Kiss the Girls

now.
    It had been four months without Peter now. Pun intended. Not good, but not in the top ten worst things she’d had to deal with. And besides, she knew the breakup was really her fault and not Peter’s. Breaking up with lovers was a problem she had; it was part of her secret past. Secret present? Secret future?
    Kate McTiernan raised her wristwatch to her face. It was a funky Mickey Mouse model that her sister Carole Anne had given her, and it was a swell little timekeeper. It was also a reminder to herself: Never get a big head because you’re a DOCTOR now.
    Damn!
Her farsightedness was getting worse—at
almost
thirty-one years old! She was an old lady. She’d been the grandam of the University of North Carolina Medical School. It was already nine-thirty, past her bedtime.
    Kate decided to pass on Spanky’s and head back to the hacienda. She’d heat up some fourth-degree chili, and maybe have hot chocolate with about an inch topping of Marshmallow Fluff. Curling up in bed with some junk food, Cormac McCarthy, and maybe R.E.M. didn’t sound half bad, actually.
    Like many of the students at Chapel Hill—as opposed to the wealthier crowd up Tobacco Road at “Dook” —Kate had a major cash-flow problem. She lived in a three-room apartment that was the top floor of a frame house, a North Carolina “country” house. All the paint was peeling, and the house looked as if it were molting. It was at the ass-end of Pittsboro Street in Chapel Hill. She had gotten a good deal on the rent.
    The first thing she had noticed about the neighborhood were the exquisite trees. They were old and stately hardwoods, not pines. Their long branches reminded her of the arms and fingers of wizened old women. She called her street “Old Ladies Lane.” Where else would the old lady of the medical school live?
    Kate arrived home at about a quarter to ten. Nobody was living downstairs in the house that she rented from a widowed lady who lived in Durham.
    “I’m home. It’s me, Kate,” she called to the family of mice who lived somewhere behind the refrigerator. She couldn’t bring herself to exterminate them. “Did you miss me? You guys eat yet?”
    She flipped on the overhead kitchen light and listened to the irritating electric buzz that she hated. Her eyes caught the blowup of a quote from one of her med-school teachers: “Medical students have to practice humility.” Well she was definitely practicing humility.
    Inside her small bedroom, Kate pulled on a wrinkled black polo shirt that she never ever bothered to iron. Ironing clothes was not a priority these days. It was one reason to have a man around, though—someone to clean, maintain, take out the trash, cook, iron. She was fond of a particular old feminist line:
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
    Kate yawned just thinking about the sixteen-hour day that would start for her at five the next morning. Dammit, she
loved
her life! Loved it!
    She fell onto the creaking double bed that was covered with plain white sheets. The only flourish was a couple of colored chiffon scarves which hung from the bedpost.
    She canceled her order for chili and hot chocolate with Marsh-mallow Fluff, and she set
All the Pretty Horses
on top of unread copies of
Harper’s
and
The New Yorker.
Kate flipped off her lamp and was asleep in five seconds. End of wonderfully illuminating discussion with herself for the night.
    Kate McTiernan had no idea, no suspicion, that she was being watched, that she had been followed ever since she’d walked down crowded, colorful Franklin Street, that she had been chosen.
    Dr. Kate was next.
    Tick-cock.

Chapter 17

    N O! KATE thought.
This is my home.
She almost said it out loud, but she didn’t want to make a sound.
    There was someone in her apartment!
    She was still half asleep, but she was almost sure about the intruding noise that woke her up. Her pulse was already racing. Her heart floated up into her throat.
Jesus God, no.
    She stayed very still, huddled near the head of her bed. A few more nervous seconds passed slowly, like centuries. Not a move from her. Not a breath. Bone-white slants of moonlight played across the windowpanes, creating eerie shadows in her bedroom.
    She listened to the house, listened with total concentration to every creak and crack the old building made.
    She didn’t hear anything unusual now. But she was sure she had. The recent murders and the news stories about the kidnappings in the