“What game?”
“Patience.”
He was proud of her. She had not done the usual stupid things. She hadn’t tried kicking at him, or twisting wildly in her seat to grope for the door handle in a hopeless attempt to throw herself from the car. She hadn’t cried, not even silently.
Best of all, she hadn’t retreated into a comatose state and left him with a mere simulacrum of a woman.
He hated it when they did that. He wanted alertness, vitality, the animal instincts healthy and strong. He wanted a taut and quivering hare to chase.
This one would do nicely. He should have expected no less.
“Exactly how long have you been after me?” he asked her.
“Twenty-seven days.”
“Watching me, waiting for me to make a careless error?”
“Yes.”
“To catch me in the act.”
“Yes.”
“Bold of you. But I suppose, given the dictates of your conscience, you felt you had no choice. You couldn’t go to the police.”
“No. I couldn’t.”
“You might have phoned in an anonymous tip, of course. But on a case this highly publicized, the authorities must get hundreds of crank calls. And there are so many people who might carry a grudge against a man in my position. Disturbed people angling for revenge…”
“I know.”
“They wouldn’t have believed you.”
“Of course not.”
“So you had to do it all yourself, with no help from anyone.”
“I’m used to it.”
“Poor Kaylie. Poor dear child.”
She didn’t answer.
He saw that she was gathering herself, her head lowered, lips pursed. That was good. She didn’t yet know what sport he planned for her, but she knew that all her resources would be required, and she was marshaling them for this last, doomed effort. He respected her for it.
A saguaro cactus rose on the roadside, then fell back in a long, slow windshield-wiper motion. The cactus was a tall one. It might be a hundred years old. Cray wondered how many small, meaningless deaths it had witnessed in the nightly dance of predator and prey.
He looked again at his passenger, saw the ripple of her throat as she swallowed the taste of fear. The freckles on her cheeks stood out against the paleness of her skin.
She was pretty. Oddly, he had never noticed it before, not when he’d known her, not when he’d looked at her photograph and wondered if she was still alive and if he would ever have revenge.
He found it strange to think of men kissing her mouth, whispering endearments, bringing pleasure to her. There was one man he knew of, but had there been many others?
Well, there would be no more.
“I like your hair,” Cray said. “You’re much better as a blonde. You weren’t the redhead type. You lacked the requisite personality.”
“How can you say that,” she whispered, “when you never knew me?”
“But I did know you. I knew you intimately. I knew your secrets. I knew your mind. I still do.”
“I wasn’t myself then. You didn’t know me.”
Cray considered his response as he slowed the Lexus, turning the wheel. A dirt road swung into the windshield.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he allowed at last. “But I’ll get to know you tonight, won’t I?”
The road was a narrow, rutted track bordered by swarms of prickly pear and jumping cholla. Cray’s high beams played over floury swirls of dust as the Lexus rolled forward.
“Oh, yes, Kaylie,” he said. “You’ll be surprised how well I’ll know you before we’re done.”
Elizabeth thought she was holding up pretty well so far. Her mind, her body, the whole of her being had been focused on the single task of staying alert and in control.
She had felt the Lexus turn onto another road, a dirt road that punished the suspension.
At the end of this road, her death was waiting.
Fear rose in her, a fierce wave of fear almost overpowering her will, but with a shudder of effort she forced it down. To panic would be fatal. Some of the others must have panicked. She would not.
“Why am I blindfolded?” she asked, holding her voice steady.
“It minimizes your mobility.”
“I’m not very mobile anyway, right now.”
“There’s nothing much to see. Cactus of all kinds. The moon has set. It’s very dark.”
“Darker for me,” she said.
Cray made a soft sound like a chuckle. “In every sense.”
Her hands shifted inside the nylon sleeves. It was so much like wearing a straitjacket. She had worn one for three days not long after her arrest. The attendants had refused to remove it even when she used the toilet. They had wiped her off when she was done. She remembered the latex gloves, the cold touch.
“I strip away the mask,” Cray said.
The words came from nowhere, startling, baffling. She turned her head in the direction of his voice. “What?”