Casey cried out. Bert flinched, tightened. Blood welled up from the cut and slid down over the white surgical tape that bisected his face. The knife had swept within millimeters of his right eye.
"Now, sit," Hunsacker demanded, his eyes back on Casey.
Her legs shook and her stomach crowded her lungs, but she managed to get over to the chair. She was turned at a ninety-degree angle to the door, equally able to see the bleeding heart of Jesus on one side and the bleeding cheek of her friend on the other. And behind him, the storm, still gathering, still building, higher and higher against the tremulous old walls of the house. Waiting to pounce, fingers plucking into weak spots, teeth ripping at exposed viscera. A battle that one day it knew it would win.
And yet, because it had always withstood, the house refused to falter.
Hunsacker lifted himself from her bed and strolled closer. "Actually, I don't want to kill him," he admitted. "Not yet. I've never had a real audience see my work, and since Scanlon can't be it, he's my substitute."
Casey clenched her sweaty hands in her lap. She kept her eyes fixed on Hunsacker's torso as he approached, the knife bobbing, the erratic light from the window sluicing along it like bright water, like yellow blood. She didn't wear earrings, she thought absurdly. Would they ever be able to identify her? Would they find her, or would she be lost like that last victim?
"Why now?" Casey repeated, her voice raspy with strain. "Why not yesterday or last week?"
He crouched down on his haunches before her. Casey struggled not to flinch away. She could smell his cologne, that smoky, woodsy scent that was suddenly so much like the incense in the other room, sickening and heavy and secretive. She could see all the way back into his eyes, and there was nothing there. No rage or remorse. The lightning sparked in them only to reveal the crescive anticipation of the hunt. Only the careful, greedy alien that kept seeking her out.
"Because it's over," he admitted in an amused voice, as if he were talking about a play instead of his own murder spree. "You found it tonight, didn't you? I was waiting for you to. It was such a small thing, an oversight when I'm usually so careful. Like these," he said, motioning to the scrubs that were so much a part of him. "Nobody thinks twice about an OB strolling around in them. And the hospital laundry sees so many bloody sets of scrubs, they don't notice one more set. So simple it's brilliant, don't you think?" Casey couldn't answer, mesmerized by his casual dissertation. "All my work is that precise. And yet, all these weeks while we've been courting, I've known I made that one mistake. I've been waiting for you to finally remember." He was delighted, smiling, the knife tip pointed right at Casey's left eye. "I had a secret, and I was waiting for you to find it."
Casey's brain spun. Her chest clamored for air. She fought the urge to press a hand against her sternum to hold her heart inside. She knew he could hear it, was feeding on its terrified staccato. "But there still isn't any hard evidence against you," she protested, trying for anything. "It's all circumstantial."
His smile broadened a little. He lifted his hand, resting the knife tip against Casey's cheek. She shied a little and felt the sharp sting of penetration, just below her cheekbone. "Doesn't matter," he said, his gaze briefly flickering to where Casey felt her own blood welling from the puncture wound. "They're beginning to take you seriously. They never figured me out in Boston, or in New York. Nobody caught on because I was so careful they didn't have any reason to tie the murders together." His gaze slid north again, impaling Casey as surely as his knife. "Until you. I figured if they couldn't catch me in New York, I could live forever in this two-bit wasteland. I could work and hunt to my heart's content. And then the first time you met me, you spotted me. Which is why you'll be my last. My best."
Casey couldn't control the shudder, and it made him smile again. He nodded, satisfied. "Not as brave as you thought, huh? I just have to know, Casey my sweet. How did you know? How did you guess when nobody else did?"
The alien, she wanted to say. That dead, decaying presence that inhabits the backs of your eyes and lubricates your hypnotic voice. "I don't know," she whispered instead. "A... gut feeling. The... the way you do pelvics."
That provoked the biggest, heartiest laugh she'd ever heard from Hunsacker. "Is that what you told the police?" he demanded. "God, I would have loved to see that."
