punished. To be rewarded with her love. It was all she had ever wanted, to be wanted by the man she loved. To be loved by the man she wanted. Her cat rubbed against her leg, purring.
He smiled, his eyes still closed, then began to chuckle. He laughed harder, his soft belly shaking, his erection bobbing up and down. The room rocked with his laughter. Thinking he was laughing at the joy and release of their lovemaking, Tovah joined in. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a tall, naked woman, still lean, not modelthin any longer, but spare and taut, with fin-n breasts and legs and buttocks that-in the dim light and from a distance-showed no trace of wrinkle or sag. But what surprised her was the face in the mirror, the happy face of a laughing, satisfied woman. She barely recognized herself.
Luv was delighted with himself Once again he had fought the mania and won. It had come upon him with titanic force, threatening to kill the one woman among all others who must not be harmed, the one on whose survival Luv's very existence depended. It had blind sighted him, sneaking up on him with a great virulence at the time when he was weakest, at a time when a lesser man would not have been able to stop.
The mania was cunning and it was strong, but Luv was stronger. He had used his demon as cleverly as a judo expert, playing its strength against his sexual passion and letting it lift him to a height he had never felt before; then Luv, by strength of will, had disengaged and won the battle. Nothing could beat him, not the enemies without or the demons within. His joy burst forth in laughter that filled the room.
Even before opening his eyes he reached out and touched Tovah's ankle.
'You are astounding,' he said. 'No, you are.'
'We are. Together.' He opened his eyes and looked up at her as she stood over him. 'You make me feel like a giant.' He slid his hand up the smooth flesh of her calf, pausing behind her knee to gently finger the delicate skin there. Their eyes met and the look on his face was unmistakable. Tovah had thought he had to be finished-that she had to be finished-but he was still erect, as if made from stone. His fingers crept up her thigh, smoothing their way between her legs, and she sucked in her breath as he touched her.
'Don't move,' he whispered.
She was astounded by the strength of her response. He brought her off with just his fingers, still lying on the floor while she stood above him. She came standing, shuddering and crying out, gripping the footboard for support, her legs quivering and threatening to buckle, but when she tried to sit he kept her on her feet and was suddenly kneeling in front of her, his mouth pressed to her. She knew it was pointless but he knew better and she came again, thinking she might die from it.
At last he allowed her to sink to the floor, where she straddled him and rode him, whimpering with excitement, his mouth on her breast, her pelvis thrusting, until she came together with him in one final, huge simultaneous shudder.
Tovah could feel his hands still on her as she lay in bed and he took his shower. She felt them still moving across her skin when she heard him going to the kitchen, then reading in bed. As the pills escorted her to sleep, she felt his hands still there, heat and sensation, fluttering across her whole body. She thought she must feel it for days. Her last conscious thought was of him and how he had changed and how their new life together was just beginning.
When Tovah was asleep Kom dressed and climbed to his attic, where he walked across the beams interspersed with rolls of pink insulation until he reached the small ventilation window on the south side of the house.
Through the slatted vent he could just make out the shape of the Taurus parked in a position that was out of the line of sight from the windows below him. The agent in the Taurus could just make out the edge of his driveway from there, he reckoned. Last night's exploratory trip had confirmed that the agent could not see the back of his house. He had the freedom he needed.
Kom was quickly across his back lawn and into the woods beyond the tennis court. He paused once under the cover of the trees, listening.
He sensed something strange about the night, something different from all of the other times he had stood here like this, but he could not say why. There were the usual noises of the night, but nothing singular. He scanned the area around him, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a familiar spot, but not one he had memorized. The configurations seemed normal, nonthreatening, and nothing moved, but his eye was struck momentarily by a mound, just one more patch of gray on gray, but somehow different. He moved his head, trying to catch it from different angles. With imagination he could twist it into the shape of a man, but Luv had learned long ago not to trust his imaginings at night Congratulating himself on his good sense and ascribing any unease to his awareness of the agent in the car out front, he moved deeper into the woods. He passed close to the troubling shape, glanced at it and moved on, heading swiftly toward his destination.
He did not turn back to see the shape rise and stand and move after him.
The car was waiting for him where he had thought it would be. He crossed the open playing field, his passage marked only by the stars and a peel of moon so thin he could barely believe it had ever been whole.
Within the border of the hedge he waited as a headlight came and went, then stepped into the black pool of asphalt and crossed to the car. With a final glance around he entered the car. The overhead light came on and off as the door opened and closed but he reached up to shut it off so that it would not happen again.
There was a pay phone designed for a driver to use from his car at another service station a twenty-minute drive to the north. He could not make the call from his home or his office because records were kept.
For the same reason, out of respectful caution, he did not make the call from the pay phone at Clamden Center. If the cops ever tracked it to the center-and they would probably trace every call she had made or received in a day or two-there was no point in bringing them so close to home.
He pulled onto Clamden Road, away from town, watched only by two eyes that peered out from the hedge where he had crouched only moments before.
Luv returned his car to the service station forty-five minutes later, delighted with his work. The plan was in place, and oh, it was brilliant, it was wonderful, it was in 'in your face.' Daring but so simple, so audacious no one would believe it. It would be just one more achievement that Luv would have to share only with himself. He parked the car where he had found it and stepped out, this time without the illumination of the interior light. After a glance around he trotted across the asphalt of Clamden Road once more and glided through the hole in the hedge. He was never aware of the eyes that followed him, as patient and murderous as a hawk's.
25
In the pre-electronic age Peter Stanhope would have been called a private investigator. Today he was a security specialist who spent more time devising alarm systems and computer safeguards than tracking missing persons or counseling jealous husbands, but for a price he was still willing to do what the customer required. It was unusual for a suspicious man to have another man tailed, but the world was changing and Stanhope saw no profit in prejudice. Passion was passion, regardless of the source.
Stanhope suspected that his client had not given his right name, but he had no problem with that, either. Clients had many reasons to wish to remain anonymous, some of them legitimate, and it was of no real concern to Stanhope what they were. He was paid to provide information and that is what he did, no questions asked- provided the cashier's check for his services was good.
'Dr. Kom is a busy man,' Stanhope said now, tapping a folder on the desk in front of him. 'Hyperactive, you might say.'
'So I've heard,' said the client.
'So busy, in fact, that the operatives assigned to him were unable to find out anything about two of the women he was meeting-they had to keep after the doctor when the women left. Since you wanted a twenty-four- hour-per day surveillance of Dr. Kom, you were already employing three operatives full-time. If you wish to assign another operative to the case-which will add to the bill, I'm afraid, there's no discount for more activity-the other operative could determine the identity of the women he's meeting.'
'I'm more interested in what you know than what you don't know,' the client said brusquely. 'Of course,' Stanhope said smoothly. He opened the folder and spoke in the semiformal way that clients found most assuring. 'You requested a summary of his activities when he was not at home, in his office, or in the hospital. In the past
