

A Perfect Canvas

Published by Kevin Adkisson at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Kevin Adkisson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting and compensating the hard work of this author.

I owe my undying gratitude to Jennifer "Chase" Adkisson, Meredith Bernstein, Stephen Garrison, Erin Jasmer, and Sharon Sala. Your advice, suggestions, and hours of brainstorming with me made this a better book. Without your support, it wouldn't even exist. I truly appreciate everything, especially for putting up with me for as long as you did.

Also, special thanks to OKRWA and the UCO MFA program for their support as well as Amy Chase for the cover artwork. You did an amazing job.

For no one.

### Chapter 1

Steele stood at the base of a red rock cliff amidst a row of beautiful Bradford pear trees. It was two in the morning and there was just enough moonlight for him to see his surroundings. No wind. He wore a Jason style hockey mask and held a machete in his hand, waiting.

Curiosity played behind Steele's eyes as the stretch limo pulled up the drive. The car carried the newest rock sensation, the speed metal band Sinister. Widely rumored to be the most hedonistic band ever, Steele wondered if the rumors would hold.

Cody Slade climbed out of the car wearing leather and chains and dragging a large chested bleached blonde by a leash. Drinking Jack Daniels straight from the bottle, he was shorter than Steele expected, but he was all sinew and taut muscle. Moonlight glistened off his jet-black hair, the tips of which had been dyed a dark red to match his famous red tinted eyes.

Three band mates loudly piled out behind Cody: Austin Young, Ryan Hartmann, and Jared Chimes. Girls, one for each, piled out with them and Steele smelled the pot on them even though he stood up wind. He also smelled their fear. He had that effect on people.

A tattooist, though not your typical tattooist, Steele was the best with a long list of clients dying to be inked by him. When Steele was young he inked a horned devil on the rock Prince of Darkness and it set his career on fire. After that, he inked multiple celebrities and rock stars, won innumerable tattoo awards, and gained a cult like following.

He did work on Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson. It was rumored Angelina Jolie bore ink from his gun. Same with Johnny Depp. The bands Wolfpack and Deadroad were reportedly on his waiting list.

Cody Slade, the lead singer of Sinister, jumped to the front of Steele's list by making a deal. Large amounts of cash only moved you so far up. To get to the very top you had to be willing to make sacrifices.

Steele slid his hockey mask up and grinned at Cody. "You ready to give up your soul?"

Cody struck a drunken rock pose with one hand on his hip and the other around his girl. "If you want a piece you'll have to get in line."

Steele pursed his lips. Bitch boy. Cody had never struggled a single day in his life. He was the son of rocker royalty, and Sinister's success was his expected inheritance. He had no concept of clawing your way to the top, earning respect.

"Heard you were a huge slasher film fan," Cody said.

"What can I say? I like screams and blood."

Steele turned and pointed the machete at a steel door in the cliff face. Carved demons, skulls, and dragons peered back. The red rock made the carvings look as if they bled. The select few who had visited Steele's private studio had quickly nicknamed it The Tomb. He preferred to think of it as home.

"You ever watch Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street while high on pot?" Cody asked. "That shit is funny as hell."

No. No, he hadn't. Nor had he performed on stage while high. He respected the art of filmmaking just as he respected all the arts. He would not dilute his artistic expression with the use of drugs.

Cody opened the door to the studio, and Steele watched the band and their women saunter through. The walls and floor were black on black and massive stainless steel pillars held up the unusually high ceiling. Around the studio loomed pieces of Steele's collection of torture devices.

One band member murmured, "Cool," another, "What the fuck?" All stopped to take a look at their new surroundings. He watched them look.

A rack commissioned for the torture of heretics in the sixteenth century stood across the room from a Judas Chair: a stool with a steel pyramid mounted on top. A chick with pink hair froze and backed away from the chair, her stoned eyes widened with shock and revulsion he could see from across the room despite her heavily made up face. The thought of her sitting on it made Steele smile.

Jared Chimes, the bass player, made as if to lie down on the rack: a rectangular wooden frame with large rollers at each end used for pulling the joints of elbows and ankles, shoulders and knees apart.

"How cool is this?" he said. "Could you imagine being pulled apart on one of these?"

Steele closed the door behind them, be careful what you wish for Jared, and led the group to the stainless steel table mounted in the middle of the room where he put down his machete and took off his mask. Nearby he kept a display of various other torture devices: a replica of a Spanish boot made for him by a client, thumbscrews, a Scold's bridle. He motioned Cody towards a barber-style chair, and the singer sat down and took off his shirt. Steele pumped a pedal at the base of the chair, raising it. Hundreds of lit candles lined an eye level shelf encircling the room.

"I only work by candle light," Steele explained. "Did you get much sleep?"

"Sleep? What the hell is that?"

"You did eat something?"

"Does this count?" Cody asked, lifting up the bottle of Jack.

What a smart ass. He'd need his buddy Jack today. That was for sure.

Steele rolled a small cart next to Cody and wiped down his neck. Then he cleaned it with an antiseptic soap. Next, he tore open a packet of autoclave tubing, removed the needles and tube. Fastening the tube into the machine, he pressed the foot pedal and adjusted the rheostat to get the correct speed.

The deal Cody made to move to the front of the line was a simple one. He'd agreed to allow Steele to do whatever design he wanted, wherever he wanted. The design Steele had prepared for Cody was of a sinister Succubus demon with long fangs, enormous tits, and ethereal robes. He would ink one on each side of Cody's neck and throat. Twins. Mirrored images sucking at his neck, sucking on his soul. He'd warned Cody that inking on certain parts of the body could be painful, that the tattoos he'd designed could take as many as eight hours to complete. Cody had laughed him off.

He shouldn't have laughed him off.

"Are you ready?" Steele asked.

"Hell, yes," Cody said, his tone smug, but Steele saw the uncertainness in his eyes.

He liked seeing the shimmering fear. The way his eyes opened ever so slightly farther than normal. The tiny twitch in his cheek.

Cody took another swig from the bottle of Jack. The bleached blonde on the leash got down on all fours at his feet, like a dog. Band members stumbled around the studio stopping here and there to look at one of the hundreds of photos and dozens of pieces of artwork hanging on the walls. No one asked about the photos. No one asked about the long staircase appearing to lead straight up some twenty feet or so into the ceiling.

Steele smeared petroleum jelly along the area and stretched his skin taut. He dipped the gun into a tiny cup of black ink. The second the needles touched Cody's skin, the singer's arms clamped to the chair.

Steele worked quickly. He could instantly tell Cody was not going to be the kind of client who could sit still for very long, that he was all show and no courage.

"Stay still," Steele said, grabbing him by the top of the head and digging the needles in a little deeper to emphasize his point.

Cody froze, the needles holding his full attention, and Steele slowly began to feel a rhythm coming on. It didn't take long for the rhythm to lull him into a zone. Like any other artist creating a masterpiece, the world fell away from him leaving nothing but the work, the materials, skin and ink. Art.

Cody squirmed and moaned quietly. The movement and sound threatened to break Steele's artistic veil.

He glanced up at Cody, saw the tears streaming down his face, saw the pleading in his eyes. He was working hard, deep breathing, gritting his teeth, white knuckling the arms of the chair. He didn't want his fellow band members to hear or see his difficulty with the pain. It was clear he didn't want them to think of him as weak.

"Want to take a break?" Steele asked.

"No. I'm cool."

Steele eased the needles off long enough to give Cody a glimmer of hope that things were going to get easier, less painful, then he dug the needles in deep again.

"We could use a topical anesthetic," Steele said, loud enough for the other band members to hear. Soon they were all standing around the chair looking at Cody and making fun of him for being such a pussy.

"I broke my arm in two places, compound fracture," Cody spit, trying to defend himself. "And it didn't feel nothing like this."

Austin, the lead guitarist, laughed. "Pain's part of the point, man. You can't very well brag to the chicks if it doesn't hurt."

"Yeah, it's like getting shot and being able to show off the wound," Ryan, the drummer, said. "It wouldn't mean a damn if it didn't hurt."

Full tattoo sleeves ran the length of both of Ryan's arms. To Steele, the work looked flat and unoriginal. A bad imitation of Paul Booth's living dead work.

Cody chewed his lip and fought back the tears as best he could, and it wasn't long before his band mates and their groupies became bored with jeering him. They looked around the studio for places to crash. They sprawled on the floor. Drank their booze. Necked.

Having outlined the Succubus and its twin, Steele rose and told Cody it was time for him to take a break. Cody immediately lit a cigarette.

"There's no smoking in here," Steele said. "Strong smells have a negative impact on my work."

Cody nodded and shuffled to the door of the studio leaving the leashed bleached blonde behind.

The singer's hands shook when he brought the cigarette up to his lips for a puff. He took short drags smoking the cigarette slowly and occasionally looking back nervously at the chair where Steele stood waiting for him. He stared out the door into the night his eyes searching.

He was trying to formulate what kind of excuse would allow him to leave, come back and finish the tattoo later, without his friends. He was trying to calculate how much face he might lose with them by wimping out and suggesting coming back later.

Cody raised his hand to his neck, pink with the abrasive aggravation of the tattoo gun's needles, but didn't touch it.

Steele watched Cody's face turn from hope to hopelessness, his eyes moved from searching the night to staring at his shoes. He watched this with amusement. He knew there could be no coming back later without losing face long before Cody came to the same conclusion. He'd seen this scene play out a hundred times. Occasionally someone actually turned wuss, but the pressure was strong, too strong for even cowards to fight.

Cody stomped out his cigarette and trudged back to the chair. He found his bottle of Jack, took several long, hard pulls off of it. Then he laughed with nervous fear and sat back in the chair. There was nowhere else to go.

"Give it to me," he said.

Steele was happy to oblige.

The buzz of the tattoo gun vibrating back to life caused Cody's shoulders to stiffen.

Steele tilted Cody's head to one side and quickly began shading. Within minutes Cody's tears fell freely.

Loud snores rose from various spots in the studio. Steele preferred working without guests and without noise as they distracted him, pulled him out of his artistic zone, but he made an exception for rock stars. They were the kind of people who simply had to make noise, even while they slept.

As Steele finished the last of the shading on the first Succubus and prepared to dress it, Cody suddenly stood up.

"I'm going to be sick," he said. Then he ran to the sink and vomited.

Steele watched, waited, laughed inside.

Cody splashed water on his face, wiped his mouth, and wobbled back to the chair. When he sat down, Steele handed him a mirror to look at the first tattoo. Seeing the completed work, Cody actually perked up, flashed Steele a thumbs up.

Rock star strength outside. Epitome of weakness inside.

Steele spread a thin layer of Vaseline over the fresh tattoo, covered it in plastic wrap, and taped it down. Then he turned to start shading the second.

The singer was dotted with sweat. His teeth were clenched. His fists were clenched. Even his eyes were clenched. Knowing Cody wouldn't be able to take much more, Steele worked quickly and completed the second Succubus in just over two hours. Then he signed the work.

Cody let out an enormous sigh. Then he stumbled out of the chair and nearly fell before catching himself on the table.

Steele lightly kicked each band member awake, told them it was morning, asked them to help Cody to the limo. Austin offered Cody a hand, but Cody shoved him away.

"Get the fuck off me. I'm fine."

He yanked the leashed bleached blonde towards him, leaned on her for support.

At the door to the Tomb, Cody looked back at Steele with humble eyes.

"Thanks, man," he said. "I really owe you for this. If you ever need anything just let me know."

Then he whispered to the leashed bleached blonde, and she turned away from Cody. She took a few ginger steps toward Steele. She pulled a small CD case and photo of the band, both autographed, from a pocket on her skirt and handed them to Steele.

He smiled. He found it amusing Cody thought he liked their shitty music based solely on the knowledge he'd inked so many artists who performed it. Still, Steele took Cody's offerings. The singer had earned that much respect.

Cody Slade arrived a bragger. About his experiences. His toughness. A man who'd never suffered. Steele saw it in his red tinted eyes. It disgusted him. But rites of passage transform people. And as hard as it might have been for others to see it, Steele knew Cody had been transformed, strengthened. He saw it in his eyes. He'd suffered, was leaving a different person than the one who arrived.

He would become far greater than what he was.

Steele and his art had that effect on people. They transformed rock stars. They transformed real estate agents. They transformed everyone they touched.

### Chapter 2

As soon as the band was gone, Steele opened a fireproof safe bolted to the floor and retrieved a black laptop from within. He flipped the laptop open, navigated his way to an encrypted website, and typed in a password. Multiple live video images appeared on his screen. He quickly located Paige Knight in the image in the top left frame. She was in her sanctuary. He double clicked the image.

Paige sat on the ledge of the peach, semi-sunken bathtub enveloped by peach tiled walls and a white, vinyl shower curtain dotted with little green-stemmed peaches. The bathroom was clearly her private place, the place where she went to get her emotions under control, to regain her strength, to think. Steele thought maybe she should rethink all the peach.

Water rained down in fat drops on her head, and she tilted her head back, welcoming them. She shut her eyes, ran her fingers through her hair. The water pulled the toxins of the world from her body as it rushed down her smooth skin and swirled into the drain.

She rotated her head in slow circles, trying to shrug off her life's afflictions. Steele imagined every muscle in her body stiff with tension, aching for release. She was worn out. Anyone could see it. And why wouldn't she be? She worked sixty, seventy, even eighty hours a week selling real estate. It was finally getting to her. It would get to any woman.

She had no business selling real estate. She had no business working at all. What good did working do her if it left her feeling worn out? Used. She needed to fill the role she was born to. The role all women were born to. To serve.

Crinkles of worry marred her beautiful face. Money worries: The electric bill, the gas bill, the water bill, car payments, student loans. If only her husband Eddie would be a man, would make her quit her job and care for her as he should. At the current rate, he figured she'd be dead before she turned thirty. Just like his mother.

And Eddie would let it happen, just as his father had let it happen.

Paige lifted her foot and pushed down on a lever. The water from the showerhead stopped, was forced out the faucet. The tub quickly began to fill, and she slid down the wall into the water.

This was Steele's favorite part of her morning routine.

Paige reached for the bar soap and rubbed at the muscles in her arms, first one and then the other, rubbed at the muscles in her legs, rubbed at her breasts and hands and neck and covered the whole of her exposed body in a thick lather of soap.

He imagined he could smell the honeysuckle scent of it wafting up through the screen.

He noted she preferred the honeysuckle scent to the lilac. He imagined her ritualistic coating of her body with soap as some sort of lame attempt to cleanse herself from the horrors of her life, to be reborn. But transformation does not come at such a low price.

A hint of steam rose, obscuring his vision for a moment. When he caught his next glimpse of her she was cupping water to her face, washing the soap from it. The wrinkles on her brow had diminished but not vanished. He could see her muscles relaxing, her thoughts drifting. He knew what she needed. He knew what she wanted, even if she couldn't see it for herself. She needed direction.

She climbed from the water and Steele quickly switched cameras to watch as she wrapped a large peach towel around her head. She then took another towel and patted the water from her body starting with her face and slowly working her way down. What a waste of beautiful flesh, Steele thought. But not for much longer.

When she reached her toes, she took another towel and wrapped it around her chest. Then she stepped out of the bathroom and into the darkness of the bedroom.

Steele clicked on another camera.

Bright stars and a haloed silver moon shone through a large window brightening the bedroom. The home was built atop a small hill and Steele could see the orbs of city lights glowing in the distance.

In a king-sized sleigh bed beneath the window, surrounded by pillows, Paige's poor excuse for a husband slept. He reminded Steele of a lazy dog. His mouth hung open. He snored. And every now and then one of his legs would twitch as if he were dreaming about an itch.

Paige dropped the towel from her body. Her skin glistened brighter than the moon.

She pulled the covers back, climbed on top of Eddie, ran her fingers through his messy hair.

Eddie opened his weak, slow eyes, gazed at Paige with a look of stupidity that made Steele want to reach through the camera and pluck them from his skull.

Paige arched her back, letting her breasts dangle above his chest. Eddie reached up and took the back of her head in his hand, pulled her down into him, kissed her on the neck. "Morning," he said.

Paige pulled back away from him, ran her fingers across his abdomen. "I love you," she said. "You are my One. I will never leave you."

Just words.

Eddie's hands wandered over Paige's shoulders, down her arms, made their way onto her breasts. She moaned.

He kissed each of her fingers, thrust into her.

Steele hated the way Paige curled her toes in anticipation of each thrust. He would not thrust at her like some wild animal. He would worship every inch of her, not just her vagina.

Eddie cupped her face, pulled it down until Paige's lips met his, and then rolled over on top of her.

"I love you," he said. "You are my One. I will never leave you."

More words.

Paige gripped his waist and kissed him. Eddie wrapped his arms around her waist, flopped around on top of her. Again. And again. And again.

"Oh... Eddie..."

The sights and sounds of their pathetic display sickened Steele. The dishonesty of it. The dishonesty in it. Eddie did not love her. She was nothing more to him than a bottomless hole in which he could pour his empty seed.

Eddie left her as soon as he was finished, and a little while later, Paige rose and sauntered across the room. She stopped in front of an easel with an unfinished painting on it. It had been months since Steele had seen her do more than glance at it as anything more than a piece of clutter. She raised her hand to the canvas, traced the line of a half finished mountain range. Steele raised his hand, traced the line of her body on his screen. Then she pulled on some pajamas, walked out of the bedroom, and into the living room.

Steele switched camera views.

Eddie sat on the couch staring at the blank screen of their TV. His hands rested in his lap. He had a look of mock seriousness on his face, as if he'd spent the last half hour thinking about something important rather than having sex.

"What's wrong?" Paige asked.

"I was thinking I need to get the tires on your car rotated."

Steele shook his head. What kind of man thinks of tires when a beauty like Paige waits to be molded by his hand? Men like that, men like his father, were a waste of flesh and blood. Eddie was their poster child.

Eddie rubbed at his eyes and adjusted his boxers, looked as if he needed to go back to bed, to sleep for half an eternity. Steele doubted it would help. Eddie would be weak even at death's door.

Paige sat down beside Eddie, and he slumped further into the cushions. He picked up the remote and tapped a button. The glow of the TV cast faint shadows around the room. A stiff looking news anchor began spewing out every piece of garbage news that had made its way across his desk in the last twelve hours.

"I know we've had a great morning," Paige said, "And it's too early to be starting a fight, but I really think we need to talk."

Steele pulled the computer closer, wondered if this would be the moment. Would she hit him with a nuclear attack and run? She wanted direction, and she knew, deep inside, that Eddie could never provide her with that direction.

Paige scooted closer to Eddie.

"I love your aftershave," she said. "It reminds me of our first date. Do you remember?"

Eddie turned his face to hers. "How could I forget? I took you to Shakespeare in the Park. We sat in the grass and watched Much Ado About Nothing. After the play, you painted the Indian Blanket wildflower watercolor, the one hanging in our hallway."

"Then the bees came."

"And I rushed us into the Starbucks across the street. You had a Latte. I had two Cappuccinos. For a couple of hours, we talked about Hero and Claudio and the impulsiveness of Shakespearian marriage."

She reached out and patted Eddie's bed head hair down, touched his cheek. "Eddie, I've been thinking. I don't want to sell real estate for the rest of my life."

"What?"

"It's just not what I want to do," she said. "I want to follow my dreams. I want to paint."

This could be it. This could be the moment, Steele thought. Did she finally see?

Eddie's eyebrows pinched together. "Are you serious? You can't up and quit your job. How would we survive?"

"I'm not saying I should up and quit my job, but surely we can figure something out if we put our heads together. We're educated and intelligent people."

Eddie folded his arms across his chest. "How?"

Her so-called husband was actually fighting against her needs. He wasn't listening. Typical.

"I'm not sure how," she said. "I only know I don't want to give up on my dreams. I want to go back to being an artist, to painting. Don't you want to write again?"

"Of course I do," he said, looking at her in a way that had to make her feel stupid. "But I want to do it with a roof over my head. Where would we live?"

Paige turned her face away, refused to look at him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to listen. I want you to really think about this."

Paige got up, crossed the hardwood floor, strode past bookshelves stacked with the fiction of Richard Matheson, Tami Hoag, Thomas Harris, and Stephen the King. Mixed in with the books were several of Eddie's unfinished novel manuscripts as well as two fat three-ring binders worth of short stories he'd written, probably while he was in college. It was all self-absorbed crap in Steele's opinion.

Eddie stood up and followed Paige into the kitchen. Steele clicked on another camera.

"I'm trying to listen," Eddie said. "But you're not making a lot of sense. If you quit, that will cut our income in half. We're not in a position to make it on my salary alone."

Steele shook his head at Eddie's feeble argument, at his complete lack of understanding. It was his responsibility to provide for her, to guide her. She was begging for him to take control. But he couldn't even see that she hated selling real estate. That she'd traded her soul for business cards and a real estate license, just as his mother had traded hers for a corner office.

Eddie walked up close to her, his mouth inches from her neck.

Paige closed her eyes and Steele could see the desire in her face. She wanted Eddie to wrap her hair up in his hands, to slap her pouting lips, to show her how to live her life. But he was weak. He wasn't capable. He would never be capable.

"You want us to plan our way into poverty," Eddie said.

Paige drilled a finger into his chest, pushing him back a step. "Is that what you think?"

The crooked grin on Eddie's face told Steele that Eddie liked the way she was standing there in front of him, her finger jutting out at him, her mouth twisted up in a scowl. He was making a mistake. This wasn't a game. This was her life.

"I'm just saying maybe we should take some time and think this through," Eddie said. "You're talking about completely changing the way we live. You're talking about giving up everything we've worked so hard for."

Paige waved her hands at everything around them. "Is this all you care about? This, stuff?"

"No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I know what it's like to live worrying about when and where the next meal might come from. You know that. You know how I grew up. So, I think I can speak with some authority on the subject. I just don't think you realize what you're suggesting. We're used to living this way."

"Maybe we could start by cutting back our hours at work."

Eddie scoffed. "Cut back our hours? How are we going to cut back hours? The agency wants you to take on more clients and listings. They've already dumped half a dozen new ones on you this week, and you know my bosses have been riding me at work. I can't cut back hours. If I even asked, they'd fire me on the spot."

"Then maybe we should find other jobs. I'm sure some agency would take me on a part-time basis, and you can't tell me there isn't some company out there that works their graphic designers less than sixty hours a week."

Eddie dug around in a kitchen drawer, pulled out a bottle of white aspirin, popped a couple on his tongue, and swallowed. He shook his head.

"This is crazy. We have responsibilities. Where are we even going to find jobs like that? What if one of those jobs doesn't work out? Then what do we do? Within a couple of weeks we could be living on the streets. I won't take that chance."

Paige pushed past him, her bare feet slapping on the tile floor, and marched into the laundry room between the garage and the kitchen. Yanking open the dryer door, she began removing and folding clothes, chopping at them like a kung-fu fighter breaking boards.

Steele was reminded of his mother folding laundry. Working. Working. Working. If only his father had stopped her. If only he would have taken control. If only he could have seen that women's hearts were too fragile to work and live. Instead he condemned her to death, just as Eddie was condemning Paige to death.

"Don't be like that," she said. "I know we have responsibilities. I know there's risk."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I just need time to think about all of this."

Paige stopped folding the pants, looked at him. "You know I'm happy with you, don't you? I love you."

Eddie stood there, his eyes locked on hers.

"I didn't go to college with the dream of becoming a real estate agent," she said. "That isn't who I am. That isn't who you fell in love with. I want to be an artist. Since I was a little girl that's all I've ever wanted."

Paige turned her back to him, bent over, and fished a pair of socks held together by a wooden clothespin out of the dryer. Eddie's eyes stayed on her, drifted down to her ass.

"I don't know why I even started this conversation," she said. "Why didn't I leave things be?"

"I love you very much," Eddie said. "I know you love your art. I know you don't want to give it up. But we have to be responsible. Can't you work and paint? What would be wrong with that?"

"What I want is to erase this whole conversation, to go back to bed so we can pick up where we started."

"I do love you," Eddie said. "Maybe I just need some time to think this through. You can understand that can't you?"

She nodded feebly. Yes, she finally understood. Eddie didn't get it, and he never would. But Steele saw it. He saw it in her eyes. She was ready to change.

### Chapter 3

Paige shoved the GOLDEN AGE REALTY sign in the yard in the early dawn light and took a step back to admire the curb appeal of the large Victorian home behind it. Not bad. Not bad at all. Her cell phone rang. She fished the phone out of her purse, glanced at the display, and flipped it open.

"Paige Knight here. Hello, Mr. Patterson."

Mr. Patterson was one of Paige's more finicky, eccentric, and talkative clients. He wanted a renovated American Bungalow in the downtown arts district, which wasn't much of a problem. American Bungalows crowded the arts district. The problem was Mr. Patterson's expectations of his neighbors. He didn't seem to want any.

"Hey, hello, Paige. I'd like to meet with you."

"Have you found something you're interested in?"

"I'd like you to see a property, but I really want to talk about it in person," Mr. Patterson said. "Can you meet me right away?"

"Sure, I can meet you."

"Good. Red Rooster Coffee. Twenty minutes."

Paige hung up. Well, damn. She'd e-mailed him pictures for days, taken him to see at least fifty, and the attempts at staying patient with him while he talked nonstop had nearly driven her mad. Now he'd found his own house. She shook her head. At least she wouldn't have to worry about this neighbor's lawn being too long or that neighbor's house being too ratty and blowing another sale. If he'd picked the spot, he had to be happy with the neighbors. Didn't he?

He'd sounded rushed, too, excited, had hardly even spoken to her. Not like him at all. Maybe he was anxious to make an offer. She glanced at her watch and hurried to her car. Called her office and told them she was meeting with a client. She wanted that commission. She'd figured out how to make her dream happen. She'd sell her little ass off and put some cash back and once she had a nice fat nest egg, Eddie wouldn't be able to tell her no. She'd ease out of real estate and back into painting. And a purchase by Mr. Patterson would be the perfect place to start.

Twenty minutes later, Paige sat in her car shuffling through every American Bungalow listing within two miles when her phone rang again. This time it was Eddie. She bit her lip. She didn't want to answer the phone—she wasn't quite ready to talk to him again—but she knew if she didn't answer it would only make things worse.

"Hello?"

"I'm glad you picked up," Eddie said. "I was afraid you might let it go to voicemail."

Paige knew something was wrong by the tone of his voice. She sat down the property listings. "Is everything okay?"

"I know you're probably still angry, but I wanted to call and warn you."

The urgency in Eddie's voice frightened her a little. Something had happened. She took a deep breath and forced herself to ask. "What is it?"

"They just ran a story on the news. There's a man downtown carjacking women, robbing them, shooting them in the face. He's a complete psychopath. It made me worry about you, honey."

The thought of an armed man roaming the streets looking for his next victim made her cringe. And she was downtown or at the least very close to downtown.

"Downtown? Were they any more specific about what part of downtown?"

"No. The police are all over the area looking for him. Where are you?"

"I'm sitting in a parking lot near the arts district, at Red Rooster Coffee. I'm waiting for a client."

"A client? I thought you were going to put up a few signs and head for the office. Which client?"

"Edward Patterson. You haven't met him yet. Did the news say what the man looked like?"

The idea of someone actually coming after her sent her pulse pounding and her eyes searching the streets.

"A long black overcoat and suit pants, average build, dark hair slicked back."

It was an odd description for a maniac. He sounded like a businessman who'd lost it. A bank VP gone American Psycho.

"Maybe you should go back to the office and stay there until the police have caught him."

"You really think I should be worried about this guy?"

There was a short pause. "Yes. I do."

He was really worried. Paige hit the door lock button and scanned the parking lot for dressy men with slicked back dark hair and an overcoat. There weren't any, but there weren't any familiar faces either.

"Okay," Paige said. "I'll go back to the office after I show Mr. Patterson this property."

"You think that's a smart thing to do with a maniac out there?"

"You remember me telling you about Mr. Patterson don't you? He's the biker bar and tattoo parlor type looking for the bungalow. He wears torn T-shirts and carries a chain wallet. He has tattoos all over his arms. If this man shows up, Mr. Patterson will scare him to death. Besides, I think he's finally ready to make an offer, and I've worked my tail off for this."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

Again, Paige heard the worry in Eddie's voice, and she did her best to shake it off. She wanted this sale, wanted a nice fat start for her nest egg.

"I'll be fine."

"Okay," Eddie said. "You're probably right, but be careful."

"I'll call you when I'm done."

"Love you."

"Love you, too."

Eddie hung up.

A hammering knock on the driver's glass startled Paige, and she jumped in her seat.

Mr. Patterson stood at the door of her car in holey jeans, a leather jacket, and a torn black AC/DC T-shirt. He slid dark sunglasses off and motioned for her to roll down her window.

Paige took a breath and switched into real estate agent mode. Then she lowered the window.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice," Mr. Patterson said. "Sorry if I startled you."

His voice sounded so exceptional, full of the quiet confidence that comes from good looks and money, but it also had an old, smooth warmth like a heavy quilt on a frosty morning. When Paige heard Mr. Patterson's voice, especially in person, she felt as if Harry Connick Jr. was crooning to her. She imagined more than a few women had fallen prey to that voice. Not to mention those dark curly locks and deep eyes. But not her. She had a good man, even if she was a little pissed off at him. What she needed was a good sale.

"Not a problem," Paige said. "This business is all about short notice."

"The place is right down the street. Want to take my car?"

"Sounds good."

Paige got out of her car and followed Mr. Patterson to a black Mercedes coupe parked a few spots behind her VW. She wasn't exactly clear on what Mr. Patterson did for a living, but whatever he did, he made good money. Every time they met, he arrived in a different car, an expensive one.

Mr. Patterson fired up the Mercedes and drove them even deeper into the art district. He drove very slowly. Slower than anyone she'd ever met. Like a man afraid a pebble might pop up at any moment and put a scratch on his car. He probably drove around puddles, too.

She couldn't complain though. His grandma driving gave her time to marvel at the art studios and galleries with their stucco buildings and clay tile roofs. She'd always dreamed of spending her life working in her own studio. These people were living her dream. Soon she'd join them. At least, that was the plan.

They parked in front of a gallery, and Mr. Patterson helped her out of the car. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said the place was right down the street.

Paige immediately noticed the building to the south had a commercial property sign hanging in the window. Mr. Patterson hadn't found a house yet after all. Not that it mattered to her. She'd be just as happy to pen a commercial offer for him.

"I hadn't realized you were interested in commercial properties," she said.

He stepped up on the sidewalk and walked to the building north of the property for sale.

"I'm not," he said. "I own this place. This is my new gallery."

BACK DOOR STUDIO & GALLERY was stenciled on the glass door.

"I'm confused," Paige said. "I thought you wanted to look at a property."

Mr. Patterson stuck a key in the door and pushed it open. "Not exactly. What I said was I wanted you to look at a property."

Paige didn't let her disappointment show. Obviously, she wasn't going to be penning any offers for Mr. Patterson. Maybe he wanted to put his "new" gallery up on the market, but that didn't seem likely. He probably wanted a market evaluation, which made her feel more than a little used. People often called her to come look at a property and tell them how much it was worth. They weren't interested in selling. They were interested in a free market appraisal.

For a commissioned real estate agent like Paige the whole thing typically turned into a considerable waste of time. Still, Paige saw it as part of her job, and Mr. Patterson as one of her clients so she told herself to smile and help him the best she could.

"Are you thinking about putting it up on the market or do you only want to determine the sell value?" she asked.

Mr. Patterson ambled into the gallery, and she followed him. The place looked nearly ready to open. The flat, untextured walls had been painted a nice neutral gray so as not to detract from the art. The floors were concrete. Several walls with wheels for adjusting room space and hanging art stood in the room. Ready to hang acrylic paintings on canvas lined one wall and some penciled works on wood lined another.

"Do you remember when we had lunch at Mickey Mantle's Grill?" Mr. Patterson asked.

"Sure."

"You talked about your art degree, said that you paint."

She remembered mentioning it, but she wasn't sure where he was going with these questions. It seemed odd that with all his talking he hadn't mentioned opening an art gallery, even when they'd been discussing her art degree. She'd never seen him as the artistic type. (Not that she walked around trying to pin the art type label on people.) She just didn't think "art" when she looked at Mr. Patterson. She thought Harley Davidson. Not to mention she didn't remember seeing him at any exhibitions, and she went to nearly all of them. But then again people with money had the ability to jump into things impulsively. Owning a bookstore sounds nice. I'll take the one on the corner and all that. Perhaps he'd just gotten into the art scene.

"You see, I have a problem," Mr. Patterson said. "I want to open this place in about a month, but I can't find anyone to run it. I've interviewed hundreds of potentials. Haven't liked any of them. Either they aren't passionate enough about art or they're too young or they don't click with me or something else about them isn't right."

Could this really be going the direction she thought it was? Was he going to ask to see her art, offer her an opportunity to show it in his gallery? It sure seemed like it.

"Well, I was thinking about how helpful and patient you've been with me while I've been looking for a home. I know I can be a pain in the ass. You're responsible. You're passionate about art, you made it clear that day at Mickey Mantle's, and you're intelligent. So, I thought you might have an interest in running the gallery for me."

Paige didn't know what to say.

"There's a small area in the back of the gallery with a mud room," Mr. Patterson said. "That's the artist's studio. It would be yours to use how you like. There's a small office, bathroom, and kitchenette across the hall. All of this space out here is for the gallery. You'd have to be willing to take on the full responsibility of finding and displaying the works of other artists as well as your own. Occasionally, I'll run across someone's stuff that I want to promote, and you'll have to make room for them, but other than that, it would be your show."

Paige turned around the room, taking it all in as an artist instead of a real estate agent. It was hard for her to switch gears, but even so, she saw the place was more than she had dreamed for. Could this be real? Did things really happen this way? She'd heard of chance successes before. A writer meets someone and mentions a book idea and the person turns out to be some high-powered agent or editor who offers him a three-book contract. A manager at a small store hustles his butt off for a customer who turns out to be a CEO who offers him a six-figure VP position. But those things didn't happen to real people, and they certainly didn't happen to her.

"There is a catch," Mr. Patterson said.

Here it comes. I have to agree to become his sex slave or sell my soul to the devil.

"It doesn't pay a whole lot. I mean, I don't want to make any assumptions about your salary, but the position only pays about $2,000 a month. I don't expect to make much money off the gallery. My income comes from elsewhere, but I'm only willing to lose so much. You can sell your own works in the gallery to augment your income. And I need to see a sample of your work before I'll officially offer you the position, assuming you're interested. There is a standard when it comes to the quality of an in studio artist's work. I assume you have a portfolio I can see?"

That was the real kicker. She hadn't picked up a paintbrush in a long time, much less done any actual work. She had a portfolio, but it mostly contained works she'd done in college. What if it didn't meet his standard? What if he didn't like it?

"Paige? Are you interested?"

She roamed around the room. Pictured her art hanging from the walls. The salary was a considerable cut in pay from what she made selling real estate. What would Eddie think? He wouldn't be very happy about the reduction in her salary. They'd have to give up things. They might have to move into a smaller house.

"Paige? Are you interested?"

It was the chance of a lifetime. She'd be painting. Someone would be paying her a steady income to do what she loved. How could she say no? She had to try.

"Yes, Mr. Patterson. I'm interested."

Mr. Patterson smiled. "Good. Let's start with you calling me Edward. Mr. Patterson makes me feel like an old man."

"Okay, Edward."

"Your portfolio?"

"It's at my home."

"We should go take a look then."

"Now?"

That surprised her. She'd figured on having time to at least flip through her portfolio maybe even whip together a few new pieces before showing it to him.

"I'm sorry, Paige, but I have to be on a flight to New York in about three hours. I'll be there for at least a couple of weeks, and I'd like to get this settled by the end of the day if we can. There's a lot of work to do before the gallery opens. Is that a problem?"

"No. Not at all."

The only real problem was Eddie. After that morning's fight about the direction her career was taking her and the costs of giving up real estate to return to painting, she was afraid that Eddie might find Edward's offer a bit too coincidental.

### Chapter 4

Paige wore a splendidly serene sky blue dress. It showed just a hint of cleavage and ended just below her knees. The dress reminded Edward of something Doris Day might wear in a late 1950's movie while her curves beneath it reminded him of Marilyn Monroe. Paige stood, politely waiting for him, her notebook in one hand and her purse in the other. Her skin glowed.

They stepped outside and a gust of wind caught the bottom of her dress. Paige dropped a hand to keep it from lifting and for a split second the sublimity of her innocence caused Edward to hesitate.

He escorted her, his hand gently resting in the middle of her back, to the passenger side of his car. Then offered his hand to help her into her seat and she took it. He knew Paige considered herself an independent woman, but he also knew she preferred the kind of treatment only a true gentleman would provide.

Paige grinned and thanked him as he closed the door.

Edward climbed behind the wheel and started the car. He buckled his seat belt and thumbed a button on the console. The sunroof slid back.

A single thread of chilly air dipped into the car. The air was shifty, as if a cold front might move in at any moment. One minute it was rigid with warm stillness, the next plump with cold violence. If a full wall of cold air decided to land, it would collide with the hot, moist air stagnating around the state. Then serious thunderstorms would ravage the city. Tornados might even be a possibility. But right then, the day was nice, a Florida beach ocean breeze kind of nice.

Edward pointed at Paige's waist. "Buckle up. Let's keep safe."

She glanced at her lap. "Sorry, Mr. Patterson," she said. "I'm not in the habit of wearing one. I know I should. I just forget."

"Edward," he said, winking at her. "Call me Edward. Everyone has a vice, or two."

"And you really seem to be such a lead foot," she laughed.

Edward slipped the shifter into first and eased the coupe through the intersection. Soon they were out of the art district, on the edge of downtown.

He hated downtown: too much traffic, too many one-way streets, too many people, too many distractions. Diesel engines rattled, a horn honked, a group of suits made their way down a sidewalk, a couple of skaters took turns doing lipslides off a concrete bench, a security guard unloaded stacks of money in clear plastic bags, presumably for a bank, from an armored car onto a dolly. Lambs for the slaughter. Slaves to society.

"It's not me that I'm worried about," Edward said. "There are a lot of maniacs out there."

"You're telling me. Eddie says there's a man going around carjacking women and shooting them in the face."

"Really? That's just awful."

Edward revved the fuel-injected V8 engine and slipped a new CD out of its case. The Temptations With A Lot O' Soul matched his mood. He slid the disc into the player and adjusted the volume to a level where they could still talk without raising their voices. "I'm Losing You" poured from the speakers. Edward tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. He couldn't help himself. It was a beautiful day.

"So, which way do I go?" Edward asked.

Paige pointed northeast, and Edward turned onto Broadway heading for I-35.

"When would you want me to start the new job?" she asked.

"Job? Can you really call being an artist a job?"

"Artist." She paused, considered the word. "Sounds nice, doesn't it?"

Edward turned again, this time onto the Interstate on-ramp. He eased up to the speed limit, signaled, and slid the coupe into traffic. "You're not afraid are you?"

"Afraid? Afraid of what?"

"Change," he said. "The risks you're taking. Some people don't embrace change. They find the prospect of quitting one job for another quite stressful. They're too frightened to follow their dreams."

Paige tucked a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear. "Well, I'm excited. I am a little worried about how you'll feel about my work though."

"I wouldn't worry about that too much. This has gone so well. I think looking at your portfolio is really just a formality. You're the one I want running Back Door."

Cars and trucks rushed by in the fast lane, one after another. As each passed the wind pulled at the coupe causing it to gently rock.

"See what I mean," Edward said pointing out a shiny red corvette as it flew past them. "Maniacs."

Paige laughed in agreement. She was beaming, absolutely beaming.

"So how's it feel to be changing your entire life?"

"I've never really felt like this," she said. "About life. I feel... giddy. Like I just escaped an avalanche that was sure to bury me. Everything looks better, even smells better. I guess this is what they mean by high on life."

"Dodged a few avalanches have you?"

"You know what I mean, don't you? I feel really good."

"That's great. It should feel really good."

They neared the Interstate interchange. Traffic thickened.

"You'll want to take I-40," Paige said. She reached into her purse, pulled out a cell phone, and looked at the display. "That's odd. There's no signal."

"Need to make a call?"

"I wanted to call Eddie. I told him I'd call him as soon as we were finished, but that was when I thought I'd be showing you a place and maybe writing a contract."

"Mind if I have a look at it?" he asked, extending an open hand toward her.

Paige placed the cell phone in his palm, and he flipped it open to look at the display. No signal. Edward turned the phone off, waited a moment, and turned it back on. Still, no signal.

"Maybe they're having trouble with the towers," he said.

They zipped past I-40 continuing south.

"You missed the exit."

Edward glanced in the rearview mirror.

"That's what I get for multitasking in the car. Now I'm driving like the rest of the maniacs."

He handed the phone back to her, gave her his winsome smile. The same smile he'd given at their first official meeting at a little restaurant called Sweets & Eats. Paige had been sitting at a table near the back. Property information sheets were spread out in front of her. Every minute or two she'd peeked up at the door. She was waiting for him.

The moment he saw her chewing on the end of a pen with Viagra imprinted across it he knew she was the one. Paige wore provocative like a new blouse. The way she sat with the pen dangling from her mouth reminded him of photos of the fetish pinup model Dita Von Teese. She was dangerously beautiful.

As he recalled it, Paige had sized him up when he'd stepped through the door. Smiled at him. Then gestured for him to sit in the empty chair across from her. When he sat down, he smiled back at her, asked her how her hunt was going.

Her skin glimmered even under fluorescent lights, like lightning reflecting off water.

She'd rattled off several property descriptions to him, but he didn't hear a word she said until she mentioned she was married. That made her perfect. He had to have her. And now, he did.

Edward slammed his right fist into the left side of her face, catching her just below the eye and driving her head into the passenger window. It bounced off the glass like a rubber ball off concrete.

The brunette slumped over in the seat.

Steele slowly brought the car to a stop on the shoulder of the Interstate.

One of his earliest childhood memories involved long pin needles with big white beads on the ends. He'd had boxes and boxes of them. He liked sliding the needles under the skin of his fingers, lining them up until they looked like alien spines made of metal and flesh.

The first time he pinned his fingers in class was in the third grade. The names of his fellow students and his teacher had long since left his memory. But he still remembered being transfixed by the dozen or so needles piercing the skin of his fingers. He remembered flexing them, feeling the skin stretching taut. He'd tapped the shoulder of the pigtailed blonde girl sitting in front of him. Waved at her when she turned. She saw his fingers, said, "Ewww." It attracted the attention of the girl next to her, a nasty little uppity brunette who always made faces at him in class.

She screamed.

And that was the first time Steele tasted real power.

### Chapter 5

Steele withdrew a set of handcuffs from his front coat pocket. He jerked the brunette's hands behind the seat and cuffed them there. She hard-blinked several times, her left cheekbone turning an angry red, but she didn't seem to be seriously hurt.

Her skin looked so soft and strong. It reminded him of buttermilk and canvas. It reminded him of his mother's skin as she lay in her casket. It also brought to mind his father standing next to the casket, weeping, and the fake tears that had burned Steele with anger. If it hadn't been for his father allowing her to work herself to death, she would still be alive. He was an emasculated, passive man who forced his wife to work. Steele loathed him.

He told his father as much.

"Her death had nothing to do with her working," his father said. "People have heart attacks. People die. It's no ones fault."

His father tried to hug him then, but he pulled away, picked up a chair, and broke it over his father's head. Then he stood over his father and cursed him for the murderer and failure he was.

"You were the one who should have died," he said.

