His gaze shifted its focus. Suddenly he was looking at her. Seeing her with new eyes.
“You’ve been right all along, Doc.” He nodded slowly, mechanically. “And I’ve been deceiving myself. Afraid to face the truth. I’ve been blind. For years… for twenty years… so goddamned blind.”
“Oliver, I want to know how you’re feeling right now. I want to know-”
“Feeling?” A catch in his voice. “How I’m feeling?”
He stood, and once again she was aware of how big he was and how very dangerous. She drew back in her chair, scared now, heart pounding.
“I’ll show you how I feel,” he breathed, the words gathering force as he squeezed them through gritted teeth. “I’ll show you, you goddamned whore. I’ll show you! ”
He seized her by the shoulders, wrenched her upright, the pinch of his fingers painful and startling.
Her involuntary cry was stifled by his mouth on hers. A hot, searing pressure, mashing her lips, stifling breath, smothering her.
She stood rigid in his arms, every muscle locked against the instinctive impulse to twist free.
He broke away. Gasping, she stared at him, at the confusion of emotions shredding the smooth mask of his face-desire and revulsion, hatred and need.
“That’s how I feel,” he croaked. “How I feel. How I feel.”
For some unmeasurable stretch of time they watched each other, their gazes locked.
Then a ripple of muscle spasms danced lightly over his shoulders. His body jerked toward the door.
Slam, and she was alone.
She heard the rattle of the key, the softer jangle of the chain lock, the hasty retreat of his footsteps up the stairs.
Trembling, she waited, afraid of his return, until she heard the muffled growl of the van’s engine. She didn’t relax until the motor noise had faded into silence.
Then slowly she sank back into the chair, wiping her mouth with her hand, trying to erase the lingering residue of his kiss. Head lowered, she fought off vertiginous waves of nausea.
Going to rape her. Christ, she’d been sure he was going to rape her.
Unquestionably he was capable of it. With his psychosis, his violent tendencies, his background of parental abuse…
Parental abuse.
She blinked, then blinked again, and there it was, the puzzle’s final piece.
“Of course,” she murmured.
Oddly, she felt no surprise. She had known already. Known without knowing. Without wanting to know.
Her analysis of his psychology had approached the truth. But at its core it had been wrong. Utterly, devastatingly wrong.
She saw that now. And something else.
The next time he visited her, she would die.
His feelings for her, liberated now after years of ruthless repression, were too intense. They cut fatally close to the heart of his insanity. They would drive him inexorably to kill.
To kill her… and Annie, too.
46
Frantic.
Gund stamped the gas pedal to the floor, careening north. He didn’t look at the speedometer needle, didn’t want to see it pinned to the far right of the dial.
He had no idea where he was going. All that mattered was to put distance between himself and the ranch. If he returned to it tonight, Erin would die.
Leaving her unharmed had exhausted nearly the last reserves of his willpower. Even now he wasn’t sure he could hold out against the ugly impulses churning inside him, wasn’t sure he could resist the urge to turn the van around.
Gasoline in the rear compartment. Two cans. More than enough to do the job.
He didn’t want to think about that. But it was hard not to, agonizingly hard.
His fingers tingled and itched. His neck burned. In his ears was a faraway chiming, elusive and mysterious.
All day long he’d been on edge. And after what he’d done with Erin-the meeting of their lips, the pressure of his mouth on hers Until the moment when he’d pulled her close, he had never known what he wanted from her, wanted and desperately needed. He’d been blind to his true nature, blind to the origins of his compulsion… willfully blind, afraid to face the ugly reality of what he was. Although he had tracked down Erin and Annie Reilly, although he had become part of their lives, he’d never admitted the full reason for their hold on him.
The burnings had been bad, but the twisted needs that lay at the root of his crimes were still worse.
Better to splash his victims with gas and toss a lighted match than to… to…
“Fuck,” he whispered, testing the word, a word he had not used-not once-since he was fifteen years old.
The muttered obscenity drew the muscles of his groin tighter. He shifted in the driver’s seat.
Turn around. He had to turn around, go back, fuck her. Fuck her and then burn her, burn her -
“I won’t,” he murmured, his eyes misting. “I won’t do it. I won’t.”
Tension racked his body. He couldn’t fight himself much longer.
But perhaps he didn’t have to.
There might be a way out. A way to find relief.
His photo. His special picture.
Yes. Go home. Remove the photograph from its hiding place. And then…
He knew what he would do.
Would it be enough? He wasn’t sure. But it was his last hope.
As he swung off Houghton Road onto 22nd Street, he glanced at the dashboard clock: 8:15.
His apartment was only fifteen minutes away-ten, if he maintained this reckless speed.
And if a traffic cop should pull him over…
He fingered the shotgun mounted under the dash, then lightly touched the handgun in his pocket.
Any cop who tried to ticket him would be dead. Anyone who interfered with him tonight, anyone who fucked with him…
Dead.
47
Annie had trouble finding a parking space in Gund’s neighborhood. Finally she pulled into a curbside slot on a side street, outside a used-car lot protected by a security fence and a restless Doberman. Her dashboard clock glowed 8:05 when she killed the engine.
The guard dog growled at her through the fence as she walked swiftly to the corner. She turned east and hurried past a dreary row of brick houses, their sandy lots bordered by chain-link fencing. Graffiti clung to walls and utility poles like patches of black fungus. From some homes the drone of a television or radio was audible, the voices on the broadcasts always in Spanish.
Gund’s apartment was a ground-floor unit at the front corner of a two-story stucco building. His windows were dark, his curtains drawn.
No fence around the place-that was one obstacle she wouldn’t have to contend with, anyway-but covering the front windows were iron security bars.
Impossible to get in that way, and she lacked the skills to pick the lock on the door. Maybe she would find some means of access at the side of the unit.
A narrow passageway ran between the apartment building and the house next door. Through the wall of the house bled the loud, insistent blare of Mexican music. Shadows of human figures flitted across the lowered window shades like drifting clouds of smoke.
Annie crept down the passage, past a wheeled trash bin and another barred window, then stopped at what must be Gund’s bathroom window. It was a slender rectangle of frosted glass, five feet off the ground, sealed shut, and unbarred.
She studied the window, uncertain if it was wide enough for her to squeeze through. She thought it was-just barely.
For a moment she hesitated. Was she really going to do this?
Then her resolve stiffened. For Erin she would. For Erin.
The music from next door ought to cover the sound of breaking glass. All she needed was a way to smash the window. Should have brought the jack from the trunk of her car, but she hadn’t thought of it.
She’d make a lousy burglar, she decided. She wasn’t even dressed right.
A black jumpsuit would have been the appropriate attire. She was still wearing her clothes from work-a brightly colored cotton skirt and a floral-print blouse. The blouse would look good in the mug shot, at least.