Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(82)

She sat tensely on the edge of the bed and listened intently for another sound. She was ready to spring at him. There it was again… a tiny creak. It was coming from the right side of the room.

Finally, she could see the full, dark silhouette of his body. She gulped air greedily and almost gagged.

There he was, goddamn him to hell.

A powerful, hateful energy, like currents of electricity, surged between them. Their eyes finally met. Even in the darkness his eyes seemed to burn through her. She remembered his eyes so well.

Kate tried to roll away from him, from his first strike.

The blow came fast and hard. He hadn’t lost his quickness. Excruciating pain ripped through her shoulder and down her left side.

Karate training kept her moving somehow. Sheer stubbornness. A will to live that was becoming her trademark. She was off the bed. Up on her feet. Ready for him.

“Mistake,” she whispered. “Yours, this time.”

She saw the outline of a body again. This time against the moonlight streaming in a bedroom window. Fear and loathing gripped Kate. Her heart felt as if it might stop, just pack it in on her.

She fired a powerful kick. Hit him hard in the face and heard the crunch of bone. It was horrifying yet wonderful to hear.

A high-pitched voice shrieked out in pain. She’d hurt him!

Now do it again, Kate. She bobbed, moved, kicked hard at the dark, shifting body, striking the stomach area. Again he grunted in pain.

“How do you like it?” Kate screamed at him. “How do you like it?”

She had him, and Kate vowed that she wasn’t going to lose this time. She was going to capture Casanova all by herself. He was ripe for the catching. First, she was going to hurt him, though.

She punched him again. Short, compact, lightning fast, and powerful. Satisfying beyond anything she could imagine. He was staggering, moaning out loud.

His head snapped back hard. His hair flew out. She wanted him down on the floor. Maybe unconscious. Then she would turn on a light. Then she just might kick him while he was down.

“That was a love tap,” she told him. “Just a start.”

She watched him stumble in front of her. He was going down.

Woof something, someone, struck her square in the back. The blow knocked all the breath out of her.

She couldn’t believe she’d been blindsided. Pain rushed through her body as if she’d been shot.

Woof

It happened again.

There were two of them in her bedroom.





Chapter 94


K ATE WAS in shocking pain, but she stayed on her feet, and finally she saw the second man in her bedroom. He swung hard and struck her in the forehead. She heard a metallic ring, and felt herself falling, toppling. Felt herself vaporizing, actually. Then her body bounced off the wooden floorboards.

Two voices were floating above her. Two monsters inside her bedroom. Stereo nightmares.

“You shouldn’t be here.” She recognized Casanova’s voice. He was talking to the second intruder. The demon behind door number two. Dr. Will Rudolph?

“Yes, I’m the one who should be here. I’m not involved with this stupid bitch, am I? I couldn’t care less about her. Think it through. Be smart.”

“All right, all right, Will. What do you want to do with her?” Casanova spoke again. “This is your show. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Personally, I’d like to eat her, a nibble at a time,” said Dr. Will Rudolph. “Is that too extreme?”

They kept laughing like two buddies talking at a sports bar. Kate felt herself fading away from the scene. She was leaving. Where was she going?

Will Rudolph said that he bought her flowers. They both began to laugh at the joke. They were hunting together again. No one could stop them. Kate could smell their body odor, a strong male musk that seemed to combine into an overpowering presence.

She stayed conscious for a long time. She fought with all her strength. She was stubborn, willful, proud as hell. The light finally went out for her like a tube in an old-fashioned TV set. A blurry picture, then a small dot of light, then blackness. It was that simple, that prosaic.

They turned on the bedroom lights when they were finished, so that all of Kate McTiernan’s admirers could have a last good look at her.

Murdered beyond cold blood.





Chapter 95


M Y ARMS and legs were shaking uncontrollably as I tried to drive the five miles or so from Durham to Chapel Hill. Even my teeth were chattering, hitting together hard.

I finally had to pull off Chapel Hill-Durham Boulevard, or I thought I would probably crash the car.

I sat slumped in the front seat with the car headlamps shining across dancing dust motes and light-crazed insects that hovered in the early-morning air.

I took deep breath after deep breath, trying to suck in some sanity. It was past five in the morning and the birds were already singing away. I put my hands over my ears to shut out their songs. Sampson was still asleep back at the hotel. I’d forgotten that he was there.

Kate had never been afraid of Casanova. She trusted in her ability to take care of herself, even after her abduction.

I knew that it was irrational and crazy to blame myself, but I did. Somewhere, at some time during the past few years, I had stopped behaving like a professional police detective. There was some good in that, but, in a way, it was bad. There was too much pain on The Job, if you let yourself feel it. That was the surest, fastest way to burnout.