The next day his father shipped him off to live with his grandmother. It was the only time his father took control. The only thing he ever did right.

Steele wanted to touch the brunette, to touch the skin so like his mother's. He yanked her dress up and ran his fingertips over her uncovered thighs. She wasn't wearing any hose so he could get right to her long, soft legs, her perfect skin. She was definitely the one. Steele reclined her seat. Then he pulled a small black box from his coat pocket and popped it open. A gleaming straight razor lay inside.

He cut each shoulder strap of her dress, slit it from chest to hem, and pulled it off. Her bra and panties were a playful light blue with polka dots. With the tips of his fingers, he caressed her smooth firm stomach and a feeling of warm contentment came over him.

The brunette's cell phone had fallen to the floor. Steele picked it up and shoved it in his lap.

No car stopped or even slowed down to check on the black Mercedes sitting on the shoulder. Vehicles rushed by, ignoring them as if they were panhandling vagrants. Steele accelerated back onto the Interstate whisking her away from her old life, taking her into a life she'd never believed was possible.

She shook her head, looked at him. Her brain had finally made a connection back with her body.

"What hap--," she began.

Steele brought his hand down hitting her below the ribs with the heel of it knocking the wind from her.

"Shut up. You do not speak unless I speak to you. Do you understand?"

She coughed and sputtered, tried to catch her breath.

He slapped her across the face. "Do you?"

"Yes," she sobbed.

"Good."

Steele lowered the driver's side window and tossed her cell phone out. He watched in the rearview mirror with some satisfaction as the phone bounced across the concrete until a car ran over it, blasting it into a million plastic fragments.

Exiting off I-35 and onto Highway 9, they traveled in a long, eastward curve. Whenever a semi or tall SUV with a good view into the Mercedes passed by, Steele looked up to see if anyone was looking down and happened to notice the nearly nude woman reclined in the passenger seat. Would they think she was relaxing in her bikini as they drove to one of the nearby lakes? Such a sight wasn't uncommon, especially at this time of year, and he would find it entertaining to watch them gawk at his prize without realizing what they were really seeing. Steele studied the faces of people as they passed by, hoping for some double-take or sign of recognition, but none ever came. When they did look, they only saw the Mercedes and not his prize.

Within a few miles, Steele exited again, and they traveled south over rolling hills towards the town of Slaughterville. The brunette sobbed quietly but didn't speak. She was clearly confused about what was happening, had to be wondering why he was doing this, what she might have done to provoke him, what she could do to free herself.

Steele turned up the stereo. Track eight "Sorry Is A Sorry Word" filled the interior, effectively drowning out her sobs.

Traffic quickly vanished as they traveled south, and it wasn't long before Steele turned onto a two-lane blacktop that had once been a gravel road. He'd paid to have it paved back when he'd bought the property.

Red Cedar, Hackberry, Blackjack Oak, and Redbud trees crowded the road as if pushing in to watch them pass by. A half mile later, Steele turned up a long driveway. He stopped next to a small security keypad mounted on a pole in front of a tall, black gate.

He felt curiosity in the brunette swelling up, pushing her to speak. She'd stopped crying, built up her courage. She wanted to know why. She wanted to know where. She wanted to know what he planned. So many questions. Some things are best experienced without complete understanding. Some questions are better left unanswered.

He put the car in neutral, set the emergency break, and waited for her to ask. The wait was short.

She raised her voice over the still loud music. "May I--"

He slapped her hard on the top of her thigh, hard enough that his own hand pulsed with the sting of the blow. She howled in pain, and he slowly turned down the music.

"Do not talk over the Temptations," he said.

A red handprint materialized on her leg.

"Do not speak unless spoken to," he said. "You indicated earlier that you understood. Now either you lied or you deliberately disobeyed me."

"Edward, please, what's happening? Why are you doing this?"

Steele clamped his hand over her nose and mouth. She twisted her head away from his hand, to free her face from his grip, but with her hands cuffed behind her the attempt was futile. She opened her mouth, working her jaws to bite his hand, but he kept his grip firm so her teeth found no purchase. He was much too strong for her. He held her fast.

"There are much worse things I can do to you," he said, giving her time to let a few possibilities sink into her imagination while she struggled to breathe.

"I don't want to do those things," he said. "I want to be civil. Will you let me be civil?"

Her struggling slowed. Stopped. She studied him, and he let her. He even smiled at her before letting her go.

Gasping for breath, she began sobbing again.

He caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers, pushed the rebellious lock of her hair back behind her ear.

"Everything will be just fine if you do exactly what you're told," he cooed to her. "Now nod your head so I know you won't disobey me again."

She nodded.

"Good."

He opened the car window and tapped his security code into the keypad. The black iron gate swung open, and he pulled the car inside.

His home sat on one hundred and sixty acres. Thick woods and brush surrounded the property. Bradford Pear trees stood in a row in front of the house while enormous Pecan trees lined the driveway. The house had been built atop a red rock ridgeline overlooking the tops of the trees. His studio, The Tomb, had been carved into the rock beneath the house. The view from his living room gave anyone the impression that the house had been built on the tops of the trees. Steele had the best view in the county.

When the Mercedes reached the top of the steep driveway, Steele pulled around near the back of the house. He parked on a concrete slab in front of a door. A detached four-car garage stood further behind the house and a gnarled Sycamore tree climbed out of the earth between the two buildings.

Steele got out of the car and walked around to the passenger door. The brunette watched his every move. She had stopped crying. Obviously, she still had her questions, and he could understand that.

She looked angry. Her brown eyes had narrowed and her lips had thinned. He looked forward to her anger.

From his coat pocket, Steele pulled out a wide, locking leather collar. The brunette's eyes moved from his face to the collar. He opened the car door.

"I'm going to put this around your neck."

"Why are you doing this? Why did you hit me?" She attempted to be authoritative, but her voice betrayed her with its trembling.

"Me?" he said. "Hit you? Are you sure?"

"You've lost your mind."

"I have? It seems to me that it's right here," he said, tapping the side of his skull with his index finger.

He brought the collar to her throat, and she ducked her head in an attempt to prevent him from putting the collar on her. Steele shoved her head back and slipped the collar around her neck.

"Stop," she cried, thrashing about in the seat. "Don't."

He buckled the collar. He then strode to the Sycamore tree, picked up a thick metal cable bolted around the trunk, and dragged it back to the car.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He didn't answer. Instead, he fastened the cable to the collar and removed her handcuffs.

"Get out," he demanded.

She didn't move. Her eyes searched the inside of the car.

Steele violently yanked on the cable forcing her head to whip back and then forward. "I said get out."

She latched onto the seat with one hand and the car door with the other then braced her feet on the concrete.

To keep her off balance, Steele pulled the cable tight to keep tension on it. He then stomped the hand she held the seat with. She let go with a cry. Steele wrapped the cable around his arm and dragged her out of the car. He enjoyed the physical work of it: The way his muscles tightened with each pull, the pressure of the cable around his arm.

The red mark on her face had already started to blue and blacken. Her voice choked with desperation.

"No... Please... Don't do this...," she begged, clutching at the door.

Steele jerked hard, and she lost her grip, fell to the concrete. She scrambled back to her feet, but slipped and sprawled to the ground again. He pressed his advantage grabbing a handful of hair and dragging her off the concrete and through the dirt to the gnarled sycamore.

The brunette wailed. She kicked her feet and desperately flailed her arms until she caught one of his ankles. She tried to bite him.

Before she could sink her teeth into him, he kicked her in the stomach and she rolled into a fetal position gasping for air. He wrapped her hair in his hand and kissed her on the cheek before she recovered. She tasted of sweat. She was full with fear. It poured out of her. And he loved it.

She heaved for breath. Dirt and tears and sweat stuck to her skin. She would have to be washed, and he looked forward to washing her, to cleaning and preparing her, to exploring her skin without any interference. She looked up at him then, defiance bright in her eyes, and he blew her a kiss. Then he slammed his fist into the back of her head and watched her slump over, unconscious.

### Chapter 6

Paige woke hanging from her wrists with her back against something painful. Her neck pounded and her hands felt as if they were about to pop free from her arms. She lifted her chin, blinking back the grogginess. Her back prickled with pain as she moved, as if she were leaning against a bed of cactus. What had happened?

She struggled to put her weight on her legs and pull away from the surface poking into her back and buttocks. Metal clinked with her effort. Then her stomach knotted and it came to her. Her client had lost his mind. He'd punched her in the face, kidnapped her, cut off her dress.

Paige looked around to see what held her. Heavy shackles padded in thick leather were clamped around each of her wrists. She thrust her hips and chest upward to take the weight and strain off her wrists. The prickling pain in her back and buttocks eased. Her arms had been restrained above her head, pulled to the trunk of a tree. She was chained to the ugly Sycamore behind Edward's house, assuming he'd brought her to his house. The thick bark of the tree was what had been digging into her flesh.

How long had she been hanging? Her shoulders were knotted up tight. She had been unconscious, but for how long? A couple hours? That sounded like a long time to be out from a punch, even to the back of the head. Maybe it had only been a few minutes. It was difficult to tell. The sun wasn't yet high in the sky, so it had to be morning. Maybe nine-ish, assuming she was looking east as she thought she was.

Her head ached. Her thoughts were jumbled and slow. She thought it likely she had a concussion. His fists were so hard and heavy, like blocks of ice, that she had to be bruised badly. Her cheekbone could be fractured. The swelling made her skin tight, hot, and she knew the pain would only get worse. At this rate her cheek would be twice its normal size come morning. If she was still alive come morning.

Paige tilted her head stretching out her neck. She had to clear her mind. Think. She needed to think if she was going to survive this. What could she do to help herself?

The afternoon sun caressed her skin, and despite its warmth, she shivered. She looked down at her body. She was naked. Anger fired through her like lit gunpowder. The bastard. The sick bastard had stripped off the rest of her clothes while she'd been unconscious.

She felt her face blush at the thought of him seeing her naked, at being mounted to the tree. She wondered if he had touched her. She wondered where he had touched her. She had no way to cover herself. The body she'd grown up hating stood showered in light, available to him as he liked.

Why was Edward doing this? Had she done something to provoke him? Had she said something wrong?

None of it made any sense, unless he was playing some sort of game. Albeit, it would be a sick twisted game she didn't want any part of, but maybe Edward thought he was fulfilling some sort of weird fantasy for her. If so, then he was a very sick man. Delusional.

When she saw him again, she'd set him straight. Tell him his game had gone way too far.

But deep inside she knew Edward wasn't playing any game. This was no misunderstanding. He had kidnapped her, had taken her against her will, and now she fought to keep her mind from touching on what he might have in store for her. He meant to do something awful. She knew that. The awfulness of his intent hung in the air like humidity. She wouldn't be able to stop him. He'd chained her to the tree in such a way that she couldn't stop him.

At least her legs were free. She could cross her legs, kick, fight. But how much damage would she really be able to do with just her legs? How long would she be able to keep him off her? And why hadn't he chained her legs to the tree. He'd had the opportunity. Did he want her to be able to kick? Would it excite him?

Oh God, her scars. No one but Eddie had seen her scars in a long time. She'd tried so hard to forget their existence. But here, nude, in the bright sunlight, they might be seen. Thank God, he didn't chain me to the tree spread eagle. There would be no hiding them then. No way to miss them.

Thankfully, Edward's car was gone and there was no sign of him. She sank back with relief. Her secret was safe, for now.

The back of his house was visible from where she stood, along with a few trees. She could even see the long driveway and the black iron gate leading up to the house. A winch had been bolted to the concrete slab he'd parked on when he'd brought her here. She didn't want to think about the purpose of the winch. Pulling off parts of her body? Her knees nearly buckled at the thought.

She was just a real estate agent, relentless in the pursuit of properties for her clients, eager to buy or sell, and quick to offer an approachable smile to every customer. She did her job, dreamed of one day becoming an artist working with paints and canvas instead of contracts. Why hadn't she gone back to the office as Eddie had suggested? She'd been such a fool. She should have protected herself better. In retrospect, she found her complete lack of caution amazing. Sure, she was no Miss Marple, able to spot cunning killers through the subtle twists and turns of seemingly insignificant clues. Still, she should have known better than to climb into another man's car, a man she barely knew. She should have been able to spot some hint into his true character. Part of her job was reading people.

The shackles around Paige's wrists had cut off the circulation to her hands, turning them a deep, ugly shade of red. She opened and closed them into tight fists, trying to force blood and feeling back into them. The chains rattled as she moved and a drop of sweat ran down her nose.

Guilt gnawed at her that she hadn't fought viciously for her freedom when she'd been in his car. She was no action heroine, no Angelina Jolie who could jump and kick her way through a dozen armed men while wielding a pair of machine guns. But she was a fighter. At least, she'd always thought she was. She had fists and teeth and nails and the will to fight for her life. But she had done nothing in the car to fight Edward. She hadn't fought him until he'd brought her here and then it was too late.

She should have used her legs, kicked at him, at the glass, at the steering wheel forcing the car off the road. Had Edward's actions been so quick, so suddenly violent and so beyond her expectations they'd paralyzed her? She could think of no other explanation. Her own mind had frozen, betrayed her at the sight of a straight razor. It was seeing the leather collar that snapped her out of it, made her realize he saw her as nothing more than an animal.

She ran her tongue over the wound she'd bit in her lip when he'd brought the blade toward her throat to cut her dress from her. She was ashamed of her initial submissiveness and she let the shame build. Build until it turned. Turned to anger. Anger that beat down her fear. She clung to the anger. When the opportunity came she would unleash it. His razor wouldn't freeze her again.

Paige took a closer look at her surroundings, analyzed her situation, hunted for some way out. A wood porch ran around both sides of the house. Two windows, a door. The door was maybe thirty feet away, looked solid, without glass. One of the windows, wide and off to one side, had dark curtains preventing her from seeing anything within. The other window, smaller, stood in front of her with a thin white curtain parted just a bit. She could make out a table of some sort inside, but everything else was in shadow.

The wind gusted. Leaves rustled in the nearby trees. Tiny grains of dirt stung her body as they struck her, and Paige slitted her eyes against the onslaught. Crows cried and a squirrel chattered at her angrily. She looked down at the ground, for some rock or sharp object she might be able to pick up with her feet, for something to use. Never mind how she would get it from her feet to her hands. But there were no rocks of any size, no sharp objects, only dirt and thick tree roots.

She realized then that from the top of the small canyon her voice would carry for quite some distance, maybe even a couple of miles. If someone lived close enough or if someone were hunting nearby, they would hear her. Weren't men often out fishing or hunting? There had to be water to fish and animals to hunt nearby. You couldn't go more than a mile in the woods without running into a pond, a lake, or a river and every other man seemed to shoot deer, birds, or something. If they heard a woman screaming surely they would come to investigate or call a sheriff. Wouldn't they?

"Help!" Paige yelled. The crows took flight. She listened.

She had a weird feeling of déjà vu she couldn't shake. She'd never experienced anything remotely like this, but it was all still frighteningly familiar, like some recurring nightmare that, until now, had been repressed deep in her memory.

The leaves rustled in the wind, the squirrel chattered at her again, but there was nothing else. Her throat dried, and she swallowed a couple of times to try to moisten her vocal cords.

Paige yelled again, louder. "Help! Anybody, please help!"

She forced the words from her stomach rather than her chest. While watching football with Eddie an announcer had said the coach wouldn't have lost his voice so quickly if he'd yelled from his stomach instead of his chest. She didn't know if that was true or if she was doing it properly, but she wanted to keep her voice as long as possible, so she yelled from her stomach.

The only response was silence.

The squirrel had quieted, probably frightened by all her yelling. Even the wind had stopped. Now that it was calmer, her voice might carry even further. Surely, someone would hear her. Surely, someone would come.

"Help! Somebody, please help!"

Her whole body strained, directing all of her attention to her ears, listening for any sound.

And she heard someone.

The sound was very faint, someone calling something back to her, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Help! I'm over here!" Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Someone was going to rescue her. For a moment, relief took hold and her whole body relaxed. It would be Eddie. No. It couldn't be him. He had no idea what had happened to her. He must be worried, though, since she'd never called him back. He had to be looking for her by now, but it was too soon for him to have been able to find her. She knew that. Still, she desperately wanted it to be him.

Paige cried out every few moments for help, screaming, "I'm over here," and "Help me," so they could follow her voice.

She yelled for what seemed like a long time, but she knew it probably wasn't as long as it felt, even though she had nearly lost her voice from the effort. So much for yelling from the stomach.

The wind picked up, whipping at the leaves, rocking the trees back and forth, so the branches seemed to be waving her would be rescuer toward her. She listened as hard as she could.

Whoever it had been, they had probably gone for help. It might take them a while to get to a phone, unless they had a cell phone on them, and even then, it might still take a while for a police car to show up. The nearest officer might be several miles away.

Something crawled across the back of Paige's neck, made its way around toward her ear. She shuddered and rubbed the back of her head against the bark in an attempt to knock whatever it was off, but little tickles that could only be tiny legs scampered down her neck, across her shoulder, and down her arm. She hated bugs. Please don't let it be a bug. Let it be my imagination.

Looking down she saw a fat black spider. She screamed. It wasn't rational to scream, the spider couldn't understand her scream and wouldn't be frightened off her arm, but she couldn't help it.

She thrust her shoulder forward in an effort to dislodge the insect from her body, but the spider clung to her skin like a rodeo cowboy riding for the national championship.

Something buzzed at her ankle and then her ear, her nose. She wiggled her body and jerked at each buzz of wings and every touch of legs.

Paige was under attack and there was no one to rescue her from the insects, no Starbuck's to take cover in. She desperately wanted to scratch every inch of her body while running as far from the tree as possible. Trapped and chained up, she twisted and turned as little pricks of legs, crawling itches, and stinging bites assaulted her.

Surely some of the sensations were being created by her mind. She forced her thoughts off the creeping crawlies moving across her body. She tried to think about something else, anything else, but she couldn't do it. She lost control, something that hadn't happened to her since she was a thirteen. Her whole body shook, and she sobbed uncontrollably.

Memories of being called into Ms. Whyte's office flooded her with anger and humiliation. When her PE teacher told her to bend over the desk, she'd wondered at why she was being punished. Why Ms. Whyte wanted to give her swats. If the paddle hit one of her multiple sores the pain would be unfathomable. She'd been too shocked and frightened by the thought to question what was happening. And then she felt the woman's long fingers pawing at her under her skirt. Her entire body clenched tight at the woman's touch, but she didn't fight. She didn't even cry then, only after, as she walked home from school. It was the look of horror on Ms. Whyte's face that hurt her the most. The way her mouth gaped open. The way she gasped and would not look at her.

Her mind numb from Ms. Whyte's invasion of her personal space, she wandered right past her house and kept going. She didn't want to go back. Didn't want her mother to know about her sores, didn't want anyone to know. There was too much shame in it.

As she'd plodded along toward the highway someone must have seen her and, worried about her, called the police. A wide black car with flashing red and blue lights pulled in front of her and the man inside turned the car's spotlight on the warm tears running down her cheeks. He took her home.

Paige hadn't lost control since.

Most of the bad things in her life happened because she didn't have control. That was a truth she'd come to accept and live by. And she wasn't going to give up her control again. Not without a fight.

Get a grip, they're just bugs. They won't hurt you.

Turning toward the spider, she sucked in her breath and blew as hard as she could. Dislodged by the sudden burst of air, the spider harmlessly spiraled to the earth. She smiled at her small triumph and let out a shaky sigh of relief. It wasn't the same as Sigourney Weaver burning an acid filled alien's head off with a flame-thrower, but it was a start.

Now quit crying--and screaming--think things through. You are not that same scared little girl. You have a brain. Use it. Find a way out.

But that would be a lot easier if she wasn't becoming obsessed with her need to pee. She'd never gone more than a couple of hours without a trip to the bathroom. She had gone way past that two-hour barrier now.

A shadow of movement from within the window caught her attention. Edward was in there, moving around. She could almost feel him. He was watching her. She couldn't see him, but she believed he was watching her, leering at her, and she shivered.

She didn't know how, but she was going to find a way to get off this tree. Then she was going to find some clothes and make the bastard pay for doing this to her.

### Chapter 7

Closed wooden blinds and soft bulb light filtered through green stained glass. Henry's Restaurant was dark even after sunrise. Eddie sagged in a corner booth bracing his back to the wall. He picked at what was left of his chicken fried steak, his thoughts on Paige. What was she thinking? She wasn't happy with the direction their lives had taken. That was clear. She wanted to quit her job. She wanted to start painting again. She even wanted him to start writing again. What was that about?

A pair of french fries stared back at Eddie from his plate, and he debated putting one in his mouth. He only ate at Henry's when Paige was with a client and couldn't meet him at home for lunch. Henry's usually served a decent lunch, but even their best couldn't match what he and Paige made together, and it had nothing to do with the quality of their cooking. He loved spending every moment he could with her.

There was nothing wrong with Paige wanting to paint again. Hell, he wanted her to paint again. Loved her work. But they needed her income. She deserved everything they had and more, but he couldn't give it to her on his salary alone. She deserved the best house, the best car, the best clothes. She certainly deserved more than what a couple of starving artists could eek out.

A flowery perfume overwhelmed the smokiness of the restaurant, penetrating Eddie's thoughts. Must be the waitress checking up on him. He mumbled something about not needing anything, so she would go away.

His real problem was trying to figure out how to make Paige happy while keeping them from ending up homeless. And the best solution he could come up with was trying to talk her out of her crazy plan, maybe taking her to have a sit down with some financial guru to explain what was at stake. Talk her into painting in her off time. But he knew she wouldn't go for it. She was determined to throw all her efforts into it.

If she quit, he'd have to take a second job. That was for sure. Even then, he wouldn't be able to guarantee financial security--too many variables. He'd have to move them into a smaller house. Maybe sell one of their cars. The second job would have to be something that paid well while not interfering with his current work schedule. Then there was the whole issue of them not seeing each other as much. What a mess.

Eddie shook his head. The flowery perfume was still there. He glanced up looking for the source of the intrusive smell and realized it wasn't perfume, but cologne. And it wasn't coming from a waitress, but a man standing a few feet away, motionless, staring at him. He wore a pressed white shirt and dark pants under a long black overcoat. Eddie didn't recognize the face, but he knew the type. A man with lots of money. Everything in just the right spot, picture perfect. He had an air about him that reeked, "I get what I want."

"Hello, Eddie."

It surprised him the stranger knew his name. "Yeah?"

"Mind if I have a seat, friend?"

Eddie frowned. He found it annoying when people he didn't know called him "friend." People who did that sort of thing always want something from you. Eddie waved the guy into a seat while picking up a french fry and sticking it in his mouth. It had a bland taste, and he quickly gulped down some Coke to chase it away.

"Do I know you?" he asked the stranger.

The man stuck out a large hand. "You might, but I doubt it. I'm Nicholas."

Eddie searched his mind for that name but didn't find it. He shook Nicholas's extended hand. The man had a very firm grip.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Eddie said. The man smiled, and it left Eddie with the feeling of something snaking across his skin. "What can I do for you?"

Nicholas sniffed, as if amused by the question, and put his hands in his lap.

"I don't need help, Eddie. You do. I have Paige."

Have? Paige? Eddie pushed away his plate and sat up a little straighter. "What does have mean?"

Nicholas picked up Eddie's last french fry. "You know what it means," he said. "I have her. She's mine now." The man stabbed the fry in his mouth and began chewing.

"Look here. Nobody has Paige. She's not a piece of property, and she wouldn't have anything to do with a guy like you."

Nicholas reached into his overcoat and pulled out a photo. He waved it at Eddie before setting it on the table. It was of Paige and Nicholas standing together on the terrace at the Museum of Art. Eddie recognized the place. Paige had taken him more than half a dozen times in the last year alone. The museum served appetizers and cocktails on the terrace whenever they had a new exhibition opening. Eddie and Paige attended every opening. In the photo, Nicholas and Paige were smiling with their arms wrapped around each other's waists. Paige was leaning in.

"You're so very wrong," Nicholas said. "Paige wants someone exactly like me. Someone who appreciates her artistically."

Eddie shoved the photo away. "That photo doesn't mean anything. We go up to the terrace all the time. We've met hundreds of people there. Someone took a photo of you and my wife. So what? Now if you don't mind, I'm trying to eat my lunch."

Nicholas picked up the photo and slipped it in his pocket. Then he dropped his hands back under the table. "I want you to know this," Nicholas said. "I'll take good care of her."

Eddie wondered at the man's motivation. Why was he here? Why would a stranger sit down across from him and insinuate he had some kind of romantic relationship with his wife? Wasn't Nicholas worried Eddie might go off on him, kick his ass all the way out the door and down the street? Judging from his build, Eddie figured Nicholas probably wasn't all that worried about getting his ass kicked. Still, Eddie could have a gun or a knife. Of course, he didn't have a gun or a knife, but he could. A man who came in and said the kind of thing Nicholas was saying to a husband, taking that kind of risk, had to have nuts the size of basketballs. He had to have an agenda.

"Look, I'm not sure what you're trying to do here," Eddie said. "But it's clear to me you need professional help. Paige wouldn't cheat on me."

Nicholas leaned forward, pressing into the edge of the table. "What makes you so sure? Hasn't Paige ever told you a lie? Told you she was someplace when she wasn't?"

Eddie imagined shoving a fork down the guy's throat and burying his fist in the back of his skull. She had recently lied to him about being at a friend's when she wasn't, but that was none of his damn business. "Screw you."

Nicholas chuckled. "I like you, Eddie. You've got spunk. I can see you're the kind of man who wouldn't let his wife walk away without putting up some kind of fight."

Eddie was finished with this conversation. The man was off his rocker. "I think it's time for you to go."

"All done, are we? Eddie, do you know how much blood a person can lose safely without dying?"

"What?" Eddie wasn't sure he'd heard that right.

"You see. I'm going to bleed you. And make Paige watch."

Nicholas brought his hand up from under the table. He held what resembled a four or five inch long closed Buck knife. He slid the blade out of the handle with his thumb, then slid it back in, and Eddie realized it wasn't a Buck knife at all. It was a straight razor.

Eddie's heart jumped up in his chest and every muscle came alive with the rush of adrenaline.

"Screams can be a tremendous source of power," Nicholas said as he flipped the gleaming blade open, then closed again. "Power absolutely transforms."

Eddie heard those cryptic words, but he wasn't listening. His ears had been overtaken by his eyes, which were locked on the hypnotic arc of the razor's blade. It took an intense effort to remove his gaze from it and sight on Nicholas.

The dim light from the overhead bulb reflected in Nicholas's eyes. They were chips of ice, yet Eddie couldn't see the slightest hint of madness in the man--only calculation. He knew immediately Nicholas meant what he'd said on a very profound level. He'd cut people before. He'd be slow about it, even enjoy it. And that knowledge sent fear slithering down Eddie's spine.

With Nicholas's back to the handful of people in the restaurant, no one but Eddie saw the razor. Eddie wondered where his pony-tailed waitress had gone. His eyes searched for her. She'd bugged him for his order every other minute after she'd sat him in the booth. Now she'd vanished from the planet. If he could get her attention, she might come to the table. Then Nicholas would have to hide the razor, and Eddie would be able to escape. He could make for the bar. Two more waitresses stood there with some guy in a green vest, probably the manager.

Nicholas saw Eddie scan the room and slipped out of the booth. He blocked Eddie's path, slid the blade in and out, in and out. Nicholas shifted his body weight from one foot to the other. Then he nodded in the direction of the restaurant employees and said, "They can't help you. No one can."

Eddie's heart banged in his chest, and his breathing quickened. He wanted to run. He wanted to dive past Nicholas and get as far from the razor as possible. He'd only been in one fight--if you could call it that--in his entire life. In fifth grade, a school bully had gotten into the habit of shoving him from behind as they walked between classes. One day, the kid shoved Eddie hard enough it knocked him to the ground. Eddie just snapped. He scrambled back to his feet and hit the boy in the jaw as hard as he could. The boy went down, but got back up and charged Eddie, taking him in a tackle. Eddie got the worst of it before the teachers broke it up, but the bully left him alone after that.

Nicholas didn't look like he would quit so easily.

To put as much distance as possible between him and the razor, Eddie slid back away from the end of the booth until he had his back against the wall and the window. He brought a foot up onto the seat. If Nicholas made a lunge for him he might be able to kick Nicholas off until someone helped him.

Nicholas leaned in until they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Your life is in its last hours," he said.

A dinner knife on the table caught Eddie's eye. He placed his hand over it, figuring it for a better weapon than bare hands.

Nicholas swiped at Eddie's hand. The razor flashed.

For a moment, Eddie wasn't sure if he'd been hurt. It felt as if Nicholas had done nothing more than dragged a ballpoint pen across the back of his hand. But when Eddie looked down, he saw that Nicholas had cut him. A gash ran from wrist to middle knuckle.

Eddie jerked his hand away.

Somehow, he managed to keep a hold of the dinner knife, and he raised it up in front of him in case Nicholas attacked him again. But Nicholas didn't. He only stepped back out of Eddie's reach.

"I'd love to stay and chat," Nicholas said. "But there's someone else I need to stick. Don't worry though. We'll be seeing each other again, soon."

Nicholas strode out of the restaurant without a backward glance.

Warm blood ran down Eddie's wrist and dripped onto his jeans. The dinner knife quivered in his hand. His body shook violently. Eddie clamped down on the cut to stop the bleeding and hot pain pulsed up his arm. His hand might be hurt badly, but the blood made it difficult to tell.

Eddie kicked where Nicholas had been sitting. Why hadn't he done something? Why hadn't he called out for help? He should have rushed Nicholas, kicked at him, thrown a punch. Instead, he'd been paralyzed like some Whitetail caught in a hunter's spotlight. Eddie had the urge to go after Nicholas, chase him down and hurt him. But what if Nicholas wanted that? What if he'd set some kind of trap up in the parking lot? Nicholas had a straight razor. Eddie didn't. Running out there unarmed would be stupid, could prove fatal.

The pony-tailed waitress came to his table, and it went through Eddie's mind that of course she'd show up now, after Nicholas had left.

"Is everything okay?" she asked. Blood spotted the table, the plate, his hands.

"A guy cut me with a razor," Eddie said. "Can you call the police for me?"

"Sir?" Confusion clouded her face.

Eddie lifted his injured hand. "I could use something to help me stop the bleeding, too."

She stared at the blood for a few seconds before his words registered. "Sure. Okay. I'll call the police and get you something for the bleeding."

She hesitated for a second before sprinting off in the direction of the man in the green vest. Eddie picked up a napkin and wrapped it as tightly as he could around his hand. Then he groped for his cell phone. He could have called the cops on his cell, but he wanted to call Paige to check on her and to warn her about Nicholas. He couldn't do that if he was stuck on hold with a 911 operator.

Propping his bleeding hand up on the table to keep it higher than his heart--both of which were pounding--Eddie hit the speed dial button for Paige's cell phone hoping she would answer. The call went straight to voicemail. Eddie hung up and mashed the speed dial button again. Voicemail.

He was frantic with worry. What if Nicholas did have her? He tried to calm down. There were a lot of reasons why Paige's phone might go straight to voicemail: She turned it off while showing a house. She was on the phone with a client. She forgot it was on silent. She had been abducted by a psychopath.

Eddie called her again and got her voicemail again. He wanted to throw the phone across the restaurant, but he didn't. Instead, he left her a message, explaining what had happened and asking her to call him back as soon as she could. He tried to sound calm, so he wouldn't frighten her. He didn't know what else he could do. He had no idea where she might be.

### Chapter 8

No one had come for her. No police car or sheriff's cruiser had pulled up the long drive. No Highway Patrol helicopter had appeared in the cloudy sky. Paige's body ached as if she'd been shackled to the tree for a long time, but she could tell by looking at the sun that it had only been an hour, maybe a little longer. Had she actually heard someone answer her call? Maybe she'd only heard the wind blowing through the hollow limb of a dead tree and not the voice of a stranger hero. Maybe the sound had been a creation of her mind.

She told the doubting voice in her head to shut up. She hated that doubting voice. Someone had heard her, she told the voice. Someone was coming.

The crows returned. Some landed in the trees, some on the roof of the house, some on the grass around her. Several of the birds pecked at the ground for worms, a few cawed. She briefly wondered if they liked human flesh. Had they fed here before?

From atop the canyon Paige watched a rusty Ford pickup appear at the bottom of the drive. Her heart sprinted out to meet it.

The black gate swung open and the truck motored up the drive. This was it. This was the man who had heard her screams for help. Then it hit her. A stranger hero wouldn't know the code to open the black gate. The man behind the wheel could only be Edward Patterson. Her heart dropped back into her stomach.

Edward parked, stepped out of the truck, tucked his shoulders back, and spread a thin smile across his lips. Paige kept her eyes on his. Took several deep breaths. She'd show him she wasn't afraid.

He had broad shoulders and a quiet strength in the set of his jaw. His eyes were clear and confident, and even now that she knew what kind of animal he really was, she couldn't help thinking how striking he looked--especially dressed in a pressed white shirt and dark pants with a long black overcoat that was clearly too warm for this time of year. She'd never seen him dressed in business clothes. He looked like a stockbroker or a bank executive. A VP gone American Psycho. Her mind flashed on the description of the man shooting women in the face that morning. The one sought by the police.

Could he be the man who was robbing and shooting women? The man Eddie had warned her about who had been all over the news? He certainly fit the description and she couldn't help but wonder if she was next, if he planned on putting a bullet through her brain.

Edward glanced down at the wet ground where she'd peed.

She hadn't gone outside since she was a child. It had been a disgusting experience then and it was a disgusting experience now. The urine had run down the inside of her leg and she still felt the wet trail of it drying on her skin. But if men could pee outside then so could she.

Edward flared his nostrils sniffing at the air. "It looks like you made a little mess," he said.

She refused to answer. She wouldn't allow him to make her feel shame in it.

"We speak when we are spoken to," he said. "Doing otherwise is rude, and I have a very low tolerance for poor etiquette."

He had some nerve. The man strips her, chains her to a tree, and then wants to lecture her about etiquette?

"Urinating is nothing to be ashamed of," he said. "It's quite natural and in time you'll learn to embrace the opportunity."

Urinating as an opportunity? The man had obviously been sniffing paint.

"Edward, I can understand you wanting to play out some kind of kinky fantasy, but you've made a mistake. I'm not interested in you, and I'm not into this kind of thing. I'm married and my husband will be looking for me. He knows I'm with you."

"Will he come looking? Can he truly know anything? He is lost."

"If you'll just let me loose we can forget about this."

Of course, if by some chance he did let her down there was no way she was going to stick around for one single additional second. She was done with this pervert.

"You hang upon the tree because you refused to follow your true nature. You refuse to follow my commands. Continue down this path, and I will leave you hanging all night."

She shivered at the thought of being chained to the tree all night, but she refused to play the submissive. She wouldn't back down. "I don't follow commands, you freak. That is my nature."

Edward didn't respond. He looked at her with a smile and eyes that groped her body. She wanted to cover herself, to hide herself away from those probing penetrating eyes, but she could do nothing. She waited in silence. His eyes stopped on her chest. He stared at her breasts.

Paige bristled. She didn't like being stared at, especially in that place, in that way, by this perv. "You're one sick puppy."

Like two smoky moons breaking a horizon, his eyes lifted from her chest to meet her gaze, her first victory.

He took a step toward her and the shadows cast by the trees and the house grew thicker, moved closer. Her feet were still free, but he stopped just far enough away from her that she couldn't reach him with them. If she could only get him in range, she would kick his penis to the stars.

She looked Edward over to see if she could find any weakness she could use to her advantage, maybe an old injury. Then she realized he had something in his hand. A rolled up towel. Somehow she hadn't noticed it until now.

"I'm going to do what I want to you," he said. "If you look deep within yourself you'll recognize that I'm saving you, that you want this. You need someone else to take responsibility for you. You want someone else to tell you what to do, how to live, how to act, to focus you, direct you, channel you. You want your life to have a higher purpose and you need someone to show you what that higher purpose is. I will do all of this and more."

She thrashed against her bindings. "You're out of your skull. You need to be locked up in a rubber room."

"It's pointless to struggle. And it goes against your nature to do so. You cannot stop me," he said. "And trying will only make things much more difficult for you."

Reaching inside the towel, he pulled out a small tube. It looked like it might be some kind of lotion. He opened the top and squeezed a large amount of white cream into his hand then he dropped the tube to the ground.

"Hasn't anyone ever taught you how to properly groom yourself?" he asked, circling the trunk of the tree, circling her.

What was he talking about? She was well groomed. She was always well groomed. She washed her hair every day, showered every day, kept her nails clean, and her legs and underarms shaved. She used extra anti-perspirant to make sure she stayed dry even though it would probably cause nine kinds of cancer. He couldn't know about her condition. He just couldn't. Besides, her condition had nothing to do with hygiene. He had to be making some odd reference to her peeing outside.

"If a man can pee outside, then so can I," she said. Why was she explaining herself to him? He didn't deserve any explanation.

Edward shoved the hand full of cream between her legs, rubbing her crotch, and smearing the cream on her skin.

"Get away from me you filthy pervert," Paige spat.

She forced her legs together to keep his hand out, but even though her legs were free and his fingers were thick like polish sausages, she couldn't keep them out. His hand touching her crotch disgusted her. The cream made everything slippery, and his hand and fingers were too strong.

"Get it off me."

She kicked at him with her foot, but he stood beside her, so the angle was wrong, and her foot found only air.

Edward grabbed a fistful of her hair with his free hand, turned her head, and kissed her on the neck. His breath tickled her ear and sent her skin crawling.

"It looks like it's wearing a toupee and that long-hair-bush-woman look simply will not do," he said.

He bit her earlobe.

She breathed in sharply at the pain, shut her eyes, thought of gouging out his eyes with her bare hands.

"Are you thinking nasty thoughts about me?" he asked. "It's okay. You can tell me. I like nasty thoughts."

"What is that stuff? What did you put on me?"

"Nothing that will hurt you, my dear." He released her and stepped back wiping his hand off on the towel and tossing it over his shoulder like a waiter.

"You freak," she spit.

"I understand how you feel, but you simply do not realize how fortunate you are. There are thousands of people out there who would love to be where you are. I know you find that hard to believe, but it is true nonetheless."

"Then they're freaks, too."

He ignored her words. He studied her chest again.

"You're nothing but an ugly pervert."

He rushed her, pressing his body against her, and crushing her against the tree. She felt her hair being twisted up around his hand. Her head slammed back into the bark hard. It struck the tree with a thud and black spots filled her vision.

She blinked the spots away and a straight razor came into focus. He was holding it right in front of her face. She hadn't even seen where it had come from. He smiled.

"There is nothing ugly here," he said. "Do not take any lenience for weakness."

He pressed the point of the blade to a spot above and in between her breasts. She couldn't move. His hot breath was on her ear again, the wet huffing breath of a demon.

"It's important for you to know, to understand, that you cannot escape me. No one will come rescue you and you will never be free of me. You are to be mine until your end, and I will choose that end. I will choose when it will come and how it will come and it will be many years from now. The sooner you learn these things, the easier it will be for you. Your path is now my path, and I am relentless. I will craft you into something which transcends this world. You will accept this and you will learn to do as I say without hesitation. The quality of your life will depend on it."

He used his forearm to pin her head against the tree. Bark bit into the side of Paige's face. He cut into the skin on her chest with the razor. She actually felt her skin open up. Felt the blade on her skin like one deep wasp sting after another, slowly working their way down her chest.

"Do you want the pain to stop?"

The question was absurd. Of course she wanted the pain to stop, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of hearing her say it. She would die before she would give him that kind of control. She clenched her teeth together against the pain.

"Be very still and it will end quickly," he said. "If you struggle it will only make the pain worse."

She fought to remain perfectly still. It was difficult but manageable. There was no point in causing more damage by moving. She drew several slow breaths in through her nose and exhaled out her mouth. Stay calm.

The edge of the blade began to feel like a hot iron as he moved it through the skin of her chest in a methodical pattern. With each thump of her heart, the blade dug a little deeper. Where he cut there was bone, cartilage, and some muscle beneath the skin, but she could tell he wasn't cutting deep enough to do serious damage to her. Droplets of blood ran down her stomach. The pain was relentless, but she had survived much worse. The blade was easy to suffer compared to the agony of having a sore split and tear open her skin. Something she'd felt a hundred times over.

As the pain of the cutting intensified, her mind automatically began using a pain reduction technique that, because of her affliction, had become a necessary part of her teen life.

Seeking out something familiar, she saw an outcropping of red and yellow wildflowers. She focused her thoughts on the flowers and everything she knew about them to help ease the pain. The flowers were called Indian Blanket. They were the flowers she'd painted when she'd met Eddie. There was a legend about them that started with an old Indian blanket maker.

The old man created beautiful blankets but was dying. Realizing he had only a short time left, he wove a burial blanket and when he died his family dutifully wrapped him in it. The Great Spirit was very pleased because of the beauty of the blanket, but also saddened because the people would no longer be able to appreciate the old man's beautiful creations. So the Great Spirit decided he would give a gift to everyone the old man had left behind. The next spring red and yellow wildflowers, the colors of the old Indian's blankets, appeared on his grave.

Paige imagined a blanket of flowers, forced her mind to picture it in the smallest of details, but Edward's voice dragged her away from the blanket, back to the pain.

"Scars serve to remind us of our experiences," he said.

If she was going to die then so be it, but she didn't want to die listening to a lunatic's philosophizing. What did he know about scars? What did he know about the pain they caused?

"Just shut up and do what you're going to do," she said.

"Tsk, tsk," he responded, raising the knife back up to her face, touching the blade to her cheek. "Would you rather I work here?"

Her body trembled like a rattlesnake's tail. "Just kill me and get it over with. I would rather die than listen to your idiotic rambling."

"I see what you're trying to do," Edward said. "It will not work. You cannot provoke me into killing you. I'm not some uncalculating psychopath who kills for pleasure. You are here for a much higher purpose. But know that I can do things to you, things far worse than death, things that you could not imagine even in your wildest nightmares."

He released her.

She choked back her tears before they fell. Edward didn't deserve her tears. Forcing herself to look down at her chest, she saw multiple cuts and a wide streak of blood running down between her breasts.

A metallic squeak of an outdoor water faucet sounded behind her. Water sputtered and smacked the ground. He came back to her holding the running water hose.

He stepped around the tree and turned the hose on her stomach. Cold water lapped at her skin below her navel. He ran the water back and forth several times, washing off some of the cream he had put between her legs. Chunks of the white goop dropped to the ground with a plop.

With his free hand, he took the towel from his shoulder and shoved it between her legs. He drove it in and out between her thighs removing what was left of the cream.

She didn't fight. Whatever the substance was he had put on her, she wanted it off. An odd aroma, like the chemical smell of hair being permed, wafted through the air.

He pulled the towel away. Clumps of cream and her pubic hair covered the towel.

My God. The word humiliation did not match what she felt. He had chemically removed her pubic hair.

The veil of hair that had helped to obscure the unsightly scars left by her disease was gone.

Her whole body reddened with the knowledge that she was naked beyond what she had ever thought possible. With Ms. Whyte's discovery, her secret had first been exposed and now it was being exposed again. Even though she had grown to understand her condition, even though the painful sores had left her, leaving nothing but angry scars behind, she still felt like that little girl all over again. It wasn't rational. She wasn't a child, wasn't that young girl in Ms. Whyte's office.

