Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(5)

“You’re welcome,” he said as he put her down. “Forgotten our manners, have we?” Her legs were shaky and she almost fell, but Casanova held her up easily with one hand.

She had on dark green Wake Forest University running shorts, a white tank top, and brand-new Nike cross-training shoes. She was a typical spoiled college brat, he knew, but achingly beautiful. Her slender ankles were bound with a leather thong that stretched about two and a half feet. Her hands were tied behind her back, also with a leather thong.

“You can just walk ahead of me. Go straight unless I tell you otherwise. Now walk, ” he ordered. “Move those long, lovely gams. Hut, hut, hut.”

They started through the dense woods that got even thicker as they moved slowly along. Thicker and darker. Creepier and creepier. He swung his black bag as if he were a child carrying a lunch box. He loved the dark woods. Always had.

Casanova was tall and athletic, well built, and good-looking. He knew that he could have many women, but not the way he wanted them. Not like this.

“I asked you to listen, didn’t I? You wouldn’t listen.” He spoke in a soft, detached voice. “I told you the house rules. But you wanted to be a wiseass. So be a wiseass. Reap the rewards.”

As the young woman struggled ahead she became increasingly afraid, close to panic. The woods were even denser now, and the low-hanging branches clawed at her bare arms, leaving long scratches. She knew her captor’s name: Casanova. He fancied himself a great lover, and in fact he could maintain an erection longer than any man she had ever known. He had always seemed rational and in control of himself, but she knew he had to be crazy. He certainly could act sane on occasion, though. Once you accepted a single premise of his, something he had said to her several times: “Man was born to hunt… women.”

He had given her the rules of his house. He had clearly warned her to behave. She just hadn’t listened. She’d been willful and stupid and had made a huge, tactical mistake.

She tried not to think of what he was going to do to her out here in these bewildering Twilight Zone-type woods. It would surely give her a heart attack. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down and cry.

If only he would ungag her. Her mouth was dry, and she was thirsty beyond belief. Perhaps she could actually talk her way out of this of whatever it was that he had planned.

She stopped walking and turned to face him. It was draw-a-line-in-the-sand time.

“You want to stop here? That’s fine with me. I’m not going to let you talk, though. No last words, dear heart. No reprieve from the governor. You blew it big time. If we stop here, you may not like it. If you want to walk some more, that’s fine, too. I just love these woods, don’t you?”

She had to talk to him, get through to him somehow. Ask him why. Maybe appeal to his intelligence. She tried to say his name, but only muffled sounds made it through the damp gag.

He was self-assured and even calmer than usual. He walked with a cocky swagger. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Anyway, it wouldn’t change a thing even if I did.”

He had on one of the weird masks that he always wore. This one was actually called a death mask, he’d told her, and it was used to reconstruct faces, usually at hospitals and morgues.

The skin color of the death mask was almost perfect and the detail was frighteningly realistic. The face he’d chosen was young and handsome, an all-American type. She wondered what he really looked like. Who in hell was he? Why did he wear masks?

She would escape somehow, she told herself. Then she would get him locked up for a thousand years. No death penalty let him suffer.

“If that’s your choice, fine,” he said, and he suddenly kicked her feet out from under her. She fell down hard on her back. “You die right here.”

He slid a needle out of the well-worn black medical bag he’d brought with him. He brandished it like a tiny sword. Let her see it.

“This needle is called a Tubex,” he said. “It’s pre-loaded with thiopental sodium, which is a barbiturate. Does barbiturate-sounding things.” He squeezed out a thin squirt of the brown liquid. It looked like iced tea, and it was not something she wanted injected into her veins.

“What does it do? What are you doing to me?” she screamed into the tight gag. “Please take this gag out of my mouth.”

She was covered with sweat, and her breathing was labored. Her whole body felt stiff, anesthetized and numb. Why was he giving her a barbiturate?

“If I do this wrong, you’ll die right now,” he told her. “So don’t move. ”

She shook her head affirmatively. She was trying so hard to let him know that she could be good; she could be so very good. Please don’t kill me, she silently pleaded. Don’t do this.

He pricked a vein in the crook of her elbow, and she could feel the painful pinch there.

“I don’t want to leave any unsightly bruises,” he whispered. “It won’t take long. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, you, are, so, beautiful, zero. All finished.”

She was crying now. She couldn’t help it. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. He was crazy. She squeezed her eyes shut, couldn’t look at him anymore. Please, God, don’t let me die like this, she prayed. Not all alone out here.

The drug acted quickly, almost immediately. She felt warm all over, warm and sleepy. She went limp.