She moved toward him. He stepped up fast and slammed her backward with a sudden, vicious shove. The floor skidded out from under her, and she collapsed into the chair.
“Hey,” Steve snapped. “Watch it.”
“I didn’t hurt her, Stevie. Now give me the pills.” Steve hesitated. “Give them to me.”
Kirstie could see Steve didn’t want to. And she could see that he would.
Slowly he handed them over.
Jack rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned close to her, the six white capsules in his palm filling her world. “Swallow these.”
Lips sealed, she shook her head.
“They won’t kill you. Put you to sleep for a while, that’s all.” He pressed his hand to her mouth. “Go on.”
She averted her face. Jack grabbed her by the chin, made her look at him.
“Open your damn mouth.”
She looked past Jack and saw Steve watching.
“I said, open your mouth.”
Desperately she gazed into her husband’s eyes, pleading voicelessly for help. She saw anguish in his face, but no resolve.
Jack’s fingers crept up under her lips like burrowing beetles and peeled them back from her teeth.
“You’re very stubborn, Kirsten Gardner,” he breathed. “It’s an unattractive trait in a woman.”
If he tried to pry her jaws apart, she would bite off his fingers like a snapping turtle.
He seemed to guess her intention. “You won’t cooperate?” He let go of her mouth and studied her coldly. “Well, maybe I can persuade you.”
The first stinging slap caught her on the left side of her face. A backhanded slap: she felt the crack of his knuckles on her cheek.
“Don’t.” Steve stepped forward, lifting the gun.
Jack didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Stevie. This is business, not pleasure.”
Past involuntary tears of pain, Kirstie saw Steve’s face, still tormented, still irresolute.
“Will you take the pills?” Jack hissed.
She glared at him, projecting all the wordless defiance she could summon.
His right arm blurred. A second slap, harder than the first, rocked her sideways. She sagged, gasping, and Jack took advantage of her momentary weakness to force one of the capsules into her mouth.
Somewhere in the background, a clatter of footsteps and an angry woof. Anastasia had heard the slaps. She scampered into the room, casting bewildered looks at her master and mistress and her Uncle Jack.
Jack ignored the dog. “Swallow it,” he ordered Kirstie. “Come on. Swallow it!”
Kirstie rallied her strength and spat the pill in his face.
“Shit.” Jack raised his hand to strike again. Ana snarled.
“Cut it out, Jack.” It was Steve who’d spoken, his voice abruptly firm and calm. “Right now.”
Jack hesitated as if gauging Steve’s seriousness, then drew back with a slow exhalation of breath. A meaningless smile twitched like a tic at the corner of his mouth.
“Sure. No problem.” He pocketed the five remaining pills and circled behind the chair. “She doesn’t have to take the damn things anyway.” Kirstie watched him unhook the rubber-insulated wire linking receiver and transmitter. “I’ll just skip ahead to part two of the procedure. If that’s okay with you… buddy.”
Kirstie looked at her husband. He swallowed.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean… maybe it’s not too late to work something out, some other plan…”
“It is too late.” Jack flicked the wire in his hand. “You’re in deep now, Steve-o. You’re committed.”
The wire traced another arc, a slow-motion whip.
Kirstie stared at it, then at Steve, then at the wire again. Her mind seemed frozen; she couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what Jack was about to do.
“If she’d taken the pills without realizing,” Steve said, “it might have been different. She would have just gone to sleep. This way …”
“This way is harder.” Jack nodded, and the wire swished again, slapping his open palm. “So? I’ve done hard things in my time. Now it’s your turn. Unless you can’t handle it. Unless you’re too weak.”
Kirstie spoke up. “Don’t let him manipulate you-”
“Shut your damn mouth.” The absence of emotion in Jack’s voice made the command somehow more dangerous. “How about it, Stevie? You know what’s necessary. Either let me go ahead, or start measuring yourself for prison blues. Your call.”
Steve stared at Kirstie for a long moment, then slowly closed his eyes.
“Do it,” he said thickly.
Jack seized her two arms, twisted them roughly behind her back. Agony screamed in her elbows and shoulders. She let out a small yelp of surprise and pain, and Anastasia barked twice.
“Sorry, Mrs. G.” The tender skin of her wrists burned as he wound the wire around them. “But I’m afraid this is for your own good.”
Panic clamped down on her. Bound, she would be helpless, more helpless than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t fight back, couldn’t run, couldn’t protect herself in any way.
“Let go of me!” It was her own voice, pitched to a keening frenzy. “Let go!”
She kicked her legs wildly. The chair creaked, rocking under her. Anastasia’s whine escalated to a ululant howl.
“Sit still, goddammit.” Jack knotted the wire in place. “You’re not helping yourself.”
With the microphone cord he lashed her wrists to the chair’s wooden back rail. Kirstie tugged desperately, needles of fire shooting through her shoulders, lancing her neck.
Steve still had not opened his eyes. His face was a tight mask.
Anastasia howled louder. She crouched on her haunches in a corner, head lifted, shrilling crazily like a wolf baying at the moon.
“Shut her up,” Jack snapped.
Steve blinked, unwillingly dragged back into the moment. He glanced down at the dog and seemed to notice her presence in the room for the first time.
“Ana. Be quiet, girl.” The order, empty of force, fell listlessly from his mouth. There was no expression on his face. “Hey, quiet now. Quiet.”
The borzoi didn’t even hear him. She lifted her head and pitched another wild, piercing lament.
And then Jack was moving toward her, a gleam of silver in his hand.
The knife.
A flick of his thumbnail, and a wicked blade popped up.
He seized Anastasia by the ears, jerked her head back-one stroke of his wrist-the blade sliced her throat in a wide arc, choking off her next cry in a frothy gurgle of blood.
“No!” Kirstie was shrieking now, all dignity lost, shrieking not in fear but in blind fury and grief. “No, no, no, no!”
Steve stared as if hypnotized, eyes glassy, as Ana’s elegant, angular snout whipsawed wildly, her white coat blushing scarlet, the floor under her feet awash in a sudden lake of blood.
Kirstie writhed helplessly in the chair, straining at the cords and screaming, screaming, screaming.
Jack pointed the red knife at her. “Hush. Or you’re next.”
Her screams trailed off into sobs and whimpers. She blinked to clear her vision, then looked at the two men who were her captors: Jack, grinning, manic, delirious with the ecstasy of the kill; and her husband, dazed, almost comatose, staring dumbstruck at the bloody harlequin still quivering on the floor.
“Steve”-her words were forced out between shuddering catch-and-gasp sobs-“you can’t let him go on doing this. He’s crazy. He’s insane.”
Steve’s lips moved. He mouthed one word: Insane. He showed no other response.
Jack laughed. “No, I’m not.” He crossed to the far side of the room. “I’m a realist, that’s all. I’ll do what’s necessary to ensure my own survival.”
The dripping blade hacked through the antenna feed line. He jerked the other end out of the radio.
