morning.'
'You don't have to go. This is their problem now, not yours.'
'As long as that guy is out there, it's my problem,' Kasey blurted out, her voice growing shrill with anger and frustration. 'It's our problem.'
Bruce stared at her. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing. Nothing's wrong. I have to go. I won't be long.'
Her coat was draped over the back of the couch. She put it on and zipped it up to her neck. Bruce watched her, and she hoped he couldn't read her mind. He always told her he didn't trust anyone in the entire world except her, but there were days when that felt like a burden she couldn't handle. He was her opposite in so many ways. That was one reason they were good together. She would never have survived this past year without him.
'It'll be better when we're in the desert,' he told her. 'You'll see.'
Kasey nodded as she put on her gloves and tried not to cry. The desert felt like a dream. She wondered if she would ever see it. She opened the front door, where the wind gusted into the foyer, bringing a cloud of snow. Before she left, she turned back and put a gloved hand on Bruce's bushy beard.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
'For what?'
'For putting us in the middle of this.'
'It's not your fault,' he told her. 'You can't blame yourself.'
'I do anyway.'
She kissed him and closed the door before her emotions betrayed her. As she tramped across the dirt toward the garage, she cringed in the cold air. The fierce wind bit at her exposed skin, and the wet snowflakes clumped on her eyelids, making her blink. Her eyes moved constantly, studying every corner and shadow. She wondered where he was. When she yanked open the garage door, she made sure the space was empty before hurrying to their car and climbing inside. She locked the doors and didn't let the engine warm up before backing through the drifts and speeding toward the highway.
Kasey was alone on the road. Snow poured across the headlights and made it difficult to see. She remembered the same lonely drive a week earlier, lost in the fog, but she knew where she was going this time. She remembered how the gun on the seat beside her had comforted her that night, but she had already surrendered her gun. She put the knife there now instead and eyed its dull blade, but no sense of security came with it.
It took her less than ten minutes to criss-cross along Highway 43 and retrace her steps to the abandoned dairy on Strand Avenue. She came from the northeast, past the house of the woman who had died in the field, across the bridge over the rapids of the Lester River. Her body felt the icy grip of the water again, the way it had knocked her off her feet. She remembered the screams and the sounds of the shots coming from her gun. She remembered standing over the woman's body after the man had escaped.
She turned into the driveway near the white dairy building. No other cars were parked there. She saw no one waiting for her. She grabbed the knife and secreted it in her pocket as she got out of the car. The wind howled. She swayed on her feet as images of that deadly encounter a week earlier hammered her brain. She had spent the days since then trying to forget, and now she was back here, the last place on earth she wanted to be.
Kasey shoved her hands in her pockets. She squinted against the snow. When she wandered toward the dairy, she saw water stains on the cinder blocks and broken frosted windows. If she looked closely, she expected to see her own footsteps, coming up from the river, winding between the pines and stealthily hugging the rear of the building. As she came around the corner of the dairy into the open stretch of grass, now white with snow, she had a vision of the woman still lying there, her body in the field. Susan Krauss. Kasey could run and run and never escape her.
But it wasn't a vision. It was real.
Kasey peered through the snow that blew sideways across the grass, and right where the woman had been, right where she had died, was another body.
'Oh, no.'
She ran, slipping, toward this new victim, who lay face down and half buried by the driving snow. The body was a woman. She was naked, her skin oddly bloodless and blue, as if she had lain there for hours. Her head was turned to the side, but where her face should have been, there was mostly a pulpy mess of bone and brain.
Kasey lurched back in revulsion. It was Regan Conrad.
She spun around, but he was already behind her, near the wall of the dairy ten feet away, smiling.
'I knew you'd come.'
His voice was husky and unafraid. He wore no mask this time, and she could see his face. His right cheek was pockmarked with acne scars. His black hair was short and wiry. His dark eyes were reptilian as they focused on her, seeing her for what she was: prey. She had no illusions about why he hadn't bothered to hide his face. This was the end.
Kasey screamed for help, but it sounded like a whisper above the hiss of the storm.
'No one will hear you,' he said. 'It's the just the two of us out here.'
'You sick son of a bitch,' she blustered, covering her terror.
'This doesn’t have to end badly, Kasey. You belong with a man like me, not that beer-bellied husband of yours. Come with me.'
'Go to hell.'
'Think about it. Running won't get you where you want to go. But I can protect you.'
She felt humiliated and furious. She wanted to cry and, just as badly, she wanted to destroy him. This was the man who stood between her and the rest of her life. Between her and all her plans.
'I love watching your mind work, Kasey,' he told her. 'I told you. I know exactly who you are.'
'What if I kill you right now?' she demanded.
He smiled, taking a step, and his long gait brought him inches closer to her than he had been before. 'Then you'd be free, wouldn't you?'
'Come any closer, and I'll blow your head off,' she warned him.
'If you had a gun, I'd already be dead.'
She took a step backward, and he took another step toward her, and again the distance between them shrank. But he was still beyond her reach. She was conscious of his size and strength. His eyes never left her. His gloved hands dangled at his sides. She kept the knife hidden in her pocket, but her fist was curled round the hilt.
'What do you want with me? Do you want to kill me like the others?'
'The others meant nothing to me,' he told her. 'This is something else, Kasey. I have special plans for you.'
'What plans?'
'You'll find out soon enough.'
She stared into his black eyes, and her heart filled with bloodlust. There was only one thing to do. Fight. Attack. Murder.
'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'Who are you?'
'My life story doesn’t matter. It only matters that I am who I am, and you are who you are.'
She took another slow step backward, but this time she let her weight settle on to her right leg. She readied herself to charge.
'I don't deserve to die. Not now. Not like this.'
'Neither did Susan Krauss. Neither did any of the others. But our paths crossed. Life is random like that.' He added, 'Or maybe God sent you to me. Did you think about that?'
'There's no God,' Kasey told him.
She pushed off with a scream, springing across the short space. She whisked the knife through the air in front of her and imagined it slicing across his skin. Felt it burying deep through skin and bone and organs. She was so close.
But it was futile. He was waiting for her, as if he was inside her mind and could see her thoughts. As she reached him, his hand twisted, revealing a black device barely larger than a cell phone. She was barely conscious of it, barely knew what it was, before she heard the sizzle of electricity. The knife spilled from her limp fingers. In the next millisecond, pain exploded throughout her body, savaging her nerve ends and cascading her off her feet. Her
