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Allison Brennan

Playing Dead

PROLOGUE

Thirty Years Ago

He buried Jessica White’s body in the vast open space on the west end of Stanford University.

He hadn’t meant to kill her. She’d been intoxicated, but coherent. He pretended to be tipsy, but in truth he’d replaced his beer with a nonalcoholic variety he kept in his room. He needed to be in control.

They fucked like animals and he couldn’t climax. He’d had this problem before, knew what had to be done to bring relief. She laughingly agreed to “play the game,” as she called it. But tying her to the floor spread-eagled was no game to him.

She was beautiful. Long, lean body, round tits, perky nipples, dark hair spilling around her.

So he had closed his eyes, wanting to remember the woman who had loved him, who had taught him everything about sex.

Bridget had seduced him when he was twelve. Told him what to do, what she liked, made him do things he didn’t want to. But he’d loved her. Loved her breasts. If she’d just let him suck her breasts, he would have been happy.

She knew he liked it, and only let him touch them when he finished his other duties. She said only young men made her feel good. Only young men like him.

The week before he graduated from eighth grade he went to her house like he did every Wednesday after school. He waited for her in the backyard. Leaving together would have been unseemly, she always said. After all, she was the principal.

He waited and waited and then heard laughter from inside. He walked around to her bedroom window and saw her with another boy. He was smaller and younger and had no pubic hair.

Bridget had told him last time he was getting too old.

She let the boy-a kid who’d transferred midyear and was a grade younger-touch her breasts. Like she’d done when she first brought him to her house. It was only later, after she hooked him, that she denied him until he satisfied her. Until he hurt her.

Outside her bedroom window, he hated her.

He went back late that night. Snuck into her bedroom. He wanted to kill her, but he loved her so much. She needed him.

She was expecting him.

“I saw you watching. I’m sorry we can’t see each other anymore. You’re leaving for high school in the fall. But I’ll give you something to remember me by. ”

Then she hurt him and he thought he would die.

After that, he couldn’t have sex like a normal person. He watched porn movies, he spied on his father and stepmother while they did it-quick and fast. Later, he spied on his hypocritical father when he learned about the young mistress.

He tried to re-create that urgent copulation with Jessica, but it hadn’t worked. It never would.

He didn’t even realize he’d strangled Jessica until he climaxed and collapsed on top of her. She wasn’t breathing. He stared in shock at her neck, saw the bruises, the thumb impressions so deep they had to have crushed her larynx.

He looked at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them as his own. They had been around her neck, his thumbs pushing, but he didn’t remember.

He wasn’t a murderer. It was an accident, just a terrible accident. Who would believe it? Jessica’s wrists and ankles were red and chafed, probably from straining while she suffocated. No one would believe that she’d allowed him to tie her up. That he’d just gotten carried away. That’s what happened, things got out of hand because she wanted him so bad. She’d asked him to tie her up. She’d begged him to do it rough, saying she liked it that way. It was all her fault. Sick bitch.