Karly had crawled around and around the perimeter of the room so many times she had long ago lost count of the corners she had turned. The space seemed to be one large square. Left turn, left turn, left turn. She had crawled around and around—crawling, then passing out, crawling some more, then passing out—in search of the way out of this hell, only to learn there was no way out.
She was exhausted, dizzy, emotionally drained, and so, so cold. The concrete floor had sucked every drop of warmth from her naked body. It felt as if she had grown into the floor, as if tissue and sinew had sunken down and taken root. She thought she might not be able to move from where she lay. And maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if the next time she lost consciousness it simply never returned.
The despair was overwhelming. She lay there imagining that she was crying, imagining that Petal came to her and licked her tears away.
Thirst nagged at her. It felt as if the walls of her throat kept closing and sticking together. Then instinct would kick in and she would cough and choke and struggle against the feeling of not being able to breathe.
If her tormentor didn’t kill her soon, she would die of hypothermia and dehydration. She wouldn’t last long enough to starve to death.
If only she had the strength to stand, maybe she could feel her way to a faucet or a container with water in it. Maybe if she could get a drink, she would think more clearly. If she could think more clearly, maybe she could at least fight her tormentor when he came back. If she could fight him, maybe he would kill her outright, and she would at least die trying instead of wasting away like an abandoned caged animal.
Gathering every last ounce of will in her, Karly curled herself into a ball then rolled onto her hands and knees. She pulled one foot up under her and started to rise up, doing her best to shut out the pain that cut through her like a thousand razor blades along her nerve endings. The screwdriver still clutched in her right hand, she reached out to find the wall.
As she gained her feet, she put her left arm out in front of her, and touched evil.
52
He watched her struggle, amused at her will to survive. The last one had given up too easily. This one had been more sport.
She got to her feet and stretched her left arm out in front of her, the fingers of her hand spread wide.
He stepped closer, leaned down, and licked her palm with his tongue.
She tried to scream, her voice too hoarse to make much of a sound. But then she wouldn’t know that because she couldn’t hear.
She jerked her hand back as if he had burned her. She turned in a panic and ran into the wall. When he grabbed hold of her shoulder, she turned back toward him, swinging at him with her right arm, a screwdriver clutched in her hand.
He jumped back in the last instant, the flat tip of the screwdriver just missing cutting across his chest.
Amused no longer, he pulled the silk scarf from his pocket and wrapped both fists into the ends of it.
She was stumbling blind, running into the table, tripping over a chair, swinging the screwdriver out in front of her as if she might get lucky and strike him. But her luck had run out.
As deliberately as a tiger stalking its prey, he went behind her and moved in for the kill.
53
At 3:23 in the morning Jane sat bolt upright in bed, awakened from an exhausted, restless sleep by an unearthly, blood-curdling howl. For an instant, she thought her heart would explode, it was pounding so hard, so fast.
Violet, her pug, launched herself off the bed and ran barking from the room.
Jane got up, grabbing the Lady Smith & Wesson from her night-stand. She had left every light in the house on every night since Lisa’s body had been found. Her outdoor lights blazed bright. A county cruiser prowled past every hour. And still she kept the gun handy.
Petal and Violet were both at the back door, barking incessantly, Petal jumping up and hurling herself at the door again and again in a vain attempt to break out.
“Girls! Girls, calm down,” Jane said, setting her gun on the washing machine.
She caught hold of Petal’s collar and nearly had her arm pulled out of the socket as she tried for three seconds to restrain the pit bull. The dog was like a torpedo of solid muscle.
“Calm down, sweetheart!” Jane shouted, her ridiculous words falling on small deaf ears.
Petal lunged at the door again and again, snapping, fangs bared, ready to tear to pieces whatever—or whoever—was outside.
Jane stood back, shaken by the dog’s ferocity. She looked out the window above the washing machine, seeing nothing in the arc of lighted lawn. Taking her gun with her, she went into the kitchen, cut the light, and went to the window above the sink. She opened the window and strained to listen, hearing only the barking of the two dogs in the laundry room at first. Then came an eerie accompaniment in the distance: Coyotes yipping wildly down in the arroyo behind her property, celebrating the death of some unfortunate creature.
She hated that sound. It was not the semiromantic howl of the wild people most often associated with the animals. It was a frenzied, hysterical cacophony of voices that preceded prey being ripped apart and devoured by the pack. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck and ran goose bumps down her arms.
The dogs went wild to hear it, but Jane never allowed them outside at night off leash. Violet would have made a nice appetizer for a coyote. Even Petal wouldn’t have been a match for a pack of them. Bold and criminally clever, coyotes routinely lured dogs away from safety with one member of the pack dancing and bowing, inviting the dog to play, only to draw the dog into an ambush by the rest of its cohorts.
Breathing a sigh of some relief, she closed and locked the window and went back to bed, not to sleep, but to sit and fret and pretend to read. Violet joined her eventually, jumping on the bed to spin around like a tiny whirling dervish before settling in her spot to sleep. Petal remained at the back door, her barking gradually subsiding to a piteous whining.
Jane debated breaking down and calling Cal, deciding against it. The dogs were calming down. The coyote victory party had died down. Her doors and windows were locked. She had her gun. What did she need with a man?
Reassurance and strong arms around her.
Her relationship with Dixon had teetered off and on between friendship and something more for a long time, never entirely tipping one way or the other. Her choice. She chose not to push it over the edge tonight . . . again.
At some point exhaustion won the battle, and Jane fell asleep only to be tormented by dark dreams of captivity and torture at the hands of a madman. When the alarm went off, she was relieved to be dragged up out of that hell.
Still wearing the sweatshirt and leggings she had fallen asleep in, she got up and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and brush her long hair back into a loose ponytail. Violet came to the doorway and began hopping up and down like a flea.
“I know, I know,” Jane said. “I’m coming.”
Dogs were the great levelers of life. It didn’t matter what had happened the day before. When the sun came up, the dogs would always need to go outside. Life would go on.
The doorbell rang as she walked through the house. She could see Steve Morgan through the glass in the front door. What a godsend he had been through this ordeal, taking some of the weight of managing the press off her.
They had agreed to meet early to go over everything that had gone on, every scrap of information that had come in to date on both Lisa’s murder and Karly’s disappearance, in preparation for a press conference set for