The knife edged close again, tickling the skin below her eye, so close she instinctively blinked. Sweat began to trickle down between her breasts. Casey couldn't possibly hold still anymore, and yet she did, terrified of that cold, bloody point that caressed her cheek.
Thunder exploded and the house shuddered in protest. Rain slammed against her window. Beyond, trees writhed and screamed. A loose shutter banged against the wall and the wind squealed in delight. But Casey, suspended in breathless agony on the point of a knife, held perfectly still.
"Oh, Casey, there you are."
Hunsacker jerked back. Casey stiffened, the knife missing her cornea by a hairbreadth. She spun toward the door to find Helen standing there, her rosary clutched in her restless hands, her smile tentative and shy.
"A passion play?" she asked, looking around the room. "Really, Casey, Lent's over."
"Mom—"
Hunsacker had, gone on point, quivering with restrained energy, ready to pounce either way. Casey's badly frayed composure unraveled dangerously. She didn't even hear the next shattering clap of thunder or notice that Helen shied from it like a nervous horse.
"Come in, Mrs. McDonough," Hunsacker invited, not moving, the knife just inside the shadow of his head.
"Heavens no." She giggled, waving away the invitation, her attention straying to the windows where the storm pounded for entrance. "I never interfere when Casey's entertaining, Benny. You should know that. I will go down and make you children some coffee, though." She'd actually turned away, pulling the door behind her. Casey's heart stumbled to a stop, started.
Run, she begged in silence. Get the hell away before he decides he can't count on your delusions.
Helen turned back to them. "Unless you'd like chocolate."
"Coffee," Casey rasped, tears choking her. She'd had a brief surge of hope when her mother had appeared. Helen would run for help. She'd stumble away and Casey would trip Hunsacker as he leapt up to follow. But Helen was lost in the mists tonight. She was wandering somewhere between the Gospel of St. Mark and Tennessee Williams. She nodded brightly and turned away, pulling the door just shy of closing so her daughter could have privacy but not be compromised, without a clue that her daughter would be dead inside a half hour.
"You know what I love about your mother?" Hunsacker asked with a broad smile. "She'll do just that. She'll walk downstairs and make coffee for when the passion play's over." He nodded, enjoying his observation, his attention never even flickering to the battering, thunderous assault of the storm against the high roof. "I think I'll probably take mine with cream and sugar."
"If you stay to coffee," Casey said. "How do you plan to get away?"
Hunsacker returned his attention to her. She felt it sweep over her like a cold, deadly wave. "Oh, I won't," he assured her. "That's why this has to be my best job. Because after this, they'll make me stop." The knife lifted, sought her skin as if it had a hunger of its own. "I practiced on that last one," he admitted. "It had been a while since I'd let myself enjoy a knife. It's part of the discipline, you know. Using it in surgery on women and not ever hurting them. Clean and sweet and swift, without pain or scarring. Controlling myself when I lay that scalpel against their skin." He pressed the knife close, the edge testing the elasticity of skin like a scalpel the second before penetration when a surgeon sets up his site, gathers his initiative, hesitates before the moment of mutilation. "I lay them open like fish, and then I sew them back up."
The knife sliced along her cheek. Casey knew it was cutting before she felt it. Her body protested even before it allowed the pain. She opened her mouth, the terror too great for words, her eyes tearing and wide, the night s
obbing for her.
"But the others, I don't sew back up," he admitted, watching the trail of his handiwork. His eyes glittered in the deathly light now, flickering life where there was none. "I watch the filth spew out of them. I lean close so I can smell it, the sweet stink of death."
He brought his face right up against hers and Casey flinched away. She heard a thud of the beer can hitting the floor, and then his hand wrapped around the other side of her head, holding her against him.
"Yes," he said with a small, satisfied nod. "It smells right on you, too."
Casey fought against the whimpering that bubbled in her throat. She pushed the paralysis away. "Who was she?" she asked, trying to keep contact with those brutal, deadly eyes. "The last one."
He dipped a finger in her blood and tasted it. "Doesn't matter," he said, sucking on the end of his finger like Casey did when she was licking a bowl of icing. "She served her purpose."
"What did you do with her?"
