Cooked Goose

of her efforts to stay there. The pain in her torn, battered body, the grave-cold dampness, the residual terror that she couldn’t... wouldn’t name, were claiming her again.
    She was re-awakening to her nightmare.
    Through shock-dulled senses she tried to determine where she was. But all she could discern were the most elementary of sensations: pain, cold, darkness, a foul taste in her mouth, a vaguely familiar smell.
    Slowly, minute by agonizing minute, Charlene realized she was lying on the ground. The taste in her mouth was a combination of dirt and her own blood. The smell was that of oranges, both fresh and rotting, nauseatingly sweet. The wet cold that had seeped through her clothing and into her aching bones was simple evening dew.
    It was night. She was lying facedown in an orange grove. Her hands were bound behind her back.
    What had happened to her?
    Even as the confused, fear-frozen half of her brain asked the inane question, the rational, coming-to-full-consciousness half replied in a language all too clear.
    She had been raped and murdered.
    No, not quite murdered. But nearly.
    Charlene could still see his face as he had dealt her that final blow to the head. Even through his ludicrous disguise, she had seen the wildness, the rage in his eyes.
    Yes, he had fully intended to kill her. She had no doubt about that—not then, not now.
    Did he think he had?
    Where was he?
    With that last question, a sense of urgency swept through her, and Charlene Yardley realized that she didn’t really want to die after all.
    Despite the pain and the spirit-crushing awareness of what had happened to her, she really, really wanted to live.
    Far away—she couldn’t tell how far—she could hear the occasional, faint, swooshing sound of a vehicle passing. Traffic. A road. Help.
    But she had to get to it. Before he returned.
    Maybe he was still there. Nearby. Watching her. Waiting for her to move.
    Charlene strained to hear any movement, the intake or exhalation of breath. But the night air was filled with the peaceful sounds of the grove: crickets chirping, a frog’s croak, the hoot of a distant owl... and that promising hum of the traffic.
    When a louder, deeper rumble signaled the passing of a truck, she felt the vibrations in the ground beneath her. The road had to be fairly close. If she could only get to it.
    She willed herself to rise, but with her hands bound, she couldn’t even move. Her limbs refused to obey her brain’s commands. Her body seemed no longer her own.
    But it was hers. The pain told her that much. And if she could hurt, she should be able to move.
    For what seemed like forever, she strained at the cord that bound her wrists. At first, it did no good; in fact, her efforts only seemed to make the knots tighter. But as she continued to twist, one way, then the other, she could feel her left hand slipping free. Something wet and slick, maybe her own blood, made it easier. Finally, she wrenched it free.
    Now able to fold her right arm, she managed to get it beneath her. But when she tried to rise, to place her weight on it, a pain—like nothing she had ever felt—shot through her, lightning hot, white, blinding.
    And when the searing brightness faded, Charlene was— thanks to the overloading and short-circuiting of her sensory preceptors—once again, in darkness.
    And for a little while longer, her nightmare was on hold.

CHAPTER FOUR

    10:00 P.M.

    “ T hat old Santa fart didn’t mean it when he said he was going to sue me... did he?” Savannah stared into the foam of her beer as though it were a fortune teller’s crystal ball. After a particularly rough day, the alcohol contained in even one brew could push her paranoia level to clinically certifiable levels.
    She and Dirk sat in their usual TV-watching, pizza-eating, beer-drinking positions. Savannah was cuddled into her cushy, floral chintz, wingback chair. Like her, it was a bit overstuffed and infinitely comfortable. On her footstool, Diamante and Cleopatra were curled in black furry balls at either side of her feet. Kitty bookends, she liked to call them.
    Dirk was stretched across the sofa. In ancient Roman style, he preferred to conduct his culinary orgies sprawled and horizonal. He had already consumed six slices of his economy pizza. With typical generosity, he had allotted Savannah two.
    Dirk sniffed and took a long slug of beer from his bottle, then set it on the coffee table. After seven years Savannah still hadn’t trained