On past occasions he had struck from behind. Curled a gloved hand over the victim’s mouth, rammed the gun into the nerve center of the base of the spine, and discharged the current. For some technical reason, explained by the Ultron’s manual but incomprehensible to him, the voltage could not pass into his own body even when he was in physical contact with his adversary.
This time he’d had no chance to grab her until after she’d spun around. Then he had delivered a five-second pulse directly to her solar plexus. The resulting disruption of her nervous system should keep her immobilized for at least ten minutes.
It was his first face-to-face encounter. He had found it interesting to watch her eyes roll up white in the sockets.
Despite everything, he had to admit that in the past he had enjoyed this phase of his activities. Using the stun gun, then exploring a woman’s body with his hand while she lay unconscious and unresisting… It had given him a shameful, furtive thrill of pleasure, had made him feel-for once-fully alive.
What had come later…
No pleasure then, only a compulsion he couldn’t override.
He pushed aside these thoughts. Must get moving. Someone might enter the lobby at any moment and find him here.
Kneeling by her, he scanned the tiled floor. A key ring lay near her jerking hand. Car keys were included in the set. Good.
The keys disappeared into another pocket. Then he lifted her in his arms. She was reasonably tall, perhaps five-eight, but slender, no more than 125 pounds. Slung over his shoulder, she was easy to carry, and the reflexive spasms trembling through her muscles created the pleasing illusion of a futile, panicky struggle against his superior strength.
He caught the scent of her hair as he lugged her to the side door. Faint fragrance. Not perfume. Bath salts.
The door opened on the parking lot that served the complex. Rows of automobiles, pickup trucks, and motorcycles were arrayed under metal carports. Fluorescent bars cast a pale, glareless glow on steel and fiberglass.
In the doorway he paused, surveying the area.
The moon, a waning crescent, hung low over the horizon, hooked in a mountain’s clawlike peak. It washed the asphalt in milky light. Anyone watching from a window or balcony would see him once he exited.
Fortunately, the blue Taurus was parked in one of the more desirable assigned spaces, only a short distance from the door.
He took a breath and carried her there, staying clear of floodlights. Behind him, the apartment building loomed dark against an icy spray of stars. On Pantano Road, safely screened from the parking lot by colonnades of oleanders in white bloom, cars shot by like comets, and a motorcycle whined past, mosquito-quick.
If a car should turn into the lot… if he should be pinned in the headlights…
He walked faster. His breath became hoarse and ragged, loud over the clicking of unseen insects.
Only once he was under the carport roof, concealed from any likely observer, did he again feel safe.
Fumbling the key ring out of his pocket, he unlocked the trunk and popped the lid. Gently he deposited her inside, placing her on her back.
From a utility pouch clipped to his belt, he removed cut lengths of rope. Bound her ankles first, then her wrists. To further restrict her movements, he lashed her wrists to her right thigh.
Good. Very good.
A roll of heavy electrician’s tape was also among the contents of the pouch. He tore off a six-inch strip and prepared to seal her mouth. Hesitated, studying her face. His first opportunity to look at her, really look at her, up close, in the flesh.
Dangerous to indulge himself like this, under these circumstances. Still, he could not turn away. She held him fascinated.
Of the women he had taken, she was by far the most beautiful. By far.
He admired her as a connoisseur of art would admire a fine painting, attentive to every detail. It was an undiluted pleasure to study her lovely face as minutely as he liked, with no risk that she would return his gaze or challenge his absolute control.
She was thirty years old, balanced at that delicate equilibrium point between youthfulness and full maturity. Her skin was smooth, powdered with faint freckles; a light suntan endowed her with a pink, scrubbed look, wholesome somehow. Offsetting these girlish features were her strong cheekbones and blunt jaw, which gave her face a squarish shape, and her wide, serious mouth, not a child’s mouth at all.
Her auburn hair, combed away from her forehead, shone even in the carport’s wan fluorescence. A stray lock lay along her temple like a spiral of sewing thread, reddish-gold.
Peeling back her eyelids, he stared into gray eyes, smoky and mysterious.
He parted the flaps of her robe. Removed one of his gloves so he could stroke her white pajama top, feel its softness. Satin.
The clean lines of her neck, the bare skin stretched taut over her thin collarbones, the scatter of reddish freckles on the margin of her cleavage, cupped in the buttoned neckband…
He reached for the top button, wanting to see her breasts…
No.
He jerked his hand away as if slapped.
His mouth twisted. A noise that was both grunt and gasp hiccupped out of him. Its echo hopped like a frog among the metal stanchions of the carports.
Dirty. Unclean. Corrupt.
Quickly he taped her mouth, then clawed a blindfold out of his pants pocket and snugged it over her eyes, knotting it in the back of her head.
Helpless now. Deprived of mobility, speech, sight. She was a free agent no longer. She was his.
Erin Reilly was his.
The Ford’s trunk thumped shut like a coffin lid.
4
Her keys gave him access to her apartment. Strange to be here, in another person’s living space, and in a home so different from his.
No dull glaze of dust on the tables and fixtures. No soiled spots in the carpet, long ignored and now permanently set. No brittle carapaces of dead insects lining the baseboards, shiny in the lamplight.
His own apartment was a ground-floor unit, cramped and airless, the windows staring blankly at the stucco wall of the building next door. Erin Reilly’s place conveyed a sense of openness and freedom, with its views of the city and mountains, its promise of light and air, its immaculate floors and whitewashed walls, its silent testimony to the serenity of a well-ordered life.
He almost hated Erin for having all of this around her-and then he remembered that she would have it no longer.
In the bedroom closet he found a set of three valises, small, medium, and large. He chose the medium-size suitcase. Opened it, then began pulling random clothes off hangers and stuffing them inside.
No. Random was wrong. He forced himself to concentrate on selecting items that went together as outfits. It must look as if she had done the packing.
What else? Footwear. He tossed in a pair of fringed western boots.
Undergarments. They were neatly folded in a bureau drawer.
Toilet articles. In the bathroom he collected them. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Deodorant. Comb. Hairbrush. Other things, including some feminine products he’d never seen before and couldn’t identify.
Stationery. His gloved hands rifled the drawers of a mahogany desk in the den. He found a bundle of pale olive envelopes and matching sheets of writing paper that bore her letterhead.
