1

April 2004
Half Moon Bay, California

IAN MACPHERSON sat hunched in his wheelchair with a Colt Python .357 shoved in his mouth. Blowing his brains out would take care of his problems, but leaving Paulinho to deal with the resulting mess hardly seemed sporting. His ex-cellmate barely spoke English.

On the other hand, what did he have to live for besides revenge? A revenge that shimmered like a distant mirage forever beyond his grasp.

The kitchen lay deep in shadow, the only illumination a pale swath of moonlight admitted by the window over the sink and the eerie green glow of the digital clock on the microwave. Two-thirty-seven.

How very appropriate, he thought in sour amusement, dying in the dead of the night. His finger tightened on the trigger.

The creak of the dog door distracted him. Not a particularly alarming noise… unless, of course, one didn't own a dog.

He leveled the pistol at the plastic flap.

Thin and agile, a young woman squeezed through the narrow aperture, a penlight clenched between her teeth. He waited until she was all the way in, then said, "Burglary's against the law."

She gasped and dropped the light. It spun across the kitchen tiles, throwing weird, flickering shadows into every corner of the room, briefly illuminating in turn the cupboards, the appliances, the butcher block, and finally Ian with his revolver.

"Don't shoot." She got to her feet, extending her hands in surrender.

"Why not? It's what one does to intruders." He flipped on the overhead light, and she blinked in the sudden glare. With her odd monochrome coloring—skin and hair almost the same shade of pale honey beige—she reminded him of an old sepia print. Portrait of a waif. He wondered if the effect was calculated.

"All I was looking for was something to eat." She met his gaze, and her eyes captured his attention. Unusual eyes, a pale silvery gray ringed in black. Even more unusual, the expression in their depths—neither fright nor defiance, just a sad resignation, a sterile lifelessness.

Abused, he thought. She looked like someone who'd endured so much in the past that she was prepared now to suffer quite stoically whatever new horror presented itself. Even a crazy, gun-toting, gray-bearded cripple.

"Hunger seems an unlikely motive for breaking and entering."

"Are you going to call the police?"

He studied her a moment in silence. "When did you last eat?"

"A truck driver bought me dinner yesterday. I didn't stick around for breakfast." She shifted her gaze to the toes of her ragged sneakers. "I don't have any money, but I can pay you for the food the same way I paid the trucker."

"You'd barter your body for a crust of bread?"

Her soulless eyes locked on his. "And count it a fair trade."

Bitterness welled up, all but choking him. "Your sacrifice won't be necessary." He glanced down at his ruined body. "My injuries preclude it. I have minimal sensation below the waist."

He was used to pitying looks and polite murmurs of, "I'm sorry." But the dead-eyed girl drew a deep breath, then released it in a ragged sigh. "Some people have all the luck."

Tasya huddled naked in the dark. Richard would be coming soon. He saved his nastiest games for the hours between dusk and dawn. Though she had no clock, she knew it was late. Like a threat, darkness pressed against the barred window high up on the cellar wall. The color of midnight.

Every instinct urged her to run, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. If only I could die, she thought. Just curl up and die, leave her body behind, go to a place where Richard couldn't follow. But he would never permit it. He enjoyed torturing her, but he was careful not to inflict life-threatening injuries. He liked her to fight, to scream, to beg, and dead women did none of those things.

Suddenly the fluorescents buzzed on overhead, flooding her prison with a harsh glare. He was coming. Oh, God, he was coming.

Copyright © 2004 by Catherine Mulvany