slow and a lot of people still hadn’t used it. Back then, when she’d been a tween model, she’d still gotten fan mail, actual letters. Now all she got was Tweets. The letters had been creepy, mostly from lonely middle-aged men. Many of the Tweets she got these days were just as creepy.

  “@Isabel_Glamor Show the other one!”

  “@Isabel_Glamor Showing off again!”

  There was even one from CNN, minus the picture.

  “@Isabel_Glamor courting controversy once again by baring breast in public. Protest or cry for attention?”

  That tweet included a link to an article. As she continued to the conference room, she clicked on it.

  And there she was on the front page, standing on Wall Street, her private parts suitably pixelated as she stood in a circle of leering businessmen, a cop running at her from the margin of the picture with an overcoat in his hands to cover her up.

  That had been yesterday, at a staged fashion shoot for Glitzer Magazine. The expensive dress and shooting permissions with the city had just been a cover. The real point was to come to America’s financial nerve center and strip naked, to reclaim her body from the rapacious male-dominated capitalism that saw her only as a product. She had bared herself in order to prove that she owned her body, not anyone else.

  And of course no one got it. Not even CNN, who put her on the front page, hiding her body while still showing it off, and shoving stories about wars and rising unemployment further down, or relegating them to only a headline and a link.

  She handed Sergio back his phone, clucking her tongue with disgust. They had just made it to the stage entrance of the conference room.

  “This doesn’t help us,” Sergio complained, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead. “It’s undermining everything we’ve built.”

  Isabel frowned at him. “You mean everything I’ve built.”

  She turned and continued toward the conference room, missing Sergio’s reaction, as his eyes narrowed at her response.

  “Darling, do be careful,” Sergio pleaded, but the pleading did not reach his eyes.

  “Careful isn’t working. It’s time to push it,” she said.

  She got onstage just as her PR representative, Ellen McDowell, finished up the statement they had prepared.

  “… a male-dominated justice system should not have control over a woman’s body in any way. And now I’ll hand the podium over to Isabel Morales herself, so she can explain this to you in greater detail and take your questions.”

  Isabel strode onto the stage, but not in the way her fans had become accustomed to seeing her at award shows and concerts. Instead of flashing a smile, she gave a defiant grin. Instead of a wave, she raised a clenched fist.

  Then she took a printout from her purse and read a prepared statement.

  “This is for my friends, my fans, the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of all to the millions of women out there suffering from the tyranny of sexism.

  “Yesterday, with the support of my good friends at Glitzer Magazine, I did a photo shoot on Wall Street, at the heart of this country’s capitalist empire. According to the permit we filed with the city, it was to advertise my new line of evening gowns for Isabel Designs. In fact, I wanted to advertise my own design, the design of the body that God gave me and that I’ve worked hard to improve and maintain throughout my career.

  “I cast off my clothes on Wall Street in order to take back my own body from the capitalists who claim it as their own, from all the advertising companies and fashion companies that make money off of my image. I wanted to show that my body is mine, just as all women’s bodies are their own. They are not owned by the photographers, or the magazines, and they sure aren’t owned by all the controlling husbands and fathers and ogling guys on the street.

  “Sisters, this is your hour. Our foremothers fought for our right to own property, the right to run a business, the right to vote, but we still haven’t gained the right to our own selves. And that’s our fault. For too long we’ve subsumed ourselves to men, either by meekly giving them what they want or by being so offensive that we alienate them. Now we need to be what we naturally are—proud owners of our own skin.

  “Look at the photos when they come out in the latest issue of Glitzer Magazine that hits the newsstands on Friday. Of course you’re going to look at my body. I don’t mind that. I’ve been stared at all my life. I’m not ashamed of my beauty. But take a look at the background too. Take a look at all those rich bankers and stockbrokers and investors. As soon as I showed up a crowd gathered, all cheering for me and asking for autographs. All those men wanted to get close. But when I slipped my dress off something interesting happened. They all stepped back.

  “They didn’t know how to handle a confident woman. They stared, desiring me, but none came close. None of them even made any crude jokes, at least not until they were safely alone with the other guys and away from women. They looked, but they didn’t touch. All those rich, powerful men just didn’t know how to handle a defiantly proud woman. We’ve been told to cover up, to dress modestly, but my photo shoot has proven that a woman can be nude in the most male-dominated space in the country and be safer than she is at a nightclub or a frat party.

  “Now I don’t want anyone thinking I hate men. I don’t hate anybody. They’ve been brainwashed as much as women have. They work themselves to death at the office and at the gym to please us, when all we really need is some respect. I did this just as much for them as for us. Their liberation is our liberation. Now if you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them.”

  A chorus of voices broke out. Isabel picked a man from Fox News sitting in the front row.

  “How can you claim to be proud of your body when you’re offering it up like that?”

  “Because I wasn’t offering it up, I was showing it off on my own terms. There’s a difference that you can’t see because of your social conditioning.”

  Isabel picked a female reporter from a female magazine next.

  “What do you say to all the young girls and teenagers out there who adore you? Do you want them to take their clothes off in public too?”

  “Of course not,” Isabel replied, resisting the urge to run over and slap her. “It’s not about nudity, it’s about owning your body and doing whatever you want with it. I want all my fans, the young girls especially, to know that their bodies are theirs. Cover up or take it off, it’s your choice. I only took my clothes off to bring attention to the cause.”

  Next, Isabel chose another male reporter.

  “So you admit that you did it for the attention. Reports indicate that revenues for Isabel Enterprises are down two point five percent this fiscal quarter. Is this a bid to save your company?”

  “I don’t think a three-hundred-million-dollar music and fa
shion empire is really in need of saving. And considering the current economic cycle, a two-point-five-percent drop is actually pretty good.”

  The next question was equally hostile, as was the next, and the next.

  And on and on they came, a relentless flood of judgments posing as questions. Nobody got it. Not a single reporter out there had even listened to her statement. They had all come with their prefabricated ideas, even the women’s magazines.

  Especially the women’s magazines.

  Isabel Morales could feel her grip slipping. This could tank her career, not that she really minded that. She had grown tired of the limelight and wanted to turn that light onto something more important, more enduring, but the media were going to twist her actions and put her down. They saw a woman standing up to claim her own body and they were going to take it right back from her.

  Sergio came up to the microphone.

  “That’s all the questions for now, ladies and gentlemen. Isabel will have another press conference just before the trial. Now let’s hear from the editor-in-chief of Glitzer Magazine, Gene Prentiss.”

  Isabel gave the crowd another of her winning smiles, waved, and exited the stage.

  As soon as she got off stage she let out a great gust of air. That had been harder than she’d thought it would be. She had expected anger, she had expected moral outrage, she had even expected the rape and death threats. She’d seen it all before.

  But not this much. Never this bad. She brushed aside various assistants offering her cups of coffee and phones with waiting calls and headed further into the hotel. She needed some downtime.

  She passed through a conference room being set up for some big dinner and into a kitchen. A cook looked like he was about to cut her off, his face all eager, probably about to ask for a selfie, but then he saw her expression and the eagerness faded. He turned and meekly went back to work.

  Isabel passed through the kitchen’s back door, down a short hallway under dim lighting, and out into an underground parking lot. A few trash bins stood nearby. Working-class cars, no doubt those of the kitchen staff, were parked nearby. Beyond that stood a van with no windows. A steel cigarette bin stood by the door and the faint tang of tobacco smoke hung in the air.