He smiled with satisfaction. "You'll never find her. Nothing but what I've already given you."
Casey's cheek burned. Blood dripped off her jaw and onto the clean white of her uniform. She was trembling now, his touch cold and purposeful.
"What do you think?" Hunsacker asked, turning her head so Bert could see her cheek. Casey could hardly see him through the tears. He seemed no more than a shadow against the storm. "Is that a great cut? And that cunt from Izzy's said I couldn't use a knife. Want to see another?"
Hunsacker lifted the knife toward her other cheek. Casey instinctively defended herself. Pulling away, she brought her left hand up. She never stood a chance. Hunsacker just sliced her palm, from ring finger to thumb.
Casey cried out, jerked away. Hunsacker grabbed her by the hair and held her back on the chair. "I don't think you understand," he told her in a gentle voice, his eyes purposeful. Reaching down behind the chair, he brought up a heavy black gun and pointed it at the same eye he'd showed the knife. "I also have the officer's gun. And you know I like guns, too, Casey. I can kill you both now, and then go down and slice up your mother... or"—he smiled, slowly, significantly—"you can play along for a while and still have a chance at escape. What would you like?"
She was whimpering now, tears mingling with the blood on her cheek, her hand clenched to hold in the pain, her fingers already sticky and warm. Staring down the black, black barrel of that gun where it waited, steady and silent before her. She didn't even notice the storm anymore as it threw its greatest artillery at the house. Windows rattled. Boards moaned and popped. Thunder echoed nonstop from one hill to the next and back again. And Casey never heard. Never saw anything but that gun, the black gleam of blood on the sleek tip of the knife.
"Tell me, Casey," he demanded softly.
She couldn't speak. He yanked a little harder on her hair, pulling her head back. He brought the blade down against her throat. "Tell me."
"Wait," she gurgled, shaking and sick, her eyes instinctively squeezing shut.
"Please," he reminded her, just like a parent instructing a recalcitrant child.
She gasped, sobbed, struggled to regain her control. "Please."
"Please, Daddy," he taunted. "Don't go."
Casey's eyes flew open. "No—"
The knife bit, so close to her carotid she could feel her own driving pulse push at the blade. "You heard me," he demanded.
"P-please, Daddy, do-don't... go."
She was going to vomit; she was going to faint. Her head swam with fireflies. The house closed in on her, fetid and cloying, like the smell of funeral flowers. The smell of her own blood filled her nostrils, thick and metallic. The sweet stink of death.
The knife lifted. Hunsacker raised his head and sniffed. "Ah, there it is." He smiled brightly. "Coffee. I knew I could count on her."
Casey heard him place the gun on her desk, just out of reach. She knew his attention was wavering just a little. She should jump up. She should at least try to disarm him, give them all a fighting chance. She wasn't even tied to the chair, for God's sake.
She didn't move. Her cheek shrieked in protest. Her hand curled in on itself, her middle two fingers limp from the tendons he'd sliced. Her blood splashed color into the faded roses on her oriental rug. Her ears rang with terror.
He'd restrained her with no more than the memory of that terrible knife against her skin, the knowledge of what it could do to her face, her eyes. She couldn't move for fear that the knife would strike before she could escape.
He'd won after all. No matter whether or not the evidence to convict him waited down in her bag on the kitchen floor. He'd made her crawl, made her beg for more, just like before. He'd swamped her in shame, and was going to make her wallow in it before he finally did just what he came to do. She was helpless, and that was his victory.
Still, instinctively, she fought. "You and I have a lot in common," she offered, willing interest into a voice already dead. Facing him, forcing him to see her as a person instead of a target.
Surprised, he looked back down at her. "We don't have anything in common," he assured her, lifting a hand to run his fingers through her hair. "I'm a doctor and you're just a nurse."
Absurdly, Casey giggled. How many times had she heard that one? Every doctor who had ever been threatened by her assertiveness, every resident who had ever been insulted when she'd questioned an order. She didn't think that insult would ever sound the same again.
If she heard it again. The giggle ended in a strangled little hiccup. "No, I mean our fathers," she offered on a voice that wavered with resurrected fear.
