Twisted

no . . .
    The engine shut off and tapped as it cooled. The dusk light was failing and the interior of thepickup was dark but she knew the occupant was staring at her. In her mind she could see his features as clearly as if he were standing ten feet away in broad August sunlight. Kari Swanson knew he’d have that faint smile of impatience on his face, that he’d be tugging an earlobe marred with two piercings long ago infected and closed up, leaving an ugly scar. She knew his breathing would be labored.
    Her own breath in panicked gasps, hands trembling, Kari drew back from the window. Crawling to the front hallway, she tore open the drawer of a small table and took out the pistol. She looked outside again.
    The driver didn’t approach the house. He simply played his all-too familiar game: sitting in the front seat of his old junker and staring at her.
    He’d found her already. Just one week after she’d moved here! He’d followed her over two thousand miles. All the efforts to cover her tracks had been futile.
    The brief peace she’d enjoyed was gone.
    David Dale had found her.

    Kari—born Catherine Kelley Swanson—was a sensible, pleasant-mannered twenty-eight-year-old, who’d been raised in the Midwest by a loving family. She was a natural-born student with a cum laude degree to her name and plans for a Ph.D. Her career until the move here—fashion modeling—had provided her with both a large investment account and a chance to work regularly in suchpampering locales as Paris, Cape Town, London, Rio, Bali and Bermuda. She drove a nice car, had always bought herself modest but comfortable houses and had provided her parents with a plump annuity.
    A seemingly enviable life . . . and yet Kari Swanson had been forever plagued by a debilitating problem.
    She was utterly beautiful.
    She’d hit her full height—six feet—at seventeen and her weight hadn’t varied more than a pound or so off its present mark of 121. Her hair was a shimmery, natural golden (yes, yes, you could see it flying in slow motion on many a shampoo commercial) and her skin had a flawless translucent eggshell tone that often left makeup artists with little to do at photo shoots but dab on the currently in-vogue lipstick and eye shadow.
    People, Details, W, Rolling Stone, Paris Match, the London Times and Entertainment Weekly had all described Kari Swanson as the “most beautiful woman in the world” or some version of that title. And virtually every publication in the industrialized world had run a picture of her at one time or another, many of those photos appearing on the magazines’ covers.
    That her spellbinding beauty could be a liability was a lesson she learned early. Young Cathy—she didn’t become “Kari” the supermodel until age twenty—longed for a normal teenhood but her appearance kept derailing that. She was drawn to the scholastic and artistic crowds in high school but they rejected her point-blank, assuming either thatshe was a flighty airhead or was mocking the gawky students in those circles.
    On the other hand, she was fiercely courted by the cliqueish in-crowd of cheerleaders and athletes, few of whom she could stand. To her embarrassment she was regularly elected queen of various school pageants and dances, even when she refused to compete for the titles.
    The dating situation was even more impossible. Most of the nice, interesting boys froze like rabbits in front of her and didn’t have the courage to ask her out, assuming they’d be rejected. The jocks and studs relentlessly pursued her—though their motive, of course, was simply to be seen in public with the most beautiful girl in school or to bed her as a trophy lay (naturally none succeeded, but stinging rumors abounded; it seemed that the more adamant the rejection, the more the spurned boy bragged about his conquest).
    Her four years at Stanford were virtually the same—modeling, schoolwork and hours of loneliness, interrupted by rare evenings and weekends with the few friends who didn’t care what she looked like (tellingly, her first lover—a man she was still friendly with—was blind).
    After graduation she’d hoped that life would be different, that the spell of her beauty wouldn’t be as potent with those who were older and busy making their way in the world. How wrong that was . . . Men remained true to their dubious mission and, ignoring Kari the person, pursued her as greedily and thoughtlessly as ever. Women grew even