He lifted his eyes and gazed into the mirror, sad but unsurprised when nobody looked back.
Cassie woke with a start but had no idea what had jarred her from a blissful sleep. Then, even as Ben rose on an elbow beside her, she remembered.
"Hey." He touched her face with gentle fingers. "Are you all right?"
His hands were always so warm. She loved that. She wanted to purr like a cat whenever he touched her.
She thought she should probably be embarrassed by that.
"I'm fine," she said at last.
"You cried out in your sleep."
Cassie studied his face in the lamplight, memorizing it with an intensity she was hardly aware of. "Just a bad dream, I guess."
"You don't remember?"
"Not really. There was something about a mirror. And I couldn't get away from the music." She frowned suddenly. "Still can't."
"What music?"
"There's been a tune in my head on and off all day. It's vaguely familiar, but I can't remember what it is."
"Maybe I'd recognize it."
Cassie smiled at him. "Trust me, you don't want me to try humming. I'm tone deaf."
"Really?" He relaxed beside her, his head propped up on one hand while the other rested lightly on her stomach. "That's hard to believe. You have such a musical voice."
"Must be genetics, then. I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it." Cassie couldn't remember him pulling the covers up over them, but she was glad he had. She wasn't exactly embarrassed, but she did feel a bit self-conscious lying there next to him, naked.
A bit? God.
It was the most astonishing thing, passion. No wonder so much was written about it. For the first time in her life, Cassie now understood how people could claim that passion had made them mindless. "Cassie?"
She blinked up at him. "Hmm?" "You went away. Where did you go?" Cassie wondered if her eyes had crossed. Even the memory of passion was astonishing. She cleared her throat. "Nowhere in particular. What time is it?"
He glanced past her toward the nightstand. "Just after eleven."
"I should take Max out."
"I'll do that. Later." Ben leaned down and kissed her slowly and thoroughly.
By the time he lifted his head, Cassie's arms were up around his neck, and she was reasonably sure she was purring. Where had the damned covers come from? She wanted them gone.
Ben seemed to have the same idea. He pushed the blankets and sheet down until they rode somewhere around his hips, leaving Cassie bare much lower down. His eyes were on her small, pale breasts, and then his hand was touching them.
Cassie heard a muted sound escape her, and was helpless to stop it. The most casual of touches was something she was acutely aware of; the stark intimacy of his hands on her naked body was something she could feel all the way to her soul.
She wasn't aware that her eyes had closed, that her nails bit into the hard muscles of his shoulders. The bed was gone, the room, the house. The world. All she knew was his warm hand stroking her flesh, creating pleasure she had never even imagined herself capable of feeling. Her breasts were hot and aching, her belly empty, and when his hand slid down between her legs, she thought she would die.
He caressed her with certain knowledge, building her desire higher and higher until she could barely endure the sharply winding tension. She wanted to plead with him to stop torturing her, but all that emerged was a wordless whimper.
Then she felt him between her thighs, felt the slow, inexorable push of his hard flesh inside her body, and the soft sound she made was triumph and need.
"Open your eyes, love," he murmured. "Look at me."
His face was taut, eyes darkened and absorbed as they locked with hers, and Cassie was astonished all over again. She couldn't read his mind, yet somehow saw deeper, and that incredibly intimate communication made her pleasure spiral even higher as their bodies moved together.
"Ben," she whispered, obeying the compulsion to say his name, hearing the panic in her voice.
"I'm here." His lips touched hers, toyed with hers, his forearms beneath her shoulders, fingers tangled in her hair. Those gleaming, darkened eyes were heavy-lidded, fixed on hers. His hips moved in a quickening rhythm.
The tension inside Cassie became unendurable, yet she had no choice but to endure it. Her senses were spinning out of control, her body caught up in a desperate headlong rush toward completion, and she clung to Ben as the only anchor left to her in an ocean of impossible sensation.
When release finally came, it swept over her with the force of a tidal wave, the pleasure stealing her breath and almost stopping her heart, and it left Cassie dazed and shaken. She barely had the strength to hold Ben as he shuddered and groaned with his own climax, and all she could think of was how close she had come to never knowing this.
It was a long time before either of them could move, and then it was Ben who eased his weight onto his elbows and looked down at her with eyes that were still dark and intent.
Beyond any ability to be coy, Cassie said, "Wow." A glitter of amusement lit his eyes. "I would say thank you, but it was definitely a mutual effort." His voice was husky.
"Is it… always like that?" The first time had been astonishing enough; Cassie wasn't sure she could survive if it just kept on getting more powerful.
"It never has been before," Ben said, and kissed her lazily.
Cassie tightened her legs when he would have lifted himself away. "Don't go." "I'm too heavy, love."
"No, you aren't." She wondered if he was even conscious of the endearment. "Are you sure?"
"Positive." She wanted to feel as much of him against her as possible for as long as possible.
Ben was more than willing to stay where he was for a little while at least. He kissed her again because he had to, and kept his fingers threaded through her silky hair as if, he vaguely realized, he expected her to try to escape him. He thought she probably would. Even then, with her body cradling his in the sated aftermath of the most incredible lovemaking he had ever experienced, there was something in her eyes that told him she was drifting away from him again, retreating in some way he could see and feel but not quite define.
He wanted to grab and hold on tight, but every instinct warned him that to do so would only push her away from him even faster and farther. The realization made something hurt inside his chest.
