Mortal Danger

obliterating her, and she hadn’t realized it until this moment.
    She tried to reason with him, but he said, “There’s nothing you can say—you’re going to die tonight,” which he repeated over and over, like a mantra.
    Kate’s thoughts raced. What could she do to save herself? She prepared to fight for her life. She would knee him in the groin and put her fingernails in his eyes if she had to. He wasn’t a big man, but he was very strong, and now he seemed possessed of inhuman strength. There was madness in John’s eyes.
    He cocked his fist and hit Kate squarely in the mouth, and then on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. He spit on her. She tried to kick him in the groin, but that only made him more determined. Kate was no longer in much of a position to fight. He was straddling her, and choking her with both hands. She tried to wrestle away from him, but they tumbled around on the ground, his grip never loosening.
    Another scene flashed through her mind. She thought of Nicole Brown Simpson. This is how she must have felt when a man who professed to love her was killing her , Kate thought. She tasted blood trickling down from her nose and teeth, and she knew she had to keep her brain intact if she hoped to have any chance of surviving. “I had to get him to stop beating me in the head. I was running out of air, so I lessened my struggle.”
    Somehow, she managed not to pass out, but her eyes bulged and her ears rang. When John saw the blood, he said, “Now, you’ve ruined it. There’s no going back now.”
    She’d ruined it by having the temerity to bleed? As always, he was blaming her for anything bad that happened. They hadn’t had sexual relations for a long time, and hetold her he planned to “finally have sex with you after you’re dead.” However, he’d decided he would also take her while she was still alive.
    He tore her panties and one shoe off in the yard, throwing them somewhere among the pink blossoms that had fallen on the ground next to the fire pit. Then he dragged her into the basement and up the steps to their living room. She either had to crawl on her knees or stumble on the stairs as he held one arm tightly in his grip.
    “Get down on the floor and take your clothes off.”
    “I’m cold. I’m cold,” she said. And she was—from shock, from the sudden chill that blew off the ocean now that the sun was gone.
    “I don’t care,” he said flatly.
    Kate’s mind searched desperately for a way to survive. Why hadn’t she kept the machete with her? What could she do to snap him out of the weirdly icy mood he was in? He looked at her but didn’t make eye contact.
    “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. Maybe she could lock herself in and somehow wriggle through the small bathroom window.
    “It won’t matter.”
    She had no doubt that he meant it wouldn’t matter because she would be dead soon.
    John explained to her that he was going to rape and kill her mother when he was through with her, and kill her father, and her best friend, Michelle, and Michelle’s daughter, Missy. He promised to find Kate’s niece and keep her captive for a week until he had her completely addicted to cocaine. He was going to find Paula Krogdahl and kill her,too, because she had supported Kate’s stay at Oasis after his January attack on her.
    It was as if the top of John’s brain had opened and all the pent-up violence and ugliness inside had spilled out; Kate had never seen such a depth of depravity in him before. She doubted that he used cocaine; she’d certainly never seen it, but he was possessed with something that had taken over his mind.
    Maybe it had been there along, and he’d been able to hold it inside until now.
    He had a knife against her throat now, sometimes moving it to her breast. It was one of their knives from the butcher block in the kitchen. She had used it a hundred or more times when she’d cooked for him. She kept asking to go to the bathroom, and he finally relented, but he went with her, standing a few feet away from her, blocking the door. She knew she had no chance to escape before he stopped her.
    He led her back to the living room, the knife pressed against her flesh. He was going to rape her. As he forced himself into her, he held the knife in one hand. She didn’t dare fight back. Bizarrely, he used herbal lubricating jelly from their bathroom. She was in the middle of menopause, and even if she had wanted to have sexual relations