She heard his voice directly behind her. Her heart dropped and she felt faint.
There he was! No shirt again. Rippling muscles everywhere, but especially around his stomach and thighs. He was wearing another mask. An angry-looking one. Crimson and bone-white swatches against a shiny black background. Was he angry today? Were the masks like mood rings for him?
“Not one of your better ideas, Katie. It’s been tried by someone slimmer than you are,” he said in a singsongy voice. “I won’t go down there to help you back up. Very shitty way to die. Think it through.”
Kate struggled to her feet and began to retch. She did her best to do it convincingly. “I’m sick. I thought I was going to throw up,” she said to Casanova.
“I definitely believe you do feel sick,” he said. “That will pass. But it isn’t the real reason you were kneeling over the toilet. Tell the truth, and shame the devil.”
“What do you want from me?” Kate asked. He sounded different today… maybe the drugs were distorting her hearing. She studied the mask. It seemed to turn him into another person. Another kind of creep. Was he a split personality?
“I want to be in love. I want to make love to you again. I want you to get beautiful for me. Maybe one of the lovely dresses from Neiman Marcus. Nylons and high heels.”
Kate was terrified and disgusted, but trying not to show it. She had to do something, say something, that would keep him away from her for now.
“I’m not in the mood, honey,” Kate shot back an answer. “I don’t feel up to getting dressed.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm completely out of her voice. “I have a headache. What kind of day is it, anyway? I haven’t been outside yet.”
He laughed. An almost-normal laugh; a nice-enough laugh from behind his nasty mask. “Sunny Carolina blue skies, Kate. Temperature in the high seventies. One of the ten best days of the year.”
With one hand, he suddenly yanked her to her feet. He pulled her arm hard—as if he were trying to tear it from its socket. Kate yelled as violent pain shot up her arm. It exploded in the soft space, the hollow behind her eyes.
In a fury, in panic, she reached out and pulled down on the mask
“Stupid! Stupid!” he yelled into her face. “And you’re not a stupid woman!”
Kate saw the stun gun in his hand and realized she had made a terrible mistake. He leveled it at her chest and shot her.
She tried to keep standing, willed herself to stay up, but her body didn’t work anymore, and she slumped to the floor.
He was going crazy now. She stared at him in muted horror as he raised his boot and began to kick out at her. A tooth spun in slow motion, spun over and over on its trail across the wooden floor.
The revolving tooth fascinated her. It took her a moment to realize that it was her tooth.
She could taste blood, and feel her lips swelling.
There was a hollow ringing in Kate’s ears, and she knew she was slipping into unconsciousness. She clung to what she had seen behind the mask.
Casanova knew she had seen a part of his face.
A smooth pink cheek; no beard or mustache visible.
His left eye—blue.
CHAPTER 35
NAOMI CROSS was trembling as she pressed herself hard against the bolted door that sealed off her room. Somewhere in the house of horror a woman was screaming.
The sound was muffled by the walls, by the soundproofing he’d built into the house, but it was still terrifying. Naomi realized that she was biting down on her hand. Hard. She felt sure he was killing someone. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The screams stopped.
Naomi pressed harder against the door, straining to hear some sound.
“Oh, no, please,” she whispered, “don’t let her be dead.”
Naomi listened to the electric silence for a long time. Finally, she moved away from the door. There was nothing she could do for the poor woman. Nothing anyone could do.