Her PE teacher had only been trying to help. Paige knew that now. She'd wanted to understand why Paige grimaced in pain when she performed stretches, why she frequently refused to dress out, what it was that kept Paige from participating in gym class. She had been afraid Paige was being physically abused by her parents. But knowing Ms. Whyte's intentions hadn't changed the degradation Paige had felt at being exposed. Couldn't erase the look of disgust she'd seen in Ms. Whyte's eyes when she'd discovered her oozing sores.

Paige had spent most of her life hiding the sores that had slowly turned to unsightly scars, scars that were the calling card of her disease Hidradenitis Suppurativa, scars that had brought humiliation down on her like nothing else could. And now she was feeling that humiliation all over again.

Edward studied the look on her face and smiled at her look of horror.

She closed her eyes. There was nothing she could do. She didn't have the power to become invisible.

"You have nothing to fear," he told her. "I will not hurt you in the way you are thinking. I am not a rapist."

In the throbbing red-tinged darkness behind her eyelids, she heard him move behind the tree.

She didn't believe him. The man was a liar and any moment now he would sexually assault her, discover the ravaged area around her perineum. He might even think her unclean, unworthy of even rape.

The sound of water from the hose drifted back around the tree. There was another metallic squeak, and then the sound of water splashing to the ground stopped. Beyond tears, Paige's mind rebelled against what was happening, wanted to leave her body, to wander away from the world in search of a place that was safe. But she fought to remain in this place and time, fought to remain Paige, although she wasn't sure why. Wouldn't she rather be somewhere else, anywhere else? Nothing could be worse than this. Could it?

She heard the door to the house open and then a few moments later close. Still, she couldn't open her eyes. Couldn't bear to look. As long as she kept them closed she could imagine she would soon wake from this nightmare. Continuing to see reality would push her over the edge and into a chasm out of which she knew she could never climb. Then she heard the crunch-scuffle of his boots across the pavement and then dirt. He was coming toward her again. Her body involuntarily recoiled at his approach.

Something cool pressed against her lips and cold water washed into her mouth. She drank. The water rushed her dry throat. Paige hadn't realized how thirsty she was. It was as if she had been without water for days.

She gulped nearly all of the water. Some of it ran down her chin and into the cuts on her chest, chilling the fire of those wounds if only for a few seconds.

"That's a good girl," he said.

Good girl? That brought her anger back. She snapped her eyes open and spit the last of the water in Edward's face. She was drained, didn't have the strength to fight him then, but she wasn't going to give up. Not now. Not ever.

He wiped the water from his face with his hand and smiled his awful smile again.

"You are very beautiful," he said.

Paige's eyelids drooped. Everything in her vision took several steps back away from her. Her consciousness pulled away from her body. Vaguely, she heard Edward say, "The spirit and the flesh should be one."

What did he mean?

He stroked her hair. She saw his eyes wander across her body. The world spun. She wondered if she was dying. A part of her hoped she was. It occurred to her that he might have drugged her. She tried to blink her eyes awake. She didn't want to fall asleep. She might never wake up.

Edward's hand was on her check, caressing her. There was music. No, not music. What is it? It sounded familiar. She concentrated on the sound but her brain wouldn't cooperate. Was it humming? It was. He was humming the song "Only You."

Everything in her vision stood haloed by darkness. His hands were on her stomach. His face came closer.

Then, even as she lost consciousness, she heard the ferocity in his voice.

"This must not be."

### Chapter 9

Eddie stood up. "This is bullshit!" He wasn't going to listen to this. "That man said that he was going to kill me. That he was going to make my wife watch. I can't believe you aren't doing anything!"

A policeman, all creases and shine, stood in the middle of Henry's Restaurant bearing the brunt of Eddie's growing frustration. Officer J. TUCKER was stamped into the pin on the cop's uniform.

"All right, Mr. Knight. Why don't you slow down? We're doing all we can."

"I don't think you understand," Eddie said. "My wife is missing."

This wasn't going the way Eddie expected. The cop was supposed to be jumping on the radio and sending out a message to search for his wife. They were supposed to be alerting the media, putting a photo of Paige up on every channel. Maybe Officer Tucker didn't realize the gravity of the situation.

"The man who cut me was crazy."

Officer Tucker jotted something on his notepad. "Do you know the man?"

"No. I don't know him. He said his name was Nicholas. He said he had my wife. I've tried calling her and can't get her on the phone," Eddie said, his voice stretched to near panic.

"I understand your concern. But I'm not going to jump to conclusions. People don't answer their phones for lots of reasons. That doesn't mean they've been abducted. The best way you can help her right now is to answer my questions. Help me get a picture of what happened. When was the last time you talked to her?"

"Around dawn."

"How long have you been trying to contact her?"

"Since the guy cut me. A few minutes."

"Have you tried calling her work, her friends?"

"No, not yet." Eddie made a mental note to call her work and friends as soon as he was done talking with the cop.

"What did the man look like, again?"

Eddie described Nicholas to Officer Tucker for what seemed like the fifth time. The cop took a few steps back and spoke into the radio microphone clipped to his shoulder.

"We're checking on your wife. I'm sure she's fine. Now let me see this cut."

Eddie remained standing, removed the cloth napkin to show Officer Tucker the back of his hand. A thin cut ran from his middle knuckle to his wrist. It didn't look nearly as bad as Eddie expected, but it was still an ugly wound.

Officer Tucker looked at Eddie's hand and frowned. "Were you hurt anywhere else?"

"No, I'm fine," Eddie said through clinched teeth. "It's my wife who needs help."

Flashing lights drew his attention to the window. An ambulance pulled in front of the restaurant and stopped. Two EMTs got out. Great. Who called them?

Officer Tucker motioned for Eddie to sit down, and he did.

The two EMTs came through the front door pushing a gurney with their gear on top. Officer Tucker nodded as they approached and pointed at the back of Eddie's hand with his pen. Eddie's hand had nearly stopped bleeding. One of the EMTs looked back up at the cop with a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me look. Officer Tucker shrugged.

Eddie shuffled in his seat anxious to get back to his feet. He didn't like where this was going. "I didn't ask for an ambulance."

An EMT opened up a gray box similar to a mechanics toolbox and pulled out a stack of gauze the size of a Stephen King novel. His partner stepped forward and said, "Are you allergic to any medication?"

"No."

The EMT stuck a plastic gun thermometer in Eddie's ear, pulled the trigger, handed it to his partner.

"Anyone see the man who cut you?" Officer Tucker asked.

"Not that I know of. Maybe one of them." Eddie pointed towards the employees congregating around the bar staring at him, watching the action like they might watch an episode of Law & Order.

"If you'll wait right here," Officer Tucker said. "I need to speak with a few of the employees. Any information, even the smallest bit, could help us in locating your wife."

Eddie's shoulders relaxed at this. They're just trying to help. Cooperate, stay out of their way, and things will go much faster.

Officer Tucker pointed with his pen at the EMT. "Just let the EMTs take care of you, all right?"

Eddie nodded. The quicker he got through this the quicker they would start looking for Paige. And he reminded himself that having a couple of hundred cops helping him look would be a good thing.

The EMT pulled out an industrial strength antiseptic that looked as if it would cause the mother of all stings and cleaned Eddie's wound. Pain burst through his hand in staccato spurts as if he were being shot at point blank range with a fully automatic BB gun. Eddie winced and did his best to hold his hand still.

"I'm sorry you guys had to come out here," Eddie told the EMT. "I didn't call you."

The EMT shrugged, ripped open a Steri-strip package, and applied the bandage to the back of Eddie's hand. He then flashed a penlight in Eddie's eyes.

Eddie turned his head away. "Is that really necessary? There's nothing wrong with my eyes."

"Hey, give me a break buddy. I'm trying to do my job," the EMT said. "We need to run you over to the hospital. You need a few stitches. You were lucky though. There doesn't seem to be any major damage."

"Stitches? No, I'm not going to the hospital."

The EMT sighed, "Then you'll have to sign a waiver."

"Fine."

Officer Tucker and the manager were still talking. The manager smiled and laughed a couple of times. Tucker pointed over his shoulder in Eddie's direction with the back of his pen. Eddie's jawed tightened. What was so damned funny? How was this helping anything?

The EMT pulled out a form and a pen and handed them to Eddie. His partner closed up the medical kit.

"You need to sign here and here," the EMT told Eddie. "Be sure and use your uninjured hand. You shouldn't use your lacerated hand any more than you have to, especially over the next several days. And you really should see a doctor."

Eddie signed with his left hand, eager for the EMTs to leave so the crowd of employees would have less to look at. He wanted to slap every one of them for gawking. What was wrong with them?

"The dressing should be changed and the wound cleaned every day," the EMT continued. "Without the stitches you might scar badly."

"I'm not worried about scars," Eddie said.

The EMT shrugged again, picked up the waiver, and handed it to his silent partner. "You take care," he said. Then they grabbed their gear and hurried over to Officer Tucker. One of them spoke a few words to the cop and then they were out the door.

Eddie clinched his good hand into a fist. He was tired of waiting. The manager couldn't have much of a story to tell. Eddie stood up and marched towards them. He wanted some answers. He wanted someone to start looking for Paige. Now.

The officer looked at Eddie, spoke into the radio microphone again, and met him near the door.

Officer Tucker motioned for Eddie to sit down and he did. Finally. Something was going to be done. The cop sat down across from Eddie, placed his notebook on the table.

"Look Mr. Knight, I'm afraid there isn't much we can do."

"What about them?" In complete disbelief Eddie pointed at the manager and the waitresses. "Didn't they see something?"

"No one saw a man with the description you gave come into or leave the restaurant."

"What?" Eddie said, standing again, confused.

Officer Tucker stood and tapped Eddie in the chest with his pen. "Calm down. Have a seat."

The cop wasn't asking, so Eddie sat back down. He'd been brought up to respect the law even though he wanted to take the pen out of the cop's hand and shove it up his ass. But pissing the cop off wouldn't help him any and he could use all the help he could get looking for Paige. It was a big city.

"Look, this is serious. My wife is in danger."

The officer nodded at Eddie as if he'd heard this a hundred times before and was eager to get to the end so he could get back to the important business of handing out tickets, eating doughnuts, and courting a new mistress.

"Just let us do our jobs," Officer Tucker said. "Did the man say anything that might help us to identify him?"

"No. But he showed me a picture. It was of him and my wife at the Museum of Art."

The cop raised an eyebrow, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Look, Paige doesn't know any man named Nicholas. I'd know if she did."

Officer Tucker grunted. "Course you would."

Eddie didn't like the hint of sarcasm in the cop's voice. So maybe he hadn't met every single client Paige had, but he'd met most and they always talked about them. He'd never heard the name Nicholas before. Not once. He was sure of it.

"I don't understand. Shouldn't you be searching for my wife right now?"

"I wouldn't worry about her. We've spoken with your wife's employer. She's fine. She's in a meeting with a client. We asked them to have her call you when she's finished."

Eddie heard the large breath leave his body before he felt it. Paige was okay. She was okay. That was the best news he'd heard all day. No wonder the cop hadn't been in any big hurry. Well, he could have at least told him the news so he wouldn't have sat there worried out of his mind.

"I doubt you'll hear from this guy again," the cop said.

"Why do you say that?"

Tucker crossed his thick arms across his chest. "To be frank, it sounds to me like your wife might be playing some kind of game with you."

Game? "What do you mean?"

"I mean, it sounds like maybe she knows this man, only she doesn't want you to know it."

"Why would she lie?"

Officer Tucker looked away. "People lie for all sorts of reasons."

"What about the cut on my hand?"

He shrugged. "I'll file the report. If it's any consolation, it's not much of a cut. I've done worse in the kitchen cutting onions."

"I can't believe this," Eddie said, shaking his head.

"Look, you haven't given us enough information. No last name. No car. A generic description. What do you want me to do? Point him out, and I'll go arrest him. In the meantime I'll write up a report and file it, but that's about all I can do."

Eddie took a couple of deep breaths. Something had to be done. He needed to know that this maniac wasn't out there waiting around the next corner for him. At least the police were able to find out that Paige was okay. Still, he felt uneasy.

Tucker picked up his notebook, stood up. "I'd like to give you some advice about your wife. If you really want to keep her, which I assume you do, then I would forget about this. I understand how you feel. It isn't easy to accept the fact that your wife is cheating on you. I went through the same thing, so I understand. It's rough. But if you keep digging, you're just going to find something that you don't want to find. Give her some space. Give her some time. After a while, she'll get tired of him and that'll be the end of it. And if she doesn't, well, then maybe it's for the best."

Officer Tucker walked away from the table, leaving his words hanging in the air. Eddie sat in disbelief. His hand throbbed with the pulse of his quickening heartbeat. He rubbed the back of his neck with his good hand. Paige wasn't cheating on him. Was she? He'd know. Wouldn't he?

### Chapter 10

Steele didn't want to move. Not yet. There was a tiny buzz outside his window and then the tap, tap of winged bodies against glass. He smiled at these little sounds and then quickly tuned them out. Crisp patterns and images formed on the inside of his eyelids: a giant pink tongue, an eyeless face, wooden chessmen, a flame. These images and more washed over his consciousness and crashed like waves against his intellect. They threatened to overwhelm him until he forced a single image to the forefront. A demonic bird-like creature with a single three clawed leg, long ice-pick fangs, catlike eyes, and a tongue extending out from an open beak the brightest shade of blue he had ever seen.

Steele focused on the creature, brought it closer, made it as real as anything in the world. When he had every detail of the beast memorized, he opened his eyes and welcomed the early afternoon light.

Since the age of ten, he'd been waking with his eyes closed, studying the images he awoke to, savoring moments of inspiration.

Sunlight poured through the bedroom's open blinds creating bars of shadow across the sheets. The bars sectioned a nude blonde woman curled up in a fetal position beside him on the enormous bed. She was a tall, busty woman with shoulder-length blonde hair fanned out behind her. One of her hands cupped her pale white cheek and a portion of the sheet was tucked between her legs. Her other hand was firmly anchored to the wrought-iron headboard cuffed in black leather.

To Steele, she had an almost angelic appearance. But he knew she was no angel.

"No...," she mumbled in her sleep, then, "Nicholas?"

Nicholas wasn't his real name. It was a name he had taken for her. To make things easier for her.

Seeing her bound to the bed reminded Steele of Cody Slade's bleached blonde and the purely aesthetic leash around her neck. He chuckled softly. Cody and his blonde had no concept of true dominance. They only played at Master and servant.

Steele tossed the sheet over the blonde, rolled off the bed, and walked around to the window.

Some twenty feet or so away a squirrel scampered up the gnarled Sycamore tree to which the brunette was bound, unconscious. On the Bermuda grass, green with vibrant life, two crows stalked for worms. A Bobwhite quail called its name. The sun burned a hole in the brilliant cobalt blue sky while a single cloud moved quickly by. Just inches away from him, hornets methodically built a nest in the corner of the window.

Steele tapped the glass with his index finger, and the insects rewarded him with angry buzzing.

He found it comforting to see everything in nature behaving exactly as it should, fighting to survive. He only wished more people understood the concept.

Turning back to the blonde on his bed, he saw she had made no movement. Indeed, she rested so still that if he hadn't heard her speak moments before he might have become concerned. But all was exactly as he would have it.

Three leather restraints hung on a long nail above Steele's head. Made of thick leather with locking steel buckles, they were the type of thing a fetish couple might purchase out of a bondage catalog or off of some S&M website. These he had lovingly made with his own hands.

Steele pulled the restraints from the nail and stepped to the foot of the bed. The steel of the buckles tinkled as he walked to the blonde's side. He wished the restraints weren't necessary, but they were. Even people enjoying pain could lose control, and that could be dangerous for both of them.

He gently slid a restraint over the blonde's ankle, fastened the buckle, and snapped the attached steel ring to a metal clip mounted to the frame of the bed, effectively immobilizing one side of her body.

Then he walked to the other side of the bed. He grasped the blonde's free wrist and gently pulled on her until she flattened out on her stomach. Still asleep, she pulled away from him rolling back on her side. The sheet nearly slipped off her body.

He counted to ten and eased her back onto her stomach. Easy, easy. He didn't want to wake her. He wanted this to be a surprise. She enjoyed his surprises.

Sliding a leather restraint over her remaining wrist, he quickly fastened it to the headboard.

His gaze darted from one part of her body to another, from ankle to knee, from knee to thigh from thigh to hip. When viewed as a whole, the intricate scars on her body formed a meticulously complete composition. The detail of his work locked his breath in his throat. The beauty caused a shiver to walk across the back of his neck.

This was his true art, his creation, his labor of love. It was the logical progression of a thousand years worth of tattooing and body modification. It was his contribution to the art form and the community of artists who saved him. He could hardly believe the work was his, that he did this, that he had taken his art to such a high level, higher than anyone living or dead.

He tossed the sheet back over her body to block the beauty he had created. When he saw so much of it, he was moved in a way he could not express in words. This was why he kept her covered. It was like staring up at and trying to take in the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre. It was like looking at an ancient god.

The blonde's eyes opened.

She looked groggy, not quite aware, just awakening. She tried to roll from her stomach to her side and quickly realized she couldn't. She glanced up at her wrists and saw the restraints holding her. Her eyes widened with comprehension, and she sneered at him.

He smiled at her, to comfort her.

The blonde yanked down hard with her arms pulling the top of the headboard away from the wall and kicked with both her feet. The whole bed shook, rattled, and banged back against the wall, but the restraints held.

He could never be certain how she would react to the restraints, especially when he had surprised her with them. He loved this about her. One day she was as pliant as potting clay, the next she was hard as dogwood.

One of the blonde's legs was still free, and Steele quickly moved to restrain it. He reached for her ankle, and she kicked him in the mouth. The inside of his bottom lip, caught between her heel and his teeth, exploded.

The pain hit him like a photoflash with fangs, but he quickly recovered. He grabbed her foot by the ankle and wrenched it down to the bed. He dug his knee into the back of her calf, holding her ankle in position, and buckled the final restraint.

The gash on the inside of his mouth filled his mouth with the taste of copper. He licked his lips, coating them red.

This wasn't the first time the blonde had bloodied him, and it probably wouldn't be the last. When properly motivated, she could still be quite the fighter.

The blonde didn't scream for help, not that it would have mattered if she did. She could scream as loud as a banshee and no one would hear her, not even the brunette hanging on the tree a rock throw from their window. And even if someone could hear her, Steele didn't fear being caught. Nor did he fear death or punishment. His primary concern was making sure his work endured, that he left behind an artistic legacy.

Steele crouched down beside the bed and opened a small trapdoor in the floor revealing a tiny safe. He quickly dialed the combination. Although his hands were large, he spun the dial with a nearly inhuman steady precision. He opened the safe and removed a silver ring holding half a dozen keys and a small credit card like transmitter. He stood, turned for the door and the smell of cherries halted him.

He looked around the room, looked at the blonde.

The room should have had no smell beyond flesh and blood. The walls were bare. The room was dry, neat, dust-less. There were no half-eaten plates of food or candles on candelabras. Two pieces of furniture stood in the room: the bed and a nightstand. There was nothing else. He kept this room as free from any unnecessary stimuli as possible.

He slept here. Dreamt here. This was his inspirational nest. Photos or music or even the scent of a single candle could prompt unwanted activity in the logical left side of his brain, making it more difficult for the creative right side of his brain to step forward and take control. A brother artist in New York taught Steele the creative technique, and he had since adopted it with a religious fervor. There should be no cherry smell.

Nothing in the room was capable of giving off the cherry scent and he could think of nothing in the house capable of producing the scent either. Still the smell was there, poking at the analytical side of his mind like a finger in the eye.

Steele studied her. She lay with one ear on the pillow. Her pale blue eyes stared out past him, seemingly through the wall beyond him. Her face was blank of expression, devoid of even worry wrinkles.

Could she be the source of the smell? It seemed unlikely, but something lizard-like in the back his brain told him that she was the source, that she was using it as some sort of weapon against his creativity. The voice told him he should kill her. Kill her now.

But there was no glimmer of rebellious understanding or mischievous intent in her eyes. They were empty.

He ignored the primitive voice calling for her death. Besides, he didn't want to kill her. Killing her went against his purpose, would result in the destruction of his greatest work. Of course, he had documented the work so well that killing her wouldn't result in a complete loss, but the digital video and photographic images paled in comparison with her actual flesh. Those mediums were two-dimensional, lacked texture, lacked the warmth of blood, the movement of breathing.

Steele considered interrogating the blonde to determine how she'd created the smell. It would be entertaining at the least, she'd always responded well to interrogation, but he quickly decided against it. He would wait and see if she made some other more aggressive move against him.

He realized then that he was chewing on his bottom lip and forced himself to stop. She had him thinking, and he couldn't properly work while thinking. He snatched a roll of duct tape off the nightstand and taped the blonde's mouth shut.

Air rushed through the blonde's nostrils. Her eyes widened.

Satisfied she couldn't cause further mischief, he flipped his keys. Two stainless steel doors led from the bedroom. One led into the kitchen and the other into a foyer. He pressed a button on the transmitter, unlocked the door leading into the kitchen.

Immediately to his right, another stainless steel door took him into a large bathroom. This door had a thick rubber seal around the entire edge making the chamber both soundproof and watertight.

Steele closed the door behind him sealing himself within the vault-like room.

The mirrored medicine cabinet hanging on the wall matched the vast majority of his custom built home: stainless steel, wood-walled, locking. Using a key, he opened the medicine cabinet. On the bottom shelf was a black bottle of cologne, several bars of soap, two neatly folded hand towels, cinnamon flavored mouthwash. On the top a hemostat, rope tie-offs, several scalpels of varying blade types, two straight razors.

He spun a chrome knob mounted on the wall. One hundred and two degree water shot from thirty shower jets mounted in the walls blasting his body clean. He loved Tina Turner and liked to sing while he washed.

"You must understand

"That the touch of your hand

"Makes my pulse react

"That its only that thrill

"Of boy meeting girl

"Opposites attract."

He washed every square inch of his body, even his hair, with bar soap.

"Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it

"What's love but a second hand emotion..."

Steele fiercely rubbed each muscle as he washed. Slowly his muscles relaxed. Each individual drop of water pounded his body, kneading his flesh.

"Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it

"What's love but a second hand emotion..."

Finally, his mind, body, and soul became perfectly in tune, and he ended the downpour with a quick twist of the wrist. Steam rose off his body. He splashed a generous amount of cologne into his palm and rubbed the stuff--his only indulgence from his self-imposed anti-stimuli rule--into his chest and neck.

His mind was perfectly clear when the moment came.

Steele washed his hands, selected the ivory handled razor from the cabinet, and strode back into the bedroom.

He locked the door behind him, but he did this without thought. It didn't matter that he was still dripping wet or that his short black hair was wildly unkempt. The time had come to finish the blonde.

### Chapter 11

Eddie jogged down the stairs, hit the bottom step, and looked up at the same dirty white concrete building that always welcomed him to work. The old twelve-story building loomed over him as a reminder of skilled builders long in their graves. Black birds pecked in the small patch of grass in front of the building. Why Demchata Graphics had ever picked such an old building in this part of town was beyond him. The whole area reeked of diesel fuel from the bus depot down the street. He could almost taste it.

When Paige called he would let her have it for not calling him back when she'd said she would and for leaving her ringer on silent or letting her phone go dead. Assuming her phone had gone dead. Whatever had happened, she should have called him to let him know she was okay.

Downtown had to be considered one of the better parts of the city. Millions had been spent transforming the area into a bustling entertainment district, and they'd done a nice job of it. The historic red brick district, only a few blocks away from the arts district, was quite beautiful with its restaurants, nightclubs, and river walk. Properties in the area demanded premium prices. But the building where Eddie worked hadn't yet been spit-shined. His office had a quaint view of the one part of downtown that was like the scum you'd find under the lid of a never-been-cleaned public restroom toilet.

Eddie strolled to the front door and slipped a yellow key card out of his pocket. Glancing up at the security camera, he smiled while passing the card down the access panel. The light on the door went from red to green and clicked as it unlocked. He jerked open the glass door, and the sound of fabric ripping filled the vestibule. One of the security bars had caught on the sleeve of his shirt tearing it. The words "It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood" immediately went through Eddie's mind. The day was quickly becoming the worst ever.

He walked to the reception counter where Joe, an overgrown security guard with a boyish face and the annoying habit of sweating regardless of the temperature, leaned against one end of the counter.

Joe sized Eddie up, grinned, and pointed at Eddie's ripped T-shirt. "Looks like you're having a nice day."

Eddie ignored Joe who smelled a little ranker than usual. Somewhere between rotting tuna and a hog farm. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and turned away from Joe.

He got on the elevator, leaned on the button marked five, and waited for that familiar stomach-hitting-the-floor lurch to let him know it was on the move. Floors dinged off and the elevator grumbled like it was about to jackknife within the shaft.

When the door slid open, Eddie meandered past a yellow wet floor sign into the cold office. It wasn't much of an office, more like two cubicles in a clinical room. A long stainless steel table, like the kind a coroner would perform an autopsy on, split the room. What the table's purpose was, Eddie didn't know. It had been there since he'd gone to work for Demchata.

Rows of file cabinets and storage shelves ran the length of two walls. Across the room, two desks snugly hunkered in front of a large window with a unpleasant view of an alley. The smaller of the two desks was Eddie's.

The dim computer monitor the company had provided him was nearly impossible to read, even on cloudy days. They wouldn't buy him one of the newer, brighter flat panel monitors like the executives used, even though he did the graphics design work that was the bread and butter of the company.

Eddie had considered moving the monitor to the stainless steel table in the center of the room to get it away from the light of the window, but he hadn't been able to muster up the courage to do it. He'd had Frankensteinish nightmares about the long steel table. It gave him the willies. Besides, he figured once he went blind from squinting at the monitor he'd have a groundbreaking worker's compensation claim. Then money would rain down on him, and he could quit, go back to writing just as Paige had suggested.

Paige. It bothered him that the cop had seemed so sure Paige was cheating on him. Why did he think that? Paige cheating on him made no sense to Eddie. She was happy, wasn't she? They had a great relationship, a great sex life. The cop hadn't even been all that concerned about the possibility of her being abducted. Had he spent enough years on the streets, interviewing people, being thrown into situations that he'd developed a knack for spotting things like that?

Eddie wanted to know who Nicholas was, how he knew Paige, and how Nicholas had known where he was going to be eating. Not to mention why he'd said he had Paige when he didn't, unless he'd misunderstood Nicholas. What if "had" didn't mean physically? What if he had her emotionally? Maybe "had" meant he "had" her in a relationship.

Eddie grabbed a comfort doughnut out of a box on Sam's desk--Sam always brought doughnuts--and bit into the sugary dough, hoping for a creamy center. No creamy center.

Sam craned over his computer with nose tilted down like an old man looking over his glasses even though Sam didn't wear glasses. He was one of those people who concentrated so intensely on what he was doing that the world around him could disintegrate without him noticing.

Eddie slapped Sam lightly on the back to let him know he had arrived and caught a good whiff of Sam's Old Spice for his trouble.

"Hey, Sam."

Sam raised his hand up without looking back. "Hey, Eddie."

Mouth dry, Eddie grabbed a coke out of the fridge and gulped at it until it burned his throat. Everything with Paige was fine. She wasn't cheating on him. His phone would ring any second, and he would find out she had just finished up a large deal, an enormous deal. She had turned off her phone while they hammered it out, that's all.

Eddie slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, stared at the display, attempted to will it to ring, and then put it away. He sat down at his desk and listened to Sam's rhythmic typing. It helped to settle his mind into work mode.

Eddie tapped his password in left handed then pulled up his e-mail. Using his left hand to get any work done was going to be a real pain in the ass.

Two e-mails blinked at Eddie from his inbox. He clicked open the first, a standard company notice that had gone out to everyone, something about only using the Internet for company business. He hit the delete key and opened the second e-mail.

"Everything okay?" Sam asked.

Eddie rolled back from the desk, turned to face Sam. "Why does everyone ask me that when things are not okay? No one ever asks me that when things are okay."

"What happened?"

"Some cop thinks Paige is cheating on me." It came out in a can-you-believe-it huff.

"I meant, what happened to your hand?" Sam pointed.

"Oh." Eddie lifted his hand, looked at the bandage. "A guy tried to kill me."

"By cutting your hand?"

Sam had a point. Nicholas could have done a lot more damage. He'd only cut him on the hand. It wasn't even a bad cut. He could have just as easily gutted him or slit his throat.

"Well, no. I guess not. He did threaten to kill me though, and then he cut my hand."

One of Sam's thick, brown eyebrows lifted, and Eddie told Sam what had happened with Paige, Nicholas, and the cops.

"So what are you going to do?"

"What can I do?"

Sam crossed his legs, seemed to think about it a minute, then uncrossed his legs, leaned forward.

"You should get your stuff out of your house. Or better yet, get your locks changed. I had a buddy who caught his wife fooling around. When he came home from work, she'd cleaned him out. Took everything but the toilet paper."

"Paige isn't cheating on me, and even if she is, she certainly wouldn't do something like that."

"That's what my friend thought. Guess someone forgot to tell his wife though. Got a gun?" Sam asked.

"What?"

"Do you have a gun?"

"I have a couple of them."

"One a pistol? You know a .357, 9mm, or a .38?"

"I have a .45. Why?"

"You should carry it. Then, if this guy shows up with a knife again..." Sam let it hang there.

"I don't have a permit to carry a gun."

"So? You don't want me to be reading about you in the paper in the morning do you?"

Sam showed up to work fifteen minutes early every morning to read the obituaries. When Eddie had asked him why, Sam said he just wanted to know if anyone he knew had died. Eddie found the habit a bit morbid. He guessed Sam's wife felt the same way since Sam read them at work and not at home.

"No. I don't want you reading about me in the paper."

"Then get that gun, carry it, and if that crazy shows up again, I'll read about him."

Sam turned back to his monitor.

The idea of shooting someone, possibly killing them, made Eddie want to throw up. Even so, Sam made some kind of weird sense.

Eddie was an excellent shot. It was something to think about.

He brought his attention back to the dim computer screen and clicked on the second e-mail. He hoped Paige had e-mailed him, but he knew the hope was unrealistic. She'd be more likely to call him than to send e-mail especially if she was out working a deal.

The message on his screen was short and simple: PHONE DEAD. MEET ME AT THE CLUB TONIGHT, 10PM. WE NEED TO TALK. PAIGE.

Eddie practically fell out of his chair. This isn't good. Why so late? And where was the "love you" she typically signed her e-mails with?

There was little doubt as to which club the message meant. The only club they ever went to was Isis. The club owned by Paige's best friend Tabitha. Eddie looked to see what e-mail address Paige sent the message from, but there was no return address. Normally, all e-mails had one. He considered the possibility that it was some sort of glitch.

"Hey, Sam. Take a look at this. You ever see an e-mail with no return address?"

Sam rolled his chair over next to Eddie. "Can't say that I have."

"Could it be a glitch in the system?"

"I suppose, but maybe she doesn't want you to know where she sent it from."

Eddie thought a glitch more likely, but something about the e-mail bothered Eddie, something more than just the absent return address. It didn't feel right. He wondered what to do. He could call the police. Couldn't he? But what would he tell them? That he'd received an anonymous e-mail from Paige asking him to meet at a club? The police might not laugh at him while he was talking to them, but he figured they certainly would once they got off the phone.

The strange encounter with Nicholas was making him jumpy. Wouldn't it make anyone jumpy? The simplest answer was the most likely one, wasn't it? Paige's cell phone had died, and she'd sent him an e-mail message as soon as she'd finished her real estate deal so he wouldn't worry. But why was she meeting him so late? After work made sense. Ten o'clock at night didn't.

Maybe she was still angry about their argument that morning. Maybe she wanted to sit down away from the house to talk to him about quitting her job and returning to painting. Tabitha would be there to support her and a two-pronged attack had worked on him before, like when she'd wanted to buy the Volkswagon.

It was obvious to him now that he thought about it. They would occasionally get into little spits like this when it came to decisions involving money, and Tabitha usually ended up in the middle of the argument, or rather, on Paige's side of the argument.

Tabitha wasn't his biggest fan, but in that moment, he thought she just might have more answers than he did. He considered trying to reach her by phone, but Tabitha hadn't joined the cellular phone craze. She considered having a cell phone an electronic leash she would never willingly wear. She rarely even answered her home phone.

No matter how much he was dreading the encounter, he made a mental note to stop by her place after work. See what she could tell him. And after all was said and done, he would go to the club. Paige would be there. His mind flashed on the sickening thought that Nicholas could be there too. But, what choice did he have?

And there was still something about the e-mail that bothered him. Something that made his skin crawl.

Sam leaned over Eddie's shoulder then and poked him in the side with his finger. "You know if I was you, I would get that gun."

### Chapter 12

The blonde pretended to sleep. Steele could tell by the forced rhythm of her breathing.

He strode to the bed and eased the white top sheet off exposing a rubber sheet beneath. He took a long red cloth from a drawer beneath the bed and carefully covered the blonde's body, leaving a small portion of his work on her ankle exposed. He examined it for flaws. He checked every angle of every line then double-checked every angle of every line. He inspected the shading, looked for signs of infection. There were no flaws. Not a single imperfection. The work was perfect.

He moved the cloth up her body so that only a piece of work on her thigh was exposed. Examined. Double-checked. Moved the cloth further up her body. He explored every inch of the work. Work he'd spent a year creating.

Now he would finish her, and it would be over. A sense of accomplishment, along with a sense of loss, threatened to overwhelm him. But he suppressed the emotions, kept his mind pitch black.

Steele opened the ivory handled straight razor. It was his sigil. Both a ceremonial tool, setting the blonde on her path to enlightenment, and a protective talisman, shielding him from his enemies.

He pulled the red cloth back exposing her shoulders, neck, and head. He brought the razor up to her face. "Do you recognize what this is?"

The blonde's eyes popped open and locked onto the straight razor. Her body stiffened.

Steele tilted the handle allowing the sunlight pouring in through window to glint off the blade. A teardrop streaked across the top of the blonde's nose.

"I thought you might," he said.

It wasn't the first time the blonde had seen the razor--she'd watched him use it on her husband--but it was the first time she'd ever seen him prepare to use it on her. Clearly, she worried he would kill her and leave her body in the same alley he had discarded her husband's in. He saw it in her eyes, her quivering lip.

"You have nothing to fear," he soothed her. "I'm not going to kill you."

Her muscles relaxed ever so slightly.

He climbed on the bed; the mattress sank beneath his knees. He straddled her back and carefully scratched at the skin on her lower back with the non-cutting edge of the blade. She shuddered as the cool metal touched her skin. He dragged it up and down her spine leaving thin white lines. He scraped at her arms. Watched the white lines form and quickly fade.

Her dragged the blade across her shoulders. Her muscles tensed and relaxed with each passing.

When she tensed no more he pushed her hair up and out of the way with his free hand and positioned the razor on the back of her neck. He took a slow deep breath, held her head firmly, and then whispered in her ear, "Don't move. Don't even twitch."

The blonde froze.

He stretched her skin taut between his finger and thumb and cut a two-inch vertical line parallel and to the right of the line of her spine. Her skin parted with a quiet sound like a zip-lock bag opening with a snap at the end.

The first time Steele ever cut someone, that sound and that feeling of the blade piercing the flesh had bothered him. But only the first time.

The blonde's knuckles whitened around the metal of the headboard. Through the tape covering her mouth, she made a sound that could have been a whimper of pain, but he thought it more likely a moan of release. She was certainly in pain on some level, but wouldn't be for long. Her endorphins would quickly kick in and her awareness would retreat from her physical senses. The feeling of pain would become more distant and the sensation of the blade edge moving through her flesh would feel more like the severing of strings of tension within her soul. He considered it a very cleansing experience.

A horizontal cut followed the vertical one, starting above and a half-inch to the right of the first cut, slicing down at an angle to meet it. Because the straight razor wasn't designed for this kind of work, it took all Steele's skill and concentration to keep the cuts precise. Much of the masterpiece adorning her body was created with various types of scalpels, not the straight razor. The razor was for beginnings and endings.

The blonde's nostrils wheezed as they strained for air. Her grip on the headboard tightened. Raw power flowed out of her body and into the blade as he worked.

A third cut, below the second, left her marked with a symbol a bit like an "F" with the horizontal lines slanting upwards: an upright Fehu rune, a symbol of fire representing a possession earned and success. Reversed, the rune was a symbol of bondage.

Steele repeated the process, reversing the symbol and placing it to the left of her spine. The blonde let out a quiet sob, which she hadn't done in quite some time--she'd become quite a good sitter--and Steele cooed encouragement to her while making the final cut.

The two runes, side by side, made up his mark, his signature. They immediately identified him as the creator of the work. Now that she bore them, she was complete.

Steele slid off her back into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He let the feelings he had been holding back assault his body.

Euphoria and satisfaction surged through him in hard pulses.

Blood ran down from the wounds on the blonde's neck. He stared as if transfixed by it, but he didn't actually see it. He was no longer there. His body sat on the bed. His eyes were open. His heart knocked in his chest. But he no longer saw with his eyes or felt with his body. He had moved from the physical world into an ethereal one that radiated pure power and creativity, a place stripped of memory triggers and commercialized patterns. A place where there was no socio-political climate to squelch his individuality, where he found a kind of peace, became centered, communed with the gods.

The euphoria lasted only a few moments. His mind slowly returned to the physical world.

He collected a small spray bottle and a towel from the nightstand. He sprayed the new markings on the blonde's neck with a solution to help the blood clot and protect her from infection. The blonde's arms and legs immediately went taut as the mist touched her fresh cuts, but she was strong. She didn't cry.

He set the bottle aside, toweled the moisture from her body, and bandaged her. Then he gently pulled the duct tape from her mouth and whispered in her ear. "You did very well."

"I am thankful," she said.

He patted her on her head. Of course she was.

It was rare for an artist to be satisfied with his work. Feelings of dissatisfaction plagued him just as they did any other artist. But since starting work on the blonde he had only felt confidence. The work on her had never failed to exceed his expectations. It commented on the work of his mentors, the artists he'd followed, and broke through the boundaries they'd set. It shattered the preconceived notions of all the work that had come before it. What he had created was important. Would be remembered. Would change the way people saw art.

He removed the blonde's restraints. Then he leaned over her and kissed her on the cheek. Later, they would enjoy a lengthy chat regarding her experience with the cutting. Now it was time to move on.

Steele drifted into the living room and opened the mahogany armoire. Four large video monitors stared back at him. Each was capable of displaying as many as four images from up to four cameras at a time. Two monitors were dedicated to the brunette: One a straight-on shot capturing her from head to foot and the other an angled view capturing her profile from head to knees. They gave him the most complete views of her bare flesh. Two other cameras could reach her on the tree, but they were trained on the property.

He sat down. The antique wooden rocker creaked and groaned under his weight, popped with the back and forth movement of his frame.

The blonde, robed in thick red cotton, brought him a glass of sweetened tea with a wedge of lemon and placed it on the coffee table at his side.

He sipped from the glass savoring the icy sweetness. Then picked up his sketchpad.

The blonde sat on her knees in front of him. She looked at the monitors, saw the brunette, and put her head down. She doubled over, pressed her chest close to her knees. Moaned.

Steele ran his fingers through her hair. "As long as you remain true, you have nothing to fear."

The blonde calmed at these words, as she should. He'd told her the truth. She stood at the end of a difficult journey. A journey few people had the courage to complete, one that had saved her, transformed her, heightened her awareness, and given her purpose and fulfillment. Her decision to engage him that morning in her own little game with the cherry smell confirmed this. Soon she would be ready for her new name, her new life, the one he'd so carefully planned for her. Still, the blonde's worry-filled eyes remained focused on the monitors and the brunette.

He found himself eager to see what the blonde would do next. Her use of smell was clever and left him curious about her method. Of course, if she moved against him in a more direct way, he'd respond by sending her away. As much as he preferred having her with him, he could not allow that type of interference. Having studied his craft for two years in Japan, he knew he could send her there, to friends who would take her in, care for her as he instructed. Offers to buy her would come, and perhaps he would entertain those offers, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

He studied the brunette. No one had heard her cries for help. Much of her voice drowned out by the symphony of wind, leaves, and cackles of little creatures in the surrounding woods. Thick bark and damp earth had silenced what was left of her pleas long before they could make it to his closest neighbor more than two miles away. But, of course, the brunette had no way of knowing this. He was supremely confident in their solitude. There would be no rescue.

Steele sketched, recalling every minute detail of the demon-like beast he'd imagined that afternoon.

He enjoyed knowing what would happen next, watching the emotions that crawled across the brunette's face: the anger, denial, desperation, the ripples of resignation pulling her muscles downward, the quiver of fear in her bottom lip. Now she slept peacefully if not naturally.

This brunette had less heart, will, and motivation than the blonde. When he'd first bound the blonde she'd fought like some wild animal before giving up. This validated the choice he had made in taking the brunette. She yearned to break through her limitations, to throw off the role that had controlled her life, and become something more than what she had been.

He studied the nuances and curves of her figure. His eyes shifted from the sketchpad to her body then back to the sketchpad. But the image of the ragged, torn flaws around her pubic region kept popping into his mind. He carefully considered her flaws. The scars he'd discovered were certainly in an interesting location, but he couldn't seem to incorporate them into his design in a way that added to the demonic beast. Something wasn't right. He ripped off the top sheet of his pad. Sketched a second demon beast and a third. Still the beast and scars would not come together. It was no use. He could not force them to coalesce. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps she wasn't the one after all.

### Chapter 13

Tabitha answered her door in a short skirt and a T-shirt with BRUNETTES DO IT BETTER printed across the front. She dunked a piece of toast in her mug before kicking open the door for Eddie.

During the time he had known her, she had been a blonde, then a redhead. Now she had gone back to her natural wavy brunette hair, which she had pulled back into a ponytail exposing the small star-shaped red birthmark on her neck.

Eddie stepped inside her penthouse apartment and was greeted by the smell of brewing coffee. Some obnoxiously gorgeous blonde anchorwoman was on the TV talking about the possibility of bad weather rolling in.

"Thanks for letting me in," Eddie said. "I really appreciate it. Have you seen Paige?"

Eddie had heard people say two women can't be friends if both of them are pretty, but he thought it was how they saw themselves that mattered more in the equation than how they actually looked. Paige was beautiful, but she didn't seem to know it. When people would comment on her good looks she would dismiss what they said, fending off their compliments with her palm. Tabitha, however, knew she was beautiful, and she knew how to use that beauty. When people would comment on her good looks she would say, "I was an ugly, chubby baby and don't they always turn out to be the prettiest people?"

He didn't know if Tabitha had been ugly or chubby as a child. He hadn't seen any of her baby pictures, but he found it hard to imagine her as either. And if she had been ugly then she'd done a fine job of growing out of it.

Tabitha sauntered to her kitchen table, waved Eddie further in the apartment with her piece of toast. "No. I haven't seen her. Why?"

"I don't know where she is. I can't seem to catch her on her cell phone. I tried calling her work, but she's not answering. All I have is a short e-mail saying to meet her at your club tonight. I don't know what to do."

Tabitha shook her head and smiled. "I guess she finally left you, huh?"

Eddie rubbed his chin. "No. I'm serious. I think she's missing. I think she may have been abducted."

She looked at him with doubtful eyes. "You sure she didn't just wise up and leave you for someone worthwhile?"

Paige had met Tabitha a year ago at Tabitha's nightclub. Tabitha had been working the bar, spilling liquor into customers glasses, when Paige had dragged them into the place. They took a pair of stools in front of her. Paige bought the drinks. Tabitha poured them. They chatted about men for a couple of hours, as if he wasn't even there.

