was right. What am I supposed to do?”
“Wait! Don’t do anything! Harper’s already scared to death!”
Berkmann says nothing.
“Edward?”
Silence.
She glances at me, her face pale. She’s lost him again, and she knows it. I glance down at my wrist, then remember I gave my watch to Drewe. It seems as though she’s been at the window forever, but help is still five to ten minutes away. I am about to yank Drewe out of the window when she reaches down and tugs at the belt of her robe, loosening it. With her left hand, she pulls aside the terry cloth, exposing her left breast.
“Can you see me, Edward?” she asks, her voice like taut wire.
Berkmann doesn’t respond. But he’s looking. I know it. Drewe knows it too. She cups the breast in her free hand, leans forward, and presses the nipple to the glass. “Edward?”
Nothing.
“No child has ever suckled at this breast.”
Silence.
“Do you want to do that, Edward?”
She starts at the sudden reply. It’s almost as if Berkmann vanished before our eyes, then reappeared. “Would you brush my hair if I asked you to?” she asks, recovering quickly.
“It needs brushing. I work so hard, I never have time to take care of it. Would you take care of it?”
Berkmann’s voice sounds strangely constricted. Drewe waits, then says, “You lost your mother too young, didn’t you?”
“And you never had a sister?”
“Look at me, Edward.” Drewe lets the robe fall open, then flattens her hand like a starfish on the windowpane.
“I’ll come, Edward. But I don’t want Harper to die. However he may have betrayed me, he’s the father of my sister’s child. I would spare him for that alone.”
“But you will do WHAT I SAY!” she proclaims in a voice so alien it sends a shiver through me. “BECAUSE I SAY SO. DO YOU HEAR ME, EDWARD?”
A stunned silence. Then:
“I’m trying to resolve this, Edward. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”
“I will.”
Drewe pulls away from the window, her chest coming up with a sticky sound, her nipples hard from the coolness of the glass. “Do you see me, Edward? I’m not pretending, like that brown-skinned Indian girl. I AM THE ONE.”
The shock of Drewe’s nudity combined with her brazen voice trips something in my brain. This is it. If she’s ever going to bring Berkmann out, it’s now. I only hope she remembers to slap the glass.
“Are you big now, Edward?”
“Very big?”
“That’s only natural. You want to touch me, don’t you?”
“You need to.”
“Do you see where?”
“Do you know what it’s like there?”
A hiccup of silence.
“It’s wet there, Edward. Burning.”
“Look, Edward. LOOK!”
Shifting the phone from one hand to the other, Drewe lets the robe slip off her shoulders as casually as if she were stepping into the shower. A gasp of disbelief bursts from my lungs. I back far away from the wall, aiming the pistol at the crack of glass between the window frame and Drewe’s side, waiting for her signal.
She shakes her hair into a fiery riot of copper and gold, then stands straight with her arms at her sides, as if to display every atom of her being in shameless pride. Her skin glows like veined marble. As when I saw Erin so many years ago, I cannot process the entirety of her nude image. I see her calves, the backs of her thighs, the small dimples above her rump, her shoulder blades-these are enough to hold my eye from its assigned task. Berkmann must be rooted to the ground.
“Jesus Christ!” I hiss. “What are you doing?”
“Edward?”
Drewe moves her free hand around her hip, out of my sight. All I see is the muscle moving in her upper arm.
“Help me, Edward. Show me your power.”
With my gun arm quivering, I edge forward toward Drewe. I keep the.38 aimed just to the left of her hip, through the window, into the waiting dusk. As my pupils dilate I discern the silhouette of the Acura. It’s closer to the house than I remembered. Maybe thirty-five feet. My Explorer sits ten yards to the left of it, parked nose-in. The Acura is the natural vantage point for someone watching the window.
But I see no one.
In the near field of my vision, Drewe suddenly spreads her arms like wings and plants her bare feet apart. Her hands close into fists and her muscles go rigid, her body a hard quivering X in the lighted window. My heart thunders with fear and awe at the specter she has not created but
As I stare openmouthed, her right hand flattens against the window and begins rattling like a superheated kettle on a stove. I focus on the hand, then realize she’s trying to signal me with an arm incapacitated by terror. In the instant I look back through the window, Edward Berkmann rises above the roof line of the Acura, his enraptured face shining like an earthbound moon in the darkness.
Time blurs, stops. We both stand transfixed, paralyzed by the realization that Drewe is everything he imagined in his messianic fantasies, and more.
“Edwaarrrd!”
Drewe’s scream jolts me back to myself. As I aim for Berkmann’s face, she hurls the cordless phone through the windowpane in an explosion of glittering glass. I shoulder her out of the way and open fire.
My first shot is high and wild.
The second punches a hole in the Acura’s door.
Berkmann drops.
Screaming like a lunatic, I fire two more rounds, then scoop up Drewe’s robe and throw my arm around her waist as she comes up off the floor. I try to pull her toward the door, but she won’t budge.