"You're frowning," she murmured, fingers gently smoothing his forehead.
"Am I?" He turned his head to kiss the inside of her wrist, where it was warm and soft.
"Is something wrong, Ben?"
He kept it light. "I think we should get a pet door installed for Max. Because I really don't want to leave you."
She smiled, but before she could reply they both heard a soft sound from the doorway. They turned their heads to see the dog standing there, tail waving slowly and with an almost apologetic look on his face.
"Speak of the devil," Ben said, and very reluctantly eased away from Cassie.
By the time he let the dog out for a last run, reset the security system, and made sure the fire they had earlier abandoned in the fireplace was banked for the night, Ben wouldn't have been surprised to find Cassie asleep again. But she was only drowsy, and came into his arms eagerly as soon as he slid into bed beside her.
"What kept you?" she murmured. "While you were gone, the music came back."
"Max wanted another rawhide bone." Ben kissed her, hardly surprised to find that he wanted her again and every bit as urgently as the first time.
Cassie wreathed her arms around his neck. "Stop talking about the dog."
Both of them forgot the dog.
And the music.
His shoulder made a comfortable pillow, and his body against hers was a pleasure Cassie thought she could drown herself in. She was vaguely aware of sleet rattlingagainst the windowpanes, of the occasional whine of the wind, but most of her consciousness was focused on t deep and even sounds of Ben's breathing.
He'll destroy you,came the whisper from the grave.
"I don't care," Cassie whispered in reply.
EIGHTEEN
FEBRUARY 28, 1999
"I wish you'd come to the station with me," Matt said restlessly, watching Abby pour herself a second cup of coffee.
"Any other Sunday, I would. But Anne can't be there today, and I have to play the organ. Matt, surely you aren't worried about me being at the church? There'll be people all around, you know that."
"Ivy Jameson was killed before she could get to church last Sunday."
"Well, you've already said you're taking me, so I should get there safely." She smiled at him. "And since you're taking me, you can come pick me up afterward."
"You don't have to worry about that."
Abby reached across the table to touch his hand. "I'll be fine, Matt. And you need to be at the station, we both know that. If what you suspect is right, you need to check all the notes on the first three murders."
"I don't know if it'll get us anywhere," he confessed.
"Maybe a step or two closer to understanding the son of a bitch. But I have to check it out."
Reluctantly Abby said, "And you'll have the autopsy report on the Ramsay girl to go over as well."
He grimaced. "I'm not looking forward to that. And I don't expect it to help us much. Even though she was left in pieces, you could still see the ligature mark on her neck. I figure the report will tell me Cassie was right about that as well. He strangled the girl with a garrote." "What about Cassie?" Abby said. "Are you still planning to ask her and Ben to come to the station?"
"If I'm right about the missing articles. Don't know that it'll help, but I think we need to talk over a few things. And maybe Cassie will be able to contact the killer." "What about Bishop?"
Matt shrugged. "It was what he noticed at the murder scene yesterday that got me started thinking. His expertise may come in handy, and at this point I'm not too proud to ask for help – as long as he doesn't drag the Bureau in with him. So, sure, why not?"
In fact, Matt called Bishop's motel room from his cruiser as he drove Abby to church, and the agent arrived at the station just minutes after Matt settled at his desk.
"Postmortem?" Bishop asked, noting the papers the sheriff was studying.
"Yeah. She was strangled with a thin wire or something similar. Cassie was right about that. And something else. He killed the girl while he was raping her."
Bishop sat down on the leather sofa. "A first for him, right?"
"Right. No established sexual contact with the first three victims – although Cassie says this sort of murder is always sexual, and the reading I've done seems to agree with her. You've seen the reports. What do you think?"
"She's right. It's about power, and that usually translates into sexual domination." The agent thought a moment. "A bit surprising that he apparently didn't attempt sexual domination with the first three, but he may well have achieved satisfaction observing their terror before and during the murders."
It was Mart's turn to consider. "Cassie also claims that when Jill Kirkwood was killed – third victim – the killer wore some kind of Halloween mask. We have no idea if he also wore one when he killed the first two victims – or the fourth, for that matter."
"He may have tried the mask to elicit more terror from his victim. If that's so, if he wore it only that time, and not before or after, then he may be only beginning to shape and perfect his M.O."
"What a cheerful possibility," Matt said.
"A reasonable one, I'm afraid. He kills because he likes to kill, and each experience gives him more ideas for his next murder." Bishop's voice was remote. "We may never know what triggered his compulsion, what pushed him over the line from fantasizing to acting out his fantasies, but whatever's driving him is obviously growing stronger and more complex. The first victim was not physically tortured, though we can assume he did his best to terrify her emotionally before he cut her throat. The second victim either fought him – with a certain amount of success – or else he fully intended to allow himself a bloody rampage just to find out how it felt."
"Christ," Matt muttered.
"Interesting that he followed that indulgence with a much calmer and quieter murder, and that he may have worn a mask expressly designed to terrify his victim. He was undoubtedly exhausted after killing the Jameson woman, yet he was obviously unsatisfied."
Matt snorted. "Ivy probably never satisfied a man in her life – even with her death."
Bishop smiled faintly. "Yes, she's the victim who stands out among the rest, doesn't she?"
Matt leaned back in his chair. "Are you saying that might mean something?"