The two women became instant friends.

Tabitha was ultra independent, successful, and had an air of confidence about her, especially when it came to men and her own body, a package other women couldn't seem to help admiring. She was smart, oozed sex, and looked as though she could handle a man better than he could handle his own equipment. She did what she loved too, which he figured was why she didn't approve of him. She was convinced that he wasn't good enough for Paige. That he was the reason why she wasn't doing what she really wanted to be doing: painting. He wasn't sure she was wrong.

Tabitha pushed back from the table, crossed her arms, and stared hard at Eddie. "Didn't you guys have a fight this morning?"

"Well, yes."

"So maybe she's cooling off. Has anyone else talked to her?"

He didn't know how to answer that. Had someone talked to her? The cops had said they'd talked to her. But maybe they'd only talked to someone at the real estate office. He wasn't even sure whether someone at the real estate office had actually spoken with her. Perhaps they'd just told the police she was in a meeting with a client because that was what was marked on their schedule board.

"You're better friends than lovers," Tabitha said.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"There's no passion between you two. You're working for a graphic design company so you can rent a larger place. She's selling real estate to bring in extra cash. How fucked up is that for a writer and a painter?"

Eddie bristled. Who was she to tell them how to live? She didn't know what they went through. She didn't have to pay their bills.

"We do what we have to. You know how I grew up. So, I think I can speak with some authority on the subject. I just don't think you realize what she was suggesting. If she quit her job..."

Eddie had practically grown up in a dumpster. For stretches at a time food was the hottest commodity in his young life. He hadn't wanted to risk going back to that kind of living. What was so wrong with that?

Tabitha sipped her coffee, turned one corner of her lip up in a smirk. "When I talked to her this morning, she mentioned maybe leaving you. She said you followed her around the house acting all wounded until she finally got angry and told you to get out."

He stared at her trying to make sense of what she'd said. That wasn't the way it went down, which meant either Paige had lied to Tabitha or Tabitha was lying to him. Considering Tabitha's disposition towards him he considered the latter far more likely.

"She was angry," he said. "But she didn't say anything about leaving me. And she didn't tell me to get out."

"I told her she should leave you. I told her not to even bother packing. You'll never be able to provide for her like she deserves. You won't even support her following her dreams."

"Paige doesn't care about money and you know it."

"No. But you do. Don't you?"

Eddie said nothing for as long as he could stand Tabitha's questioning gaze, and he felt a bit like a heathen standing at a church altar. "Don't you think I know where she'd be if it wasn't for me?"

"Where she'd be? That's exactly the problem. You think this is all about her. It isn't. When was the last time you wrote anything? If you stay together, you'll both end up bitter and miserable."

Eddie slammed his fist down on the table. "You're wrong. I love Paige. I could never be miserable with her."

As much as Tabitha wanted to blame him for everything, there were things about his relationship with Paige that Tabitha couldn't understand.

She hadn't been there when they'd gone to New Orleans on their honeymoon. She didn't know what it was like to doze naked in the sweaty heat of the city after exchanging vows. Their hours unstructured. Their days uncounted.

At night he couldn't clearly distinguish her body from his own. They slept, awoke, and moved into one another without effort. No beginning. No end.

In the mornings they listened to the tinkling of spoons against bowls and cups against saucers as people ate in the downstairs café, the only light pouring through the open shutters of their second floor room. He remembered hearing the clack, clack of hard heels against the concrete in the street below.

Once, he'd lifted up from the bed and seen a group of women in airy dresses and large sun hats. Those women moved in a surreal slow-motion fashion from boutique to boutique, hunting happiness, what he already had.

Paige had still been painting then, and--when they'd managed to leave the hotel--she'd carried a sketchpad everywhere. Dressed in loose fitting cotton, they'd ambled through streets of the city in whichever direction took their fancy. When their stomachs rumbled, they stopped at the first restaurant they hadn't yet sampled. She snapped photos of the waiters as they took orders, of street musicians as they played. They'd barely spoken to one another during that exquisite week, not because they had nothing to say, but because there was nothing that needed saying. His cheeks hurt from all the smiling. She'd been unlike any woman he'd ever known.

No. He could never be miserable with Paige. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

Tabitha stood up from the table and put her coffee cup in the sink. "Well, I'd love to stick around and chat, but I can't. I'm off to see a wizard." She palmed her breasts, one in each hand, giving them a little squeeze. "A Doc's been popping in at the club and I'm hoping for a free examination. I think it's time for you to go."

Eddie followed her to the door. "So you're not worried about Paige? About her being missing? Don't you give a damn about your best friend?"

Tabitha smiled. "The only thing I'm worried about is getting to work on time. Who knows, maybe this Doc will give me a little extra squeeze. Makes my kitty shudder just thinking about it. Unlike you, I'll give Paige her space, buzz her later."

"But you don't understand. A man came into a restaurant and cut me." He showed her his bandaged hand. "He said his name was Nicholas. He said he had her."

Tabitha opened the door for him. "Was he hot? Did he tell you to get lost? If he did he could be my hero. Now why don't you go back to work Eddie? Put in some overtime. That's where you really want to be, isn't it?"

He couldn't believe her blasé attitude. What a friend. And no, work wasn't where he really wanted to be. He wanted to be at Paige's side, wherever that might be, to hold her in his arms and know that she was okay.

### Chapter 14

Paige ran through the thick of the forest. It was night, the moon a shard casting pale white light on the thin trail before her. Branches rattled like bags of bones, and limbs clung to her like cobwebs. She smelled dead fish. Water was nearby. Twigs and stones jabbed into the bottoms of her feet as she limped onward, her chest pounding.

The boughs came alive, snatched her off the ground, constricted around her arms and held her in place. Her body trembled. The trail she'd followed disappeared, swallowed by the trees and brush. The ground beneath her opened a giant maw, reached up, chewed at her legs. She screamed, fought to free herself, but couldn't break the grip of earth and trees. The tips of the branches picked and probed at her, and everywhere they touched her, pus-filled sores sprouted up on her body. She screamed.

Then light.

Glaring light bathing her.

And the warm aroma of baking bread. Paige's stomach grumbled with hunger.

She blinked. Blinked again. A bright ceiling lamp rained heat down on her face. Her head rested against something hard, and it took her a moment to realize where she was. The rough bark of the tree no longer tormented her skin. She wasn't on the tree anymore. She lifted her head, pain shot up the back of her neck, and she stiffened, momentarily closing an eye. The other had swelled shut. Everything in her vision tilted at odd angles.

She sat in a room, her wrists and ankles strapped to a metal chair bolted to the floor. A long mahogany dining room table stretched before her. Her eyes followed its length over several plates and platters covered with white cloth napkins to the opposite end where they found Edward.

Pushing back his chair, he stood. "Good. You're awake." Open palmed, he gestured toward the center of the table. "You must be hungry."

Paige didn't answer. An empty plate sat in front of her. The table wobbled in her vision and then settled down as if she'd just climbed off a tilt-a-whirl.

Her head pounded harder than the worst case of red wine brain throb. But at least the leather collar was gone. She could no longer feel its thick grip around her throat.

The house was stiflingly warm, even though she was still nude. A large bandage stained red with blood was taped to her chest. The inflamed skin beneath it pulsed with each beat of her heart.

What else had Edward done to her? Molested her while she was unconscious? He'd already assaulted her and exposed the most intimate secret in her life: Her scars. What else could he have done? Had he raped her? It didn't feel as if he had, but there were many ways to be violated. She thought of his fat fingers between her legs, his huffing breath in her ear, the way he'd pushed her hair over her ear. She shivered at the thought of him touching her again.

Edward uncovered a platter stacked with breaded catfish, a basket of wheat rolls, and bowls of rice and green beans.

"I made plenty," he said. He spoke in a conversational tone, as if they were on a dinner date and she wasn't kidnapped, wasn't naked, wasn't strapped to the chair.

The gleam in his eyes told her he wanted her reacting instead of thinkingshe'd figured that much out--and she wasn't going to do it. She didn't answer him.

"You can have as much of it as you like," he said. "I would be happy to feed you."

Disgusting. He obviously wanted her to eat, probably got off on the idea of taking care of her. The smell of the food made her stomach ache for it. She couldn't remember anything ever smelling so good. The only thing she'd eaten since dinner the night before was a Snicker's bar out of a snack machine that morning.

Wouldn't you love feeding me.

She continued to ignore him. She focused on studying her surroundings, holding back her fear.

The living area, dining area, and kitchen were all in one massive room. A yellow couch with a plaid blanket thrown over the top stood in front of an enormous bay window at one end of the room. The window was huge, like something you'd see in an aquarium. She half expected to see sharks or stingrays swimming on the other side of it, but the glass was dark with the coming night. A coffee table stood within easy reach of an old wooden rocker facing a closed armoire not far from the couch.

Edward's home, if this was his home, wasn't anything like she would have pictured. She'd had him pegged with his black leather and boots as a post-modern or contemporary meets biker-bar kind of guy.

On the wall across from her stood a large stone fireplace, the mantelpiece barren of knickknacks or photos, as were the walls. This house had nothing personal in it. The impersonal feel of the place was like show homes that builders filled with furnishings so house hunters could get a feel for what it might be like if someone actually lived there. Of course, it was obvious to everyone who walked in the doors that no one really did live there, which made it kind of creepy. And that was the vibe she got from Edward's house. Everything in it was show. Nothing looked real.

She pulled on the leather straps holding her wrists, testing them. Leather could be manipulated, stretched, even torn in the right conditions. The straps pinched at her skin. There was quite a bit of slack in the restraints, but not enough for her to slip a hand out. A simple belt-like buckle at the bottom held the restraints around her wrists. If she could only get one hand out. That's all it would take. Then she would be free in seconds.

"I see you're still playing rebellious," Edward said.

Copper cooking pots hung from a rack above a granite top island in the kitchen. Just let me get a hold of one of those pots, and I'll show you playing rebellious.

The cabinets and cupboards beyond the copper pots were a weathered yellow. A white curtain hung in front of a window above the sink. It had to be the window she'd looked in while chained to the tree.

He stared at her, his eyes pulling hers to his. Something in his eyes had always made him look dangerous. She had to admit she'd once found that part of him attractive, but now it made him seem more like a creature than a man. His eyes had a grayish cast like those of a dog or a wolf. She remembered his eyes being a deep hazel when they met, not gray. There was a flatness behind them that unnerved her.

He didn't say anything, didn't move. He was waiting for her to answer. Let him wait.

Edward picked up a roll, knifed a small amount of butter on it, took a bite. "The rolls are still warm. Quite delicious."

As fragrant as the food smelled, especially the bread, and as much as she thought she might need the strength it could provide, she couldn't imagine eating anything he had touched. Besides, what she really wanted was something to drink. Between her yelling and whatever drug he had given her to knock her out, her throat feel abraded, as if it had been roughed up with sandpaper and stuffed with tissue. It was so dry it nearly gagged her.

"You know, you're going to have to learn to answer me when I speak to you or I'm going to become very displeased," he said. "I've been quite tolerant."

She tried to swallow away the thirst from her throat. "Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice cracking. "Why me?"

She wondered at the calmness and fearlessness that seemed to be welling up from somewhere deep inside her. Was it because she had known him as a client? She didn't know. He had drugged her. She knew that. She still felt somewhat disoriented from whatever he had given her, and she thought maybe her calmness could be some kind of side effect. Wherever her composure came from, she was thankful for it.

"First, you should eat," he said.

She kept her eyes scanning the room. "I'm not hungry."

Two stainless steel doors stood at the far end of the kitchen. She'd never seen anything like them in a house. They reminded her of meat locker doors. One of those doors had to lead out, but she wasn't sure which.

Edward stepped around the table and strode to her with the knife in one hand and the roll in the other. As he approached, the words "force feeding" went through her mind. Her chest constricted, and it felt as if an army of red ants were biting the cuts he'd made on her chest. Her hands trembled, and she gripped the armrests of the chair so Edward wouldn't be able to tell. So much for her feelings of calmness and fearlessness.

He squatted down until he was face to face with her, brushed her hair out of her eyes.

"You look hungry," he said.

"Well, I'm not."

"Did I ever tell you how my grandmother loves to fish?" he asked. "She taught me how, used to take me fishing every month. Now I take her. She loves a good struggle with a nice big cat."

Well, good for you. You psycho. It didn't shock her that he had a grandmother who cared for him. That was how things in her world had always worked. People who didn't deserve a grandma had one who would take them fishing. The people who really needed one ended up strapped to a chair in a lunatic's house.

"I caught the fish yesterday," he said. "Out of one of my stocked ponds. They're corn fed, deep-fried. Very tasty. It's Grandma's recipe."

He ran the edge of the roll he'd bitten into across her lips basting them in a thin film of butter. Her stomach grumbled in yearning.

"See? You are hungry," he said.

Paige turned her head away and spat the butter off her lips. "What are you going to do to me?"

"You should eat. I know you like fish."

He was so close she could smell cinnamon toothpaste on his breath. It cured her hunger, nearly made her vomit. She bit back the bile. "I said I'm not hungry. I won't eat."

Her body tensed for the blow. None came.

Edward stood back up, placed the roll on her empty plate, and strolled back to his chair.

"I am thirsty," she said. "May I have something to drink?"

She hated asking, but each breath burned her throat. In her ears the pleading quality of her voice sounded revolting. She was appalled by the thought of drinking anything that was his, but she couldn't help herself. She had to have something to drink.

He turned back toward her, pursed his lips together, and then nodded.

A hand touched Paige on the shoulder. She jumped and the straps pulled at her wrists. She would have leapt out of the chair had her restraints not held her firmly in place. They weren't alone.

### Chapter 15

Eddie kept the accelerator on the floor until he turned into Red Rooster Coffee's parking lot. It was the last place he knew Paige had been.

Tabitha was being an idiot just as Officer Tucker had been an idiot. That man was completely incompetent. Eddie didn't believe he had spoken to Paige, he didn't believe anyone had spoken to her. And now hours had been wasted.

Paige's Volkswagon was parked in front of him. No sign of Paige. He climbed out of the car, rushed into the coffee shop. Still no sign of Paige. He hurried by a few of the nearby businesses, peering in as he went. No Paige. He stopped at her car, unlocked the doors, looked inside. Nothing.

He raced back inside the coffee shop, asked around. Asked the employees working the counter and the customers sitting near the window if they'd seen anyone with Paige's description. Seen anyone get out of the VW parked in the lot. No one had seen a thing.

Eddie climbed back behind the wheel of his car. The city sprawled across six hundred square miles, and Paige could be anywhere in it. Maybe even beyond it by now. A large army would have trouble finding her. Going on a one-man manhunt wasn't really a practical option. He didn't have a single clue as to where she might be, where else he should look. He'd left messages everywhere he knew to leave them.

He contemplated calling the police again, but quickly decided against it. What would he say? That his wife had left her car in a coffee shop parking lot? That he hadn't talked to her all day? If he called 911, the police wouldn't do anything but chide him. Then he remembered James Vann. Why hadn't he thought of him sooner?

James Vann was a detective Eddie had done some graphic design work for. Eddie looked up his number on his cell and punched send. James was a tall gangly man in his early fifties who spoke with an unenunciated drawl. But you couldn't let his accent fool you. The man held doctorates in both criminology and philosophy. His favorite hobby was fencing, and his second favorite hobby was dabbling in the stock market where he'd made a small fortune. He also happened to sing country music. But that wasn't the reason why Eddie was calling him. The man owed Eddie a favor.

On the third ring, James answered. "Hello?"

"James? Eddie Knight. Remember me?"

"Sure, how could I forget you kid? You did the cover art on my CD. Great job you did. Did I ever tell you that? Well, you did. Thanks for doin' it. So how are things going?"

"It's probably nothing," Eddie said.

"Then I'll still owe you one, won't I?"

Eddie smiled, weaved in and out of traffic. James was definitely one of the good guys. It only took him a few minutes to fill James in on what had happened at the restaurant with Nicholas. And it only took James a few seconds to tell Eddie there wasn't much he could do about it.

"You just don't have enough, kid. You have any idea how many guys out there are named Nicholas? I mean if you'd have seen the license plate on his car that'd be something. The best I can do with what you have is pull a list of every Nick, Nicholas, and Nicolai that's in our database and see if anybody looks like they fit the part. But that's going to be one long list, and it's going to take you some time to look at all those ugly mugs."

Eddie didn't have time to go looking through a bunch of mug shots. Not now.

"She could be in serious trouble, James. What if he has her? What would you do?"

James was silent for a moment. "Good point. She carry a cell phone?"

"Always."

"Give me the number. I'll see what I can do with that. In the meantime you could file a missing persons report, but it won't amount to much. It's not as if they'll send out an army of police choppers and uniforms to hunt for her."

"Do I need to come in to file the report?"

"No. I can do it over the phone for you. Why don't you give me a call after ten. If she hasn't shown up, I'll file the missing persons report. Until then, I'll see what I can chase down with her cell phone number. It may take a while though."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Chances are this is nothing. Some guy who has an interest in Paige flexin' his muscles and all. You'll probably never see him again. But just to be safe why don't you stick to public places. Keep your eyes open. If he shows his face again, you give me a call."

"Will do."

Finally someone was helping. Finally someone else was looking for Paige. All he could do now was head for the club and wait. Hope that she was okay. Hope that she showed.

### Chapter 16

Paige half expected the person who'd touched her to be Edward's grandmother, but it wasn't. It was a woman though. A woman wearing a thick red cotton robe, her eyes downcast. The hair on Paige's arms rose.

The blonde woman's face was a near perfect pale oval. Her hair swept around her face in a platinum nimbus. It hurt Paige's sore neck to stare up at her at the odd angle, but she couldn't look away. A twinge of unwanted jealousy swelled up in her at the woman's beauty. Then she saw the woman's eyes. Pale blue, shallow, and dim, nearly lifeless.

"A drink," Edward commanded.

The woman lifted her eyes from the floor to Edward then glided around the table. The edge of her long robe dragged the ground, and her steps were so graceful and soundless, she appeared to float across the floor.

Arriving at the kitchen counter, she removed a small glass from the shelf then turned and took a plastic pitcher from a cabinet mounted refrigerator. Paige wouldn't have known it was a refrigerator if she hadn't seen the woman open it. She filled the glass with what looked like tea.

"Water from the tap, please," Paige said. She didn't want to be drugged again.

The woman glanced at Edward who nodded. She then emptied the glass into the sink and, after rinsing it out, filled it again, this time with tap water.

Paige watched.

Edward watched.

When the woman returned, she held the glass up to Paige's lips. The glass quivered almost imperceptibly in her grip.

Paige didn't want to know what Edward had done to this woman to make her serve him with such obedience. The whole display sickened her. She promised herself then that no matter what else happened she wouldn't serve this man, ever. She would die before she would submit to him.

Looking up at the blonde woman as she drank, Paige attempted to share some non-verbal communication through eye contact, but the woman wouldn't look at her. She looked at a spot on the floor to Paige's side. Whatever it was she looked at, if anything, Paige couldn't see it from this angle. She stretched out her fingers, brushed them against the woman's robe in order to get her attention, but still she did not respond.

"Thank you," Paige said when the glass was empty, her throat feeling much better. "I'm Paige."

Edward barked a small laugh. The woman took the glass back into the kitchen, placed it in the sink, and crossed the room to Edward's side. He gripped her by the shoulders, rotated her like a mannequin on a display until she faced Paige. The woman still wouldn't look at her.

"Since you refuse to eat, we will talk," Edward said. "As a student of art, the names Botticelli, Dali, Klimt, and Monet must be familiar to you. But what about Booth, Garza, Ouellette, Steele, or Zpira?"

Paige was confused. Why was he talking about artists? Surely his whole bit about her running his gallery had been nothing more than a clever ruse. Why continue it?

"I can see by the look on your face those names aren't familiar," he said. "Unfortunately, I can't say I'm surprised. The elitist non-artists who dominate the fine arts community still predominantly ignore our medium."

He ran his fingers up and down the blonde woman's arms.

"You asked why I am doing this," he continued. "And the answer is simple. Because I have to. I understand that may be bit vague and perhaps unbelievable from your current perspective, but you're an artist. Surely you can understand how art is more a compulsion than an intentional action. Now, let me show you what it is I do."

Edward reached up to the blonde woman's shoulders and slid the robe off her.

She stood nude and hairless beneath the robe. Large silver studs pierced each of her nipples. Something had been painted on her body: A tattoo-like image of a gleaming copper and red snake wrapped horizontally across her waist and down her leg. Each scale shimmered as she moved.

Paige gasped. It can't be. But it was.

She wasn't looking at a painted image or even a typical tattoo. This was something much more horrifying.

The woman's skin had been cut, scarred, and tattooed. The hundreds of red lines that gave the snake its form and color were actually open wounds. The shadows, ink from a tattoo gun. It was unlike anything Paige had ever seen.

Edward turned the woman until her back faced Paige.

The snake image spiraled up and around the woman's body in a lusty embrace with the head resting between and just above the woman's shoulder blades. The snake's forked tongue flicked up at her neck. There were ridges over the snake's eyes. Something had been inserted under her skin to raise it up. They looked similar to keloids, but that wasn't what they were. Each bump was too perfectly shaped.

"Beautiful," Edward said. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Paige didn't know what to say. The disgusting display of mutilation appalled her. It had to be written all over her face. She was thankful the woman wasn't looking at her, that she couldn't see her reaction to what Edward had done to her body, and she wished, for the woman's sake, that she'd had the forethought to suppress her gasp. The woman didn't need the additional slap to her self-image. Paige understood that kind of slap all too well, and this woman had been through enough by suffering the disfigurement alone.

There wasn't any doubt left in Paige's mind that Edward had long left the world of the civilized to join the ranks of scavengers on the outer edges of humanity.

He was beyond psychotic.

"One of the purposes of art is to change our perspective," he said. "This art form is called scarification, although extensive flesh removal and tattooed shading were also involved."

"You are one sick crazy fuck," she told him.

He smiled with bright cruelty. Clearly her reaction had pleased him.

"This form of art has been around for thousands of years. The patterns can have both deep spiritual and symbolic meaning. I call this work Sacred Lébé. It's a blood python."

"Why? Why would you do that to someone?"

Edward put the robe back around the woman's shoulders, and she slipped her arms inside.

"You are so naive. It's really quite charming," he said. "I have a three-year waiting list of clients eager to receive my designs, and they pay very well. It's never been much of a problem for me to find someone willing to receive an image. The problem has always been one of artistic choice."

His eyes regarded her with an icy interest.

"You see," he continued, "artists in nearly every medium have the opportunity to select the object that will receive their work. We, in this medium, rarely have that luxury. Clients often demand a specific design and pick the placement of the image. This is especially the case for new artists. Of course, once you've gained some notoriety, along with a list of people waiting to receive the work of your hand, you can be more selective."

He gestured toward the table, and the blonde woman spooned rice, green beans, and fish onto his plate.

"You can, on occasion, even demand a specific location," he said. "But even then you are forced to deal with constraints. Clients are often already adorned with various works from other artists or have marked their own body in some act of self-mutilation. Even if you find a client devoid of markings and willing to completely submit to your artistic will, you still have to deal with issues such as skin pigment, appearance, body shape, size."

Edward sat back in the chair and the blonde woman fetched him a glass, filled it from the pitcher.

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is, even with a long list of clients, to find the absolute perfect canvas for my work?"

Edward cut his fish into small squares, took a bite.

Paige looked down at her chest, at the bandage covering the cuts he'd made. A dark wonder passed over her like a dizzy spell. Her heartbeat accelerated. She sucked in deep breaths of the warm air. She was going to faint. He meant to do to her what he'd done to the woman. He meant to scar her, and he'd already started.

"Now do you understand?" Edward asked, his voice low, excited. "I chose you because you have the right temperament, because you have the right look, because I thought you would be the perfect canvas for my greatest work yet. I believed you were special."

"No," she said, more to herself than to him. "No. No. No." She wouldn't allow it.

"No? You think you have some choice in this?"

"Wait." It was as if her mind were absorbing his words at a slower rate than her ears. "You said, you thought I was the perfect canvas. Now you don't?"

Edward didn't answer.

"Because I'm already scarred? What are you going to do?"

He tilted his head, looked at her strangely, the gleam gone from his eyes.

"And that's the real question, isn't it? What to do with you. I had hoped to save you. But perhaps I should just end your suffering."

### Chapter 17

Eddie didn't like bars or nightclubs. He never had. Drinking, dancing, and hobnobbing in meat markets was a colossal waste of time.

When he'd turned twenty-one, he'd let a few friends drag him into a pair of bars, three nightclubs, and a strip-club for his birthday.

He went because he had never been and because they begged him to go, wouldn't leave him alone about it. "Come on, man..." "It's your birthday..." "Don't be a jerk..."

Watching people get drunk in the bars was depressing and paying to see his friends slip dollar bills in the G-strings of a bunch of topless women just wasn't right in his mind. He didn't want a sex object. He wanted a soul mate. He would have preferred an evening at home on the couch with a tall Coke and a nice creepy Dean Koontz novel.

Ever since that birthday outing he had avoided all such places, even Tabitha's nightclub, Isis.

The traffic light changed, and he scrambled across the street toward the club. It was twilight. Dozens of blackbirds perched across the edge of the building. Their droppings painted the top bricks of the club and the cacophony of their chirping sounded like cats screaming in the distance.

A long line of pleasure seekers snaked from under a gold sign, down the sidewalk, and around the building. Eddie scanned the features of the people on the red brick walkways for some sign of Paige. She wasn't there.

Where the line of hopeful customers started, Bill and Bob--the style and beauty brigademanned red velvet ropes. Bill was the skinny one in the shimmering blue shirt. He held the automatic in-list rolled up in his hand. He decided which people not on the list, if any, would make the cut. Bob was the fat one in the black T-shirt with SECURITY printed on the front. He was the bouncer who walked people through the metal detector and enforced Bill's will.

Most of the people in line would spend the night waiting outside, and they knew it, yet they still waited. Stupidity in action. He wouldn't waste the time. He knew it was Paige's style and beauty, and later her friendship with Tabitha, that had gotten him past them.

It hit Eddie then that he might not make it past those ropes. What if he wasn't on the list? What if Bill and Bob didn't recognize him? Paige wasn't with him. Bill and Bob liked the power their job gave them, and they'd heard every line ever conceived to try to get past them. "My wife's inside," and "I'm friends with the owner," probably being two of the more common ones. If Tabitha had taken his name off the list, there would be no talking his way past them.

Eddie tucked his shoulders back and tried to look as confident as possible as he approached. Bill glanced at his list, didn't say anything. Bob looked Eddie up and down and said, "Hey, Eddie."

Remembering his name was a good sign. Eddie nodded.

"Hello, Bob."

Bill and Bob stood there for a few seconds looking at him and making him feel uncomfortable. He looked from Bill to Bob then back to Bill. He wasn't sure what he would do if they wouldn't let him in. Wait outside? Then Bob lifted the rope.

Eddie blew a quick breath of relief, tossed his keys to Bob, and stepped through the metal detector. Several people in line grumbled at his preferential treatment. A quick look in their direction from Bill silenced them. Bob handed his keys back and patted him on the shoulder. The pat felt like sympathy and Eddie cringed at the thought that Bob knew something he didn't.

He quickened his pace through the door before Bob had a chance to say anything. There was no way he was going to risk having a chat with Bob the bouncer about his wife.

Eddie hadn't come to talk about his wife, he had come to talk to her, to find out what "We need to talk" was all about. He felt he was going to be hit hard by something, and he didn't like it.

In his experience, the words "We need to talk" rarely came to any good. His mind went into overdrive with every negative possibility. Maybe Paige was going to follow Tabitha's advice and leave him. Maybe she was seeing someone else, some asshole like Nicholas. Maybe she planned on coming clean about an affair. Maybe she wanted a divorce.

No. Don't think like that. Don't be negative and full of doubt. Paige wanted to talk. That was all. Hell, she might be meeting him here to celebrate a big sale. This could be good news.

Gold Egyptian hieroglyphics covered the walls of the short hallway leading into the club. Bass from techno music vibrated the bottom of Eddie's jeans and shook the walls. Every few moments--mixed into the music's rhythm--David Lee Roth's twangy voice repeated, "Everybody wants some. I want some too." Smoke billowed around Eddie's feet.

Despite his aversion to clubs, the atmosphere intoxicated him. Called up primal instincts he forgot he had. It cut through his apprehension, pulled at him, whispered to him. Forget your troubles. Come drink. Come dance. He supposed that was part of reason why he didn't like clubs. He wanted to walk differently in them, to stride around as if he was somebody important when he knew he wasn't. It was almost enough to drag him out onto the dance floor, and he didn't even like to dance. That was a testament to Tabitha's ability. She knew what she was doing and there could be no doubt about it. She was a nightclub goddess.

Eddie sidestepped several tables and elbowed his way through the dance floor crammed with people grinding against one another. Anger, fear, and worry charged through him and yet a strange calmness swept over him at the same time.

It was as if two Eddies inhabited the same body and neither of them had full control. One worried about Paige and wallowed in a deep consuming apprehension. The other went about as if nothing had happened. With methodical precision, it analyzed, made decisions, moved through the club and into action.

Club Isis was crowded, packed with uninhibited youth dancing and spending money. The mingled scents of smoke, sweat, and liquor fused together, encircling him. Eddie preferred the seats away from the crowd. He made his way past the bar, shuffling past patrons and waitresses to an empty table against the wall. He spilled into the chair. He hoped Tabitha wouldn't spot him anytime soon. He could do without another chat about his relationship with Paige.

Tabitha stood where he expected to find her, at the end of the bar, as close to the dance floor as she could get. She wore a black tank top with the words PLAY MORE, THINK LESS printed on the front in white glitter. The shirt was at least one size too small, maybe two. Gold hoop earrings dangled from her lobes.

Even though Tabitha owned the place, she made it a point to work the bar. "Honey," she'd say, "that's where all the action is."

A wall of customers stood across from her. She drizzled clear liquor into half a dozen shot glasses, sucked one back, and distributed the rest while snatching cash from fingers. Eddie looked for Paige among the people, didn't see her, but that didn't surprise him. He was a couple of hours early. Still, he'd feel a lot better once he'd seen her.

Wendy, an athletic young woman with dark eyes and long, raven black hair dodged her way to his table. He knew her name because she'd waited on him every time Paige dragged him into the place. He ran his hand through his hair trying to get himself under control, to fit in, and raised his voice over the music once she stood next to him.

"It's like you're the only waitress that works here," he said.

"What?"

"Every time I come in here it seems like you're the only one working the tables."

"Feels that way to me, too." She smiled. "You want the usual? A Coke?"

"Yeah, but bring me a shot, too."

A shot might do him some good, seemed like a good way to mellow before the storm.

She raised an eyebrow. "You want a shot?"

With the music so loud, she probably thought she hadn't heard him right. He'd never ordered liquor from her before.

"Yeah."

"Of what?"

"Bring me whatever Tabitha is having."

"You got it." She turned and made her way back to the bar.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, tapped a button and glanced at the display as it lit up. Damn. No missed calls.

Paige had said her phone was dead, but he'd figured she'd have charged it by now. Pressing the speed dial digit assigned to Paige, he brought the phone to his ear, and the call went straight to voicemail. Eddie hung up without leaving a message.

The cut on his hand had finally quit throbbing, felt stiff more than anything else, and he flexed it a couple of times to try and work out some of the stiffness.

"You look like shit," Tabitha said. She stood across from his table, one hand playing with a short gold chain dangling from a navel ring.

Eddie looked up at Tabitha's face. Damn. Damn. He'd hoped to avoid her for a little while longer. "I've been better."

"You've looked better, that's for sure. Not that you ever look that great." She sat down and leaned toward him. "You find Paige?"

He'd hoped she wouldn't sit like she was with her chest bulging out at him. His face reddened from cleavage exposure. He didn't understand why she made it a point to act like this. Whatever her reasoning, he kept his eyes moving: from the table, to the DJ, to the crowd--anywhere but her chest.

"I don't know. She's supposed to meet me here."

"I'm glad you came in. I've been thinking about you since our chat earlier."

"Have you talked to her?"

"No, but that doesn't mean anything. The place has been busy."

Eddie frowned, watched the crowd, not really seeing them as people, just a moving mass of flesh. Strobes flashed over them like seductive beacons of light calling through the darkness.

"Did you come up with some fresh ways to tell me how much you hate me?" Eddie asked.

"I don't hate you. I just don't think you and Paige are being good for each other. You don't support one another. I'm vocal about it because I care."

He locked his eyes on hers. "Could have fooled me. I told you Paige might be missing and you didn't seem to give a shit."

Tabitha lit a cigarette and puffed on it. "You know, we've never really talked, you and I. Have we?"

"No. I guess we haven't."

He figured if Tabitha was going to get in on his discussion with Paige, and she probably would, he ought to smooth things out between them as much as he could before Paige arrived. Besides, she had his curiosity up. She'd never really showed an interest in talking to him before.

Wendy returned with the Coke and the shot, left them on the table, and then disappeared back into the swarm of writhing arms, legs, pelvises. Eddie slammed back the shot and waited for the warmth to work its way into his body before chasing it with a bit of Coke.

"You're drinking?" Tabitha asked. "That'll solve all your problems."

Eddie stared into the bottom of the glass. "Just one shot."

Tabitha smiled. "Hey, maybe you should have a couple more. Maybe then you'd be less of a prick."

"Thanks. I'm fine." He didn't care what she thought of him. She'd never see him as anything more than what she'd pegged him to be, a prick, no matter what he did. He didn't want to get drunk, drown his problems. He wanted to take the edge off before he talked to Paige. Not that he expected Tabitha to understand that.

She rained ashes into an ashtray.

"Is Paige cheating on me?"

He tried not to feel guilty about asking Tabitha before giving Paige an opportunity to defend herself face to face, but he wasn't successful. They were married, and he ought to have talked to her first. He justified it by telling himself that he deserved to know the truth.

Tabitha didn't say anything. She just sat there looking at him with her eyebrows pinched together. She'd clearly been thrown off by his question. He understood how she felt. It threw him off asking it. But Nicholas had him doubting.

"Why don't you just give up?" Tabitha said. "Don't you get it?"

Something other than condescension laced her tone, and he tried hard to shrug it off, to get past it and find out what she knew. What she wasn't saying. Clearly she wanted to tell him something. Tabitha would know if Paige was cheating. And Tabitha had no reason to hide it from him. She wanted him gone.

"You didn't hear it from me," she finally said.

The air around Eddie thickened. The hurt and anger of Paige's infidelity punched through his chest in a twisted combination that astonished him. His eyes welled up, and he turned away from Tabitha, blinked back tears. If he lost control now, he didn't think he'd be able to get it back. He focused his mind on the questions racing through his mind.

"Have you met him?"

"No, I haven't met him."

"How long has she been seeing him?"

"A few months."

A few months? Unbelievable.

"She's actually been cheating on me?"

An image of Paige and Nicholas together, going at it like porn stars, pushed its way onto the projection screen of Eddie's mind. He fought hard to force the image out of his head, but everywhere he looked in the club there was skin grinding on skin.

Tabitha turned away from the table, looked out at her dance floor.

Wendy hustled by and Eddie signaled to her for another shot.

"You haven't been cheating on her, have you?" Tabitha asked.

"No."

"Not that you would tell me if you were."

"Come on, Tabitha. I'm a one-woman guy."

"Hey, things happen. I'd understand."

"Well, nothing's happened. I wouldn't do that to her. I love her."

At a table across from Eddie, a young man wearing a stocking cap pulled down so far it nearly covered his eyes stood amid three young women with various shades of cotton candy colored hair. The man did a circling motion with his finger ordering the ladies another round then cocked his head to one side like a confused dog.

Maybe he should have bought Paige more drinks. Maybe he should have taken her out more often. Maybe he hadn't been fun enough for her.

Wendy returned with his shot, and he downed it as soon as she put it on the table. He looked toward Tabitha to see if she wanted anything, and she waved a hand no. He ordered a double, and Wendy shuffled back into the mob to get it. He'd have to remember to give her a really big tip for all the extra running back and forth he was making her do.

It all made sense now. Tabitha's lack of concern. Nicholas showing up and threatening him at the restaurant. Paige's e-mail wanting to "talk."

As he fought to maintain control, Tabitha slid her chair over next to his. Her eyes softened. She smelled like limes and coconut. Wendy brought him the double, and he stared at it. Couldn't force himself to drink it.

The music changed, and Eddie's shot glass rattled on the table to a hip-hop beat he'd never heard before.

Eddie looked up and saw a man who was at least twenty years older than the rest of the crowd bounce his way across the dance floor looking for someone, anyone, to dance with. He had a thick gray beard and wore red leather pants. As the man moved toward women on the dance floor they flipped their backs to him like magnets with the polarity reversed. Eddie wondered how the man had made it past the style and beauty brigade out front.

Paige would be trying to drag Eddie out on the dance floor if she were here. She loved to dance. Maybe he should have danced with her more often. Maybe he should have told her she was beautiful more often.

Tabitha watched him, studied him. He could only imagine what emotions flashed across his face.

"When was the last time you had something to eat?" she asked.

"This morning, but I'm not really in the mood to eat."

She blew a raspberry at him. "Nonsense." She signaled Wendy back over to the table. "You have to eat. You'll feel better after you eat."

Club Isis didn't serve food, but several restaurants nearby did. Tabitha spoke to Wendy, and she scampered off toward the exit. That tip was going to have to be monstrous. Eddie felt a good quarter past mellow now. The alcohol was finally starting to do its job.

"We'll have something over here for you in a few minutes," Tabitha said.

The man on the dance floor in red leather pants had found a partner, a chubby girl with a large U shaped piercing through her nose. Eddie watched them dance awhile, the girl's butt banging away against the man's groin. The image of Nicholas and Paige going at it like porn stars popped back in his head and he nearly lost it again.

"Did Paige say why?" he asked.

"Does it matter? If she doesn't want to be with you, if she doesn't love you, if she's been cheating on you, why would you still want to be with her?"

"Because I love her."

Tabitha patted Eddie's hand. "Well, maybe you should think about starting over, finding someone new."

### Chapter 18

Paige didn't want to die, but she thought death might be preferable to what Edward had planned for her. A life of captivity. A life of servitude. A life of pain and disfigurement. She already knew what that was all about.

"We'll have to discuss your scars at length," Edward said forking a small piece of fish into his mouth, swallowing. "Knowing the history behind your scars could help inspire me to incorporate them into a design."

Paige averted her eyes. No way was she going to let Edward inside her mind by talking to him about her scars.

When she was twelve, a bump formed on her thigh under her panty line. She didn't think much of it, just another weird zit popping up in a weird spot. It was somewhat swollen and sore, a not yet ready to pop zit. But a few days later, it was still there, and it hadn't formed a head. And it hurt. It hurt all the time.

She tried cleaning it with soap, acne cream, lotions. She tried washing it with peroxide and rubbing alcohol. She even lathered it with Neosporin. But nothing seemed to help. In fact it only grew larger, hurt more. Finally, she tried the natural solution.

She squeezed the large bump as hard as she could. She squeezed and tears flowed. The bump seemed to have a direct connection to the pain center in her brain, lancing a fire of agony up her thigh to the back of her skull. But it popped. Drained. And the relief she felt was unlike any she'd ever felt before. She could sit without pain. She could walk without pain. She could move without pain. It was over, or so she thought.

A week later another bump sprung up a few inches from the first, which had never really healed. The skin around them itched, felt warm to the touch as if something in her thigh was being cooked on low heat.

Over the next few weeks more cyst-like lesions appeared in and around her perineum.

Every morning, before school, she would sit on the edge of the bathtub, crying, as she popped the nasty oozing sores, some larger than her thumb. If she didn't pop each cyst-like alien, they could burst as she walked between classes, soiling her clothing and leaving her smelling of rotting flesh. But some sores wouldn't pop no matter how hard she squeezed, wouldn't burst even after she'd pierced them over and over again with a sewing needle. Instead they ruptured while she sat at her desk or on the bus ride home. The smell of the green discharge nearly made her vomit.

The disease Hidradenitis Suppurativa caused her Apocrine sweat glands to swell. Swell until they exploded.

One boy at school teased her ceaselessly. He would tell her she smelled like a dead lizard. "Why don't you go home and take a bath?" he would say. "Take a bath! Take a bath! Take a bath!" he would chant on the bus ride home.

Paige lived with pain. Paige lived in tears. Paige lived alone.

When Ms. Whyte finally discovered her secret, she was forced to show her mother her sores.

Her mother took her to the doctor, but the doctor told them it was a hygiene problem. Paige was mortified. She showered and scrubbed and soaped, but nothing helped. The experience created an obsession with cleanliness and bathing that she hadn't been able to shake since. It wasn't until years later that she learned that Hidradenitis had nothing to do with hygiene.

She tried everything the doctors suggested from changing her diet, to lotions and crèmes, to antibiotics. And when something seemed to miraculously help, it never lasted more than a few days. Nothing really helped. The sores and pain always returned. She saw doctor after doctor only to learn that she often knew more about the disease than they did, and she didn't know much beyond the fact that the disease was an incurable, orphan illness that affected such a small percentage of the population that little or no research had been done on it. The doctors could do nothing for her.

It wasn't until she was in college that her sores suddenly vanished. She was one of the lucky sufferers of the condition. It had, thankfully, gone into remission for reasons unknown, but not until she'd been scarred horribly in the worst possible way. Everyday her scars reminded her that the disease could return at any moment, without warning.

She would bite off her tongue before she'd tell Edward one word about her disease.

"Your scars have an intriguing quality," Edward said. "I've never seen anything quite like them, and, as you might imagine, I've seen just about every kind of self-mutilation you can conceive of."

Thank God he thought they were from some form of self-mutilation and not her disease. There were many things she could stand, but this man having all the details about her condition wasn't one of them. She couldn't imagine what humiliation she would suffer if he knew. Luckily, since he didn't know what caused her scars, if it came to her being forced to tell him something, she would simply lie to him, tell him what he wanted to hear.

"When I return," he continued pushing his plate away and standing. "I'll want you to explain to me why you hurt yourself in that location."

When he returned? Was he going to leave? She found it hard to believe he would do that. No doubt he was playing with her. Surely he wouldn't leave, but a small flash of hope surged through her at the thought.

The blonde woman cleared the table and began washing the plates, bowls, and utensils. Steaming hot water hissed into the sink.

"What you're doing isn't right," Paige told him. "You can't do this to people."

Edward smirked, walked up close to her, ran his hand through her hair. Paige pulled away from him. The restraints bit into her wrists.

"There are cultures scattered throughout the world where tattoos, scarification, and body modifications are the norm," he said. "Most of the procedures performed, especially in Africa and the Middle East, are carried out on someone who has no real choice in the matter. I reject the idea of a morality limited by geography as ludicrous."

"It isn't right to mark someone like that. Against their will. No matter where it happens."

Edward slammed his fist down on the table. "Against their will? What about my will? Their will has no more value than my own, especially if my will saves their life."

Trying to reason with him was pointless. She knew that. She saw it in the determined set of his jaw, the confidence in his eyes, the matter of factness in his tone. But she couldn't help herself. She had to try.

"Your will hurts people," she said. "It doesn't save lives. Just because it's what you want doesn't give you the right to hurt other people to get it."

He pointed an accusatory finger at her. "But wouldn't you do exactly that? Aren't you here precisely because of what you wanted? There isn't any real difference between emotional scars and physical ones."

