belonged to girls and young women who had been killed by the man Tina had dubbed the Frankenstein Killer.
Was it possible that she’d figured out who that man was and what he was doing?
Risa settled back on the sofa, ready to find out.
OVER.
After twenty years, her slavery was finally over.
But even as Danielle DeLorian silently echoed the thought for at least the hundredth time in just the last twenty-four hours, it still sounded as empty as her house felt.
Yet the house wasn’t empty: the living room in which she now sat was filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture — and millions more of art — that told everyone who entered exactly how full and successful her life was. Just the chair she sat in — one of the original Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, its frame bolted together rather than welded, as in the chairs built after 1950—had cost her more than she wanted to think about even now. But it had been worth every cent, and only Conrad Dunn understood the subtle joke the chair represented. But then, no one else knew her anywhere near as intimately as Conrad Dunn.
And now, finally, her debt to him was discharged and she would be free of him. Except even that wasn’t true, which was why the thought that it was all finally over rang so hollow. Conrad had promised as much before, promised that he would never demand further payment. And it had always been a lie. The debt would never be discharged, and he would go on making demands, more and more demands, bending her to his will until the day she died.
And there it was — the real thought that had been lurking in the shadows of her consciousness for so long.
She gazed deep into the glass in her hand, the merlot it held turning bloodred in her mind’s eye. Then her eyes left the glass to rove around the room. How would her blood look if it were pooled on the white carpet, or oozing across the ivory leather that covered every piece of furniture in the room?
Suddenly the room — and the thought of it all being finally over — seemed not quite so empty.
All she needed was the courage to do it.
The wine!
Perhaps more wine would give her the strength she would need.
She rose to her feet, crossed to the bar, and was just reaching for the decanter when the doorbell rang.
Danielle’s heart began to pound.
Who would come to her house at this hour? Who would have wound their way up the canyon and the hillside without calling first?
No one.
Yet her doorbell was ringing.
Was someone standing on her porch cradling a dead animal in his arms, as she had stood waiting for Molly Roberts? She set the wineglass on the bar next to the decanter and walked through the arched doorway leading to the foyer, then peered at the small monitor attached to the camera outside.
Maybe she should simply turn away from the door and ignore the bell until he gave up and went away. Except that she already understood all too well that Conrad Dunn would never go away.
She turned back the dead bolt and opened the door. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Don’t you think I know it’s still not over?”
“Actually, Daniel,” Conrad said, setting his valise on the foyer table, “it is.”
Just the sound of her birth name sparked a surge of anger in her. “Dan
“Daniel, Danielle, what does it matter at this point?” He was moving closer to her now, and there was a menacing calm to his voice that made her step back. “Too many mistakes, Daniel,” he went on. “I don’t like mistakes. You know that.”
Danielle took a reflexive step backward, felt her heel catch on the edge of the runner that stretched the full length of the large entry hall, and saw Conrad move even closer and reach out to her with his left arm. But instead of catching her before she fell, he spun her around, his right arm slipping around her neck as the weight of his body slammed her against the wall. A second later she felt his right forearm tighten around her neck, and though she could still breathe, she felt strangely light-headed, as if about to pass out….
WHEN SHE AWOKE, Danielle was lying on the floor in her entry hall. Conrad Dunn’s face was hovering over her, and as she looked at him, she saw his lips twist into a dark smile.
“Awake?” he asked. Instinctively, Danielle nodded. “Good,” Conrad went on, and even as he uttered the word, Danielle felt an odd pressure in her right arm.
“What are—” she began, struggling to form the words as her mind shook off the last of the unconsciousness that had overcome her.
“Don’t try to talk,” he told her. “In a couple of minutes you won’t be able to, anyway.” He held up an empty hypodermic syringe. “Pancuronium,” he said. “A wonderful drug, actually. You can’t move, but you stay conscious and hear, see, and feel everything that’s going on.”
Danielle tried to struggle now, but it was far too late — the drug was already coursing through her veins, sapping the strength of every muscle in her body. “Whaa—” she began again, but even the single syllable she was able to form emerged as nothing more than an unintelligible moan.
“This time it really is over, Daniel,” she heard Conrad say. Though she could no longer make her eyes follow his movements, she could see him standing up and moving toward the table where he’d set his medical bag. A moment later he was back, standing above her, his hands covered with surgical gloves.
In his left hand he held an enamel emesis basin, which he set on the floor beside her.
In his right hand the blade of a scalpel glimmered in the light of the chandelier that hung from the ceiling.
“I’m going to put you back the way you were, Daniel,” he said as he knelt next to her. “That’s going to be your punishment for the mistakes you’ve made.” Danielle felt his fingers untying the dressing gown that was all she was wearing, and a moment later felt the chill of the air as he pulled the robe away. Then he was touching her breasts, fondling them almost like a lover. “Some of my best work,” he said.
Though not so much as a hint of sound had emerged from her lips, it was as if Conrad knew exactly what she had said.
“You taught me so much, Daniel,” he said. He was smiling again, and Danielle felt a sudden searing pain as the scalpel slid deep into the flesh under her left breast. “And not just about surgery, either,” he went on.
He changed the angle of the scalpel now, and Danielle felt an agony worse than she could ever have imagined.
“You’re a freak,” Conrad said, his voice taking on a cold clinical tone that made every one of his words slash as deeply into her psyche as the scalpel did into her body. “I knew that when I first met you, you know. But I knew you’d do whatever I asked, once I gave you what you wanted.” The blade sank deeper, and a silent scream rose inside Danielle, but she made no sound at all. “But you made mistakes,” Conrad went on. “And now they’re going to find you. And you’ll talk. You won’t keep my secrets the way I always kept yours.” He suddenly slashed the scalpel upward to rip her breast from her chest. “Except they won’t find Danielle, will they?”
He gazed down into her eyes, and Danielle knew he was looking for the pain she was feeling, wanting to savor the torture his scalpel wielded, and she silently prayed that her eyes revealed nothing of her agony, that all he saw was the same hollow emptiness that she’d been feeling only a few minutes ago.
Above her, Conrad’s eyes glowed with hatred, and as she stared up at him, unable to look away even if she wanted to, she knew that the hatred had always been there, had always been simmering beneath Conrad Dunn’s placid surface.
As if he’d heard the words, Conrad slashed at her body once again, and this time Danielle felt it tear through
