willing herself to know fear, then to control it.
He had gotten her. Somehow he’d gotten into the house, past the guards, and he’d gotten her.
There was suddenly a wispy light, the smell of smoke. He’d lit a candle. He was here, just inches from her. She calmed the building fear. It was hard, probably the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but she knew she had to. She remembered, very suddenly, her mother telling her once that fear was what hurt you because it froze you. “Don’t ever give up,” her mother had told her. “Never give up.” Then her mother had gripped her shoulders and said it one more time: “Never give up.”
It was so clear in her mind in that moment, her mother standing over her telling her this. She could even feel her mother’s fingers hard on her shoulders. Odd that she couldn’t remember what had happened to make her mother tell her this.
“Where are we?”
Was that her voice, all calm and indifferent? Yes, she’d managed it.
“Hello, Rebecca. I came for you, just like I said I would.”
“Please,” she said, and then she laughed, choked, “please don’t lick my cheek again. That was really creepy.”
He was dead silent, affronted, even pissed, she realized, because she was laughing at him.
“You gave me a shot of something. What was it?”
She heard his deep breathing. “Just something I picked up in Turkey. I was told that a side effect is a temporary sense of euphoria. You won’t feel like laughing for much longer, Rebecca. The effects will fade, and then you’ll be heaving with fear, you’ll be so scared of me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
He slapped her. She didn’t see his hand, it was just there, connecting sharply against her cheek. She tried to leap at him, but she realized she was tied down, her hands over her head, her wrists tied to the slats of the headboard. So she was lying on a bed. Her legs were free. She was still wearing her nightgown, a white cotton nightgown that came up to her chin and went down to her ankles. He’d smoothed it over her legs.
She said with a sneer in her voice, “Hey, I liked the slap better than you licking me. You’re really brave, aren’t you? Would you like to let my hands free, just for a minute, and then we’ll see how brave you are?”
“Shut up!”
He was standing beside her, leaning down, breathing hard. She couldn’t see his hands, but she imagined they were fists, ready to bash her.
She said very quietly, “Why did you kill Linda Cartwright?”
“That fat bitch? She was bothering me, always begging, pleading, whining when she was thirsty or she wanted to pee or she wanted to lie down. I got tired of it.”
She said nothing at all, beyond words, wondering what had made him into a madman or had he been born like this? Born evil, nothing to blame but screwed-up genes.
She could hear him tapping his fingers,
“Did you like my present to you, Rebecca?”
“No.”
“I saw you puking your guts out.”
“I thought you probably did. God, you’re sick. You get off on that?”
“Then I saw that big guy, Adam Carruthers, there with you. He was holding you. Why did you let him hold you like that?”
“I probably would have even leaned against you if I didn’t know who you were.”
“I’m glad you didn’t let him kiss you.”
“I had just vomited. That wouldn’t be fun for anyone, now would it?”
“No, I guess not.”
He didn’t sound old, not the age of this Krimakov character. But was he young? She just couldn’t tell. “Who are you? Are you Krimakov?”
He was silent but just for a moment. Then he laughed softly, deeply, and it froze her. He lightly ran his palm over her cheek, squeezed just a bit, made her flinch. “I’m your boyfriend, Rebecca. I saw you and I knew that I would have to be closer to you than your skin. I thought about actually getting under your skin, but that would mean I’d have to skin you and then cover myself, and you’re just not big enough.
“Then I thought I wanted to be next to your heart, but again, there’d be so much blood, fountains of it. Too many hands ruin the stew, too much blood ruins the clothes. I’m a fastidious man.
“No, don’t say it or think it. I’m not crazy, not like that Hannibal character. I just said that to make you so afraid you’d start begging and pleading. Already the drug’s wearing off. I can see how afraid you are. All I have to do is talk and you’re scared shitless.”
He was right about that, but she’d give about anything not to show him, not to let him see that she was boiling white hot inside, nearly burned to ashes with fear. “But then when you’re all done talking, you’ll strangle me like you did Linda Cartwright?”
“Oh no. She wasn’t important. She wasn’t anything.”
“I’ll bet she disagreed with that.”
“Probably, but who cares?”
“Why me?”
He laughed, and she bet that if she could see his face, he’d be smirking, so pleased with himself. “Not just yet, Rebecca. You and I have got lots of things to do before you know who I am and why I chose you.”
“There’s a reason, naturally, at least in your mind. Why won’t you tell me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, or not. We’ll see. Now, I’m going to give you another little shot and you’ll sleep again.”
“No,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom. Let me go to the bathroom.”
He cursed-American curses mixed with English-sounding curses, and an odd language thrown in that she didn’t recognize.
“You try anything and I’ll knock you silly. I’ll strip the skin off your arm and make it into a pair of gloves. You hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. I thought you were fastidious.”
“I am, about blood. There wouldn’t be all those fountains of blood if I just peeled the skin off your arm.”
She felt him untie her hands, slowly, and she supposed that the knots must have been complicated. Finally she was free. She brought her arms down and rubbed her wrists. They burned, then eased. She was very stiff. Slowly, she sat up and swung her legs off the bed.
“You try anything and I’ll put a knife into your leg, high up on your thigh. I know just the place that won’t show much, but the pain will make you wish you were dead it’s so bad. There wouldn’t be hardly any blood at all. Yeah, forget about skinning your arm. Don’t try to see me, Rebecca, or I’ll have to kill you right now, and that’s the end of it.”
She didn’t know how she managed to walk, but she did. Then, as the strength came back to her feet and legs, she wanted to run, run so fast she’d be a blur and he’d never catch her, never, never.
But she didn’t, of course.
The bathroom was just off the bedroom. He’d removed the doorknob. When she was through, she paused to look at herself in the mirror. She looked pale and drawn and gaunt, her hair tangled around her head and down to her shoulders. She looked vague and on the edge, like a woman who had been drugged, knew it, and also realized, at last, that she might very well die.
“Come out now, Rebecca. I know you’re through. Come out or you’ll regret it.”
“I just got here. Give me some time.”
There was nothing in the bathroom to use as a weapon, nothing at all. He’d even removed the towel racks, cleared everything from beneath the sink. Nothing.
“Just a moment,” she called out. She raced back to the toilet and fell onto her knees. It was old. If the big screw that held the toilet down had ever had a cap on it, it was long gone. She tried to twist it, and to her utter surprise, it actually moved, just a bit. It was thick, the grooves deep and sharp. She was choking, sobbing deep in her throat, praying.