In a twisted way she thought Edward had a point even though he couldn't know it, could he? She had put her decision to paint ahead of Eddie. Sometimes he could be a little self-centered and controlling, but he was also loving. He cared about her, and she knew it. He just wanted the best for her. And she really loved him. He'd done so much for her, helped draw her out of her shell.

If it hadn't been for Eddie, she'd probably never gotten over her intimacy issues. After her first boyfriend snapped nude photos of her and showed them to all his friends, made fun of her scars, she left him and took the photos with her. Kept them to remind her what had happened. She became afraid of men after that, of letting her guard down, of getting hurt. She'd thought being intimate with a man and their learning about her condition--something she wasn't comfortable sharingcould only result in their making fun of her and eventually leaving her.

She'd been rejected too many times because of her scars, scars that the rest of the world would never see. Sure, the men that rejected her were shallow, but as she'd learned, more often than not, men in general were shallow, but Eddie wasn't. He'd been the first man who tried to really know her. When she'd met him, having a serious long-term relationship with a man was a risky dream she could only wish for. Eddie broke through her wall of solitude. He'd shown her what was possible. He'd shown her that someone who loved her wouldn't care about her condition. She should have at least talked to him before accepting Edward's offer to run the gallery. He deserved that much.

Edward raised his hand up, put it around her throat, and shoved her head back against the chair. She sucked air into her lungs. Edward peeled back her bandage. The tape pulled at her skin.

She looked down at her chest as best she could, but it was difficult to see with her head pinned to the back of the chair. She was anxious to get a look at the damage he'd done to her.

Edward's lips curled in disapproval.

The sound of running water from the sink stopped, and the blonde woman glided over, stood beside him. She carried a black old-fashioned doctor's satchel. She opened it.

Edward released Paige's throat, reached in and removed a pair of scissors. Then he snipped at her chest, pulled globs of bloody gauze off her with the scissors.

Paige looked down at her cuts. Blood oozed from those she saw, and they looked deeper than she'd expected. She couldn't tell what image, if any, the cuts formed.

Taking out a small cloth and spray bottle from the satchel, Edward dabbed at the cuts with the cloth and said, "You're bleeding more than I like. This will sting."

He sprayed and a fine mist dotted her chest.

It did not sting. It burned. It burned so deep she felt it in her back, as if acid were burning a hole completely through her, as if someone was grabbing the handful of skin between her breasts and was yanking it off her body. She coughed the air from her lungs. She thought she was going to pass out from the pulsing pain of it.

She jerked at the leather straps holding her arms and clenched her teeth together so tightly she thought her jaw might break. It was far worse than when he'd cut her. Nearly worse than the eruptions of her aliens.

"You're doing very well," he cooed to her.

She wanted to spit on him. She wanted to curse him. She wanted to kill him. But her body was locked in pain and her mind was pierced. She could do nothing.

When the pain eased enough that her body and brain began communicating something beyond just pain, she realized she was covered in sweat.

Edward patted her chest with a damp cloth, cooling and soothing her skin with each lingering touch. The blonde removed a jar from his satchel and handed it to him. He dipped his fingers into the jar.

"This will be much less intense," he said.

Paige's whole body flinched as he dabbed at her wounds with a greasy Vaseline-like substance sending sharp pangs of pain through her chest. When he finished, he looked at her with smug satisfaction then taped a new bandage to her chest.

"Now I have to get ready," he said taking her head in his hands, kissing the dampness from her eyes. "Eddie is expecting me, and I wouldn't want to keep him waiting."

Paige blinked away his kisses. Shook her head to get his hands off her.

What did he mean Eddie was expecting him? Was Eddie involved in this? He can't be. He'd called her and warned her to be careful. He wouldn't have called if he were involved. Would he? Eddie hadn't even known who Edward was. Had he?

Her heart collapsed taking hope with it. If Eddie was involved then she had no reason to believe she would ever be rescued. She could think of no one else who would search for her. Not even Tabitha. Her best friend had a nomadic mindset and wouldn't even begin to worry about her safety for a couple months. More likely Tabitha would see it as an opportunity to make the moves on Eddie.

Eddie couldn't be involved with Edward. He just couldn't.

Edward pushed open one of the stainless steel doors and stepped into an enormous bathroom. The robed woman followed him and closed the door behind them.

Paige sat alone. She wanted out of this place, out of this chair, away from that man. It was time to act.

She bent over and tried to reach the strap with her teeth, to manipulate it, but the angle was wrong. Her mouth would move no closer than several inches away.

She jerked up as hard as she could with her right wrist. It was her strongest arm and was held by the restraint with the most slack. The leather held.

Her anger welled up inside of her, filling her arms with strength. She leaned forward, put her back into it, and jerked up again. Still the leather held. But it would not win. It could not win. She wouldn't allow it.

Grabbing the front of the chair's armrest and leveraging her weight by pushing her back against the chair, she pushed up on the strap, keeping a constant pressure against it. The leather went taut, still held, but the hole where the metal pin of the buckle pierced the strap widened ever so slightly.

Ripping it open enough for the pin to fall out, thus releasing the buckle and freeing her, could take all night. But it had stretched a bit, and that was something. Something that renewed her hope.

There was additional slack in the restraint as well, and Paige used the extra room to bend her wrist and angle her fingers down to pull up on the edges of the strap. Rotating it around the armrest, she brought the buckle up so that it sat on her wrist like a watch with the face on the inside of the wrist. Maybe she could just unfasten it. But she had to get a grip on it first. If she let off the pressure, the buckle would slide back towards the ground. When it rubbed against the end of her fingers, she made a grab for it, but missed. Gravity pulled the buckle down before she could grasp it.

Anger born out of frustration willed her forward. She was close. He'd underestimated her. She might have missed on the first grab but she now knew it was possible to reach the buckle, and she would, even if her arm broke with the effort.

She rotated the restraint again, and it moved back toward her fingers.

Paige glanced at the steel doors. Edward and the woman were still in the bathroom. Maybe he was keeping himself occupied with the blonde woman. Paige didn't want to think about how. She heard no sounds coming from inside the bathroom, and she wasn't sure what that meant. She took it as a sign he wasn't hurting her. She hoped he wasn't hurting her.

But at the same time she didn't want Edward to come out for at least a few minutes longer, long enough for her to get free. The best thing she could do to help both of them was to get free and find a weapon.

Paige concentrated on using the ends of her fingertips to pull the leather strap up. It moved. The buckle was closer to her fingertips. She pushed the strap up again, and the buckle moved up a little more. It was at the tip of her fingers. She grabbed it. So much for the easy part. Wiggling her body forward in the chair, she pulled the strap as close to her hand as possible. It didn't move much. She had to lean forward to keep the buckle in her hand.

Edward and the woman had to be close to finishing. She wished she heard them, and then thought better of it. What were they doing? Showering, toweling off, dressing? Don't let him be raping or killing her. Whatever they were doing she knew she probably only had a few more minutes at the most. Not much time.

Paige took the buckle between her fingers and tried to slip the leather out of the buckle with her thumb. Her hand shook with effort. The buckle slipped, and she nearly dropped it. If she had, the buckle would have slipped back down towards the ground forcing her to start over.

This wasn't working.

Her fingers were damp from the heat of the room and the struggle. She slid her knee up as far as the restraint on her ankle would let her and used it to hold the leather strap around her wrist in place. She turned her open palm toward her face and blew on it with several deep breaths. She opened and closed her hand rapidly in order to dry her sweaty fingers and to loosen them up.

Her heart thumped away against the wounds on her chest sending pulses of pain through her. She glanced at the steel doors. No sign of Edward or the woman.

Paige grabbed the buckle again and eased the strap out of the buckle with her thumb. She pulled back hard, and the restraint fell to the floor with a clatter. Her arm was free. Thank God.

Quickly, she unbuckled her other arm and then both of her ankles. She got to her feet, swayed dizzily, and nearly fell over. Her legs wobbled as if they hadn't been used in days.

Holding on to the table for support, she shook one leg and then the other to force the blood back into them. She took a couple of timid steps, and the world solidified under her feet.

She darted to the couch, snatched up the blanket, and wrapped the thin covering over her shoulders, around her naked body, like a makeshift robe. She saw nothing in the living area she could readily use as a weapon. The kitchen was her best bet. A knife would be great, but she would settle for one of the nice heavy copper pots hanging above the counter.

That was the plan. Get a weapon. Get out of the house. Get help.

A few dozen steps and she stood in the kitchen, but there were no knives in plain view. She reached for a drawer, yanking at the first one. It wouldn't open. She tried another, and it wouldn't open.

Paige yanked at the cabinet doors, the cupboards, and more of the weathered buttery yellow drawers, but not a damn one would open. She put her foot up on the counter and using all her weight yanked at the handle. It should have popped free from the cabinet drawer with all the force she was putting behind it, but nothing happened. The drawer remained closed.

They were all sealed tight, as if glued shut. She looked closer at the material. Rapping her knuckles on one drawer then another, the sound was more metallic than wooden. The cabinets, cupboards, and drawers weren't wood. They were metal. They were painted to look like wood.

It didn't make any sense. She'd seen the blonde woman open several without any trouble at all. She hadn't used any trick that Paige had seen, and there were no locks on any of the cabinet doors. She was running out of time.

Paige reached for one of the larger copper pots, one large enough to inflict serious damage while not being too unwieldy. As she grabbed the pot, she saw a padlock through the handle, securing it to a metal frame. What kind of person padlocks his pots in place? She gave the pot a good yank then another, but the lock held it fast. The copper should have bent, but it didn't.

She turned back to the kitchen counter. A juicer, a bread machine, a coffee maker with one of those cheap plastic coffee pots, and a microwave, sat on the kitchen counter. She grabbed the bread machine thinking it would be the heaviest, inflict the most damage, but it wouldn't budge. She looked closer. It was bolted down.

She grabbed the other appliances, one after the other, but none of them moved. They were all bolted down.

Forget finding a weapon. Get out.

Knowing which door Edward had taken into the bathroom, Paige rushed to the other. It had to lead out. She turned the handle and pushed at the door. It wouldn't open. It was locked. No big surprise, but she'd had to try. She looked at the window above the kitchen counter, tried opening it, but could find no lock. No way to open it. What was she going to do? Nothing was what it seemed.

The bathroom door opened.

Edward stepped out, smiled his sick smile. A smile she now equated with pure evil.

He didn't look a bit surprised or distraught at her escape from the chair. His hair was mildly damp, slicked back, and he'd changed into a long sleeved black turtleneck and black slacks. One hand was in his pocket.

She pulled the blanket tighter around her, took a step back at the sight of him.

Paige stood cornered between the doors. She was out of his reach but cornered.

No sign of the blonde.

"It's about time you got up," he said.

She didn't answer. Sliding with her back against the kitchen counter, Paige slowly sidestepped away from Edward and the bathroom door. She grabbed the plastic coffee pot off the coffee maker, wishing it were full of steaming hot coffee, and brandished the pot at him like a weapon.

Edward chuckled, and then took a short step toward her.

She leapt to one side, away from him, to the middle of the kitchen where there was lots of room for her to maneuver. He wouldn't find her submissive this time. She'd fight with everything she had.

Edward stepped to the other door, looked over his shoulder, and considered her for a moment. "Perhaps I should return you to the tree?"

"No." she said, backing away from him until her bottom bumped against the table in the dining area.

He put his hand on the door handle, turned it, and cracked open the door.

How had he opened it? He'd used no key. Unbolted no lock she could see.

"What a person can do, they should do," he said. "What can you do?"

She had no idea what he meant. Was he challenging her? Did he want her to attack him? She saw another room beyond the door, but she couldn't see what was inside. His body blocked her view. She saw white walls and light, perhaps from a window.

She considered the odds of rushing him, catching him off balance, and pushing past him but decided that it would be best to wait. It seemed to her that he wanted her to attack him so she didn't. If he was actually going to leave the house, and it looked to her like he might, then she could find a way out after he was gone. It would be safer.

"I've been lenient because this is new for you," he said, his eyes cold. "People take time to adapt. But the next time you fail to answer me when I speak to you I will make you spend the night on the tree. Do you understand?"

"Yes." She didn't want to provoke him. She just wanted him to leave.

"As difficult as it may be for you to accept it, you want this," he said. "You long for a higher purpose. You long for someone to truly take responsibility for your life."

He opened the door, stepped out.

"If you have a need, make do," he said.

Then he closed the door behind him.

Paige heard the click of the lock. She hurried to the kitchen window to see if he was really going to leave. She couldn't believe it. If he was leaving then he wasn't just crazy, he was stupid. She'd be long gone before he made it out of the driveway.

A light from the porch allowed her to see Edward standing outside the house in his long black overcoat.

He looked at her through the window and waved at her like the happy husband headed to work. He strode out of the light, toward a garage, and a few minutes later a black Jaguar rolled out, its headlights cutting through swirls of dirt kicked up by the wind. Paige ran into the living room and watched the lights of the car as it turned out of the driveway and sped down the road away from the house.

She looked around the room, spotted the rocker beside the couch. She knocked it over and kicked at one of the rocker legs with her heel. Pain slammed its way up her ankle. The leg of the chair bent away from the seat. It was good hard wood.

She kicked again and the rocker broke away from the legs of the chair. She picked it up, swung it at the floor, knocked one of the legs free. Then she picked up the leg and gave the air a testing swish with it. It felt heavy in her hand.

Now she had a weapon. Now things had changed. Now it was time to get the hell out of this place.

### Chapter 19

Paige raced back to the kitchen window, turned her head away, and slammed the broken rocker leg against it. Bam. The wood made a flat sound as it struck. A few splinters of wood flew from the end of the leg. She swung again putting all her anger behind the blow. Bam. More splinters. She let out a guttural growl of frustration. Not a single blemish appeared on the window. It couldn't be glass.

She laid the chair leg on the counter, turned on the faucet, and cupped cool water to her lips. She turned, surveyed the interior of the house, again looking for something she might have missed, looking for another way out.

Two doors, two windows. Not many options.

She'd already tried one of each, finding only a locked door and a window that wasn't made of glass. Paige wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, picked up the chair leg. That left the large bay window in the living area, no doubt made of the same material as the kitchen window, and the bathroom door Edward had left cocked open.

The blonde woman. She had forgotten her. The woman had followed Edward into the bathroom and hadn't emerged.

Paige shuddered at the thought of what might be behind that door. If Edward had killed the woman, mutilated her body in some grisly fashion while Paige had struggled for her own freedom, if she found the woman's body floating in a bathtub, then Paige didn't know if she would be able to handle it. And she certainly didn't want to have that kind of guilt or image scorched onto her mind. It would be too disheartening.

The door could also lead to her escape. Then again it could be a gateway into a bloody, hellish slaughterhouse that would leave her screaming away her sanity.

She closed her eyes and shrugged away the image of the woman's dead, floating body. What if she wasn't dead? What if she was just hurt? Needed her help?

Odds were the woman was dead, that Edward, having brought Paige home as some sort of replacement, had cut her up for his pleasure. Otherwise the woman would have come out. Otherwise the woman would be crying out for help. Otherwise Edward wouldn't have left the door cocked open to pique her curiosity. The woman hadn't come out and there were no wet moans of pain issuing from inside. There was just an eerie drip, drip.

He wanted her to see what was inside the bathroom. She could feel it. And for that reason alone she wasn't sure she wanted to go inside. But what choice did she really have? She had to see if the woman was alive. Help her if she could.

The chances of finding a way out of the house through the bathroom were impossibly small. She knew that. But small was better than none. If the blonde woman did happen to be okay, then she might be an invaluable source of information. Information that could save Paige a lot of time and time was something she didn't have a lot of. Sure, Edward had left, but that didn't mean he wouldn't return within a few minutes. The psycho might have just popped down to the local hardware store to replenish his supply of hammers or nails or knives or God knows what.

Paige hastened to the door, put her free hand on the handle, and then pulled her hand away. The steel handle was unnaturally warm. She raised the leg of the chair. The piece of wood trembled in her grasp. She pushed against the door with the end of the leg, shoved the door open.

The bathroom was large and white. Paige saw no blood. No grisly scene of murder and mayhem. No windows or doors leading to another room either. The floor was white ceramic tile and the walls were made of what looked like hard plastic rather than sheetrock.

A large semi-sunken Jacuzzi bathtub, which looked carved from a single piece of white marble, was at the far end of the room. The blonde woman was nestled within the confines of the bathtub surrounded by pink bubbles and the aroma of hot soap. Paige was mystified. The woman wasn't dead or hurt. She was taking a bubble bath.

The woman sat up, but made no move to cover herself or speak. Her skin looked smooth and clean as milk. Large breasts and a glistening curve of the snake peeked out from the bubbles. Again, Paige was struck and intimidated by the woman's beauty. She wasn't sure what to do. Covered by nothing but the throw blanket, walking in on another woman taking a bath, Paige had intruded on this woman's privacy. The woman looked at Paige but continued to bathe as if a stranger hadn't just stumbled in on her.

Feeling somewhat like she had stepped out of a horror movie and into a bad porno, Paige began to back out of the bathroom, it was the polite thing to do, but then she stopped. She decided to hold her ground, be direct as possible, even though the woman didn't seem at all interested in striking up a conversation. What else could she do? She couldn't very well sit around and wait for the woman to finish taking her bath. She didn't have time for that.

The woman wrapped her shoulder-length hair around her fingers and wrung some of the water out.

Paige rushed forward to the edge of the tub. "How do we get out of here?" she asked.

The woman considered Paige's question for a moment. "If I knew that I wouldn't be here. Would I?"

There was a raw condescending attitude and hard tone in the woman's voice Paige hadn't expected, but she also thought she heard an underlying nervousness. She needed to make friends with this woman. She needed her help.

"Good point." Paige stuck her hand out to the woman in the tub. "I'm Paige."

The woman pulled a wet hand from the tub and shook Paige's hand. "Christina. But I prefer Chris."

Paige caught her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. An ugly bruise colored her left cheekbone. Her hair was a mess, damp and wild. She raised a hand, patted it down. A lump had formed on the right side of her head. It was tender. She sat down on the lid of the toilet to avoid the mangled image staring back at her in the reflective glass. Somehow she managed to force a smile.

Chris leaned forward washing one foot then the other.

Paige's eyes locked on the forked tongue and beady eyes of the snake scar on the woman's back, just below her neck. She pulled the throw blanket tight around her body.

"There has to be a way out of here," she said.

Chris ran her hands over the tops of the pink bubbles, which were thinning out. "None that I know of, but you're welcome to try. He expects you to. That's part of his game. But you won't find a way out, and he knows it. This house was made to be a prison. He had it custom built. Told the builder he was tornado proofing."

Paige realized then exactly how clever and patient and devious Edward was. It wouldn't be easy for her to find a way out. He'd obviously spent a lot of time and money planning this, and he'd built his life around that plan. This made the information Chris had about the house even more valuable. "No phone?"

"No phone. Nicholas carries a cell with him, but there isn't a phone in the house."

So, his real name was Nicholas and not Edward. Assuming he hadn't lied to Chris as well.

Chris looked her up and down. "No wonder he likes you," she said. "You're perfect."

Paige felt her face flush. She wasn't used to compliments, especially from other women.

"Thanks. But I'm not perfect. I have flaws. Major ones. And now that he knows about them, he is going to kill me. I need to find a way out of this house."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. He won't kill you. You're beautiful. Stunning. I don't see any flaws."

"We really don't have time for this," Paige said. "We need to get out of this house. He could come back any minute."

"I told you there's no way out of the house," Chris snapped. "I've tried. You think I'm too stupid to have found a way out if there was one?"

"Of course not," Paige said. "I'm sorry."

Chris shrugged. "If you want to clean up, take a bath. I'll be finished in a few minutes."

"No. I don't want to take a bath. I just want to get out of here."

Chris reclined, lifted a leg from the water, and pressed a small button in the wall with her big toe. Pink bubble bath foam pumped into the tub from small holes on both sides. Within a few seconds fresh shiny bubble froth covered the top of the water.

"I haven't talked to anyone other than Nicholas in a long time," she said. "That's part of why I didn't come right out of the bathroom to talk to you when he left. I wanted to, but I was afraid. And I had to bathe first."

She splashed water on her face.

"He gets very upset if I don't do what I'm told. He has cameras everywhere."

"Cameras?"

"Sure." Chris nodded at the corner above the door.

Paige followed her finger, tilted her head up, saw a small camera sitting within a plastic globe. The eye of the camera was trained on the tub. Sick pervert. The man had set up his own private twenty-four hour voyeuristic fantasy. If there were cameras, then there might be microphones as well. It explained Chris's laid back behavior. She knew he was watching, listening.

"I think I know what's going on here better than you," she said. "You know, I used to be just like you. And let me tell you something. You're wasting your time. You can't get out of the house. There are no phones. No one is coming to rescue you. Nothing exists for you anymore but Nicholas and this house. That's my world. And now it's yours."

The way the snake on her body moved, the way parts of it undulated as her body swished back in forth in the bubbles, it appeared as if she was bathing with a live creature.

She pointed a finger at Paige. "You need to accept it. The sooner you do the better off you'll be. Otherwise you're just going to piss him off, and you don't want to do that. I promise you. You don't want to piss him off. He'll make you do things."

"There isn't just Nicholas and this house anymore," Paige said. "We have each other. Maybe you couldn't get out of this place on your own. Maybe I can't get out on my own. But maybe if we work together we can find a way out. Four hands can do things that two hands can't do."

Chris shook her head, pressed another button with her toe. The whirlpool jets whirled to life.

"Nicholas would be very angry with me if I tried. You can try to escape if you want to. Like I said, he expects you to try. It's part of his game. He likes you. But I can't risk it."

Paige wondered if she was wasting what little time she had. Time that could be spent trying to escape or find a weapon. Nevertheless she was riveted to the toilet seat. This woman could help her if she wanted to. Paige could feel it.

"He's going to kill you anyway," Paige said.

Chris shrugged. "Maybe." She rolled over on to her stomach, stuck her feet out the top of the water, and began blowing at the bubbles. "Maybe not. Maybe having two is better than one."

Paige realized Chris had a point. After all, what psychopath wouldn't prefer two playthings to one?

"What happened to you? How long have you been here?"

Chris quickly rolled on to her back, fixed her with a hateful stare. Paige felt, almost saw, a great wall come up between them.

"I'm no one," Chris said. "I was once. I was married. We had a home. A nice home. But, like you, things went bad, and I left all that behind."

Paige wasn't sure what to make of that. "What do you mean? Things went bad? Like me?"

"What do you think it means? I left my husband, Nick. I left our home. It was hard, but it was something I had to do. I wanted my life to have purpose. I needed support, direction. Nicholas gave me those things. He saved me. Things are better now."

"That's bull," Paige said.

Chris shook her head back and forth. Her eyes brimmed with a wetness that had nothing to do with bath water. "No, it isn't," she mumbled. "My old life was bull."

Paige let it go. She didn't want to push too hard. She felt Chris might be as fragile as a thin plaster sculpture. "What happened to your husband?"

"Nick is dead," Chris closed her eyes and whispered. "Nicholas chained him to that tree. Cut him and cut him and cut him..."

The sorrow in Chris's voice made Paige's own eyes well up.

"I'm sorry."

She didn't know what else to say. The woman had been through too much. More than any woman should have to experience. It was a miracle she'd held up as well as she had. Paige didn't know if she would have handled it as well. She reached out to comfort Chris, but Chris pulled back and away from her, rubbed at her eyes with her hand.

"Don't be," she said. "It was my fault. It'll be worse for you. And Eddie."

Paige's tongue stuck in her mouth, and it took her a moment to get it working again. "What do you mean?"

"Your husband. His name's Eddie isn't it?"

She nodded suspiciously wondering how Chris knew her husband's name. Was he involved?

"That's where Nicholas has gone, after him. To bring him here. To kill him. He'll use the razor. He'll make you watch."

Paige slid off the toilet onto the floor. The coolness of the tiles quickly penetrated the thin throw blanket covering her. She shivered. Nicholas was going to kill Eddie.

Chris batted at the bubbles in the tub. "Sometimes I still hear Nick in my sleep. It always wakes me up. Makes me feel cold."

Paige looked at the wall, fought to bring back the image of the Indian Blanket wildflowers with their yellow tipped petals. The same flowers she'd thought of while hanging on the tree, that she'd painted when she'd met Eddie. She focused on the image, blocked out the room, the sound of the whirlpool jets, the splash of Chris in the water, the sound of her own breathing. She let her mind go. Let go of everything she was feeling. Fear. Shame. Hopelessness. Guilt. Her eyes welled up, and the flower image melted from her sight. She broke down, cried, and did something she'd never done before. She closed her eyes and prayed.

God, please don't let him die.

She didn't want him to die. If one of them had to die then she wanted it to be her, not him. She'd put herself in this position. Eddie had done nothing. If he died, she would be consumed by guilt, more guilt than she could carry if she lived for an eternity. She would be responsible.

God, please don't let him die.

She could think of no reason why God would listen to her. She'd never been to church even though she'd always believed on some level. Never tithed. Never read the Bible.

She wasn't praying for herself. She wasn't trying to bargain with God. She wasn't asking for forgiveness. She was just asking for Eddie's life.

God, please don't let him die.

"Maybe you won't have to watch," Chris said.

No. She wouldn't watch. That was for sure. No matter what he did to her she wouldn't watch.

"But he'll make you listen. You can't close your ears like you can close your eyes."

She couldn't even imagine listening to Eddie die. It would drive her mad. She had to do something. Paige stood up, reached into the bathtub, and flipped the drain lever.

If Nicholas wanted her to play a game, she'd play. She'd play harder than anyone he'd ever met.

"Hey what are you doing?" Chris complained.

Paige approached the camera. She stared up at it then mouthed the word, "Bastard."

She swung the chair leg with all her strength bashing the bottom of the plastic globe. It cracked with the first impact of the hard wood and fell to the floor with a clatter.

Nicholas wanted to destroy the thing she cared about most.

She swung again, this time hitting the tiny camera, and it broke free from its small mount. It bounced off the wall, dangled from the ceiling by its wires. Paige grabbed the camera, gave it the finger, and jerked the wires from it. Then she hurled it against the tile floor where it shattered.

The least she could do was try to return the favor.

### Chapter 20

Wendy swapped out Eddie's Coke for a pungent coffee-like sludge. He blew a long blast of air across the top of the hot coffee before cautiously taking a sip. Somehow the club looked even more crowded. People not only filled the chairs around tables but the spaces between the chairs.

Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he glanced at the display. It was half past ten and Paige hadn't showed, nor had he received any calls. He couldn't blame her. He wouldn't be able to face her if he had committed adultery.

Still, he wanted to talk to her, to tell her that he was afraid. Afraid of what was happening to them. Afraid of ending up alone. Afraid of trying to live his life without her.

He'd tell her they would work it out. He could change. That he'd been wrong. He'd try to be more supportive. But he didn't know if there would be any point in telling her those things. If she was already seeing someone else, then she'd already made her decision regarding him, hadn't she? It just seemed so unbelievable.

Tabitha gave him a hug and stood up. "Maybe this is all for the best."

Eddie didn't answer. He put his elbows on the table, his face in his hands, fought to repress his anguish. The way she wouldn't look at him made it clear to him she knew he was having a hard time. He was afraid if he gave in to it he wouldn't be able to regain control, and he wouldn't allow himself to turn into a sobbing mound of flesh in the middle of her nightclub.

"I've got to get back to the bar," she said. "But we'll talk more later. Okay?"

"Okay."

As much as Tabitha didn't like him, she was trying to be a real sweetheart. She'd asked him about his family, his job, and generally kept the conversation steered away from Paige every time it started to go that way. She'd even made him smile a couple of times and ordered him the coffee.

Eddie glanced at the bandage on his hand, remembered Nicholas saying, "I'm going to kill you."

Well, he had killed him. It just hadn't been the way he'd expected.

With no sign of Paige, Eddie began to doubt she was ever going to show. Part of him was relieved she hadn't shown up, that there hadn't been a confrontation. It would only make it more real. And after all, what good would come from getting into it at Tabitha's place? It would have felt better to have at least had the chance to talk to her though. To tell her how hurt he was. Besides, where was he going to go now? Home? He wasn't sure he ever wanted to go back there without Paige.

He still wanted her. He couldn't even imagine the possibility of Paige not being with him, not loving him. Sure, they'd had a few problems and sometimes they argued, but they always worked through it. Love was supposed to be bigger than problems. Love was supposed to last forever. He couldn't believe that people really fell out of love. Either you loved someone and you always loved them, or you didn't love them and you never had. So how did cheating apply to that?

Paige had to be confused right now. He could think of no other rational explanation. In a few days, at the most in a couple of weeks, she'd realize this was a huge mistake, that she still loved him, had always loved him, and she'd change her mind. Or maybe she wouldn't. Either way, he couldn't give up on her. Not yet.

Eddie didn't want to go home, but suddenly he was tired of being here in this place with its loud music and crowd of strangers hitting on one another. His skin felt covered in a thin layer of slime. He wanted to take a shower, wash everything all away, then maybe he could come up with a plan and take some action. He stood up, looked for the best path through the crowd to the door.

Then, through the smoke and strobes of the club, Eddie saw a figure coming toward him. It was him. It was Nicholas. Eddie knew it was him before he clearly saw the man's face. A tree among bushes, the man had the pompous walk of someone who is used to getting what he wants.

"Going somewhere, Eddie? Aren't you expecting someone?"

The prissy cologne he wore smelled as strong as ever.

"How did you get in here?" Eddie asked.

"Oh, I have friends."

Grabbing a chair, Nicholas turned it backwards and sat down across from Eddie in one fluid movement.

"Sit back down. We'll have a little chat."

Eddie sat back down, pointed at Nicholas. "You knew about the e-mail."

"Just now figuring that out? Aren't you clever."

The metallic chant of Marilyn Manson's "Tainted Love" pounded through the club. Strobes played across Nicholas's face making the irises of his eyes gleam. Eddie decided he'd never seen a man that looked more demonic. But regardless of how evil the man looked, he wanted to hear what his enemy had to say. This was war.

Nicholas wiggled a finger at the air. "Sounds like they're playing your song."

"What do you want?"

"It's not what I want. It's what I have," Nicholas said. He reached across the table.

Eddie instinctively pulled back away from him wary of the razor he assumed Nicholas had on him, metal detectors or no metal detectors.

Nicholas picked up Eddie's coffee, sniffed it, and took a sip. When he sat the cup back down on the table, his eyes had hardened. "Let's talk about Paige."

"If you hurt her..."

Nicholas picked a nearly invisible white speck from the front of his shirt and flicked the offending particle to the floor.

"If I hurt her what? What are you going to do? You're a coward. You've been a coward all your life."

The muscles in Eddie's bowels clenched, a damp sweat popped up on his arms, and the room grew noticeably warmer. "If you ever hurt her, I'll kill you."

Nicholas snorted. "I would love to see that. You know she's got a nice body, just my type. But she's not very good in bed. How did you put up with it?"

Eddie lunged across the table punching at Nicholas's mouth. "You bastard!"

He wanted to silence this man, wanted to hurt him. Nobody talked about Paige as if she was some whore. Nobody rained destruction on his life without paying a price.

Nicholas lifted his forearm blocking Eddie's wild punch, clamped his hand around Eddie's wrist, pulled it down and squeezed. Pain blasted through Eddie's forearm, and he swung his other fist at Nicholas's face, hoping to make Nicholas let go, but the man swatted his hand away like a basketball player blocking a shot and grabbed him by the throat. Nicholas held him, looked at him as if he were contemplating what he wanted to do, and for one terrifying moment, Eddie thought Nicholas was going to break his neck with a simple flick of his wrist.

Instead, Nicholas shoved Eddie back into his chair.

Eddie and the chair slammed back into the wall and nearly toppled in a tangle to the floor.

"That was asinine," Nicholas said. "I could have easily broken your wrist... or your neck."

Eddie grabbed the frame of the chair, stabilized the seat beneath him. Tabitha meandered up to the table with a hand on her hip.

His neck and wrist hurt, and he rubbed at one then the other, took a deep breath. His heart tried to beat through his ribcage. Fear for his own safety and loathing for this man strangled him like a garrote.

Tabitha looked Nicholas up and down, tilted her chin toward Eddie. "Is everything okay? Or do I need to get Bob over here?"

There were other bouncers in the club, so Eddie wasn't sure why she mentioned going outside to get Bob. Surely someone else was closer.

"Everything's fine," Nicholas said. Then he lowered his voice, said something to her. His lip curled up in a flirtatious smile. Eddie couldn't make out what he said over the music. Tabitha looked Nicholas up and down again, returned his smile. Then she turned to Eddie. "You sure everything's under control?"

Eddie nodded. "We just got carried away."

She shifted from one foot to the other, doubtful. "I won't put up with any trouble in my club. I'll throw you both out on your ass."

Eddie glanced over at Nicholas who was now sitting arms crossed with a fat smirk on his face. "There will be no trouble," Nicholas said. "Will there, Eddie?"

He shook his head.

"All right," Tabitha said. She narrowed her eyes, bounced an accusatory index finger from Nicholas to Eddie and back to Nicholas. "But if I see anymore of that, I'm going to get Bob."

Eddie nodded. Nicholas grinned. Tabitha glanced over their table. "Now you boys need anything else to drink?"

Eddie plinked the rim of his mug. He would feel a lot better knowing someone was coming back. "Another coffee."

"Sure thing," she said, winking at him. With a quick turn, she bounded back into the crowd towards the bar.

"Got the ladies looking out for you, huh, Eddie?"

Eddie turned back to Nicholas. "I don't care what you think about me, but if you talk about Paige that way again, I swear I'll kill you."

He realized his fists were clenched. He'd never been the physically aggressive type, but he wanted to hurt this man like no other he'd ever met. Wanted to teach him a lesson about messing with another man's wife.

"You don't deserve a woman like Paige," Nicholas said. "What did the cops say to you when you called them? Did Officer Tucker believe you? Did he think you were being the wimp that you are?"

He didn't know what to say. How did he know about Officer Tucker? What else did he know?

Nicholas looked at him disdainfully, leaned forward. "Paige left you because you were cheating on her."

"You're insane," Eddie spit. "I've never cheated on Paige."

"But you will. It's in your nature. It's part of who you are, the kind of man you are."

"Screw you."

Nicholas leaned back. "You just have to admire a man with your communication skills."

Eddie stood up. He was tired of listening to this.

Nicholas grabbed him by the arm. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To take a piss. You want to come hold it for me?"

"I'm not done with you," Nicholas said squeezing Eddie's arm.

Eddie tried to yank away from Nicholas, but the man's grip was firm. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. We'll see each other again."

Nicholas let go of Eddie. Then he said it.

"Paige went home."

There was resignation in Nicholas's tone that stopped Eddie from walking away. He wasn't positive he'd heard him right. "What?"

"She went home. She's probably in your bed. Waiting for you."

Could it be? Eddie stood there wide-eyed and open mouthed. A belief born out of love and foolishness began to rise up in him.

Nicholas dropped his eyes and hunched his shoulders.

"After you called the cops, she called me. She told me that you'd been hurt. She said that at first she'd been angry, but then she started to worry about you, and the longer she sat there the more she worried. She said all the worrying made her realize how much she still cares about you."

Eddie wasn't sure he believed this man, his enemy. A part of his mind screamed this was a deception. Nicholas was a liar. But even so, he couldn't help believing him. He knew he was smiling, couldn't help that either. He even fought against it. It took everything he could muster to keep from laughing. He wanted to dance, wanted to cry, wanted to jump up and shout that love had prevailed, but he knew he should be cautious.

"I came down here to see if I could figure out what it was that made her pick you over me," Nicholas said.

As much as Eddie liked the sound of that, he didn't believe him. More likely he'd come here to taunt him one last time.

"If what you're saying is true, why hasn't she called me?"

Nicholas gave Eddie a slick, one-sided smile. "Good question. I figured she had."

Standing up, Nicholas swung the chair around and back under the table. "Maybe it isn't over after all." He tossed a photo onto the table. "Either way, this will wipe that smug grin off your face and give you something to remember me by."

Nicholas strode away, the crowd parting for him.

The photo captured Eddie's eyes like a steel cage. It was Paige lying on her back in their bed, a pillow under her hips, the sheets messy around her. She was nude, and she was smiling.

### Chapter 21

Steele parked the Jaguar behind the tin barn and stepped into the blackness of night. He loved the night. In the night he felt a Zen-like connection with the world. The pungent alfalfa and manure scented air. The creak of a windmill. The wind rushing through leaves. The chirp of crickets. The moo of a cow. They were all a part of him.

He plucked the wooden case holding his razor from his leather coat and slipped it into his back pocket. Then he removed his coat and tossed it on the front seat of the car. He would come back for it later. The bulky coat would hinder him in his current task.

He stood in the patchy grass watching the dark windows of the old farmhouse. Anyone inside would have seen his car creep down the long drive leading up to the house, but he knew no one was home.

Steele quickly circled around to the front door. White vinyl siding, splotchy with green moss, covered the house and thick ivy constricted the porch lattices. The window curtains in the front of the house had been left open and he peered in confirming there was no one inside. When he'd last visited the curtains had been open as well. He pondered whether they were left open out of Eddie's stupidity or the brunette's need to play exhibitionist. He figured the latter.

He withdrew a key from his pocket. His time was limited. Eddie was coming. He unlocked the door and pushed it open with his palm. The door swung inward on silent hinges and Steele stepped into the living room. The house was still, the air stale from a full day's emptiness.

Steele closed the door and walked to the center of the living room. Surveyed the seat dented couch, the telephone. Looked at the smoke detector that was much more than a smoke detector.

Framed paintings decorated the walls. Steele could easily make them out, even in the darkness. He'd seen them several times before: a rock formation, a sunset over sand dunes, a field of wildflowers.

He admired the potential of each piece. They were her works of course, and they reminded him of his own first fledgling works, although hers weren't nearly as good.

Painting became his coping mechanism after his mother died, and he learned to pour himself into his work. That was the major difference between his works and the brunette's. Hers lacked any exposure of her true self. They also lacked confidence, boldness. Great art can only come through risks. Risks she clearly hadn't been willing to take. He saw it in her timid angles, in her distance from the subject matter, in her careful brushstrokes. With encouragement she would have continued creating such works. She would have progressed, put a little more of herself in each subsequent piece. She might have become great. But she had no such support structure. Her creativity had been strangled.

His grandmother had been the only real believer in his life. Once his father shipped him off to her, she taught him how to be bold and brave in his art, to free his mind of the limitations other artists place on themselves with their doubt. She encouraged him to paint. And when he watched her tattoo someone, he expressed an interest. She taught him how to make a tattoo gun, explained how to know the speed of the needles by listening to the hum, showed him how deep to pierce the skin.

Then she taught him how to tattoo, apprenticed him in the craft she had supported herself with for more than forty years. She started him off tracing vintage World War II tattoo flash of anchors and battleships, pinups and American flags. Within weeks he was free handing his own designs, tattooing them on pork hocks and later his own arms. He learned to tattoo with both hands. Tattooed his first customer at fourteen.

She was a young woman. She walked into the shop, her eyes puffy with emotion, walked up to him in the booth next to his grandmother.

She held one hand in the other.

"I want a tattoo," she said.

"Of what?"

She didn't answer for quite some time. "As long as it's beautiful, it doesn't matter. I want to be a work of art."

Steele considered what she said for a moment. Then he went to his drawing desk. He returned a few minutes later with a simple black and white drawing of lily.

"How is this?"

She took the drawing, studied it. "Can you do this?" she asked.

He nodded. "Where would you like it?"

She pulled down the collar of her shirt and pointed to a place over her heart. "Here."

There was an immediate connection between them. Anger and fear radiated out from her and into him as he worked her skin. She cursed him under her breath all the while begging him not to stop.

"You've changed my life," she told him when she visited him again a few months later.

"How?"

"I'm no longer afraid to be who I am. I look at this lily and I see myself as standing apart from the rest of humanity."

He nodded and she hugged him and she left.

And that was his first tattoo.

He and his grandmother traveled the country after that moving from tattoo parlor to tattoo parlor. They worked in Australia and Japan, New York and LA. But mostly they worked in little holes near the military bases where most of their customers were stationed.

His talent grew very quickly. When it surpassed his grandmother's, she let him tattoo her.

She was covered in tattoos before his ink even touched her. Markers for the events in her life, for the places she'd been, for the people she knew. Cherry blossoms for their time in Japan. Two turtles on a beach commemorating a trip to Hawaii with her best friend. A dozen others like them.

Steele brought her hodgepodge collection of tattoos together. Turned several individual works into a singular collage. She liked his work. But he wasn't satisfied. She didn't have the reaction he'd expected. The mistakes in the works of the other tattooists left the piece imperfect, and less than a month later she let another artist tattoo her, essentially ruining the piece he'd created.

He saw then the flaw in the tattoo art form. The receivers of their works could not stop at one piece, even if it was fantastic, even if it took your breath away, even if it shocked you to the core. As if eating potato chips they had to have another and another and another. They were drawn to the needles, addicted to the buzz of the gun and the feelings of euphoria brought on by adrenaline and the scratching at their skin. They collected tattoos as one might collect rocks, cobbled them together just as they had cobbled together their identities. And in his mind the addition of each subsequent work had only the effect of watering down the previous.

His grandmother tried to sway him from this belief, but she could not.

"My tattoos are the story of the journey of my life," she told him. "A story that will continue to grow until the day I die."

"A collection of bad drawings cannot compare to a single great work that changes the way we see art," he answered. "You think of your tattoos only as they apply to you and your life. You do not think of them as art."

He was an artist. He created works because that was his purpose. It was the way in which he coped with the world. He could no sooner stop working than he could stop breathing. And he would not be told how to create his art. It was born from within him. To ask him to share his canvas was like asking Van Gogh to share canvas with Da Vinci. Such was an abomination. But he did what he must in order to provide the financial support needed for his great works.

Then everyone would see the truest form of art to ever exist. Art entwined within a life.

Steele's eyes were drawn then to another abomination: A photo of the brunette and Eddie sitting on a cluttered desk. Both smiling. Both feigning happiness.

He had taken great pleasure in slamming Eddie against the wall of the nightclub. He loathed him. Loathed his kind. Loathed so-called men who lacked discipline, strength. Men like his father. Slack-jawed, indecisive, fearful weaklings who only played at taking control of their world. Eddie was passive, forced his wife to work, had been emasculated. And to what purpose? So he could fit some imagined model of sexual equality? He had lost his way in the world, and for that Steele pitied him. But there was more to it than that. Eddie submitted to his wife because he believed mainstream society demanded it, not because he thought there was any true equality between them, and by doing so he had strangled that which was precious within her: creativity.

Something deep within the brunette groaned for something more than Eddie could ever offer. For an austere man, a man with the strength and discipline that he could provide. Steele felt it. He heard it in her voice. Saw it in her face. Felt it in her skin. She wanted guidance, training, correction, and true independence. She wanted to live. She did not want a boring life, in a boring home, in a boring place.

Steele roamed through the living room and into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, drank milk from the carton. He closed the refrigerator and ran his fingers across the kitchen countertop. A black and white cow cookie jar, sugar canister, and salt and peppershakers decorated the ceramic surface.

The brunette wanted to be nurtured, loved, appreciated. She wanted to be placed on a pedestal, worshipped from afar by people who did not even know her name. She wanted greatness. But she didn't know how to obtain what she wanted. She'd abdicated all personal responsibility from her life. She was adrift. Ironically, she'd handed responsibility for her life over to Eddie, who didn't know what to do with it. He couldn't even live his own life properly.

