Kiss the Girls

stacked directly behind. Visually, the Terraces were horizontal bands of rock, accented by stripes of the most beautiful color. Tulips, azaleas, camellias, irises, and peonies were in bloom.
    I knew instinctively that this was a place that Scootchie would love.
    I knelt near a visually striking patch of bright red and yellow tulips. I was wearing a gray suit with an open-necked white shirt. The ground was soft and stained my trousers, but it didn’t matter. I bowed my head low. Finally, I wept for Scootchie.

Chapter 28

    Tick-cock. Tick-cock.
    Kate McTiernan thought that she’d heard something. She was probably imagining it. You could definitely get a little buggy in here.
    There it was again. The slightest creak in the floorboards. The door opened and he walked into the room without saying a word.
    There he was! Casanova.
He had on another mask. He looked like some kind of dark god—slender and athletic. Was that his fantasy image of himself?
    Physically, he would be considered a hunk at the university or even as a cadaver in an autopsy room, which was preferable to her.
    She noted his clothes: tight, faded blue jeans, black cowboy boots edged with soil, no shirt. He was definitely a hardbody, proud of his rippling chest. She was trying to remember everything—for the time when she escaped.
    “I read all your rules,” Kate said, trying to act as calm as possible. Her body was shivering, though. “They’re very thorough, very clear.”
    “Thank you. No one likes rules, least of all me. But they’re necessary sometimes.”
    The mask hid his face, and it held Kate’s attention. She couldn’t take her eyes away from it. It reminded her of the elaborate, decorative masks from Venice. It was hand-painted, ritualistic in its artistic detail, and weirdly beautiful.
Was he trying to be seductive?
Kate wondered.
Was that it?
    “Why do you wear the mask?” she said. She kept her voice subservient, curious, but not demanding.
    “As I said in my note, one day you’ll go free. You’ll be released. It‘s all in my plan for you. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.”
    “If I’m good. If I obey.”
    “Yes. If you’re good. It won’t be that hard. Kate. I like you so much.”
    She wanted to hit him, to go after him.
Not yet,
she warned herself.
Not until you’re sure. You’ll only get one try at him.
    He seemed to read her mind. He was very quick, very bright.
    “No karate,” he said, and she sensed that he was smiling behind the mask. “Please remember that, Kate. I’ve actually seen you perform at your dojo. I’ve watched you. You’re very quick and you’re strong. So am I. I’m no stranger to martial arts.”
    “That wasn’t what I was thinking about.” Kate frowned and looked up at the ceiling. She rolled back her eyes. She thought it was pretty fair acting under the pressure circumstances. No threat to Emma Thompson or Holly Hunter, but decent.
    “I’m sorry then. I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t put words in your mouth. I won’t do it again. That’s a promise.”
    He seemed almost sane at times, and that terrified her more than anything else so far. It was as if they were having a nice normal chat in a nice normal house, not in his house of horrors.
    Kate looked at his hands. The fingers were long, and might even be considered elegant. An architect’s? A doctor’s hands? An artist’s? Certainly not a workingman’s hands.
    “Well, what do you have in mind for me?” Kate decided on the direct approach. “Why am I here? Why this room, the clothes? All my things?”
    His voice remained gentle and clam. He was actually trying to seduce her. “Oh, I guess I want to fall in love, to stay in love for a while. I want to feel real romance every day that I possible can. I want to feel something special in my life. I want to experience intimacy with another person. I’m not that different from everyone else. Except that I act instead of daydream.”
    “Don’t you feel
anything?
” she asked. She feigned concern for him. She knew that sociopaths couldn’t feel emotion, at least that was her understanding.
    He shrugged. She sensed that he was smiling again, laughing at her. “Sometimes I feel a great deal. I think that I’m too sensitive. May I tell you how beautiful you are?”
    “Under the present circumstances, I wish you wouldn’t.”
    He laughed a nice laugh and shrugged his shoulders again. “Okay. That’s settled then, isn’t it? No sweet talk for the two of us. Not