“She was an attractive woman. Maybe you had a crush on her.”
“There was nothing… nothing like that.”
He seemed less sure of himself. Erin felt confident she was circling closer to the truth.
“Maureen looked like me in some ways,” she said tentatively. “Do I remind you of her?”
“No.”
“Does Annie?”
“No, goddammit.”
He was lying. She was certain of it.
“You did feel something for her,” Erin whispered, “didn’t you, Oliver?”
He shook his head without answering.
“And what you felt for Maureen-you feel it for us, too. For Annie and me.”
“No.”
“You look at us, and you think of her.”
“No.”
“You see Maureen in us. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Don’t you, Oliver?”
“I… no, I… it’s not…” He averted his face from her. Tremors shook his body. “It isn’t… isn’t… oh, Jesus. Oh, my God.”
A change came over him then. His eyes widened in surprise, his gaze focusing inward, and Erin knew he was doing something rare and astonishing; he was looking inside himself, seeing the truth that had been long concealed from his conscious awareness.
And suddenly she was afraid. She had pushed him recklessly, almost forgetting the risk, carried away by the sheer exhilaration of an intellectual challenge.
Now she wondered how his new perspective on himself-whatever it might be-would upset his precarious equilibrium.
“My God,” he said again, numbly. “My God.”
“Oliver?”
“I never knew. I never even knew.”
“Oliver, talk to me.”
“All these years”-he spoke in a robot’s monotone-“and I never knew.”
His gaze shifted its focus. Suddenly he was looking at her. Seeing her with new eyes.
“You’ve been right all along, Doc.” He nodded slowly, mechanically. “And I’ve been deceiving myself. Afraid to face the truth. I’ve been blind. For years… for twenty years… so goddamned blind.”
“Oliver, I want to know how you’re feeling right now. I want to know-”
“Feeling?” A catch in his voice. “How I’m feeling?”
He stood, and once again she was aware of how big he was and how very dangerous. She drew back in her chair, scared now, heart pounding.
“I’ll show you how I feel,” he breathed, the words gathering force as he squeezed them through gritted teeth. “I’ll show you, you goddamned whore. I’ll show you! ”
He seized her by the shoulders, wrenched her upright, the pinch of his fingers painful and startling.
Her involuntary cry was stifled by his mouth on hers. A hot, searing pressure, mashing her lips, stifling breath, smothering her.
She stood rigid in his arms, every muscle locked against the instinctive impulse to twist free.
He broke away. Gasping, she stared at him, at the confusion of emotions shredding the smooth mask of his face-desire and revulsion, hatred and need.
“That’s how I feel,” he croaked. “How I feel. How I feel.”
For some unmeasurable stretch of time they watched each other, their gazes locked.
Then a ripple of muscle spasms danced lightly over his shoulders. His body jerked toward the door.
Slam, and she was alone.
She heard the rattle of the key, the softer jangle of the chain lock, the hasty retreat of his footsteps up the stairs.
Trembling, she waited, afraid of his return, until she heard the muffled growl of the van’s engine. She didn’t relax until the motor noise had faded into silence.
Then slowly she sank back into the chair, wiping her mouth with her hand, trying to erase the lingering residue of his kiss. Head lowered, she fought off vertiginous waves of nausea.
Going to rape her. Christ, she’d been sure he was going to rape her.
Unquestionably he was capable of it. With his psychosis, his violent tendencies, his background of parental abuse…
Parental abuse.
She blinked, then blinked again, and there it was, the puzzle’s final piece.
“Of course,” she murmured.
Oddly, she felt no surprise. She had known already. Known without knowing. Without wanting to know.
Her analysis of his psychology had approached the truth. But at its core it had been wrong. Utterly, devastatingly wrong.
She saw that now. And something else.
The next time he visited her, she would die.
His feelings for her, liberated now after years of ruthless repression, were too intense. They cut fatally close to the heart of his insanity. They would drive him inexorably to kill.
To kill her… and Annie, too.
46
Frantic.
Gund stamped the gas pedal to the floor, careening north. He didn’t look at the speedometer needle, didn’t want to see it pinned to the far right of the dial.
He had no idea where he was going. All that mattered was to put distance between himself and the ranch. If he returned to it tonight, Erin would die.
Leaving her unharmed had exhausted nearly the last reserves of his willpower. Even now he wasn’t sure he could hold out against the ugly impulses churning inside him, wasn’t sure he could resist the urge to turn the van around.
Gasoline in the rear compartment. Two cans. More than enough to do the job.
He didn’t want to think about that. But it was hard not to, agonizingly hard.
His fingers tingled and itched. His neck burned. In his ears was a faraway chiming, elusive and mysterious.
All day long he’d been on edge. And after what he’d done with Erin-the meeting of their lips, the pressure of his mouth on hers Until the moment when he’d pulled her close, he had never known what he wanted from her, wanted and desperately needed. He’d been blind to his true nature, blind to the origins of his compulsion… willfully blind, afraid to face the ugly reality of what he was. Although he had tracked down Erin and Annie Reilly, although he had become part of their lives, he’d never admitted the full reason for their hold on him.
The burnings had been bad, but the twisted needs that lay at the root of his crimes were still worse.
Better to splash his victims with gas and toss a lighted match than to… to…
“Fuck,” he whispered, testing the word, a word he had not used-not once-since he was fifteen years old.
The muttered obscenity drew the muscles of his groin tighter. He shifted in the driver’s seat.
Turn around. He had to turn around, go back, fuck her. Fuck her and then burn her, burn her -
“I won’t,” he murmured, his eyes misting. “I won’t do it. I won’t.”