Together, they were pathetic, and that was Eddie's fault. She was salvageable, transformable. Eddie could only be put out of his misery. Put down like a crippled horse. Like his father and all men like him, Eddie was incapable of change.

Steele sauntered into the bedroom, put his hand upon the bed, tested the tension of the springs. They were as stiff as the people who slept on them.

He walked to one of two wood dressers, opened the middle drawer on the second row, pushed his hand through the brunette's panties to what was beneath them. He rubbed his hand over the slick texture of a magazine cover. He did not need to see it to know what it was. Nor did he need to remove it to know there were several dozen similar magazines beneath it. Vogue, Cosmo, Elle. Fashion and style magazines filled with images of the unreal, the unobtainable.

He closed the drawer, smiled at the alarm clock that was much more than an alarm clock, strode back into the living room. The wood floor creaked beneath his feet.

Later, he would return for his camera equipment: The smoke detector, the shower mirror, the clock radio, as well as the receiver, recorder, and half dozen other cameras he had wired into the house's electrical system. He would take her paintings while he was at it. They would prove useful in her training and in keeping her properly focused. Then he would burn the house to the ground.

Standing in the middle of the living room, he turned to face the windows. They provided a nice view of the long driveway. He waited. Eddie was rushing home to him, to his doom. Steele felt him coming, and he wanted to watch him arrive.

### Chapter 22

Eddie took the curve too fast and the rear of the Honda slipped, tires chirping, before catching again on the concrete. He slammed the steering wheel with his fist, glanced down at the nude photo of Paige that Nicholas had given him, and slammed the steering wheel again.

Paige was smiling in the photo. Actually smiling. Not a fake or forced smile, but a genuine smile, one that he knew she reserved for intimate playful moments in the bedroom.

Eddie stomped on the gas pedal. The narrow two-lane road, bare of traffic, materialized from nothingness at the edge of his headlights. The night was moonless, black as oil, and only a handful of the brightest stars could occasionally be seen in the sky. Lightning flickered far to the south lighting up a thick blanket of clouds above him.

He'd left the club in a flurry, anxious to confront Paige. And now he was just outside the city, speeding and heading east, towards the house he'd once called home.

The nude photo wasn't the first such photo of Paige Eddie had ever seen. An old boyfriend had snapped a few Polaroids of her that for some reason she'd kept all these years.

Eddie flipped on his bright lights, but the extra illumination did little to help him see any farther down the hilly road. Deep drainage ditches flanked both sides of the two-lane threatening to consume the inattentive driver. Having driven the road so many times, Eddie no longer sensed the threat in the miniature chasms. He felt his way along the road more than he drove it. Still, he was driving too fast. But he didn't care. What difference would it make if he careened off the road and into the ditch? His wife was gone. His life was gone.

He had only seen the Polaroids of Paige once. But still he remembered them. They were branded into his memory, impossible to forget.

Paige was lying on her boyfriend's couch in the photos. She said he took them as she dozed naked in front of the TV. She looked drunk or stoned in them, her eyes glazed over and half closed. The room had been very dark and the brightness of the flash had woken her. By the time she realized what was happening, he'd taken several.

Holding this new photo in his hand, Eddie couldn't help but ponder whether that was the truth. And that really bothered him.

It made him wonder how much he really knew about his wife and her past. Was Paige really the woman she seemed to be? Was she hiding her true self? Was she trying to be what she thought he wanted?

The photos were so far out of character for the Paige he knew, especially considering her self-consciousness regarding her scars that he didn't know what to think. None of it felt right.

The Honda bounded down a long hill, gathering speed before ramping up an even longer hill. Topping it, the road fell steeply, turned right, then left, and rose again.

Paige claimed she was ashamed of the photos. But for some reason she'd kept them. It hadn't bothered him before, but now he wondered why she had.

The beam of his headlamps revealed squiggly lines of black tar used to repair the cracks in the aging concrete as he raced home.

Before seeing the photos, he'd never really thought about his wife having been with any other man--he'd certainly never visualized it--and this new photo Nicholas had given him had forced him to. He imagined Nicholas standing behind a camera snapping away, Paige lying on the bed smiling.

Eddie tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He approached a stop sign, slowed, but then accelerated through the interchange without coming to a complete stop.

Nicholas had slept with her. The photo proved it. Didn't it? The man had even been smug in torturing him with it. Nicholas was enjoying this. He just knew it. He imagined the man puffed up and pleased with himself as he drove home, probably in some expensive sports car, like a Porsche or Ferrari. The man had made it his purpose to taunt and intimidate him, to hurt and destroy. And he'd done a damn fine job of it.

The two-lane flattened out and the drainage ditches on each side of the pavement were slowly replaced with short dense trees crowding in toward the road to escape the power lines above them. Lightning flickered, closer this time, lit up a deer crossing sign. No headlights appeared in his rearview mirror. None ahead. He was alone. He kept his foot heavy on the accelerator.

The photo confirmed Paige had been lying to him. He could scarcely believe it. Even while looking at the photographic evidence, a small part of him wanted to reject the idea but couldn't. He'd held out a desperate hope that she wouldn't do something like that to him. But that hope was smashed with each glance at the photo.

He was crushed, beyond tears, and even so he still desperately wanted to see her. She hadn't shown at the club. Maybe she'd thought she could face him but couldn't. He hoped she was at home waiting for him. But he didn't really believe she would be. Would facing him there be any easier?

Paige had let that man photograph her in their own bed. Their own bed. It mystified him that she would treat their bedroom with such a lack of respect. Hadn't any of their time together meant anything?

Her betrayal hurt on so many levels it made his chest hurt. His brain hurt. His heart hurt. It even made his feet hurt.

Wind tugged and pushed at the sides of the car. Lightning flicked at the ground like a whip--the first actual ground strike he'd seen. Round bales of hay dotted the darkness of the fields on both sides of the car. He was just a couple of miles from home now. He jammed the photo in the back pocket of his jeans. He couldn't look at it anymore.

It wasn't a photo of the Paige he knew.

Eddie crested the last small hill and a large yellow dog, possibly part Labrador, bounded out of the dark field and onto the road. He jerked the steering wheel to the right and slammed on his brakes in an attempt to miss the animal. The rear of the Honda began to slide out and he jerked the steering wheel back to the left. But it was too late. The car slid sideways.

The dog jumped in an effort to avoid the car. The seat belt tightened across Eddie's chest. He didn't see the dog get hit, but he heard a thump and felt an impact on the driver's rear quarter panel. Not a hard impact, but an impact nonetheless.

The car died.

"Stupid mutt," Eddie said, more out of anger with himself than the animal. His hands shook. His heart pounded. He hoped the dog was okay. He'd never hit an animal before.

It had happened so fast. The car could have easily careened off the road and slammed into a tree, killing him or trapping him in the wreckage. The reminder of his own mortality caused him to shiver. He'd been doing at least eighty when he'd seen the dog and hammered on the brakes. Thankfully, it hadn't started raining. If the pavement had been wet, slick with the first splatterings of rain, he might not have been able to keep the car on the road.

The Honda sat sideways across both lanes of traffic. Eddie pushed the gearshift into park and got out. He left the headlights on so any traffic happening down the road would be able to easily spot his car. He swiveled his head, searching the fields for the animal, but he didn't see the dog. He listened for whimpering, but heard nothing.

Branches of jagged lightning crossed the sky, illuminating the area like a thousand simultaneous strobe lights.

He hurried to the edge of the road, in the direction the dog had been sprinting, and surveyed the field. Straw-colored cut grass and round bales of hay were all he saw. Considering the dog's coloring, it might as well have been wearing camouflage in the jungles of Vietnam.

He called for the dog.

"Here boy. Here boy."

No response. No movement in the field. The only sounds were the wind and the distant rumble of thunder.

Hurt, the dog had probably hobbled off to find a place to hide. It would likely stay there. His chances of finding the animal, on his own and in the dark, weren't good, but he didn't care. He ran into the field, overcome with the urge to find and help the animal. He looked down at the ground for any sign of blood or tracks and found none.

Headlights approached from the east.

He ran to the closest hay bale but saw nothing of the dog. He called for it again then dropped to the ground and looked for any lump in the field that might be the size of a dog.

The headlights rolled to a stop in front of Eddie's car. Large drops of rain began falling. The driver of the car honked his horn.

Eddie stood, surveyed the field again. The driver honked again.

Reluctantly, he stomped back to his car, climbed behind the wheel, and started it. Then he maneuvered the rear out of the oncoming lane. The waiting car accelerated into the night.

Eddie looked out into the field. No dog. He hated leaving it, hated having failed to find it, considered getting back out of his car to look some more. But he didn't. He drove away overwhelmed by feelings of utter failure.

Minutes later, he turned onto the drive leading to his house. The farmhouse sat on five acres of flat land surrounded on three sides by large hay fields. A dozen Cottonwoods sparsely populated the land along with a single Weeping Willow. Out here he didn't need to lock his doors--although he always did--and he didn't have to worry about being bothered by door-to-door salesmen or noisy neighbors or vandalizing teens. Eddie had always liked the house. He liked the homeyness of the place. He'd never thought he would dread seeing it. Not like he did today.

There were no lights on. Maybe Paige had gone to bed?

With a click of the remote clipped to the car's sun-visor, he opened the garage door. Her car wasn't there. She wasn't home. Another disappointment. He had so many things he wanted to ask her, to say to her. Not that he was completely surprised she wasn't home. The next conversation wouldn't exactly be a pleasant one. If he was her, he most likely would have put off any face-to-face chat for a while too.

He got out of the car, walked around it looking for damage, and was surprised to find none. He ran his hand over the rear quarter panel where he was sure the car had made contact with the dog, but there wasn't a dent in the car's fender or bumper. Not even a blemish in the paint. No blood on the bumper or fur stuck in the gaps of the car's body. The tail lamp, turn signal lamp and even the parking lamp were completely undamaged.

He got down on his hands and knees to look at the undercarriage. Found nothing. Stood. He scratched at his head, had a seat on the trunk. Perhaps the dog hadn't been hurt after all. He hoped so.

A light warm breeze that he almost found comforting whipped into the garage. The light from the garage door opener went out, the internal timer having clicked off enough time for the average person to shuffle inside or turn on an alternate light. Eddie sat in the dark. Listened.

The rain stopped. Toads trilled loudly. A streetlamp mounted atop the electrical pole feeding his home flickered. The pole stood a good hundred feet to the west of his garage and had been malfunctioning for the last couple of months. Sometimes it was on, mostly it was off, and sometimes it sputtered forth light like a neon sign on PCP.

He'd put in a call about it to the electric company, but they rarely came out this far, except to check the meter.

Across from his property, Eddie saw the back porch light was on over at his neighbors, the Jones's. An affable old couple, Betty was a big fan of college basketball while Earl wore overalls and liked to work in his garden, where he babied his tomato plants and grew them more than ten feet tall.

Sometimes Eddie would see him in his garden, and they would wave at one another. Occasionally, Betty would bring over a basket of sweet corn or okra. The couple had been married for nearly fifty years. Eddie could easily picture them out on a night like this, enjoying the evening under their porch, Earl puffing away on his pipe and Betty listening to a ballgame on the radio. The old couple represented a picture of the married life he'd always wanted. The one he'd clearly failed to attain.

The wind turned cooler, made the hair on his arms stand up. He had that same feeling he sometimes got when he walked out to the barn in the dark. That feeling that someone or something evil was behind him, stalking him, creeping up on him, and was going to rip him limb from limb.

Turning, he scanned the inside of the garage, but saw nothing out of place in the darkness.

He stood up and studied the horizon. Lightning crackled through the distant sky, outlining a huge thunderhead far to the northwest. Though the storm had moved a few miles away, the ground shook lightly with the rumble of thunder.

Shadows jumped across the ground with each flicker of the streetlamp and the wind whipped at the trees, but still Eddie didn't see anything unusual. Even so, he couldn't shrug off his feeling of fright. Eyes crawled over him. A supernatural hand of terror clawed at his shoulder. Someone was watching him. Someone like Nicholas.

Eddie briefly considered the possibility he was walking into some kind of trap, that Nicholas wanted him here, although he couldn't see why. Eddie was tired of Nicholas, tired of the game. If Nicholas had come here expecting to find someone to victimize then he'd made a terrible mistake. Eddie would be no victim. No matter what Nicholas thought, he wasn't a coward.

A fresh gust of wind, cold wind, sliced through Eddie like an icy knife, and he turned his back on it walking deeper into the garage. At the door leading into the kitchen, Eddie tested the knob. It was locked, as it should be. He tapped the button on the wall closing the garage door. The overhead light popped back on and Eddie turned his head back to watch the door lower to the concrete. It hit the ground with a quiet thump.

Eddie unlocked the door with his key and stepped into the kitchen. He waited quietly in the darkness for a few moments allowing his eyes to adjust. He listened. The only sound he heard was the rattle and hum of the refrigerator fan. He shut the door. He couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone. Something felt very wrong.

Crouching down, he crept ape-like past the washer and dryer and a pile of his clothes Paige had stacked that morning. He moved quickly and quietly across the kitchen tile.

As he passed the refrigerator, rounded the corner and wobbled through the short hall leading to their bedroom, he felt a bit like a fool. It was probably nothing. Just a bad case of the jimjams. He was probably alone, acting like a paranoid idiot.

Still, he kept low and he kept the lights out. Paige was always leaving the curtains in the house wide open, and if someone was outside watching, he didn't want them to know his location in the house. He wouldn't let them figure out where he was by spotting him through a window or by watching for a light to be turned on. He didn't need the lights. He'd been up enough times in the middle of the night he could navigate the whole house in the dark.

The hall was carpeted, windowless. Eddie stood up as he moved through it so he could move faster, get into the bedroom quicker. Once inside, he squatted next to the king-size bed and reached underneath it feeling around. It has to be there. He couldn't remember the last time he'd pulled it out. Still, it had to be there. Where else would it be? He kept it under the bed for quick access. Just in case they ever had a midnight intruder.

His fingers brushed against cold metal. Bingo. He had it.

Pulling out a small black box the size of a shoebox, Eddie shifted his eyes back and forth between the door to the bedroom and the single window in the room, looking and listening for any movement inside or outside the house. There was none.

He felt across the top of the box. Five black buttons and a brass knob protruded from it. Eddie found the first and fifth buttons and pushed them simultaneously, then he found the second and fourth buttons and pushed them, then he pushed the third and final button. Click. He smiled and turned the brass knob ninety degrees to the right. The box popped open.

This was not the first time Eddie had had the feeling someone was watching him--for a while, when they'd first moved into the house, he'd suspected old Earl of being a peeping Tom--but this was the first time he'd opened the box because of such a feeling.

He put his hand inside and pulled out the single action Smith and Wesson .45, a gift from his father on his eighteenth birthday, and Sam's words came back to him, "You know if I was you, I would get that gun."

Well, now he had it. And damn the fool who stood against him while he carried it.

### Chapter 23

Paige tossed what was left of the video camera in the sink.

"What the hell are you doing?" Chris demanded. "You're just going to piss him off."

"I won't be watched like a caged animal at the zoo."

"That won't work. He has hidden cameras, too. They're everywhere. You'll never find them all."

Paige spun around to face Chris. "I don't have to find them all. That's not the point. Now if you don't get out of that tub and help me find a way out of here, so help me God, you won't have to worry about him killing you. I'll do it myself." She raised the leg of the chair to emphasize her point. "I'll beat you to death with this."

"Okay. Okay," Chris said, holding up her hands in surrender. "I'm getting out."

She stood up, wrung out her hair, and climbed out of the tub. The snake tattoo and scar writhed and glistened as she moved. "Just let me dry off."

Paige looked around the bathroom for a towel but couldn't find one.

"Where are the towels?"

There was no towel rack, no towel sitting atop the sink, no towel draped across the back of the toilet. There were no towels on the floor and only one small cabinet under the sink. Paige opened it but only found a small plastic trashcan.

"There aren't any," Chris said. "We air-dry. Although sometimes he has me dry him."

"Jesus." No wonder Nicholas had been in the bathroom with her for so long. "We don't have time for that." She didn't even want to think about how he made Chris dry him. Ick.

Paige yanked at the medicine cabinet door, looking for something that might be of use, but it wouldn't open. A small key lock mounted flush with the cabinet held the door fast. Grabbing Chris by the arm, Paige dragged the woman to the cabinet. "Do you know how to open this?"

"No. He has the only key."

Paige pulled her out of the bathroom.

"What's the rush," Chris said. "We have plenty of time. Nicholas won't be back for a while."

"How do you know?"

"I told you. He's gone after Eddie. To bring him here." Chris flapped her arms like a bird in an attempt to dry them. "You realize I'm dripping all over everything, and we'll have to clean all this up before he gets back."

Paige hoped Nicholas would die in some horrific car accident before he made it to Eddie. But she knew she couldn't count on something like that happening. She had to stay calm, think things through, act.

"We won't be here when he gets back," Paige said. "How do you get into the cabinets?"

Chris folded her arms across her chest and somehow managed to leave her breasts exposed. "You're being stupid."

"Just tell me how you get into them."

"You can't. They're locked too."

Paige ran her hands over the surface of the kitchen cabinets but found no place for a key. "How? How do you unlock them?"

"With a key."

"No kidding. Where does he put it? Where's the lock?"

"It's magnetic," Chris answered. "The locks are magnetic. He uses a little remote transmitter on his keychain to unlock them. He carries it with him and when he isn't carrying it he keeps it locked up in a safe in the floor of his bedroom."

Paige turned and looked around the house. "Are there any tools in the house? A screwdriver maybe?"

"Nope."

"What about this door?" Paige pointed at the steel door Nicholas had left through. "Where does it lead?"

"His bedroom," Chris said. "There's another door in his bedroom that opens into a foyer where there's a door that leads outside. But the door to the foyer is stainless steel, just like the one that leads to his bedroom. You couldn't get through them with a battering ram."

Paige took a closer look at the door. The hinges were on the other side of the doorjamb and the frame around the door appeared to be metal as well. Lightning lit up the living room through the big bay window dragging her eyes back to it. Maybe they didn't have to get though the doors. Maybe there was another way out. "What about that window?" Paige said pointing at it. "Can we get out through that?"

"You tried the window in here, didn't you? I could hear you banging away on it. I don't know what they're made out of, but it isn't glass."

Chris snapped on a switch flooding the front yard with light.

"The big window is the same stuff, only there are two layers of it, and even if you managed to get through both layers it's about a thirty foot drop to the rocks below."

The grounds in front of the house were open all the way to the road. No guard dogs. No chain link fence with razor wire surrounding the property. There was just a decorative white wooden rail fence that anyone could easily climb over and an iron gate blocking cars from entering the drive. Obviously, Nicholas was supremely confident they wouldn't be able to get out of the house.

"What about the walls?" Paige asked. "Have you tried going through the walls?"

"My adopted dad was in the construction business," Chris said. "The walls aren't sheetrock. They're wood, and thick. You could throw your body against them all day long and not make a mark on one. The ceiling is the same as the walls. I told you this is pointless. This place is like a vault."

Paige twisted the chair leg in her hand. "There has to be a way out."

"There is," Chris said. "The way you came in. With Nicholas."

She thought about an air conditioning vent into the attic space but immediately dismissed the idea. There was no way either of them would fit through the opening. She looked down at the floor. "What about this?"

"The floor? What about it? It's a floor."

"What's it made of?"

"Tile?"

The kitchen, bathroom, and dining room were ceramic tile, but the floor in the living room was white carpet.

"Not in the living room," Paige observed. "Does the house have a basement?"

Basements were unusual in the area. She thought it had something to do with costs and the soil, something about the red clay and moisture, but considering what Paige had learned about Nicholas in the last few hours, she suspected a man like him might find use for a basement. And he certainly had the means.

"Yeah, sort of. It's his studio," Chris said. "Why?"

"How do you get into it?"

"There's a staircase that leads down into it, but you can't get to it and you don't want to go there."

"Why not? What's in there?"

"That's where he works. The place is like a medieval torture chamber. That's where his machines are. And there's no way out of the house from down there. That door is steel as well."

"Machines? What kind of machines?"

Chris shrugged. "His tattoo stuff, a freaky looking microwave, inks, a wooden bed with ropes that stretch you out by your ankles and wrists, a chair that holds you and pokes you in the a--"

Paige brought her hand up in a stop gesture. She didn't want to hear the gory details. She'd learned enough to realize there were probably tools down there. Maybe even something she could use for a weapon.

She rushed to the place where the ceramic tile of the kitchen and dining areas met the living room carpet. A small portion of the living room, the part closest to the bay window, hung over the edge of the small cliff. Here the large room shifted from dining area to living area. This was the point where the carpet was farthest from the big bay window and the cliff.

Chris gasped and Paige turned quickly to find Chris with a hand covering her mouth. She stared into the living area. "You broke his rocking chair," she said. "You shouldn't have done that. His grandmother gave that to him."

"And I'm going to break a lot more," Paige said wondering where else the woman thought she could have gotten the wooden leg she carried.

Setting the leg down, Paige got down on her hands and knees. She dug at the thick carpet where it met the tile and pulled up until a portion ripped free. Then she yanked up the pad so she could see what was beneath it. A wood floor.

"Bingo," she said.

Yanking back the carpet, she exposed about a five by five section of the wood floor. She didn't know if she would be able to bust through it, but she was sure as hell going to try.

"That isn't going to work," Chris said.

Paige looked up at her. Chris had stayed on the tile presumably to keep the water dripping from her nude body from getting on the carpet. She shifted from one foot to another. The snake adorning her body rippled and undulated with her every little movement. It had a hauntingly hypnotic quality that pulled at Paige's psyche. She couldn't help herself. It was a disturbing image that drew her eyes and left her wondering at her character. It pulled at her the way a car wreck or someone jumping from a high-rise pulls at a person with a voyeuristic fascination for the morbid.

Despite her revulsion, Paige admired the work as a student of art. Purely from an artistic standpoint, Paige thought the work on Chris's body was amazing. The vivid copper and red tone details and shading were exquisite. The snake breathed with its own life. She wondered how many hours it had taken to complete it. How painful its creation had been.

But why a snake? Snakes gave her the willies. Even paintings of snakes gave her the willies. She shook her shoulders to shake off the thought. Something less creepy would have been more aesthetic. She remembered something about a Lébé god in her African art studies. Something about the god visiting the members of the tribe in the form of a serpent and licking their skin in order to purify them and infuse them with power. Or was it life force? She couldn't quite remember the details, but what she did remember didn't sound appetizing.

Water ran down Chris's body, over the snake, dripped to the tile floor where it formed a small puddle. The puddle gave Paige an idea.

She went to the sink, turned it on, and ran her own hair under the water. She rushed back to the spot where she had exposed the wood flooring, wrung her hair out onto the wood, then headed back to the sink for more water.

"What are you doing?" Chris demanded, her arms crossed, her head tilted to one side. Somehow she managed to pull off both puzzled and outraged quite well.

Paige wrung more water from her hair onto the floor. "The water will weaken wood," she explained, heading back to the sink.

"There's no way you're going to weaken the floor enough to break though it with your body weight. That water would have to sit there for several months, maybe longer. You're just making a mess. You'll get us both in trouble."

Paige stopped. Chris was right. It wouldn't work fast enough. Frustration rushed through her and quickly turned to anger. Blind anger.

She marched back to the carpet, got down on her hands and knees, and ripped at it with her fingers, tore at it with her nails, yanked at it with her fists. It felt good. If she couldn't get out of the nightmare house then she'd do her best to destroy it. To hell with Nicholas. To hell with his damned house.

Chris told her to stop, but Paige's feeling of revenge was too satisfying. She was doing something, dammit. She knew Nicholas or Edward or whatever the hell his real name was would be pissed when he saw what she had done to the floor and she would probably suffer for it, but she didn't care.

She stood up, marched to the wall. She reared back and kicked it, throwing her weight and hip into the blow. A sharp pain spiked through her heel. She ignored the pain and kicked the same spot. The pain leapt from her heal all the way up to her hip. She took several steps back, sprinted directly at the wall, lowered her shoulder. She bounced off it like a speeding car off a concrete highway barrier.

Chris sat down in a dining room chair. "You're wasting your time."

Paige ignored her, turned her attention to the big bay window. She beat against it with her fists, bringing them against the glass like two hammers. She stepped back and kicked it. Nothing.

The armoire. In a frenzy she grabbed the edge of the armoire, put a foot up and the wall for leverage, and pulled. She pulled until her muscles ached and burned from the effort, but the armoire would not budge.

She bent over, her hands on her hips, and gasped for breath. At some point in her rage she'd lost the throw blanket. It lay in a pile on the floor. She snatched it off the floor, wrapped it back around her. She looked around the room. The walls and window didn't have so much as a nick on them, and the armoire hadn't moved an inch. She'd accomplished nothing, nothing except bruising her foot and shoulder. But at least she was trying. At least she was fighting.

A stitch made its way up her side and she winced as it tightened. She looked at the carpet, the stupid white carpet. Who buys white carpet anyhow? White carpet made selling a place a complete nightmare. Homebuyers know it will stain eventually. Just a matter of time.

What was she thinking about? White carpet? At a time like this? She'd slipped into real estate mode. Imagine that. Here she was, kidnapped, naked, stuck in a hellish nightmare of a home, and she was thinking about how hard it would be to sell the place with its white carpet. She shrugged off her carpet thoughts.

She'd been working without thinking. She needed to think. Blind rage wasn't going to get her out of this mess. Nicholas had been calculating in the creation of his home. She needed to be equally calculating if she hoped to escape.

The basement. His studio. There had to be a way into it. If not through the wood floor then some other way.

Paige turned to Chris. "Where's the staircase that leads to his studio?"

"You don't want to go down there. You won't find what you're looking for."

Paige circled the couch, looked down at the floor. A large chunk of carpet was pulled away from wood floor. At least she'd made some progress in destroying the carpet. It was better than nothing.

"Please don't," Chris said. "I'm begging you."

Paige stopped, studied the couch. Something about it wasn't right. What was it? It looked normal enough. Standard everyday plaid couch. But something wasn't right about it. She felt it. It drew her eyes like a spot of dirt on a painting.

She got down on her hands and knees, began pulling the carpet away from the floor in the direction of the couch.

Chris stood back up. "What's wrong with you?"

Paige ignored her, clawed at the carpet like a beast, every twisting twinge of pain in her face and chest and every other part of her body completely forgotten. She yanked at the carpet, wrenched it back and forth and ripped at it until the wood floor was exposed all the way to the couch. Then Paige pulled and shoved at the couch, but it wouldn't move. She kicked it.

"Come here and help me," Paige yelled.

Chris made no move toward Paige or the couch.

Getting down low, Paige pulled up hard while shoving on one end of the couch. It teetered on the edge of upward movement. She moved around to the back and pushed up on it trying to turn it over. The couch rotated forward on hinges, revealing a metal door mounted in the floor. The same kind of metal door used for Tornado shelters.

Paige's heart nearly leapt out of her throat. The success filled her with purpose and hope.

"We're getting somewhere now," she said.

There was no handle on the door, nothing to grab to pull it open with. The gap between the wood floor and the metal door was too small for her to pry it open with fingers. But that didn't matter. She'd find a way to open it.

Chris stepped out of the dining room and moved closer. The movement caught Paige's eye and she glanced up at her. Chris had the broken leg from the rocking chair in her hand.

"That's a good idea," Paige said. "Maybe we can pry it open."

Paige got down on her hands and knees. The door was ice cold. A small lip protruded around the edge of the door. The door was metal but didn't look to be anywhere near as strong as the steel door that led into the bathroom and Nicholas's bedroom. If she could jam something between the lip and the floor she might be able to bend it open.

She looked up at Chris to take the chair leg from her and saw Chris bringing it down on her like a woodsman bringing down an ax to split a log.

No! she thought, bringing her hands up to protect herself from the blow. But it was too late. She heard a loud crack, felt her body slump to the floor.

### Chapter 24

Eddie learned to shoot handguns before he learned to read. At the age of three, he'd shot tight groups the size of a softball resting the seven-inch barrel of a Ruger .22 on sandbags from as far as twenty-five feet away. By the time he was five, the groups were the size of a baseball and he was shooting at twice the distance. By ten, he was shooting groups the size of a golf ball from a two handed standing position. As a teen, he'd shot in high-powered pistol competitions, won medals.

He made it a point to go out to the range once every couple of months to relax, to get out of the house, to keep his skills sharp.

The .45 had a titanium firing pin and competition sights that glowed a dim green even in complete darkness. The double diamond checkering on the grips had been honed and additional hand checkering had been added to the steel front strap and mainspring housing to provide even better sandpaper-like grip. Hand checkering had even been added to the hammer and trigger. The pistol wouldn't come out of Eddie's hand if it had been dipped in baby oil.

Eddie hit the oversized eject button, and the clip dropped into his hand. Pushing down on the top of the clip with his thumb, he made sure it was fully loaded with rounds before sliding it back up into the frame. It clicked into place. So did a doubt.

Could he really shoot someone? He'd never shot a living thing before--he didn't hunt--and he'd certainly never killed anyone, which was exactly what the .45 would do. Some people equated owning a firearm and target shooting with some innate ability to kill people, but Eddie knew that wasn't the case. He'd never even considered pointing the pistol at another human being, and he certainly didn't want to kill anyone.

Eddie's mouth went dry. He licked his lips.

The clip was loaded with Black Talons bullets designed to open up like a flower. This kept the rounds from penetrating walls, which made them more ideal for home defense. Any person hit by such a round most likely wouldn't survive even if hit in the arm or the leg. Said appendage would be blown off. But at least the assailant wouldn't keep coming at you.

Pulling back the slide, he chambered a round and flipped the thumb safety on. He didn't want to live with the guilt of having killed someone, but he would use lethal force if he had to. He wanted to live.

Eddie pulled a spare clip out of the box--not that he expected that he would need it unless a small army was planning to assault his home--and slid it into his back pocket. The clip was loaded with hollow-points, which wouldn't be as effective as the Black Talons, but would still get the job done.

He slipped the metal box back under the bed.

Eddie duck-walked toward the window using the bed for what little cover it provided. He held the semi-automatic with both hands, keeping the barrel up. Once he was at the end of the bed he remained in a squatting position, situated himself where he could see through the bedroom door, down the short hall, and into the blackness of the living room while still being able to see a good amount of yard out the window.

He waited.

His hands were damp. He rested the butt of the .45 on the bed, sighting the barrel halfway between the bedroom door and the window. The garage door was closed. The back door was closed. The front door was locked. A closet was just behind Eddie to his right. That door was shut. The bathroom was just behind him to his left. That door was also shut. All the entrances to the bedroom were covered. He was probably being paranoid. It was probably nothing.

His eyes shifted back and forth between each possible entrance. The door to the bedroom. The window. The door again. Eddie considered checking inside the bathroom and then the closet but decided against it. He was in a good position. If either door swung open he would see it and be able to react.

He peered back through the window and saw the shadow of someone standing outside, maybe thirty feet away. His chest constricted. He pivoted the pistol toward the window and took aim. The streetlamp popped off and on and the shadow vanished with each pulse of light. There wasn't someone outside. It was just the moonlight casting shadows through a tree. Eddie breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

This would drive Paige absolutely nuts. She'd say he was being an unreasonably suspicious ass. He stood, rubbed the sweat from the back of his neck, and chuckled. He was being ridiculous. He was getting himself all worked up over nothing, over a shadow. If anyone had seen him, how he'd been acting, they would have figured him for a paranoid lunatic. If Paige had seen him, well...

The air conditioner fan kicked on and the house groaned from the change in air pressure. Eddie shifted his feet, spinning away from the window towards the interior of the house. A silence followed that he found nearly as startling as the shadow had been. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.

Out the window, behind the tin barn, in the bright shutter-flash of the streetlamp, he saw the front fender of a car, a dark car. A car that someone had tried to hide behind the tin barn. A car he didn't know.

Someone was there. Someone was watching him.

He turned back to the door to the bedroom. He didn't know how he knewhe'd never before had any kind of psychic premonition--but he knew. With uncanny certainty he knew the someone wasn't out there. They were in here. Inside his house.

Eddie's heart jumped like a bullfrog. A sickening feeling made its way down his spine and into his gut. It made his balls ache and his sphincter tighten.

Squinting in an effort to force his eyes to pierce the darkness of the living room, Eddie saw nothing but black. Then the streetlamp popped on and cast a dim arm of light through the bedroom and into the living room. Again he saw a dark figure standing at the end of the light, a ghost in the darkness. He shook his head. It can't be a ghost. But he'd been watching, studying that very spot, and he'd seen nothing there until now. The streetlamp went out.

One part of Eddie's mind leapt at the idea that maybe the figure was Paige returned home while another part whispered it could only be the angel of death.

"Who's there?" Eddie said.

No answer came from the figure. There was only silence.

Eddie flipped the safety off with his thumb and raised the .45. He kept the muzzle angled downward. His hands shook a little, and he took a deep breath in an attempt to steady them. He hoped for another flash from the streetlamp. He wouldn't shoot without knowing exactly who or what he was shooting at, and he wouldn't shoot without giving a warning.

"Don't come any closer," Eddie said. "I've got a gun, and I'll shoot."

If it was Paige, he figured she would answer. She knew he owned firearms. She wouldn't take such a statement lightly. Still, he needed to be absolutely sure. Know your target. Know what's beyond your target. He wished he'd turned on a light instead of leaving the house dark. He didn't want to be one of those people who accidentally shot their spouse.

The wood floor in the living room creaked. Eddie wondered if the figure had taken a step toward him.

He stood his ground. "Paige?" he asked, hoping, if it was her, to prompt her into a response. "Honey, if it's you then you need to tell me. I'm going to shoot."

The wood floor creaked again, and Eddie thought for sure it shifted beneath his feet. Had the figure moved closer? He couldn't tell in the darkness.

It couldn't be Paige. She would have answered, said something. She wouldn't risk getting shot. He had to be absolutely sure though. The gun felt heavier in his hands, required more force to keep it raised. Realizing it was likely he would kill whomever it was with a single shot and wanting to give them every opportunity to flee, Eddie gave the intruder one last warning.

"Whoever you are, if you take another step I will blow a hole the size of a softball through you."

A burst of strobe-like light lit up the interior of the house again, Eddie saw the backlit phantom had moved closer, had crossed the living room and was nearly to the bedroom door. The figure looked too large to be Paige.

Adrenaline screamed its way through Eddie's body telling him to run, to get out of the house. The apparition had moved closer, although he'd never seen it move, and it was ignoring his warnings.

Oh dear Jesus get out. Don't be one of those idiots you see in horror movies standing there waiting to get murdered. Get out of here.

But there was nowhere to go except out the window and there wasn't time to get it open, the figure was too close.

Eddie aimed the .45 at the place where he'd last clearly seen the figure. The pistol trembled in his hand. He brought up his other hand, cupping it under the .45 to help steady the firearm. He searched for the silhouette in the blackness, prayed for another flicker of light.

The interior of the house lit up for a second. Eddie caught a glimpse of the face. Nicholas. No mistaking that grin. The sight of him spurred Eddie into action. Taking a deep breath, letting a little out, he aimed the pistol at Nicholas's chest and squeezed the trigger. The hammer dropped.

Clink.

The handgun misfired.

Nicholas took a couple of steps toward him. Eddie heard each thud of his heavy boots against the wood floor. He jerked the slide back chambering another round, letting the dead slug fall to the floor with a clatter.

He brought the pistol back up. Nicholas was close enough now for Eddie to make him out even in the darkness. Eddie aimed for the chest again.

Nicholas was in his bedroom, but he wouldn't be there for long. The bullet would blow him back through the doorway and into the living room shredding his chest. Eddie squeezed the trigger. The hammer dropped.

Clink.

Eddie couldn't believe it. A second misfire? What were the odds? Had to be astronomical. A bad batch of rounds? Couldn't be. He'd popped off a couple Black Talon rounds from the same box just a few weeks ago. They'd been fine then. He didn't have time to ponder the problem any longer. In two long steps, Nicholas was around the bed, nearly face to face with him. Eddie only had a couple of seconds to come up with a new plan of defense.

The big man's large fingers reached out for his neck.

Eddie dropped down and rolled onto his back bringing his feet up in front of his body as Nicholas charged him. Using Nicholas's weight and momentum against him, Eddie kicked with everything he had flipping Nicholas up and over him and slamming him into the wall.

Both men scrambled to their feet. Eddie was faster. A 12-gauge pump shotgun was in the closet. He needed to create space in order to give himself time to get to it. He swung the butt of the .45 at Nicholas's head. One good blow to the skull with the heavy pistol and Nicholas would go nighty night giving Eddie all the time he needed to go for the shotgun.

Nicholas pulled back, and Eddie's swing came up short. It threw him off balance. He spun around and something slammed into the back of his head, jamming his face into the wall. His nose exploded with pain.

Eddie's gun hand tugged away from his body. Nicholas was trying to wrestle the .45 from his hand. Eddie's hold tightened on the handgun, the checkering ripping at the skin of his palm. Eddie grabbed for the gun with his free hand, but a blow to his kidneys took his legs. He nearly crumpled, refused to go down. Standing meant life. Falling, sure death.

He spun back around and a punch with the force of a fastball pitch caught him square on the cheek. Eddie tasted blood. He didn't know whether it came from his nose or his cheek. He only knew it was bad. He was losing this fight, losing badly. He had to do something, and soon, before Nicholas killed him.

### Chapter 25

Eddie caught another punch to the stomach. The air in his lungs burst from his body. He doubled over in pain. Desperately, he kicked out, felt contact. Nicholas was momentarily shoved back, off balance, and went down to his knees.

No time to go for the shotgun in the closet.

Eddie ran, jerked the bedroom door closed behind him as he fled the room, and flipped on the living room lights. Gasping for breath, he spotted the cordless phone sitting on the armrest of the couch. Dial 911. Why hadn't he thought of that sooner? He could use his cell phone to dial 911, but the house phone would be more reliable. Turning to face the bedroom door, Eddie backed toward the phone. He had to get some space between Nicholas and him.

Eddie clutched at his chest. The pain was intense. He fought to catch his breath, wheezed in air. Almost unbelievably, the .45 was still locked in his grip. Thank you, Dad! If his father hadn't had all the extra checkering work done to the pistol, he was sure he would have lost it.

He hit the enlarged eject button, dumped the clip loaded with the dead Black Talon rounds onto the floor. He kept his eyes on the bedroom door and continued to retreat from it. He jerked the second clip out of his back pocket, slid the fresh magazine into the .45, and pulled the slide back loading a hollow-point round into the chamber.

Eddie reached the cordless phone and picked it up with his free hand. Tapping the off hook button, Eddie punched 911 and tossed the phone back onto the couch. He knew the police always answered 911 calls even if they didn't hear anyone on the other end of the line.

He backed up to the wall and sidestepped into a room where he kept an old pool table. Eddie stopped in front of the pool cue rack putting the table between him and the bedroom. He wanted to keep as much distance between him and Nicholas as possible.

Eddie's nose and face throbbed. He touched his hand to his mouth, his fingers came away smeared with blood, but it didn't feel too bad. He'd live.

Nicholas still hadn't come out of the bedroom. Maybe he was playing possum. Or maybe he had bailed now that his would-be victim had escaped his grasp. Or maybe he was just taking his time, enjoying the hunt.

Regardless, whenever Nicholas opened the door, Eddie would be prepared. He slid a pool cue down from the rack and sat it on top of the pool table in front of him in case he had another problem with the .45.

But Eddie wasn't going to wait for Nicholas to show his face again to find out if there was a problem with the gun. Pointing the pistol directly at the bedroom door, aiming chest high, Eddie squeezed the trigger. The hammer dropped with another clink.

What the hell? He couldn't believe it.

Chambering another round, he pulled the trigger again and then again and then again. The pistol spit each dead round into the air and they clattered on the wood floor.

Eddie quickly examined the exterior of the .45. He couldn't see an obvious problem, not that he really expected to see one. If something was wrong with the pistol, it was most likely an internal problem. It certainly couldn't be the bullets. Just no way he could have had that many misfires in a row. Not from two different sets of ammunition. The odds on that were beyond astronomical. They weren't misfires. There had to be problem with the pistol.

But what was wrong with it? Had Nicholas gotten to it? Eddie always kept the .45 in the small box safe. He couldn't have. It was impossible. Maybe he had reassembled the pistol incorrectly the last time he'd cleaned it? He must have. It was the only logical explanation. Whatever the problem, the firearm was useless.

Nicholas opened the door to the bedroom and stepped into the living room. He stopped, stared at the pistol in Eddie's hand.

Aiming the .45 at Nicholas, Eddie pulled the trigger one more timealthough this time he actually expected the pistol not to fire--and it didn't. The hammer just fell with another sickening clink.

"Looks like you're having trouble," Nicholas said. "That's a real shame. You could have had me there."

Nicholas glanced down at the top of the pool table, then at the pool cue. He took a step around the table toward Eddie.

Eddie dumped the chambered round and the clip from the .45 onto the floor and tossed the pistol on the table. He picked up the pool cue, held it like a baseball bat with the thicker end up high. The .45 might have had more weight as a blunt force weapon, but the pool cue had far better reach.

Nicholas strode around the pool table.

Eddie backpedaled away from him, keeping the table between them. Nicholas reached into his back pocket, and Eddie expected him to pull out the razor. He prayed the bastard didn't pull out a gun. If he pulled out the razor, Eddie felt like he would still be in good shape. If he pulled out a gun, the jig was up. He'd take a pool cue over a knife any day. But against a pistol the pool cue would be worthless. Thankfully, Nicholas didn't pull out a gun or a knife. Instead, he pulled out another photograph and tossed it in front of Eddie.

"We can dance all night if you like," Nicholas said. "But while we're dancing she's dying."

Eddie glanced down at the photo. It was another picture of Paige. She was nude, handcuffed to a tree, and bleeding. A wide stream of blood ran down her chest to her navel. She looked unconscious.

Eddie's throat constricted. His worst fears realized. The psycho had Paige, had hurt her. Eddie's grip tightened around the pool cue. He hoped the 911 operator was fast, hoped the police would be faster, but until they arrived he was going to use every second to make Nicholas pay for his photos.

"She's not dead yet," Nicholas said. "But she's running out of time."

"You bastard."

He might be lying. She could be dead already. His heart went into freefall at the thought.

"Are you willing to take a chance? Roll the dice." Nicholas asked.

Was the man reading his mind? If he was, then Nicholas knew he wasn't willing to take that chance.

"It's now or never," Nicholas said. "Are you going to be the coward or the hero?"

Nicholas was baiting him.

They had traded places around the pool table now. Eddie had his back to the bedroom. Nicholas had his back to the rack of pool cues. For a moment Eddie worried he'd made a huge mistake, that Nicholas might grab one as a weapon of his own, but instead he ignored them and continued to move around the table coming toward Eddie.

Behind Eddie, the hallway led back into the bedroom and the shotgun. If he could only get to it, he could put an end to this. But if he sprinted for it, and Nicholas followed, he wouldn't have enough time to get to the closet, open it, and pump the shotgun before Nicholas was on him. He needed to slow Nicholas down, to give himself enough time to get to it. And he wanted to make the man pay for what he'd done to Paige.

At least the police were coming. Backup. But it might take them a few minutes to get out to Eddie's rural home and in a few minutes the fight could be over.

Eddie stood his ground again, this time fear for Paige's life locked him to the floor. She needed him. Based on the amount of blood he'd seen in the photo, he didn't think she had a lot of time. He wouldn't give up access to the bedroom and the shotgun.

Nicholas continued around the pool table, stalking him.

