Rules of Prey

again, bouncing off her shoulder, and again, straight into her face . . . she stopped moving, curled into a fetal position . . .
    The maddog, breathing hard, dropped the hose and fell on her like a tiger on a staked goat. Pulling her head back, he thrust the Kotex into her mouth, wrapped her head with tape. She was dazed and unresisting. He worried for a moment that he had killed her and thought, absurdly: This is not a Chosen, this is a raid, it makes no difference when she dies . . .
    The pistol was lying on the floor and he pushed it away, stood up, grabbed her by the shirt collar, and dragged her into the bedroom and used the tape to bind her to the bed. She was wearing a man’s flannel shirt and he ripped it open, a button popping off and clicking against the wall, the maddog’s hearing now supernaturally keen, the sensory high coming with a rush. He snatched the side of her bra and wrenched the back strap, breaking it, and the shoulder straps. Unfastened her jeans, pulled them halfway down her legs. Ripped the crotch out of her underpants and pulled them up her belly.
    Stood back, surveyed the prisoner. Just right. She wasn’t a Chosen, but she could be fun. He reached out, rubbed her patch of pubic hair.
    “Don’t go away,” he said in sweet sarcasm. “I’ll need something sharp for the rest of this.”

CHAPTER
33
    “Has he gone to bed?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah,” said the first watcher, the tall one.
    “Shit.” Lucas looked at the ceiling, brooding. Maybe he’d spotted them. “He’s got to move soon. He’s got to.”
    “My stomach’s moving now,” said the second surveillance cop. “I need something to eat.”
    “Three more hours,” said the first one.
    “Christ.” The second cop looked at Lucas. “So. What’re you doing?”
    Lucas had been lying on the surveillance mattress, reading the copy of Powder.
    “Uh . . .”
    “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a pizza?”
    “Sure. I guess.” Lucas rolled to his feet.
    “There’s a place over by the university. Pretty good,” said the hungry cop. “I’ll call, they’ll have it ready when you get there.”
    “You got your handset?” asked the first cop.
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ll holler if anything happens.”
     
    The pizza wasn’t ready when he got there, but it was ready five minutes later. He took it out to the car and headed back, letting the Porsche run a bit, cutting dangerously close to an oncoming car as he turned into the street that led to the surveillance house. Can’t do this, he thought as the other car’s lights raked over him. The last thing he needed was a fistfight with some outstate redneck who didn’t like being cut off.
    He hustled the hot pizza up three flights of steps to the surveillance post on the top floor.
    “Nothing,” said the first cop.
    “Quiet as a fuckin’ bunny rabbit,” said the hungry one. He pried the top off the pizza box. “If this thing has anchovies on it, you’re a dead man.”
    Lucas took a piece of the pizza and went back to the magazine.
    “Night-light must have burned out,” the first cop said after a while.
    “Hmmph?”
    “No night-light tonight.”
    Lucas crawled to the window and looked out. The maddog’s bedroom window was a flat black rectangle. Not a glimmer of light. That was odd, Lucas thought. If a guy slept with a night-light, he usually needed it . . .
    “Dammit,” he said, pivoting and sitting with his back against the wall, his knees bent in front of him.
    “What?”
    “I don’t know.” He turned his head and stared over the windowsill. “That freaks me out. That’s not right.”
    “Just a fuckin’ night-light,” the hungry cop said as he finished the last of the pizza and licked his fingers.
    “It’s not right,” Lucas said. He smelled the wrongness. Watching him now for almost two weeks, a night-light every night. But there was no other way out of the house. Not unless he poked a hole in the walls.
    The attic, he thought. That fuckin’ attic.
    Lucas crawled to the telephone. “What’s his number?” he asked the first surveillance cop, snapping his fingers.
    “Jesus, are you gonna—?”
    “Give me the goddamn number,” Lucas said, his voice cold.
    The first cop glanced at his no-longer-hungry companion, who shrugged and took a small notebook from his pocket and read the number. Lucas punched it in.
    “If he answers, it’s just a wrong number,” he said, glancing at the others. “I’ll ask for Louise.”