It was an inner heat, an excitement of the blood, a sudden rush of pure stimulation that sharpened his sight and hearing, even his olfactory sense.
He was a predator. And he knew in this moment — a transient thought, lost before it could be captured — but for one moment only, he knew that on those nights when he stripped bare the mask, the first mask he cast off was his own.
John Cray was nothing and nowhere. There was only the driving heartbeat, the itch of need, the flash and eddy of unfiltered sensation, and the knife, sharp as teeth, the knife and the urge to use it as he opened the next door and the next.
He lifted his head, and losing himself entirely, he bayed at shadows, a wolf under the moon.
Kaylie heard the noise, echoing on stone, on tile.
A coyote’s howl. But not a coyote, of course.
Him.
Some answering panic rose in her own throat, and she nearly let loose a fatal scream that would draw him instantly to this room.
But that was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Not just her death.
Madness.
I strip away the mask, Cray had told her in the desert. A human being is an onion, layer upon layer…. Peel the onion, strip off the mask, and what’s left is the naked essence. What’s left is what is real.
First he took his victim’s mind and spirit, and then, only then, would he take her life.
She understood all this, saw it clearly, and with a snap of altered perspective she came back to herself — not entirely, but enough.
She knew who she was. She was Kaylie McMillan. Not a hunted animal. She was a person. She mattered. She couldn’t give up yet.
That howl again. Closer.
Cray must be searching each room in turn.
This room was last in line. Even so, he would not take long to reach it.
Kaylie backed away from the door, retreating into a corner, putting distance between herself and Cray.
She had keys. Sharp. She could fight him. Go for his face, his eyes. She—
Her hip banged against cold steel.
A commode, still embedded in the floor — invisible in the dark, its shape apparent only to her touch.
She’d stood on a commode like this on several nights many years ago, fumbling at the grille over the air vent, straining to loosen the screws that held it in place, with nothing but a strip of torn elastic from her mattress cover to improve her grip on the small, devilishly slippery screw heads
The job had taken hours, nights.
But now—
Keys in her hand.
A key could turn a screw.
Nearby, a steel door clanged. Cray was at least halfway down the hall.
She stepped onto the commode bowl’s lidless rim, reaching blindly for the vent cover in the ceiling. Her fingers touched the grille, velvety with dust. Four screws secured the cover to the ceiling. She found the first of them and struggled to insert a key into the notch in the screw head.
The key was too big. Wouldn’t fit.
Another door clanged, closer.
She tried another key, thinner than the last.
It fit. She wrenched her wrist counterclockwise, and the screw turned, loosening.
From the hall, a wild baying and another slam of steel.
The screw unwound another few turns and dropped into the dark.
Three left.
Not enough time.
She found the second screw and worked it free.
Glanced back.
Red glow in the mesh window of the cell door.
His flashlight, very near.
Another door swung open and crashed shut. She felt the vibrations through the stone wall as she fumbled for the third screw.
He was perhaps two doors away. Coming fast, too fast.
The third screw was caked in dust, hard to discover by feel alone, but she found it and jammed the key into the notch.
It wouldn’t yield. It was implanted too tightly in the frame.
The door directly across from this room creaked open.
Cray would look in here next.
She gave up on the third screw, found the fourth.
It was loosely set in its hole, easily dislodged with a few turns of the key. She let it fall.