A glancing blow wouldn't be enough. Nicholas would expect him to swing, he knew that, but one well-placed hard shot was all he needed and he intended to make use of the reach advantage.

Nicholas reached the edge of the pool table and cautiously took a step toward Eddie.

Nothing but air between them now. Taking little half steps with his hands chest high, Nicholas was obviously trying to anticipate the blow.

Eddie cocked back the cue, ready to make the first swing count. One more step. Just one more step. If he caught Nicholas solid then he would make a break for the closet and the shotgun.

Nicholas took the step.

Eddie swung for the fences.

The crack of the pool cue was hard and crisp. Eddie thought he'd hit a homer the second the pool cue connected. His hands rang with the force of the blow. Nicholas howled and dropped to one knee holding his arm. Eddie raised the pool cue and brought it down again and again, thinking of the photo of Paige bleeding as he did. The wood connected with Nicholas's forearm, then his shoulder, then his thigh.

Eddie smiled, glad he wasn't on the receiving end, and for an instant he considered beating Nicholas to death with the pool cue right then and there, but he didn't. He needed to know where Paige was, and Nicholas was the only person on the planet who could tell him.

He bolted through the door to the bedroom, slamming it shut as he went. He dropped the pool cue, opened the closet, and snatched up the 12-gauge. The steel and wood felt good and heavy in his hands. He pumped the shotgun, and the room was filled with the sound of a shell loading into the chamber. Man, he loved that sound. It was the best sound he'd ever heard. A universal sound that would stop even the most violent of intruders right in their tracks.

With the shotgun held waist high and his finger on the trigger, Eddie approached the bedroom door prepared to unload a round of 12-gauge buckshot into Nicholas's ass.

Kicking the door open, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder. Nicholas was exactly where Eddie had left him, sitting on the floor, holding his arm. The man would be lucky if it wasn't broken.

Eddie aimed the shotgun at Nicholas chest.

Nicholas looked up at him. "What are you going to do? Shoot me?"

Lowering the shotgun back to waist height, keeping the muzzle aimed at Nicholas's chest, Eddie said, "I'm going to wait for the cops to get here, and then I'm going to let them deal with you."

Nicholas sniffed, as if amused. "By the time you get to a phone, and the cops get here, she'll be dead."

Eddie shook his head. "That's where you're wrong. I already called 911. The cops will be here any minute."

"Really?" Nicholas said. "So I guess my cutting the phone line didn't stop you from getting through?"

Eddie frowned. He backpedaled to the couch and the phone, kept the shotgun leveled at Nicholas's chest.

"Shoot me in the chest with that shotgun," Nicholas said, shifting his weight, starting to stand. "And you'll never see Paige alive again."

Eddie lowered the barrel of the shotgun to Nicholas's knees and said, "Make a move without me telling you to and you'll never walk again."

Crouching down, Eddie had to balance the barrel across his forearm so he could pick up the cordless phone. He glanced down at the display. It was blank.

Eddie put the phone to his ear. Nothing. No dial tone. No 911 operator. He hit the off button then the dial button. Nothing. He looked at the display again. It was still blank. Tossing the cordless phone back on the couch, Eddie pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He hadn't used it to call 911 because he'd wanted to keep his hands free, and in the rural community where he lived, 911 calls from cell phones couldn't always be pinpointed. If that happened the 911 operator wouldn't know where to dispatch an officer. Now that he could stay on the line and give them an address it wouldn't be a problem.

Eddie dialed 911 on the cell phone and pressed the send button.

"What makes you think I'll tell the cops anything?" Nicholas said. "Without my help they'll never find her. You'll never find her."

The cell phone let out a series of alternating high to low tones. Eddie glanced at the display. A red stop sign symbol appeared along with the words ERROR IN CONNECTION. Eddie hit the end button and dialed again, but got the same message. Damn.

"She's dying, and you're jacking with your phone."

Eddie mashed the end button and shoved the cell phone back into his pocket. It wasn't like it was the most reliable piece of equipment he owned. He'd had problems getting a signal from inside the house before. But that would change once they got out on the road.

"Get on your feet and turn around," Eddie said. "We're going for a drive. You're taking me to her." He didn't see where he had any other choice. He wasn't going to sit around while Paige bled to death.

### Chapter 26

Paige shoved herself up from the floor with shaky hands. Her mind didn't want to come back from the deep black, but her stomach had other ideas. She rushed to the kitchen sink, dragging the throw blanket behind her, and made it just in time to spew soupy bile.

She turned the faucet on, cupped cool water to her dry lips, and rinsed out her mouth. Pungent sweat dotted her brow, and she wiped it away. Her head thrummed. Her neck felt stiff, and there was a sharp pang when she turned her head.

She glanced out the window. No sign of Nicholas's car. No sign of Chris. But Paige saw the remains of the rocking chair had been moved into the kitchen. The largest chunk sat on the floor. Smaller pieces were on the counter. The leg she'd been carrying had been broken in half and was on the dining room table.

Paige cracked another leg off the body of the rocking chair. This one she wouldn't put down. She wouldn't be caught off guard again.

Having the solid piece of wood in her hand gave her some reassurance, but not much. It was too small. What she really needed was a better weapon, something that would give her a real edge when Nicholas returned, which, no doubt, would be soon.

In the living area, the couch was still tilted forward, but the carpet had been smoothed back over most of the floor. The room was still a wreck. She smiled. Nicholas wouldn't be pleased.

The Tornado shelter style door in the floor stood wide open. The last thing Paige remembered was being hit on the head. She hadn't had time to open the door before she'd been hit, which meant Chris had to have opened it, unless Nicholas had returned.

She checked the window again. Still saw no sign of his car. But what did that really mean? He had a huge garage out back. It could be parked inside. She could think of only one way to find out.

Paige tied the throw blanket back around her body and cautiously approached the door to the basement.

Black painted concrete stairs led down into dizzying darkness. Another spasm of nausea assaulted Paige's stomach. Her guts felt as if they'd spent the night in a blender.

"Chris?"

Paige rubbed at the back of her head unleashing a corkscrew of pain. She couldn't help but wonder why the woman had hit her. Had she done something to provoke Chris or was she really working with Nicholas? It sure seemed like it. But perhaps Chris had only reacted out of fear for Nicholas's wrath over the destruction she'd wreaked on his carpet.

"I'm down here," Chris's voice echoed up out of the floor.

Paige took a couple of steps down the stairs into the shadowy dimness. She wasn't sure why she was going down into the basement. No rational and intelligent person would, but she couldn't help herself. Something was drawing her down. Some part of her had to know what was down there in Nicholas's secret lair.

The basement swallowed what little living room light filtered down into it. Paige bent over and peered into Nicholas's "studio." It was hard to see how large it was, but it felt deep, enormous, even bigger than the ground floor of the house.

Frigid damp air wafted up out of the darkness. Paige smelled ammonia and soap and something else. Something acidic that she couldn't quite place.

"Why did you hit me?"

"Why didn't you stop? I told you to stop. I begged you to stop. I'm responsible for what you do when you're with me."

Chris's voice had come from Paige's left.

An electric buzzing sound cycling between highs and lows came from the same direction.

Paige took a couple more steps down into the pit. A dim orange candle flickered in a far corner casting a weak halo of light on what looked like a small desk. She couldn't make out much else in the room, and she couldn't see Chris.

"I'm sorry," Paige said. "I wasn't thinking about that. I just wanted to get out of this house, away from him. And then I got angry. I wanted to hurt him in whatever way I could."

"He'll punish us both for what you've done. It will be awful."

Paige took a few more slow steps down the stairs. Down. Down. Down. She took more than a dozen steps in all, and still she didn't reach the bottom. From the angle of the light coming from the stingy candle, she guessed she was only about halfway down the stairs which would make the ceiling twenty or more feet tall.

She stopped.

It was like stepping down into nothingness. Her heart pounded in her palms. She didn't want to descend further without more light, without knowing exactly how far down the stairs went, without knowing what was at the bottom. Besides, if something happened, she needed to stay close to the door in the floor, wanted to stay close to the exit.

"I'll tell him you had nothing to do with it," Paige said

The dim light from the candle stood in stark contrast with the darkness permeating the rest of the room. The concrete was freezing cold. Grew colder with each step down. She felt certain that even if she were wearing shoes she'd feel the chill in her heel bones, which didn't make much sense. Underground rooms were supposed to maintain a fairly steady temperature. A cool, comfortable temperature. They weren't supposed to be like a freezer.

"No. He won't listen. I have to take my share of the responsibility. I just don't understand why you're acting like this," Chris said. "Why won't you listen to me? Why are you fighting so hard? You should be thanking him for all he's offered you."

Paige felt an evil presence creep up on her, as if something slithered towards her. It wasn't Chris. Was it Nicholas? Was it death incarnate? Whatever it was it made her want to back away from the cold blackness, to move closer to the door, but she held her ground. She felt along the wall with her hands, looked for a light switch, found nothing. Not wanting to retreat and not wanting to move forward, she sat down on the stairs with her back against the wall.

"The only thing he's offering is slavery and death," Paige said. "The man's insane."

"I realize you're afraid," Chris answered. "That you might be having second thoughts. I had them, too. He can be so intense. But after I thought about it, I began to ask myself what I really wanted and whether there might be something to all this. It wasn't like I'd found any answers on my own."

Paige heard the whir of an electric motor above her head and looked up to find the door above her closing.

"No," she wailed, sprinting up the stairs. But the door clanked shut before she could get to it.

Caught like a bug in a can, Paige frantically felt around looking for a latch or a handle, but there wasn't one. The face of the door was cold and smooth as polished steel.

"Don't be afraid," Chris said. "Everything's fine."

Paige banged the rocking chair leg against the metal.

"Let me out! What the hell is wrong with you people?"

"The door is on a timer. It closes automatically. We can leave this room whenever we want."

"You can open the door?"

"Yes."

"Then open it."

"I know you're frightened. I know it feels like you're giving up your control, but you're not really giving up anything, at least anything you really want. I'm just trying to help."

Paige crouched at the top of the stairs, wrapped her arms around her legs for warmth. Her shivers had shivers. She kept the leg of the rocker in front of her. She wasn't afraid of the dark, and she wasn't afraid of being confined, but something about combining the two made her flesh whimper.

"That's crazy. You're crazy. Open the door. Why would you want to give him anything? Give in to him? Give in to anyone? Open the door."

"Calm down," Chris said. "You're fine. I hear what you're saying, but that's not what this is, and we both know it. I know it feels like you're giving up control. But you're not. You have to get beyond that."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

"That battle of will, that moment where your mind is screaming at you to run. I always want to run. I even lash out sometimes or just take off. But in the end, I submit because it's what I really want, not because it's what he wants. You see, don't you?"

"I can see he's broken you. That you've lost your sense of who you are."

"No. It's a dance, a beautiful fulfilling dance. You're the one who has lost the sense of who you are. I was meant for this, and there's a lot of satisfaction in knowing that. It's like there's a line. A line that always lets you know where you stand. It sure beats playing the part the world wants you to play."

Paige spotted Chris's form in the murky blackness, but even with the light from the candle she couldn't see her clearly. At least she can't get behind me.

"You don't know what you're saying. The man has warped your mind. Please, just open the door."

"I know you're new to this. I know it sounds crazy. But haven't you spent your whole life looking for something? Looking for an answer to a question that's burned its way through you?"

"So what?"

"But I know the answer," Chris said. "The same question called to me from deep within. You want to be saved from the nothing that you've become. Here you can be. Here you can become immortal."

"You're seriously confused. You can't find meaning to your life like that."

"You're wrong."

"And you're working with him. That's why you won't open the door. You've convinced yourself that you've found something because you've had to in order to survive. I can understand that. But it isn't real. Nicholas isn't the answer, no man is, and he doesn't have any answers. I don't want this. I've never wanted any of this."

The odd buzzing sound stopped.

Paige heard Chris's bare feet slapping on the concrete as she crossed the room. Chris entered the candle's circle of light, turned, and slid her bottom up on one end of the desk. She saw Chris held a smallish round object in her hands. Chris put the object down and picked up the candle. The flame wavered as she lifted it.

"I'm not working with him," she said, and blew out the candle.

Paige shrieked in total darkness.

### Chapter 27

Eddie shoved the barrel of the shotgun into Nicholas's shoulder, pushed him in the direction of the garage, and then he let the man get a good eyeful of the huge dark hole at the end of the barrel of the 12-gauge. "You're going to take me to Paige," he said, letting his triumph become evident in his tone. "Get up."

Nicholas struggled to his feet. His leather boots thudded against the hardwood floor.

The smug grin Nicholas had worn was gone now, beat from him, but Eddie kept his guard up even though the man looked defeated.

"If you even flinch without asking for permission," Eddie said. "I'll take a leg off."

Nicholas grunted, rubbed his injured arm.

"Into the kitchen," Eddie said, keeping enough space between the two of them to give him time to react if Nicholas made a move.

Nicholas limped into the kitchen. Eddie followed. Nicholas leaned against the kitchen table taking weight off his injured leg.

Eddie sidestepped to the kitchen sink. He cradled the shotgun on his forearm, the stock under his armpit, the barrel pointed in Nicholas's direction. He picked up a towel. His mouth tasted of pennies, and his nose throbbed. He brought the towel up to his nose and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. The shotgun nearly slipped out of the crook of his arm, but he caught it. Nicholas made no move toward him.

For just over a minute Eddie kept the towel shoved against his nose while Nicholas stood there, looking at him with about the same amount of interest as the average twenty-something watching an Olympic Curling competition. Nicholas was being awfully quiet, but Eddie figured losing did that to a man like Nicholas.

Eddie tossed the towel in the sink. There was a good bit of blood on it, but he'd stemmed the tide. He motioned Nicholas toward the laundry room and the door to the garage.

"Open the door and step inside the garage. But stay where I can see you."

Nicholas opened the door, reached inside, and snapped on the light. He then looked back at Eddie with a "What now?" expression.

"We'll take my car," Eddie said.

Nicholas looked at the Honda then looked back at Eddie.

"Your car? You sure you wouldn't rather take mine?"

Eddie fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to him. "I'm sure."

Nicholas snatched the keys out of the air.

Eddie thrust the barrel of the shotgun in the direction of the driver's door of the Honda. "You drive."

"You know I drove a Jaguar?" Nicholas asked. "It's right around the corner."

"I know where your car is, and I don't care what you drive. We're taking my car. Now shut up and get in."

Nicholas shrugged and limped to the car. He opened the door, reached down, and slid the driver's seat all the way back before dropping down into it.

Eddie tapped a switch on the wall opening the garage door, walked to the passenger side. He slid down onto the rear seat. He laid the stock of the shotgun across his lap, shoved the barrel between the front seats aiming it at Nicholas's ribs.

The 12-gauge pump was a Remington police issue riot gun he'd bought for home protection. The barrel was barely long enough to be legal, but even so, it was going to be a pain to maneuver in the small car. He wished he had a pistol to carry instead of the shotgun. The pistol would have left him with a free hand and more maneuverability. But at least he had no doubt about whether the shotgun would work. The last time he'd used it he'd only cleaned the barrel. There had been no disassembly.

He dug the barrel into Nicholas's ribs to let him know he was still in charge.

Nicholas swiveled his head around and looked down at the barrel of the gun.

"What makes you think I'll take you to Paige?"

"Because you want to take me to her. Now turn around and drive."

Nicholas winked at Eddie then turned around and started up the car. It took him a moment to find the headlight switch and twist it on. Then he backed the Honda out of the garage. The streetlight flickered. The wind howled. The small car vibrated as they accelerated down the gravel driveway.

Eddie wiggled his cell phone back out of his pocket and glanced at the display. There was no signal, which didn't make any sense. He punched 911 and hit send anyway. The cell phone let out a series of alternating high to low notes. A red stop sign symbol with the words ERROR IN CONNECTION filled the display again.

Had the phone been damaged during his struggle with Nicholas? Maybe when he fell? Or maybe the tower covering the area was malfunctioning. Eddie put the cell phone away. He'd try it again later, once they were a little closer to the city where the tower signal would be stronger.

He thought of the photo of Paige. He hoped she was okay, that he would be able to get to her in time. Just hang on. I'm coming.

"What's up with the smell?" Nicholas asked.

Eddie had no idea what the man was talking about. There wasn't any smell. "Just shut up and drive."

"Ever heard of an air freshener? Really. I mean I can understand someone enjoying the smell of lemons, but sometimes moderation really is the best policy. You know it's still not too late to take my car."

"Do you always talk this much?"

There wasn't any smell of lemon in the car that Eddie could detect. The Honda smelled like it always did, a little musky with maybe some remnant of drive-thru cheeseburger. There definitely wasn't a lemon odor.

Nicholas flipped on a turn signal, pulled out of the driveway and onto the two-lane blacktop. He drove south. A white box truck with BLUE & GOLD SAUSAGE painted on the side passed them in the oncoming lane.

Usually a county sheriff cruiser could be found roaming up and down these back roads looking for speeding strangers. Almost every day Eddie saw one of their black cruisers, pulled off the road, partially hidden in the trees, radaring cars as they topped the hill. Eddie watched for one.

If he spotted one, how would he get the cop's attention or force Nicholas to pull the car over? Eddie didn't want to risk losing Paige by killing Nicholas and he hoped he wouldn't have to shoot him to get him to stop, but he was willing to do it if it came to that. Paige was hurt, bleeding, and he didn't know how badly.

Nicholas peered at him in the rearview mirror.

"What's your plan, Eddie?"

"Isn't it pretty obvious? Save Paige."

Eddie tried to sound confident, like he had it all worked out, but he didn't. His best option was to make Nicholas drive him to Paige. The man clearly wanted to take him there. But then what?

"What makes you think she wants to be saved?" Nicholas asked.

Eddie huffed. What a stupid question.

"You don't understand what's happening here, Eddie. She's becoming what she was meant to be. Long after you're forgotten, she will live on, immortal."

"What have you done to her?"

"There's a side to her you'll never understand. A side that craves darkness, that finds release and meaning in what you call pain. She needs an ordered world with structure and discipline. You can't provide that."

"Saying something like that just proves that you know nothing about her."

Nicholas reached down into the dashboard pocket beneath the radio and pulled out a cassette tape. With a frown, he looked at both sides of the tape. Heavy use had worn the ink off the plastic case.

"You really need to get a new car," he said. "Or at least a CD player. Cassette tapes are so passé."

Eddie jammed the shotgun into Nicholas's ribs. "Leave that alone. Tell me what you've done to her.

Nicholas ignored the barrel in his side, slapped the tape into the player. Journey's "Separate Ways" blared out the speakers.

"Whoa," Nicholas said, turning down the music. "What the hell was that?"

"Shut up. Turn it off. Tell me what you've done to Paige."

"Oh, now. Don't be that way. The music isn't that bad. Really. It's not."

Eddie met Nicholas's eyes in the rearview mirror. A this-is-way-worse-than-bad look stared back at him.

Eddie lifted the shotgun and popped Nicholas on the side of the mouth with the barrel. Nicholas's head snapped to the side from the force of the blow.

"What have you done to Paige, smart ass?"

Nicholas brought his eyes right back to the rearview mirror. They were slits. He raised his hand to his mouth. When he pulled his fingers away from his lips blood flecked them. Reaching down, he ejected the tape.

"I think you loosened a tooth," he said.

"Good."

"Journey, Chicago, Foreigner, The Eagles. You have shitty taste in music."

Eddie wondered at how he knew what kind of music he listened to.

"Like I care what you think."

It was clear Nicholas wasn't going to answer his questions.

He relaxed his grip on the shotgun, flexed his fingers. He'd been holding it so tightly his fingers were starting to go numb.

The headlights of the car lit up a yellow dog limping down the road. Nicholas looked in the direction of the dog, and Eddie knew it was the same dog he'd hit, knew what Nicholas was going to do before he did it. There wasn't enough time for Eddie to stop him.

He swerved, never touched the break pedal. The Honda struck the dog and pieces of the front bumper flew over the windshield. A glob of blood the size of a baseball splattered onto the glass. There was a double thud from beneath the car as the wheels went over the fallen dog. The glob crawled down the windshield like a giant slug. Nicholas pulled the lever to the wipers spraying washer fluid up onto the glass. The wipers smeared the blood back and forth, back and forth across the glass until it was clear.

Eddie whipped around in the backseat to look out the rear window. The dog's balled up body tumbled in the road. Eddie couldn't actually see bloody tire tracks running from the dog's body in the red tint of the taillights, but his mind supplied them. He turned back to Nicholas.

"You bastard. Why'd you do that?"

"You know cigarettes kill people," Nicholas said. "But people smoke them anyway. What do you think that says, Eddie? I think it says some people like pain, want to die. Otherwise, they wouldn't work so hard at killing themselves."

"You just killed that dog for the hell of it."

"You're not paying attention, Eddie. We're talking about smoking, about people having a death wish and about people who enjoy pain in the same way you enjoy laughter."

Eddie felt the urge to pull the trigger and blow Nicholas in half. But he couldn't do it. Not with Paige out there, somewhere. He forced himself to take long deep breaths. A murderous rage had built up inside him he hadn't believed he was capable of. He swallowed it back down, bottled it up.

"You're going to pay for what you've done," Eddie said.

"You say that, but we both know it isn't true. If you really loved her, you would want this for her. You would understand how much she needs this. The truth is, you're a selfish little man. You know she doesn't love you anymore and you know you don't love her like you should."

"Shut your mouth."

"It's true," Nicholas said. "I know it's hard to accept. But think about it. She isn't the kind of girl that goes out and finds someone like me for the fun of it."

"Shut up. Shut up." Eddie shouldered the shotgun pointing it at the back of Nicholas's head. He put his finger on the trigger. He wanted to squeeze. Oh, how he wanted to squeeze. "What is wrong with you? Can't you just shut up?"

Nicholas brought the car to a slow stop in the middle of the road. Turning, he looked back, into the barrel. Then he looked Eddie in the eyes.

"You aren't being very polite," he said. "We've already covered shooting me. Remember? Shoot me and the next time you see Paige she'll be ready for a wood box."

Somewhere he'd heard that counting to ten would calm you down, but he was so angry he couldn't even force himself to think of numbers. Whoever had thought that idea up hadn't ever been in a situation like this. Eddie still wanted to pull the trigger. Only his thoughts of Paige chained to the tree, dying, kept him from squeezing. He took his finger off the trigger, lowered the shotgun.

"You listen and listen up good, you snake. You're going to shut up and take me to Paige or so help me God I'm going to shoot you. And I promise you, there are a lot of places I can shoot you that won't kill you."

### Chapter 28

Paige huddled with her back against the steps, the door above her head, and her knees pressed to her chest. The room was all blackness on blackness, devoid of a single thread or dot of light. Why had she come down here? Dumb move. She should have stayed up in the living room. She didn't want to die down here in this cold, dark place. She started weeping and almost lost control again. The whole house was a place of madness crammed full of sickness.

She tried to calm herself down, to bring back the image of the red Indian Blanket wildflowers with their yellow tipped petals, but with the blood hammering through her head she couldn't concentrate enough to bring them into focus. The image darted away from her like a startled bird.

Paige wiped the tears from her eyes with the palms of her hands, took several deep breaths. She was going to have to face this.

From across the room, she heard Chris hushing her. "Shhh, shhh," as if she were an infant. Then Chris began to sing.

"Hush, little baby, now, don't you cry

"Daddy's gonna give you a mountain high

"If that mountain top's too cold

"Daddy's gonna give you a--"

Paige snapped, her anger ripping its way out her throat. "Open the damn door you bitch!"

No answer. Just the sound of her own voice echoing off the concrete. The silence deepened the darkness of the room.

"My husband Nick used to sing that to me when he'd want me to give him a blowjob," Chris said. "Only he would change the words around. That's pretty screwed up isn't it?"

Anger wasn't going to get her anywhere with Chris. She was working with Nicholas. She'd become his Igor, his Renfield, his evil assistant.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I yelled at you, that I called you that. I just want you to open the door. Will you please open the door?"

"I will. I will. But we need to talk first. Really talk. Come down. I'll turn on a light. We'll talk. We need to talk. We're on the same side."

"I don't think so," Paige said. "You're working with him. You're helping him."

"No. No. No. I mean, I am a part of this. But not the way you think. Come down. I'll turn on the light. You'll see for yourself. You don't have to hide anything from me. I want us to be friends. I can help. Really I can."

Paige just wanted the madness to end. She wanted all the power play games to stop. Why wouldn't Chris turn on the light?

"I'm not hiding anything, Chris. If you'll turn on the light first, then maybe I'll come down."

Paige wasn't really sure if she would go down into the room even if Chris turned on the light. It all depended on what was in the room.

"I'm just saying I already know who you are, what you are. There's no reason to hide from me. I already know why you came here. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Exasperated, Paige said, "I don't understand what you're talking about. This is all nonsense to me. I didn't come here. Nicholas brought me here against my will."

The buzzing began again.

"Okay. Fine," Chris said. "Have it your way. You were brought here. You didn't have any choice. I understand. I told myself those same things. Felt the same way. But we both know the truth. There's no need for lies anymore. People lie out there. Not in here. You can be what you are here, without shame. We can be friends here."

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. The only sound between them was the buzzing.

Paige's teeth began to chatter. Even with the throw blanket wrapped around her body, the room was so very cold. She didn't see how Chris could stand being naked in it. Time was running out. It slid out from under her. Chris wasn't going to help her. Nicholas would return soon. She needed to get out and find a weapon before he did.

"Since I was a little girl, I've had these desires," Chris said. "My earliest fantasies involved being wanted, chosen. I would dream of being used in elaborate rituals, of being the one who must surrender herself for the good of the community. I didn't understand why I had dreams like that. At some point I realized that control had come to mean everything to me, that I had to let go. You've had fantasies like those, too. I can tell. You wouldn't be down here if you hadn't. Can't you see? I found my bliss in the darkness. So will you."

"You call this bliss? Hiding here in the dark is not bliss. It's denial."

Chris snapped on the light.

Paige winced at all the brightness. The basement was nearly the size of the room above them, and it was deep, deeper than she'd originally thought. The distance from the floor to the ceiling of the basement had to be more than twenty feet.

Paige scooted away from the edge of the stairs until she was up against the wall, away from the long drop to the floor, which looked to be black painted cement. From her high perch, she saw evenly spaced stainless steel columns supported the ceiling. Two large ceiling fans spun lazily, circulating the already frosty air. An iron cage maybe four feet tall hung up in one corner of the room. A black metal wagon-like wheel hung in another corner.

"There," Chris said. "I've turned on the light. Now why don't you come down here? I have something I want to show you."

Chris remained perched atop the desk in the far corner of the room. More buzzing. This time Paige knew the sound was coming from what Chris held in her hands. A small grapefruit and what looked like some kind of electric engraving pen. The buzzing sound was coming from the pen. The tone of the buzzing changed as she dragged the tip of the instrument across the skin of the grapefruit. It wasn't an engraving pen. It was a tattoo machine. She was tattooing the grapefruit.

Paige pointed at the tattoo gun. "See. You are with him."

Chris held the grapefruit up. "This is for passing the time and making him happy. I'm not working with him. There's nothing else to do. Can't you see? It's not as if there's a TV to watch. It's not like there are bookshelves loaded with stuff to read, although, that would be nice. I like to read. My favorite is The Monk by Matthew Lewis. It's about this monk who feels--"

"Chris. You're frightening me. Don't you understand normal people don't act like this? What's wrong with you?"

"I'm frightening you?" She shook her head, lowered her chin. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. It's been a while since I've talked to anyone but him. Sometimes he brings clients in. Brings them down here and works on them. But I don't ever get to talk to them. Sometimes he lets me watch on the monitors."

Paige scanned the room. There had to be something down there she could use as a weapon. But nothing jumped out at her. She needed to get closer. Hesitantly, Paige lowered herself on her bottom, one step at a time, moving toward Chris and the desk in the hopes of getting a better look.

Candles of every color and size--there had to be several hundred--decorated a chest high shelf that ran along all four walls. The wax had melted down the sides of the candles, off the edges of the shelf, and had pooled and solidified on the floor.

A massage table with black vinyl padding stood next to what looked like a dentist chair. A few feet away from them there was what looked like a wooden bar stool with a metal pyramid on top. Three chains, one from each wall and one from the corner, were linked to a harness that hung above the pyramid.

"He works on them?" Paige asked.

"Yep. He's done a lot of important work here. Tattoos, scarification, flesh removal, body modification, that kind of thing. Sometimes he'll do basic piercings, but he doesn't like to."

"Where do you watch from?"

"Upstairs. Like I said, he's got the whole place wired with video cameras and microphones. I watch them drive up in their fancy cars. Sometimes they ride in limos. Once a woman drove up in a silver Rolls Royce. Shar Quest from the band Tribal Illusions. Have you heard of her? Nicholas did an amazing tat of a blue Chinese dragon on her back. She got a real kick out of his medieval torture collection." Chris pointed at a rough wood chair sitting against a wall. "That's an inquisition chair."

Hundreds of spikes covered the chair's back, seat, arm, and footrest. Metal bars, similar to what you might expect to find on an old rollercoaster, crossed the chest area, thigh area, and the top of the feet to hold the body against the spikes. The bars could be screwed down tight to force the spikes deep into a person's body.

Paige stood, took several steps down the stairs.

"There are closed circuit monitors in the armoire upstairs," Chris said. "But you can't watch TV on them. Nicholas says television inhibits creativity."

Chris pointed across the room to a steel door like the one in the kitchen. "He brings the clients in through there."

Paige took a few more steps down the stairs. She was nearly to the bottom. "Does it lead out?"

"Yes. That way he can bring clients directly into the studio. But you can't get out that way. How would you get through the door?"

"It doesn't unlock from the inside?"

"No. It has a magnetic lock like the others."

Paige stepped onto the floor of the basement. Walked over to the door, tried the handle. It was locked.

Small cocktail napkin size sketches of animals, symbols, runes, flowers and every other imaginable thing were taped to one wall. Larger sketches, on what looked like illustration board, were stacked against a table. A painting of a woman sleeping naked on rock hung above Chris. In the painting, near the woman's feet, a pomegranate floated in mid air, a fish swam out of the pomegranate, a tiger leapt from the fish, and the tiger spewed forth yet another tiger. A rifle with bayonet hung in front of the second tiger, the blade pointed at the woman, and an elephant with long, thin legs walked across the sea behind her. The painting was unmistakably Salvador Dalí, but Paige couldn't remember the title. Hundreds of photographs, too far away to make out clearly, covered a third wall of the studio. She advanced on them to get a better look.

"You didn't scream for help when he brought them in?" she asked, her eyes locked on the wall of photos.

"Sure. Once. But I guess they couldn't hear me, and he punished me afterwards, wouldn't let me watch on the monitors for a long time."

The pictures were of tattooed arms and legs, breasts and thighs, navels and backs all riddled with panthers or hearts, zombies or pinups, portraits or dragons.

"None of them saw you? Through the window upstairs in the kitchen?"

Chris shrugged. "He doesn't bring them in that way. Besides, people see what they want to see. It's not like he lets me run around the house when they're here."

There were also pictures of body modifications on the walls. Images of split tongues and branded arms, castrations, pierced nipples, and even what looked to her like a penis split in two. She gasped at the images, turned away, tried to put them out of her mind.

"Where does he keep his knives?"

Chris picked up a magazine and waved Paige closer. "Come here. I want you to see something."

Paige cautiously stepped closer. Chris handed her the magazine. BODY ART was the name printed across the top of the publication. On the cover a woman sat with her back to the camera. It was Chris. Paige knew it was Chris even though the photo was a shot from the neck down. The bloody snake writhed on the glossy cover. Its forked tongue flicked out at a strange symbol on Chris's neck.

"It came out last week." Chris pointed to the symbol. "They had to airbrush his signature in."

Chris turned and pulled aside her hair to show Paige a small bandage on the back of her neck.

"It was going to take another four to six weeks for it to heal and the publisher didn't want to wait. They're calling it the greatest work ever."

The caption beneath the photo read STEELE'S MASTERPIECE.

"Is that his real name? Steele?"

"No. I don't think so. That's just what he's known by. Like Madonna or Prince or Bono. He's famous. He's had spreads in every magazine covering tattooing and body modification. Walk into a tattoo convention and mention the name Steele and everyone will know who you're talking about. Nobody knows his real name. Well, somebody might, but not me. His clients don't. The magazines don't."

Paige touched the bandage on her chest and thought of the other scars on her body. It had never occurred to her that some people might find scars attractive, that people would pay someone to scar them or buy magazines devoted to scars.

"He wants me to call him Nicholas because he sees taking Nick's name as giving him some kind of power. I think it's also supposed to serve as a reminder of what happened. He can get kind of mystical about stuff like that. He'll want you to keep calling him Edward."

"Well, I won't."

Chris took the magazine from her, narrowed her eyes.

"You just don't get it, do you? You'll call him whatever he wants you to call him. You'll owe him that, and more, for killing your husband for you."

### Chapter 29

Eddie watched Nicholas turn back to face the wheel. The Honda shot forward as Nicholas stomped on the gas pedal like he was trying to kill a mouse.

"So I'm a snake, huh?" he said. "I like that. Serpents are the middlemen between mankind and the spirit world. That's high praise."

Eddie shook his head. The man was way unbalanced.

They stopped at a stop sign. A single lance of electricity fissured the night sky. Thankfully, they continued south, moving away from the thunderstorm, which looked to be heading north. An occasional gust of wind pushed at the car, causing it to rock from side to side.

"Are you circumcised, Eddie?"

"What?"

"Has the foreskin of your penis been removed?"

Eddie shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "That's none of your damn business."

They neared the taillights of a cattle trailer being pulled by a slow moving farm truck. Nicholas let up on the accelerator. The smell of manure streaked through the car like the tail of a sulfur comet.

"Come on now. We're both grown men. We've shared the same woman, swapped germs so to speak. Surely you can tell me if you're circumcised or not."

The thought of swapping germs with Nicholas nearly made Eddie puke.

"Most men born in America are circumcised," Nicholas said. "But there's no real meaning behind the act. Circumcision is meant to be a rite of passage. In some cultures a boy goes through various stages of circumcision on his way to manhood. You've probably never heard of meatotomy. It's a form of penile modification in which the underside of the head of the penis is split. Then there's a subincision where the split is continued all the way to the base."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Rites of passage. Rituals performed on the penis. The clamp and cut procedure is the most common method currently used to perform a meatotomy or a subincision. First, you restrict the blood flow with a simple rope tie-off. Then the tissue to be cut is clamped using hemostats. They're sort of like needle-nosed pliers that ratchet closed. One side is inserted into the urethra. Then you ratchet them tight until the tissue is fully compressed. Within about fifteen minutes the tissue will become paper-thin and translucent. It's just a matter of cutting to the desired length after that."

Eddie cringed. "That's disgusting."

"Some people use surgical scissors, but I prefer a scalpel." Nicholas leaned forward in his seat, tried to peek around the truck and trailer. "You know this car is a real piece of shit. The clutch is slipping, it pulls to the left, and the brakes are spongy."

Who cares. How did he draw the chatty nutball in the serial killer lottery? Weren't maniacal killers supposed to be the quiet type? Couldn't the man just shut up and drive?

A rear tire of the trailer ahead swerved off the payment, probably pushed by the wind, and rumbled across the bare earth along the edge of the road, kicking up chunks of dirt that smacked the fender and hood of the car.

Nicholas accelerated and passed the truck and trailer at over eighty miles an hour.

Eddie tightened his grip on the shotgun. The moisture in his hands brought out the sickeningly sweet smell of the gun oil he'd rubbed the weapon down with the last time he'd stored it.

"Everything's going to be just fine," Nicholas said. "Isn't it? Soon Paige will be saved. Then it's on to the whole world."

Eddie's mind swelled with questions. Nicholas could be taking him down a road that led to his death, to Paige's body, to a place worse than hell. There was a good possibility he was walking straight into another trap. But what else could he do? He could think of nothing. He only prayed Paige was still alive, that this madman wanted to take him to her while she was still alive.

"Have some confidence," Nicholas said. "You're going to save Paige, be the big hero. Right? The real question is why do you want to save her? Why are you risking your life for a woman who betrayed you, who doesn't love you anymore?"

"She still loves me."

"Then why'd she sign a lease on a new apartment?"

The man was messing with his mind. But didn't it make sense? She would set herself up with a new place to live if she was leaving him, and if he were to believe Tabitha she might have been planning it for a while. Eddie tried to shrug it off.

"So what if she has?" he said, just wanting to shut Nicholas up. "Just because she signed some stupid lease doesn't mean she doesn't love me."

"Then why has she been having an affair?"

With this choice of topic Eddie couldn't help but wonder if Nicholas wanted his brains surgically removed from his head via shotgun. Nicholas's lack of concern worried him.

"It doesn't matter."

"Quit avoiding the question. Why did she leave you? Why did she start banging me?"

"Because of your lies." Eddie tasted the venom in his own words, hoped to poison Nicholas's smugness. "People like you smell a little blood in the water, and you take advantage of the situation. That's why."

But a tremor of uncertainty quivered in his gut. He could have done more for her, more for them.

They continued driving south. Nicholas kept them on back roads where there was little traffic. Eddie checked his cell phone again, but the error message was still there.

Nicholas smiled. "All I did was offer her what she wanted. That's it. She did the rest. If she really loved you, do you think that it would matter what I said to her? Face it, I offered her another option, and she jumped at it."

"You keep telling yourself that. The fact is we were happy together until you came along. Things might not have been perfect, but they never are. She means nothing to you."

"We're not together for the sex, if that's what you mean," Nicholas said. "She wants to be a part of something special."

"Special? Until you, she was a part of something special. You chained her to a tree. You hurt her. Now she's all alone, bleeding, maybe dying. And you call that special?" The cork of anger worked its way back out of the bottle, and he hammered it back in as best he could. "You need to seek professional help, buddy. And I don't believe you. Paige hasn't cheated on me. She's never cheated on me. Would never cheat on me."

Tabitha was wrong, and Nicholas was lying. He had to be.

"I can see why you might think that, Eddie. But as usual, you have it all wrong. You really don't know anything about her, do you? She deserves better than you. I know it. She knows it. You know it."

"Like I said, you don't know anything about us."

They passed a huddle of sand trucks on the side of the dark rural road drenched in the light of a street lamp. The place wasn't familiar. Nicholas had gotten him talking, and now Eddie wasn't sure exactly where he was. He would have to watch for the next street sign.

"I know a lot more than you think. I know why she left you. I know what she's looking for. I know what she needs. I even know about her scars."

Eddie blinked, stunned by this piece of information. If Nicholas knew about the scars then maybe there had been some real intimacy between them. Paige rarely talked about her scars, even with him. Most of what he'd learned he'd had to piece together over the years because she was so sensitive about it.

He spotted a green street sign and realized they were on the southern side of the city, not very far from a police station. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of it sooner. He was making a mistake, trying to do it all on his own. He needed help. He should have made Nicholas drive him to the closest police station when they'd left the house. Now he'd fix that mistake.

"Make a right at the next intersection," he told Nicholas.

"Now why would I want to do that? There's plenty of gas in the tank. Whatcha' thinkin'?"

"I'm thinking you've forgotten who's holding the shotgun."

"Nope."

Nicholas made a left at the next street, taking them east. He started humming what sounded like "Superstitious" by Stevie Wonder, drumming his thick fingers on the steering wheel to the tune.

Eddie shouldered the shotgun again. "Turn around."

"Paige is this direction," Nicholas said pointing out in front of the car. "If I turn around that'll just take us into town. And what's there? Nothing we're interested in. Maybe you're thinking of stopping? To chat with some college girls, offer to buy them a drink? Or maybe you're looking to get some help?"

He paused, raised an eyebrow inviting a response. Eddie didn't bite.

"Well, I'm not sure that's a good idea," Nicholas continued. "Think about it. We stop. People see you holding a shotgun. The cops come. Now how's that going to look? What do you suppose the cops will do when they see you holding that gun on me? You think they're going to listen to what you have to say? Or do you think it more likely they'll shoot you first and figure out what's going on afterwards? I think it's best, for Paige's sake, not to chance it. Don't you?"

Eddie shoved the barrel of the shotgun forward meaning to pop Nicholas's in the chin with it, but Nicholas ducked out of the way, reached up with his shifting hand, and slapped the end of the barrel away from his head.

"I'm trying to drive here," he said. "And you smacking me with that isn't helpful."

Eddie sucked in a breath. Lucky son of a bitch. His finger hadn't been on the trigger. "Keep your finger off the trigger till you're ready to fire," his dad had drilled into him as kid. And thank God for that. Otherwise Nicholas's brains would be all over the windshield, and Paige would be left out there, somewhere, never to be found.

"You're really not thinking things through, Eddie." Nicholas tapped the side of his head with his finger. "That's disappointing. If you shoot me what's going to happen? You think I'm going to take you to Paige if I've been shot? You think I'm going to tell you where she is while I sit here bleeding?" A snort of derision shot from his nose. "Not a chance. She can rot on that tree." He looked at Eddie in the rearview mirror. "But I'll tell you what will happen if you hit me with that shotgun again. I'll grant your last wish. I'll stop this car and we'll just sit. We'll call the cops if you like. Wait for them to come. They'll never find her, she'll die, and you'll get shot."

They passed an old farmhouse with a wood shingled roof and a half dozen junk cars lined up in the front yard like waiting coffins. A light was on in an upstairs window, and it made Eddie think of those motel commercials. The ones that go, "We'll leave the light on for ya." But nobody was out there leaving a light on for Paige and him. They were on their own.

To the north, white and blue bolts of lightning battled in cosmic swordplay. Paige was in the worst trouble of her life, and so was he. He'd thought he was in control of the situation, but he wasn't. He never had been.

### Chapter 30

"What the hell are you talking about?" Paige demanded.

Chris flipped open the magazine. "I'm talking about you having Nicholas kill your husband."

"What do you mean? I don't want Nicholas to kill Eddie."

"Did you know the blood python is one of the most unpredictable of the species? They have a reputation for being vicious and for striking with the least bit of provocation."

Paige didn't want Eddie killed, but for some reason Chris thought she did. If she could unravel what Chris was talking about, maybe the woman would finally help her.

"Why do you think I want Nicholas to kill my husband?"

"Lébé was the first mortal, part human, part snake," Chris said, flipping the page. "It's said that Lébé comes during the night to transfer wisdom through the saliva of its tongue."

Paige grabbed Chris by the arm. "Would you quit with the trivia and just tell me what the hell you're talking about?"

Chris pulled away. "I would, but you don't believe in magic. And you're not being honest with me." She set aside the magazine, opened the top desk drawer, and pointed.

Pictures of Paige filled the desk drawer. Pictures of her hanging from the tree. Pictures of her lying in her own bed. In one photo that immediately caught her eye, she was lying nude on her back. She had her sleeping mask on. She felt her face flush with anger. How had he done it?

The photo had to have been taken while she was home alone, napping. She never slept nude unless she was completely alone.

She picked up the photos, flipped through them. There were pictures of her sitting on her couch in her pajamas. Pictures of her in the shower.

Had he drugged her somehow? No. He hadn't. He had cameras in her house. He had to. It was the only logical explanation.

All the photos of her in her bedroom were taken from the exact same position, from her dresser. And the photos in the living room were taken from a single spot as well, from somewhere up on a wall.

"You can quit your little act," Chris said. "I know all about the two of you."

Now she understood why Chris had hit her, why Chris had hesitated in helping her. All this time Paige had been wondering whether Chris was working with Nicholas, Chris had been thinking she had some kind of relationship with the maniac.

