Even now she could feel herself giving into it. A curious bonding effect often develops between captor and captive. She had begun to look forward to his brief visits, on some level that she couldn't possibly comprehend, hoping that she would please him and that he'd allow her to shut her eyes tightly again and curl up into that wonderful state of abject nothingness. She recognized how dangerous this was. She realized she was beginning to give up.
She fought to keep herself servile. To keep her voice soft and pseudo-sexy as he unlocked her shackles. She must call on every ounce of her courage and resourcefulness. He was large and powerful and she was weak and no match for him. But she had a strength of her own. She knew men. She could see this madman had an obvious weakness. An area of insecurity that, if played correctly, could set her free.
She knew that if she could convince him that she wanted his sexual prowess, wanted to enjoy it to its fullest, he might take the belt or at least the heavy chain off her for a few moments. Then she could watch for her chance. After the first week or so, he had stopped locking the upstairs door when he came down to visit her. She prayed he would not lock it this time when she heard the door open and the old boards creaking under his weight.
Now he had entered her again from the rear and he was savagely reaching a climax. She was doing her best to bring him to a wild finale, working hard to make him ejaculate in a hot frenzy of intercourse, and their moans and hard breathing brought him to the shooting point and she could feel the liquid heat and then his spent member withdrawing as he murmured things to her.
“Oh, that was some good slave pussy,” he told her.
She moaned back at him, her back still turned. Squirming a little for him as she did so and making a little toss of the head that she did, a shake of the hair to make the long mane fall back away from her face. But he could not see that her eyes were as hard as Carborundum, nor could he know that her concentration was as sharp as a butcher knife.
And in just that three or four seconds when he turned to adjust his radio volume those bare feet took her soundlessly up the stairs, and she was fast and very scared and lucky and flew through the small frame dwelling with unerring accuracy and out the back door of the kitchen and down a few wooden stairs, through a postage-stamp-size backyard and down an ordinary alley to the barking of a dozen neighborhood dogs, running barefoot through cinders, gravel, broken glass, garbage, sticks and stones, rusty nails and alley cat tails, running like a frightened gazelle, propelled by the potent fuel of terror, running nude through the Dallas night, running across lawns, clumsily falling, sobbing and gasping for air, darting around strange shapes and silhouettes, jumping stumbling vaulting throwing herself over all manner of obstacles, dashing unexpectedly out in front of cars on a busy street in a blinding glare of headlights and a blasting, cacophonous honking of horns and screeching of brakes as bewildered motorists stood on brake pedals to avoid the insane streaker who shot across their field of vision in a blur of skin and wild, trailing hair, and then out of sight and running through suburbia, through the streets of the darkest shadows, knowing the mad one was right behind her and that any moment she'd feel the awful stab of the blade or the searing heat of the gunshot, and running beyond exhaustion and running through the dead envelope of shock and then losing herself in this endless new world of alternating pools of blackness and bright light, awareness melting away, her consciousness dissolving in the deliquescent flow of perpetual night that took her at last and held her in its arms.
Buckhead Station
Jack Eichord looked like shit. He was drinking too much. He wasn't getting enough sleep. He was irritable and apprehensive about nothing and just generally felt awful. He was getting his own diagnosis confirmed by one Detective Sergeant James Lee, who was breathing toxic fumes on him and berating his condition and attitude as they sat side by side in the cramped and filthy detective squad room in the basement of Buckhead Station.
“You don't seem to give a shit anymore, like I said."
“It isn't that—"
“Don't tell me it isn't that. I know when you're giving a shit and when you ain't, Kemo Sabe, and you don't act like you care. You been just walking through it. I been knowin’ you too long, man. I know when you're here and when you are out to lunch, dig?"
Eichord just shook his head at the Oriental cop whom he'd worked with for so many years.
“You got an attitude all of a sudden, that's another thing. When Jack fuckin’ EICHORD, straight-arrow crime-crusher and Mr. Never-give-up gets an attitude on the job it's something a friend notices, believe me."
“Make sense, for Chrissakes,” Jack said, smilingly, but feeling sour.
“You walked through this Cassarelli thing like you weren't here. Like you didn't give a rat fuck. Just because it wasn't some big mass homicide with three hundred dead people in a locked room, and Jack haffin’ to fly in and figure out who put the cyanide in the fucking Kool-Aid—I mean, you're still on the job, my man. And since when don't you give a hundred fucking percent. Eh?"
“Gimme a break."
“Huh?"
“Cassarelli was a piece of shit. Another tap dance. What's to have an attitude about? I'm just tired of going through the motions for looks. You knew the perp was gonna end up walking. I knew he was gonna walk. HE knew he was gonna walk. His fucking lawyer knew. His honor the nitwit judge knew the fucking captain knew my dead Aunt Sarah knew. Everybody knew. So what's to get an attitude about?"
“That's what I mean, right there. Since when do I hear that kind of shit outta your mouth?"
“I'm just tired, I guess,” Eichord admitted. “I need to back off it for a while. Take another vacation or something."
“Bullshit. You just came back from fucking vacation two, what was it—three months ago. You said it bored the stones offa ya."
“Well—"
“You look like shit. You're drinking too much. You don't get enough sleep. You're hanging around here night and day and you got the social life of a monk with herpes."
“A monk with herpes? What the hell does that mean?"
“You're drinking again, my man. And it worries me."
“I'm not drinking one fucking bit more than I always drink."
“You are half-blitzed on the job, kiddo. Don't bullshit a bullshitter. You stink like a fuckin’ brewery half the time."
“Christ.” Eichord fought back a smile.
“I'm not jokin’ with ya, man. And everybody's saying stuff about it. I mean the captain—on the Cassarelli thing—he was talkin’ to me one day and you'd been in his face and he goes"—Jimmy Lee fanned a hand over his face—"tell the bartender to cut back on the vermouth, this gin tastes funny.” They both chuckled. “And you know that bar rag, shit Jackson, he's never seen the noon hour without at least two coffee cups of Gordon's under his king-size 56. So when that son of a bitch says you stink of booze you gotta smell like a broken bottle of Fuzzy Navel."
“I hope I didn't stink as bad as you do right now, you smell like you're wet and on fire.” Eichord turned to fan a hand over his face.
“I hope this pungent cigarette is not the object of your scorn. This doesn't bother you, does it?” Lee said, blowing a huge cloud of poisonous smoke directly at Jack.
“Come on, man,” Eichord said, fanning furiously. “I mean, if you wanna get cancer, that's fine, but don't—"