"Oh, I don't think so," Hunsacker answered. "Your father was an asshole who worked in a brewery and beat his wife. My father was a well-respected surgeon from a very good family."
Who molded the monster before her with his own hands, Casey wanted to say. "You got along with your father?"
The fingers tugged hard, pulling some hairs from their shafts. "I respected him. Just like everybody."
Silence. Outside, the storm paused, receded before striking again. Casey fought for something more to say, some way to show that she understood what he'd faced as a child.
"I think it's just about showtime," he murmured, his fingers clenching in Casey's hair. "I want to be gone before the storm's over."
Casey could only see one side of his torso. Some of her blood had stained the dull green. He looked as if he'd just walked out of a delivery.
"Take off your clothes," he commanded.
Casey froze. "What?"
He pulled harder, lifting her just a little way up by her hair. "I said take your clothes off. Now, do it."
She began to shake, closing her eyes and then opening them, her hands lifting helplessly, stopping short of interfering. Choking on the new, flashing fear. "I can't... my hand."
Hunsacker yanked her straight to her feet. Casey cried out, her good hand instinctively reaching for the pain. Fresh tears burned her eyes, scalded her cheek. Please, she wanted to beg. Please don't do this to me. I'll do anything.
I'll do...
No.
No. It was what he wanted. He wanted her to beg, to plead. He wanted her on her hands and knees.
Casey wasn't sure how the revelation wormed its way through the terror. She didn't know why suddenly she saw it so clearly when only seconds before all she wanted was to be away from the knife.
He was going to kill her. But the torture he intended was the very act she most dreaded. Not rape or disfigurement. Humiliation. Pleading for him to do anything, just as long as she stayed alive. Pleading for him to continue.
If she begged again, he'd win. He'd ruin her in a far worse way than even rape and murder, because she wouldn't have escaped her past after all. She'd let him act out her worst humiliation.
He would make it worse if she begged him.
Casey struggled for composure. She swallowed her tears and let her hands fall back to her side. The knife danced next to her throat, chilly and lethal. There was a new fire in Hunsa
cker's eyes.
"Say please," he coached. "Please, Dr. Hunsacker, don't do this to me, and I might not make you strip."
She wasn't sure where she got the courage. Maybe it was only blind rage. Instinctive pride. Her breath still caught on sobs. Her heart beat even harder. Her knees wavered. She was going to die. Helen wasn't going to save her and Bert wasn't going to save her. If she didn't save herself, it wouldn't matter. So, she was going to at least fight for her self-esteem.
"Now you're going to have to beg on your knees," he commanded. "And maybe I won't kill you after all."
Casey pulled away and faced him. Silent. Challenging. Pushed as far as she could go.
It took some effort one-handed, but in the end, her uniform lay in a blood-smudged pile at her feet. She stood before Hunsacker in bra and panties. The storm gave a howl and swung back into action. Casey ignored it. She met Hunsacker's gaze with every ounce of determination she could muster.
Keep him off center. Keep an eye on the gun. Do something.
Hunsacker shook his head in wonder. "You're not nearly as much fun as the last one," he admitted. "She begged for two hours before I killed her." The knife homed in, circling, searching. "I think this time I'll send Scanlon one of your breasts." Hunsacker looked her in the eye, daring her to say something. He let the knife caress her nipple, rasping against the silk like an adder. "Not very big breasts," he taunted with that slick, horrible smile of his, "but nice."
Casey fought down a shudder, then another. She choked on more tears. But she faced him, silent, straight, her hands clenched and her head up.
Anger. White, fierce, brushing at the edges of the terror, demanding room. Casey was furious that she was a victim, that all the other women had been victims to this man without anyone helping or interfering.
"Nothing to say?" Hunsacker asked, letting the knife press deeper, slicing through the fabric. "I'll do it, Casey. Just ask for it."
Thunder shuddered through the house. Rain swept back over it. The wind howled and whined. Casey remained silent.
"Casey, dear?" There was tapping on the door.
A Man to Die For Page 39