"At first," Chris said. "I thought you were just like me. Then I realized you were up to something. Now I know you're just like him. I didn't ask Nicholas to kill my husband. He did it on his own. Maybe I could have done more to prevent it from happening. I could have fought him. I know that now. And I have to live with that. But what you're doing is murder."

"But I don't--"

"Don't bother trying to explain."

Paige rubbed the side of her head. How could she make Chris believe her? She took a breath, looked Chris in the eyes, and spoke softly. "I didn't ask Nicholas to kill Eddie. Yes, I knew him. Yes, I worked with him, but he lied to me. Honest. I had no idea what was going on. I would never want Eddie dead. Nicholas kidnapped me."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?"

Paige dropped to her knees. If there was anything she thought Chris might understand, that might make her see the truth, it was an act of submission. She put down the leg of the chair, and took Chris's hands in her own.

"You have got to believe me. I never asked for any of this. I'm here completely against my will. Can't you see? Oh God, what can I do to make you believe me? I didn't want any of this to happen."

"I want to believe you," Chris said. She pulled her hand away and ran her fingers through Paige's hair. "I do. But--"

"You have to believe me. We can't let him kill Eddie. He doesn't deserve to die. Help me. Please help me save Eddie." Paige pleaded.

Chris put her hand under Paige's chin, looked at her long and hard.

"In African Muti ritual killings it's believed that the more a victim screams the stronger the magic that's born of them will be. Some people believe in magic. Some people believe in talismans, magical charms that protect them or give them power. Some wizards acquire all their power from a wand."

Chris winked at her. Then she picked up the grapefruit from the desk and handed it to Paige.

Baffled, Paige took it and looked at it. Tattooed on the peel in an elaborate script were the words: LOOK IN THE MEDICINE CABINET.

Paige looked back up at Chris. "What?"

Covering Paige's mouth with her fingers, Chris took the grapefruit from her and pushed her away.

"I'm sorry. I can't help you. Even if you don't want your husband killed, it's too late. Nicholas would kill me if I did."

Chris looked up at a corner of the ceiling. Paige followed her eyes and saw a camera just like the one that had been in the bathroom.

Chris peeled off a portion of the grapefruit's skin.

"The only thing I can do for you is open the door."

Sliding off the desk, Chris stuffed the peel in her mouth and began chewing it. Then she glided away from Paige.

Paige picked up the leg of the chair and stood.

Chris crossed the room, snapped on a switch. The door in the ceiling motored open. She peeled off another portion of the grapefruit and stuck it in her mouth.

Paige sprinted up the stairs. She wished Chris would come with her, help her. Her odds of beating Nicholas would be much better if it was the two of them against him, but she understood why Chris wasn't willing to help her anymore than she had. She'd lost too much. The risk was too great for her.

She stepped into the living room, glanced out the big bay window. Headlights at the end of the drive pointed up at the house. She wanted to run and wait at the kitchen window to get a better look at the car, to see it as it drove around the house, to see if it was Nicholas, to see if he had Eddie.

God, wouldn't it be fantastic if the police had arrived? Wouldn't it be great if some hunter had heard her cries for help and had called the sheriff? But she knew in her heart it was Nicholas. She was out of time.

### Chapter 31

Steele pulled up to the security box, dropped the driver's window, and punched in his code. The gate opened. It was nice to be home.

"We're here," he sing-songed to Eddie. "Home sweet home."

He kept his eyes fixed on Eddie in the rearview mirror, hit the accelerator, and raced up the steep driveway fishtailing and kicking up rocks and dust behind them. Eddie rocked back and forth in the backseat, his eyes wide and red with weariness. He gripped the back of the passenger seat to steady himself. Steele smelled the fear on him. Strong, pungent, like sweat. Eddie was going to be quite the screamer.

"Are you ready to play hero?" he asked.

Eddie raised the shotgun in response.

"Don't you think that's getting a little old? I mean how many times are you going to wave that thing at me? You realize the effectiveness gets lost in all the repetitiveness."

"Where's Paige?"

"Paige, Paige, Paige. Where did I leave her? As if she's some lost token." Steele parked the car on a concrete slab, killed the engine. "She's right inside," he said, pointing. "Go get her hero."

"She better be," Eddie said, shifting his eyes from him to the door then back. "Get out."

Steele unhooked his seat belt, climbed out of the car, and strode around the front of the Honda. He dragged his finger across the hood as he went. He was going to enjoy this.

Eddie quickly stepped out of the car, brought the shotgun up to his shoulder. "Back off," he said.

The gaping hole of the shotgun barrel was an insult. It would not stop him. Nothing could stop him. He saw Eddie slide his finger onto the trigger. But he also saw the hesitation in him.

Steele reached for the barrel. Eddie pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell, made a hollow snapping sound.

Surprise bloomed in Eddie's eyes, and Steele smiled. His fingers wrapped around the barrel and he snatched the shotgun out of Eddie's hands. Then with a quick step to one side he brought the stock of the weapon down on Eddie's right knee. Eddie dropped to the ground in howling pain clutching his kneecap.

"I gave you chance after chance," he said, firing a kick into Eddie's upper lip.

A tooth flew from Eddie's mouth, and he raised his hands to protect his face.

Steele kicked him in the back, and Eddie rolled over in an attempt to get away from his boot.

"You could have beat me to death with that pool cue," he said. "But you didn't have it in you."

Eddie rolled away, and Steele followed. He stomped down on Eddie's hand-covered face, was rewarded with the branch crack sound of boot against bone. Blood filled Eddie's hands, covered his face. He shrieked in pain.

Yes. He was definitely going to be quite the screamer.

Steele tossed the shotgun aside, grabbed Eddie by the hair, and dragged him to the Sycamore.

"You're about as bright as your average one watt light bulb," he said. "You know that, Eddie? You knew I had been in your house. I was inside when you came home."

Steele pulled the cable with the leather collar to Eddie. He strapped it around Eddie's neck and locked it in place.

"Didn't it occur to you that I would have searched your house for weapons?"

Eddie said nothing. He held his nose, groaned in pain, spit blood.

"I found the shotgun first," Steele said. "It was loaded, and it wasn't even locked up. Do you have any idea how unsafe that is? Disabling it only took moments. From the amount of dust, it looked as if you hadn't used it in a while."

Steele walked away from the tree to a pair of light-switches mounted next to the door to the house. Even with twenty feet of slack in the cable holding Eddie, Steele was well out of his reach. Not that Eddie seemed to be all that interested in continuing their little confrontation. He was too busy holding his bleeding nose and sobbing like a schoolboy.

"The .45 was a tad more difficult," Steele said. "That little lock box safe you have for it is quite clever. It took a while to get it open. But after all, there could only be so many combinations."

Steele snapped on one of the switches, turning on the flood lamp mounted to the roof of his house. It spotlighted Eddie and the Sycamore. Eddie's face and hands were blood on pale white. His eyes were the knowing eyes of a jackrabbit caught by a mountain lion, awaiting the final pounce.

Steele snapped on the second switch turning on the electric winch bolted to the concrete. The winch whirled to life taking up slack in the cable, dragging Eddie closer to the tree. Eddie grabbed at his throat and kicked with his feet, forcing himself along with the cable to prevent being choked.

Steele opened the door to his home, went inside. He lifted a length of rope from a hook on the wall of his foyer and carried it back to the tree.

Eddie clawed at his collar. His feet thrashed about, kicking up puffs of chalky dirt as he backpedaled in an attempt to keep slack in the cable as it slowly pulled him to the tree.

Steele uncoiled a portion of rope, tied it into a lariat, and dropped the rest. He tossed the lariat at one of Eddie's feet, lassoing him around his shin as he was pulled across the ground.

The cable reached the tree and began hoisting Eddie into a standing position. He kicked down at the rope around his leg, struggled to get it off him.

Steele waited, kept slack in the rope.

The winch stopped with Eddie's neck pulled tight against the bark, his feet dangling inches from the ground. He raised his hands to the collar and pulled at it to keep from choking. Spittle sprayed from Eddie's lips as he wheezed for breath. He put his heels at the base of the tree and pushed himself up to relieve the pressure on his neck and lungs.

Steele stepped around to the back of the tree, knelt down, and tied Eddie's shin to the side of the tree with a hitch knot that could hold Eddie's weight. Then he looped excess rope into his hand.

Eddie gasped and coughed and spat blood on the ground.

Steele grabbed Eddie's free ankle, wrestled it into place, and tied it to the other side of the tree in the same fashion as the first. He stood then and circled the tree, just outside Eddie's reach. The trunk split Eddie's feet. The ropes bore his weight, kept him from hanging by his neck, allowed him to breathe.

"Where's Paige?" Eddie asked, his voice still sounding strangled. His hands remained on the leather collar surrounding his neck.

Steele stopped in front of him. Eddie seemed to be trying to fix him with a malevolent stare, but the result looked frightened, pathetic. His eyes wet, blinking. He was clearly terrified. It was easy for Steele to see that. And to think, he'd just started. He hadn't even brought out his razor.

"Still concerned about her? How noble. She's right where I said she was. We'll bring her out for a happy reunion in a few minutes. Right now let's take care of you."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Lots of things. We're going to have great fun together. I'm going to start by hobbling you, can't have you running away, then we'll get your blood flowing."

Eddie looked away. "You won't get away with this," he said.

Steele laughed. "Now where have I heard that before?"

He offered Eddie his outstretched hands.

"I guess I should just give up then. Let her go. Let you go. Turn myself in to the police."

"Screw you."

"What's the matter? Don't you play well with others? I tell you what. I'll give you a choice." Steele knelt down and moved forward. He pulled off one of Eddie's shoes. "You or Paige."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I can cut on you or I can cut on her, your choice. Just say Paige's name, and I'll go to work on her."

Eddie said nothing.

Steele removed Eddie's other shoe then both his socks.

"Think about it. What do you think she would do if the situation were reversed? What do you think the woman who has been cheating on you would do? Do you think she'd take the cuts or pass them on?"

"I don't care what she'd do. If you have to cut someone, cut me. Don't hurt her."

Steele pulled the wooden case from the inside of his boot, removed a mahogany handled straight razor, and flipped out the blade. It was time to feed the beast.

"See, you do play well with others."

He severed Eddie's Achilles tendon with one smooth swipe.

Eddie screamed.

### Chapter 32

Paige raced into the bathroom. She might have only a few minutes to get to the "wand" whatever it was. She prayed it was a weapon. She tried pulling the medicine cabinet open again, to see if somehow it had magically been unlocked, but the mirrored door wouldn't budge. Taking the leg of the rocking chair in both hands, Paige turned her face away from the cabinet and swung the piece of wood at the glass as hard as she could. The wood bounced off the mirror as if it were polished stainless steel, which she figured it probably was.

A small lip wrapped around the outer edge of the cabinet's door. She might be able to get a good grip on it. Setting the leg of the rocking chair across the back of the sink, Paige quickly tested the lip by yanking on it, looking for any weaknesses.

Paige grabbed a corner of the medicine cabinet with both hands, gave it a testing pull. She moved to the next corner. Then the next. Then the last. The top and bottom corners on the right side of the cabinet gave the tiniest bit when she pulled on them. The mirrored door of the cabinet had to be hinged on the left side, and, from the way it held firm there, the locking latch had to be in the center of the right side.

She grabbed the top right corner, pulled back on it, throwing what weight she could behind it. The corner didn't bend. She tried again, putting a foot up on the wall to give her more leverage. Please bend. The door bent toward her, but not enough to really help. Her fingers slipped off the narrow edge. Her fingertips throbbed from the effort.

Paige heard a scream through a crackle of speakers and started at the sound. The panic in the cry sent a chilling tingle down her spine. Chris's words in the bathroom echoed in her mind. "Maybe you won't have to watch," she'd said. "But he'll make you listen."

Somehow Nicholas had turned on some sort of sound system in the house. He'd turned the volume up loud. Eddie's voice crackled through the speakers. "Don't. Please, don't." He screamed again.

Paige burst into tears, ran to the kitchen window and peeked out. She couldn't help herself. She knew she was wasting precious time, but she had to know what was happening. She had to know if he was killing Eddie.

Light rained down on Eddie, encircling him. He was bound to the Sycamore and spotlighted in the darkness by some lamp bright high above her. Flying insects swirled toward the lamp and kamikazed into the kitchen window. Eddie's arms were free. He swung them wildly in an attempt to hit or grab Nicholas who was kneeling down on the ground in front of him. She hoped Nicholas was getting up from a blow that Eddie had delivered, that it was Nicholas who had screamed first. Then she saw the razor in Nicholas's hand. And the blood.

Eddie's feet were tied to each side of tree with rope. His shoes and socks were gone. Blood dripped from his feet.

"Don't kill him. Don't kill him. Don't kill him," she said like some sort of mantra.

Nicholas picked up a rope, moved to Eddie's left side. Eddie took another swing at him, but Nicholas easily stepped back from the blow. He punched Eddie in the stomach. Eddie spit blood. Paige's gut heaved in sympathy.

Nicholas snatched one of Eddie's wrists with the rope and wrenched it back. Eddie winced. Nicholas cinched the rope tight, tossed the loose end over one of the Sycamore's large branches, knotted it.

She had to help Eddie.

Paige rushed back into the bathroom, grabbed the top edge of the cabinet door, and put her foot on the wall again. She rocked her body back and forth pulling and pulling and pulling with every ounce of strength she could muster. She thought she was going to pull her fingers off, but with each jerking motion the top corner moved a bit closer to her until finally she had made a noticeable bend in it.

Picking up the leg of the rocking chair, Paige jammed it into the gap she'd created. She wrenched back and forth on the leg, using it for leverage, working to widen the bend or break the latch that held the cabinet door closed. The very end of the chair leg splintered in her attempt to force the door open, but Paige didn't stop. She shoved the chair leg deeper into the opening and frantically yanked on it again.

Eddie's voice cried out through the speakers. His cry wasn't a piercing scream like she'd heard before but more of a long drawn out wail of desperation. She wanted to go back and look again, to see what Nicholas was doing to him, but she fought against the urge. With a weapon they would have a real fighting chance. Without one, they were lost. She prayed Nicholas wasn't killing him yet. As sick as it sounded, she hoped Nicholas was toying with him as he'd toyed with her. She just needed a few more seconds.

She jerked back on the leg of the chair and the piece of wood splintered down nearly the entire length. Paige yanked it out of the opening. The locking latch didn't break, and she wasn't able to bend the door any farther with what remained of the chair. But the gap felt wider.

Paige climbed on top of the sink to see what damage she'd done to the cabinet. The body of the metal cabinet had collapsed inward from her effort, and she saw an ivory handled straight razor, along with several scalpels, sitting on the top shelf, but the hole was too small for her to slip her hand in. The straight razor was just out of reach.

She pulled a thick splinter from the leg of the chair and used it to slide the razor closer to the opening. Jamming two fingers down into the hole, Paige managed to pinch the straight razor and lift it out of the cabinet. Yes!

Paige slid open the blade to make sure it was a straight razor. Then she hopped off the bathroom sink. She was elated she had the razor. Now she had to figure out a way to get Nicholas to open the door and come inside. That might not be so easy. She sprinted into the kitchen to look out the window.

Both of Eddie's hands were pulled up over his head now, tied to the large branch above him. Nicholas stood with his back to her, admiring his handiwork. She had to turn him.

An idea occurred to her. Paige banged on the window with her fist. Nicholas turned and looked at her. Eddie looked at her. She gave Nicholas the finger. It was crude, rebellious, but she hoped it would be effective. Maybe it would offend his need for discipline and control.

Nicholas gave her a little smile and wave, then, raising the blade, turned back to Eddie.

### Chapter 33

Sharks of pain swam through Eddie's mind consuming him in whole chunks. Long jagged teeth sank into each heel and into his calf muscles. The pain was dizzying. Not a dull throbbing pain, but a hard chomping pain that made his body shudder with each bite. Sweat escaped from every pore of his body. Blood dripped from his ankles.

"See that, Eddie? She's letting you know just what she thinks about you," Nicholas said.

Eddie wanted to answer, wanted to say, he didn't care what she thought about him. He was doing what he had to do to survive, but he couldn't say it. The pain wouldn't let him.

With his thumb Nicholas flipped the gleaming blade of the straight razor open then closed then open. Seeing it, Eddie struggled against his bindings, started shaking.

Paige banged against the glass, but he couldn't bear looking directly at her. Thank God this was happening to him and not her.

"Do what you have to do," Eddie said. "Just don't hurt Paige."

The blade came up, slashed, ripped, hacked. Eddie's eyes blinked through the flurry of movement. Nicholas forced a piece of cloth into Eddie's mouth partially suffocating him and causing him to gag. He thrust his head forward, spit the wadded up piece of cloth out. Snorting for air, Eddie fought to shove aside his terror.

He wanted to run. God, how he wanted to run, to fill his lungs with strength-giving air and run to Paige.

Nicholas stepped away from him, tilted his head, and studied Eddie as if he were a menu board. He didn't look pleased with his options.

"Do you know what evil really is, Eddie? It's anything that crushes artistic expression."

It took Eddie a few seconds to realize he hadn't been cut. His clothes had been slashed from his body and now lay in a shredded pile at his feet. Dimly, he realized his boxers were damp. Had he pissed himself? A stream of wetness dried on the inside of his right leg. He had.

"Still want to take the blade for her?" Nicholas asked, nodding in the direction of the house.

Eddie wouldn't look at the house. He knew Paige was standing at the window. He looked at the ground, wished she wouldn't watch, wished she would go away. He didn't want her to see him like this. Eddie turned his eyes up to Nicholas's.

"Yes. I want it."

Nicholas brought the blade forward again, and Eddie clenched his eyes shut, almost desperate for a swift release, but no such release came. Only the sensation of his boxers being cut and tugged away from his pelvis. He was nude now, the wind drying the dampness on his body.

"Please don't," Eddie said, knowing it was useless.

His tears ran freely. His breaths tumbled out of him in hot gasps. He tried to relax, willing the tension from his muscles to give his fear an opportunity to ebb a bit, so he could think, figure out what to do, but fighting his body was like wrestling a swarm of killer bees.

A prickling pain began at the edge of Eddie's right armpit and a shudder rippled down his spine. Eddie opened his eyes but saw nothing through his tears but the bright light of the flood lamp and the blurred form of Nicholas standing nearby. Eddie tried to blink away the blur. The pricking twisted into a deep sting that flared into searing pain, filling his mind.

Nicholas was cutting him.

The blade slowly moved through the flesh of his armpit. It was a long time before Nicholas stopped, but even when Nicholas did stop, the pain didn't. Instead, the pain blossomed into something he couldn't get his mind away from. He fought the pain, the raging pain, thrashed in his bindings against the pain.

"You realize this has to be done, don't you?" Nicholas said. "You're an evil disease, a cancer. You must be cut from her life. She cannot be free until you are removed, erased from existence."

Eddie tried to answer him, to tell him where he could stick it, that he already knew that he wasn't worthy of Paige, but the pain halted his ability to speak. He could only scream.

Nicholas's form, filtered through wet eyes, circled around him.

Again, Eddie felt the flesh of his armpit being cut, felt the same slow movement of the blade, only this time it was on the left side of his body. Eddie hard-blinked several times, and his vision, like a soaked windshield cleansed by the wipers, finally cleared.

Nicholas stood at his side, one hand firm on Eddie's shoulder, the other guiding the blade. Nicholas looked to be in a trance-like state unaffected by Eddie's struggles.

Eddie wanted to escape the pain ravaging each of his ankles and each of his armpits, to shrink from reality into some safe place deep within his body, but he knew he could do nothing but accept his fate and watch his own mutilation. There was no place his consciousness could go.

Nicholas stepped back and circled him once more.

"The Chinese have a torture technique where they make one cut at a time with a very sharp dagger. Each time the person refuses to talk, they cut again and create a seemingly endless barrage of pain. As long as the cuts are shallow enough, an individual can live until the body is drained completely of blood. The torture can go on for days, months, even years by simply allowing the person's wounds to heal."

Nicholas cut on Eddie's chest until Eddie was covered with blood. No words, and no tears moved Nicholas from his purpose. The louder Eddie screamed the more Nicholas cut. It was as if his very screams drove Nicholas forward. In those places where he screamed loudest, Nicholas did the most work.

The world began sliding out from under Eddie, tilted up at an odd angle. Out at the edge of his vision everything had gone black. It crept closer. The pain forcing the light from his eyes. He saw it fading out.

Nicholas stopped in front of Eddie and slapped him across the face.

"Don't you pass out on me," he said. "If you pass out, I'll bring Paige out here. Do you hear me?"

He slapped Eddie again and the blackness at the edge of Eddie's vision retreated two steps.

"Look at me," Nicholas said. "Show me that you're still there."

Eddie's chin rested on his chest, but he looked up at Nicholas, into a dead face communicating a murderous resolve.

"It isn't as bad as you're making it out to be," Nicholas said. "The cuts aren't that deep yet. In the African community of Dogon they perform female genital circumcision on adolescent girls without any kind of anesthetic. They don't pass out, and they're being cut on one of the most sensitive places on their body. By comparison, I've hardly touched you."

Nicholas squatted down and began cutting on the top of Eddie's thighs. Eddie banged his head back against the trunk of the tree in an attempt to force his mind away from the pain. His vision flickered for a moment. Eddie screamed at Nicholas to stop, called him every foul thing he could think of, but Nicholas didn't respond. He continued to cut.

Trails of blood ran down Eddie's stomach and legs. It dripped from his armpits as well as his heels. He was nearly beaten. He knew that. Regardless of what Nicholas said, he would not be able to take a whole lot more of this. Once the pain reached a certain point, he would do nearly anything to make it stop.

Paige was still in the window. She was frantic now, banging her fists against the glass and waving something. Eddie wasn't sure what it was. With the glare from the floodlight in his eyes and with all the pain, he wasn't sure he could trust his eyes anyway. But seeing Paige gave him a burst of resolve and strength. He didn't know how that could be, but there it was. He couldn't let anything happen to her. Suddenly, he knew he could take whatever Nicholas could give.

"So you're finished," Nicholas said. "You're ready to trade places with her."

Eddie was breathing hard, but he managed to spit out a defiant, "No."

"I knew you were a coward, but I hoped you would last longer. I'll bring her out here to take your place," Nicholas said.

"I said no, you bastard. I'm not finished. I can take a whole lot more. I can take everything you can give."

"See, this is my favorite part. When things begin to get a little hazy, you aren't exactly sure what you've said and what you haven't said."

"You're not listening to me. I said keep cutting me. I won't trade with her. You'll have to kill me."

"Oh, I heard you quite fine between your screams. You may have changed your mind now, but that's not the way this game works. You begged me to stop, said you were finished, and you are, for now."

Eddie couldn't help but wonder if Nicholas was right. Had he said that he wanted to trade places? Maybe he had. Maybe when he had been screaming, maybe when he'd been out of his mind with the pain, he'd said something he didn't mean to say. Or maybe Nicholas was screwing with his mind. He didn't know. He just knew he didn't want Nicholas to touch Paige.

Nicholas turned away from Eddie and went to the door of the house.

"No!" Eddie screamed. "Do whatever you want to me. Just leave her alone."

"Take it easy, Eddie. She won't be as big a baby about it as you. You'll see. She'll do just fine. She's much stronger than you could ever be."

### Chapter 34

Paige saw Nicholas turn and head for the door to the house. She stepped over to the door to the kitchen, putting herself in what she hoped was the best position to attack him when he came inside. She pulled the throw blanket away from her body and tossed it behind her. She didn't want to get tangled up in it. An arm's reach from the door, she waited.

Thank God, Eddie was still alive and Nicholas had decided to come into the house.

She held the straight razor in her right hand, heart high, pulled back, and ready to strike. There were no lights on in the kitchen, the room was illuminated by the spillover from the floodlight outside. She heard her own heart beating in her ears, felt the rapidity of her breathing in the cuts on her chest. It was time for Nicholas to pay.

She would only get one shot. When Nicholas pulled the door open, she would have to lunge in at him and hope she hit something vital before he realized she had a weapon. Against his size and strength it was her only chance.

The sound of Eddie's cries pouring through the house's sound system had driven her into a rage. She hadn't thought she could ever feel the depth of hatred she felt for Nicholas. A hate almost as deep as her pride in Eddie's strength and courage. Despite being tortured, Eddie refused to allow her to take his place. She knew he wouldn't. She'd heard his refusal. She'd seen his defiance. She'd do anything to take his place. She would give up her own life before she would see him hurt again.

Nicholas pulled opened the door.

Paige lashed out at his face with the razor in a savage search for flesh before he stepped into the room. But Nicholas was ready for her attack. He raised his hand up to fend off her attack and a thin blood red line leapt across his palm as she slashed at him.

Nicholas jerked his hand back, eyes wide.

Darting at him again, Paige flicked the razor at his exposed neck, striking like a viper. The blade made contact. Nicholas yelped. A stream of blood sprayed out from his neck in an arc spattering the wall. He quickly covered the wound with his hand.

Paige lashed out once more with the razor. Nicholas brought up an arm in an attempt to fend off her blow. Another thick blood red line appeared, this time across his forearm. Nicholas yanked his arm back and pulled the door fully open. This surprised Paige. She'd expected him to retreat behind the steel door. Instead, he rushed through the entryway charging into the kitchen. His own razor flashed in his uninjured hand.

Not wanting to give Nicholas any more room to maneuver than she had to, Paige widened her stance. Blood erupted from between Nicholas's fingers where he clutched at his neck. Paige couldn't see how wide and deep the wound was or if the blood was coming from his hand more than his neck, but she saw enough blood to realize Nicholas was badly hurt. His lips were parted, and his teeth were clenched. She hadn't hit his vocal cords though because he said, "How did you--"

And then he looked beyond her. "You," he said.

Taking a step back from Nicholas, Paige turned and looked behind her. Chris stood next to the dinner table, her arms folded across her chest. She looked at Nicholas with a rebellious childish expression that said, "What?"

Paige turned back to Nicholas. She had never even read about a knife fight, much less been involved in one, but considering the amount of blood running down Nicholas's arm and pattering onto the floor, she thought time was on her side. She could afford to back off, let him weaken.

Nicholas took a probing step forward, jabbing out at Paige with his razor.

The blood coated razor slipped in Paige's grasp. She fought to keep a firm grip on it.

"Help me," Paige screamed at Chris.

Nicholas took a step back from her. His eyes darted from her to Chris and back to her.

"Come on, you ugly coward," Paige said, wanting Nicholas to come forward, not turn and retreat into his bedroom where he might be able to dress his wounds and take time to recover.

Chris took a step back from the table.

Nicholas grimaced and came forward. He feinted in one direction and then thrust the blade with the other.

Paige hopped to one side, away from the blade, but the feint threw her off. She stepped left when she should have stepped right. The move put her in Nicholas's range. He lunged forward, sticking her in the abdomen and driving her backwards toward the table.

She twisted her body away from Nicholas in an attempt to avoid being slammed back into the table. She thrust her razor out at his body, hoping to hit anything she could. The razor connected. But, as she twisted around, her foot tangled in the throw blanket on the floor and the razor flew out of her hand. She went down on her side, Nicholas on top of her. Paige heard a loud crack, saw his head hit the edge of the table before the weight of his body blasted her and her head knocked against the floor.

The room went black and then came back into focus. She shoved her way out from underneath Nicholas, rolled onto her back. Looking down at her abdomen Paige saw Nicholas's razor had penetrated her so deeply she only saw the handle of it sticking out. As she moved, tilting her head to look down at the blade, she felt it etching a spot on a something deep inside her.

Paige reached down and quickly jerked the razor from her body without thinking. If she'd thought about it, she wasn't sure she would have had the courage to pull it free. Blood pumped out of her.

Nicholas choked and spit blood. He was dying. Paige had no doubt about that. She saw the wound in his neck now, and it was wickedly vicious. Within minutes, his heart would empty his life onto the floor.

Chris stood over him, looking down at him. She squatted down and placed her hand on his forehead as if taking his temperature or performing the last rites.

Paige sat up, grabbed the throw blanket, and pulled it against her abdomen, covering her wound. She pressed a hand against the spot, putting as much pressure on it as she could and tied the blanket around her. She stood up. The pain was excruciating. She limped to the door. Turning, she glanced back at Nicholas and Chris. He clutched at his neck with both hands. Chris said something to him, but Paige couldn't hear what it was. Nicholas wasn't looking at Chris. He was looking at her. He tried to say something but only blood and spittle escaped his lips.

Paige knew Nicholas could not get up and come at her again like some Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger. This was not a horror movie. He would not cut anyone else again. Ever. He was finished. She stumbled out the door, out of the house, out to see Eddie.

He was a bloody mess. There was so much blood Paige wondered if Nicholas had been in the process of skinning Eddie alive. As she drew closer she realized almost all the wounds were shallow cuts, intended to cause pain rather than kill. The wounds on Eddie's ankles were the most serious. Blood covered both his heels. But if she could get the bleeding stopped she thought he would live.

Paige staggered to the tree and dropped to the ground at Eddie's feet. She picked up the shirt Nicholas had cut from his body and tore two long pieces from it. She wrapped them around Eddie's ankles, knotted them, to slow his bleeding.

"Are you okay?" Eddie asked her.

"I'll live," she said, although she wasn't so sure. She looked at herself. So much blood. What strength she had was quickly fading. She wasn't a doctor, but the wound seemed devastating.

"Where's Nicholas?"

"Inside the house. Dying. Maybe dead."

Eddie nodded.

"Let's get you down," she said. But she'd left the razor in the house. She tried to stand back up, to go get it, but her legs wouldn't support her.

She collapsed.

### Chapter 35

"Paige!" Eddie screamed as Paige went down to her knees and then toppled to the ground in a heap.

She didn't answer.

Eddie shook his body in its bindings. He pulled and pulled and pulled with his arms until his muscles felt as if they would snap and his back would break, but it only resulted in tightening the ropes around his wrists.

He wanted to rip free from the tree, to reach out to her, to touch her, but his arms and legs may have well belonged to someone else. Nicholas had been too efficient in binding him.

Blood stained nearly three-quarters of the blanket covering Paige. She was badly hurt. He needed to do something. Think, dammit. But it was hard. Pain, mind numbing and piercing, battered and beat his thoughts.

He saw nothing around him but dirt and rocks and a pile of his clothes. His torn shirt sat on top of the pile and just beneath it his jeans. His jeans. He kept a small pocketknife in his jeans. If there was only some way he could get to them.

But there wasn't.

He was so tired. So very tired. Strength oozed from his body. Insects buzzed around him, landed on him, fed. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to curl up with Paige and a pillow and not wake up. And then he saw her.

She stood in the doorway, maybe thirty feet from him. She was blonde, naked, hairless from the neck down, and part snake. Or maybe she was dressed in snake? Scales, blood red and sharp, wrapped around her waist, hugging at her as she moved. She carried Nicholas's straight razor. Eddie flinched at the sight of it.

Beautifully frightening, the angel of death had come for him.

He was pleased it was a woman, although he wasn't sure why he felt that way. He was glad it was over. He would not fight her.

Eddie looked for a sign of Paige's breathing, but couldn't find one. He watched her chest to see if it fell or rose, but her crumpled fetal position made it difficult to tell. He hoped that it did. Tried to convince himself that it did. But she already had a lifeless rag doll look about her. His mind shied away from that word. Lifeless.

She can't die. It can't end this way. But maybe it did.

The angel of death spoke his name. "Eddie?"

He thought of answering but wasn't sure what to say to her.

"Eddie, we have to hurry."

"Yes. Hurry."

End it quickly.

Would he go to heaven? Hell? What about Paige? Would they be together?

"You're so beautiful," the angel said. "Has Paige ever told you that?"

"I hurt."

"I'm going to take care of that."

The blonde angel pressed a switch on the wall next to the door. Immediately the cable holding his neck went slack. His head slumped forward. A wary hope wafted through him. Was she going to help or hurt?

The angel glided towards him, put a hand on his neck, kissed his cheek. He tried to speak but his voice broke like rotted wood. Only a crackle of unintelligible sounds escaped his throat.

She cut his ankles free with the razor. Fresh spikes of pain rocketed up his legs to his groin as soon as his feet touched the cool earth. His legs would not support his weight. He dangled by his wrists.

The angel leaned into him to support his weight, and cut one of his wrists free, then the other. He slumped against her body, and she eased him to the ground.

Eddie reached for Paige, pulled her up into his arms. She felt cold to the touch, lay limp in his arms. He held her, begging her to forgive him for failing her. With one arm cradled around her shoulders, he pulled her tight to him, cupped her cheek in his hand. This was his fault. He should have saved her. He should have been her white knight.

Tears rolled down his check, fell to his chest, burned.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "Please don't die."

As he sat holding Paige, the angel spoke to him. He looked at her, saw her mouth moving, but could not understand what she was saying.

The angel shook him by the shoulder. "Do you have a cell phone?"

He thought about her question. "Yes. Yes. It's in my jeans. But it doesn't work."

"Nicholas carries a cell phone jammer," she answered. "I've turned it off. Your phone will work now."

She picked up his jeans, pulled the phone free, and dialed.

The three of them huddled together under the gnarled Sycamore tree overlooking the road, Eddie wrapped around Paige, the angel wrapped around him. He glanced from Paige, to the road, back to Paige. He could feel the blonde watching the door to the house.

Eddie kept the blanket pulled tight around Paige and kept pressure applied to the wound in her abdomen. He thought she was still breathing, hoped she was still breathing, prayed she was still breathing. Worry sent his fingers to her wrist, fumbling for a pulse, finding a beat too faint to last much longer.

Within a few minutes a car with red and blue flashing lights pulled into the drive. An officer stepped out of the car.

The blonde woman screamed to the officer. "We need help! Please, hurry!"

The officer climbed back behind the wheel, pushed the gate open with the bumper of his car, and accelerated up the driveway. The sticker on the door of the car read COUNTY SHERIFF.

The sheriff stepped out of the car, pulled his pistol, and hurried towards them. He was a short, stocky man with small darting eyes.

"Is everyone okay?" he asked. "Is there anyone in the house?"

"We need an ambulance, fast," Eddie yelled.

"There's no one inside," the blonde woman said. "Just a body."

The sheriff dropped to a knee beside Eddie, touched Paige's neck, and then called for reinforcements on the radio clipped to his collar. He turned to the house, went inside, his pistol in front of him.

Before the sheriff re-emerged from searching the house more flashing red and blue lights and the sound of sirens filled the wooded area. Eddie watched them convoy up the drive.

EMT's and officers rushed to them. Someone came, helped the angel up, and led her away. Someone else came, pulled Paige away from him. His heart didn't want to let her go, but his mind whispered to him that they could do much more for her than he could. He let them take her.

Two women lifted Paige onto a gurney, rolled her to an ambulance.

Eddie tried to crawl after her. He wanted to go with her, but someone else grabbed him.

"I need to be with her," Eddie said. "I'm her husband."

The EMT held him still. "She's in good hands," he said. "We're going to Mediflight her to the hospital. Let's focus on you."

The EMT gave the cuts on his chest a quick glance then went to work on his ankles, waved over another EMT to help. One of them asked him questions: Name, age, allergic to medications? Eddie tried to respond, wasn't sure if he got the answers right.

"You're in shock," the EMT said.

Then they put him on a gurney, rolled him to an ambulance.

"She saved your life," someone said. "Wrapping your severed heels like she did."

Eddie chuckled, found the statement funny. Of course, she'd saved his life. She'd killed the killer, been his knight in shining armor.

### Chapter 36

One year later...

Paige woke to the sound of a door closing. Lying in bed half-awake with the sheet pulled over her head, she only saw shadows through the fabric.

Over the course of several interviews with the police, Eddie and Paige learned a little more about Steele.

Documents linked him to several properties across the United States and at least one in Europe. The police had their hands full tracking down every client he'd ever had. Steele kept extensive records of the people he'd done work on and the police seemed sure they'd encounter more missing people, more bodies, but so far they hadn't. They considered it unlikely that his behavior had been limited to her and Chris. The police also had an interest in several photographs they found in Steele's studio. But so far nothing had come of them.

Tabitha's deceit destroyed their friendship. Obviously, she hadn't disliked Eddie at all. She'd wanted him for herself, and that left Paige wondering if anything about their friendship had ever been genuine. She'd lost her only real friend. But thankfully her art was quickly gaining her new ones.

The police linked Chris's husband to a body they'd found in an alley the year before. Although there was some suspicion as to Chris's involvement in his death, there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the matter. She was taken to a local hospital for evaluation, but after forty-eight hours they had to release her.

Paige often wondered where Chris had gone, what she was doing. The last time they'd spoken was in Steele's studio, and Paige still wanted to thank her for helping her, for helping her help Eddie, for calling the police.

Paige was happy their ordeal was over. That Steele's sadistic vision had come to an end.

Sometimes in her mind, she could still see Eddie hanging from the Sycamore, his blood dripping into the red earth. Sometimes she would dream she hung on the tree in his place. Sometimes she woke up calling out to him, and he hushed her back to sleep. But those dreams were quickly fading along with their power to frighten her.

Steele was dead. No coming back from that. She had nothing to fear from him. That made her grin.

She yawned. Sunlight crept through the window, inching its way up the walls and across a canvas she'd been working on, a suburban playground filled with light and laughter.

Eddie limped over to the bed, bent down and kissed her on the neck.

She smiled, happy he'd been walking, exercising his ankles. He had only recently started walking again with any regularity.

His limp wasn't as pronounced as it had been. Maybe soon there would be no limp at all.

For weeks, he'd been confined to a wheelchair, then crutches. During that time he lost his graphic design job but found his passion. The confinement released the writer in him. He started writing short stories within a couple of days of coming home, stories of love conquering evil, and he'd already published a few.

They were good stories, too. She had no doubt he'd move to novels soon.

Eddie held two cups of coffee and handed one to her.

Paige took the coffee and cautiously sipped. "Thank you," she said. "What got you up so early?"

Eddie sat on the edge of the bed, reached down with his free hand, and pulled off a set of ankle weights. "It's a beautiful day."

She climbed out of bed and strolled to her canvas. She picked up a brush and did a bit of light work, pushing back a shadow here, touching up a child's face there.

"It looks great," Eddie said.

"Thanks."

He walked to his desk not far from their bed and fired up his computer. "I'm going to get a little writing done before we go downstairs."

They were full time artists now. They didn't work for money or fame or to impress people. They didn't work because they had to, as some sort of survival mechanism. They worked for the love of it.

Her paintings hadn't turned to darkness and pain and death. They were vibrant with life. His writings hadn't turned to violence and evil and anger. They were filled with love. Paige sighed, confident her painting and his writing showed they had a real grip on their purpose in life: To live it to the fullest.

Paige dabbed her brush on the canvas.

And there had been a miracle.

Eddie had had a revelation. He couldn't deny what had happened to them, he couldn't pretend things were the same, and just go on as he had before.

Their lives had been changed. Forever.

Paige sold their home. It was her last real estate sale.

They pooled their resources and bought a commercial space in the Paseo arts district. They converted the second floor into an apartment, opened the first floor as a coffee shop and art studio.

They were doing well enough they'd hired a college student to handle the early morning customers, leaving them the opportunity to enjoy one another, be grateful for life.

They made it a point to start every day right. You couldn't put too much weight in a good start. They made their first words to each other kind words, loving words. They cooked together, cleaned together, worked together, and gave the first of themselves to the other. They were living their dreams.

Going to work for them had become as simple as walking downstairs and unlocking the front door. Paige loved that, and Eddie didn't seem to mind much either.

Paige put down her paintbrush and walked up behind Eddie. She whispered in his ear, "I love you. You are my One."

He kissed her on her cheek and then on her lips and then on her neck.

"I love you, too. You are my One."

Paige nodded in the direction of the bathroom. "I'm going to jump in the shower."

"Want some help?"

"I think I got it. For now."

"Okay," he said. "Just holler if you change your mind."

Paige stepped into the bathroom, pulled off her T-shirt, and shimmied out of her panties. She looked at herself in the mirror. She saw all of her scars, old and new. The scars from her Hidradenitis. The scars from Steele's cutting.

Eddie had scars, too. Scars on his ankles. Scars on his chest. He was unashamed of them.

Paige ran her fingers across her scars, felt the groves of them. They weren't ugly to her anymore. They were beautiful.

They served to remind her how much she and Eddie loved one another, how much they were willing to sacrifice for one another, how unimportant physical appearances were in their relationship.

And they were badges. Badges of survival. They were a part of what made her the strong, confident woman she had become.

Paige turned to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the bedroom. She cleared her throat, and Eddie turned at the sound. He looked her body up and down, his eyes as wide as a couple of small lakes.

"I've changed my mind," she said with more than an invitation in the lilt in her voice and the lift of her eyebrow. "Do I really have to holler?"

### Epilogue

In a secluded Upper West Side Manhattan apartment with shuttered windows pulled closed, a dozen men and women sit around little tables. Chris stands among them wearing a thick blood red robe. A white suited servant serves each person a cup of warm tea while they wait. A few whisper among themselves before the evening's main event begins.

At the front of the room stands a round platform about a foot high. Behind it there's a stainless steel table. A tattoo gun and inks, several scalpels, and a few other odd looking instruments rest on a cart next to the table.

Chris carefully studies the body of each person in the audience as she moves among them. Some she asks to stand. Some she asks to remove an article of clothing: a shirt here, a skirt there. Two she has strip completely nude. One a man and one a woman. As they stand naked in the crowd she reiterates her requirements.

"You must agree to sign a waiver. You must agree to receive the work of my choosing in the location of my choosing. The price is five thousand dollars cash. To any who wish to watch, the price is five hundred dollars cash."

Each of the people in the room has already paid an additional five hundred dollars just for the opportunity to see the Sacred Lébé adorning her body.

Chris has turned away more than double the number seated. She intends to keep these little events exclusive.

Having made her choice, she gestures to the two people still standing, and they both sit without dressing. Then she steps up on the small round platform giving everyone a clear view of her body. The platform slowly spins. Chris drops her robe.

Several murmurs of approval come from the audience: one even gasps. Then there is silence. Chris allows the platform to make three complete rotations before she steps off. She then walks to each of the tables and allows each patron to view her individually for up to one full minute. When she completes a circuit of the room, she points to the man she has chosen.

The large nude man steps forward. As he comes toward her, all she sees is the blank canvas of his bare torso. No one leaves the room. The image of a dragon-like creature with long talons, catlike eyes, and a forked tongue extending out from a fleshy mouth flashes into her mind.

The large man lies face up on a padded table, settles under her hands as if he were a bear preparing to hibernate through the winter.

Chris takes out a pair of Sharpies, one red and one black, and sketches an image on him. She can almost feel it coming alive beneath her fingers. By the time she's finished, she's trembling inside with anticipation.

She turns on the tattoo gun and the vibration of it sends a tingle all the way to her crotch and turns her on. She wipes the man's skin, dips the needles, and leans into him.

Time passes.

There is nothing but the dragon and the high she's riding from the scent of ink and blood.

***

Kevin Adkisson is a writer. He can occasionally be found trying to dig the silver bullet from his chest and the wooden stake from his back, but more often he can be found driving his Jeep along the back roads of Oklahoma while dreaming of being a hippie beach bum. On moonless nights he can be found sitting in an empty field, writing. All proceeds the author receives from the novel "A Perfect Canvas" will be donated to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. You can find him online on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=44010927 If you would like access to his blog or if you just want to tell him how much you despise his book you can do so at: Writeblind@aol.com

