Her Darkest Nightmare (15 page)

“Apparently, I like uptight psychiatrists.”

She smiled at his response. “Who are afraid to make love. I hate that I left you hanging. I-I really didn't want to do that.”

“It's fine. I'm not afraid of a challenge, Evelyn. Not if it's
our
challenge.”

“Meaning…”

“We could work on it together—get past it.”

She bit her lip. Part of her, a big part, insisted it would be much smarter not to get his hopes up again. But he was the only man she'd met in such a long time who made her want to
try
. “You seemed pretty angry this morning.”

“Not over last night,” he clarified. “I wasn't angry with
you,
anyway, if that's what you thought. I was angry at the situation.”

“A problem you believe
I
brought to town.”

“What you'll be leaving me with when you go.”

“I'm not going anywhere, Amarok, not anytime soon.”

He lowered his voice. “That's good, because I can't quit thinking about you.”

She didn't know how to respond. For once, she was as frightened of rejecting someone as she was of accepting him. What if Amarok gave up on her? She didn't want to miss out on getting to know him. “You have more confidence in me than I do.”

“Your Ho Hos are here. Why don't you come get one?”

She smiled again, but she knew herself. She wasn't ready to risk a repeat of the frustration they'd experienced last night. Maybe she could if that was all she was dealing with. But in the aftermath of Lorraine's death … she didn't have it in her to tackle her sexual problem at the same time. “Maybe another time.”

There was a long silence.

“Can you wait?” she asked.

“Yeah. I'll be here when you're ready.”

She hoped that was true. She missed the comfort and security she'd felt when she was with him. But she'd be fine here, with Sigmund, she told herself.

Except that Sigmund hadn't put in an appearance yet. Where the heck was he? He was always eager for her company when she arrived home.…

Planning to look for her cat, she told Amarok to e-mail her those names, since she had no way to write them down given the dearth of pens in her kitchen. Then she hung up and stripped off her heavy coat. That was when she realized something else was wrong. It was cold in the house. And she didn't think her alarm system had sounded its usual warning signal when she opened the door.

The power had been out for a long stretch thanks to the storm. Maybe the system hadn't been able to rearm itself. Or it was broken. Those were plausible explanations—but she couldn't help fearing it was something other than that.

Reclaiming the cordless phone with one hand, she got her 9mm GLOCK out of the drawer with the other. She had Mace in her purse, but after what'd been done to Lorraine she wanted to be able to use lethal force, if necessary. She wouldn't be attacked again, not without giving her attacker one hell of a fight.

“Sigmund?” She moved slowly into the living room. “Sig, baby, where are you?”

When her cat didn't come, her heart pounded harder. Something was wrong, all right. Part of her insisted the temperature of the house and the missing cat had to be related to the storm in some way, but she wasn't taking any chances.

She hit the light switch in the hall. This elicited no sound, no creak or commotion. But she wasn't sure she would hear such things. If she was about to come face-to-face with the man who'd killed Lorraine, and very likely Danielle, he'd be crouched and ready to spring.

Another uncertain step brought her almost to the entrance of her home office. Sigmund's scratching post and other toys were in there. She hoped to find him sleeping on his mat. But before she could go any farther, she spotted her bedroom door. She always shut it when leaving for work in the morning to keep Sigmund from getting fur all over her new comforter.

That door wasn't closed now. It stood ajar by about two feet.

Someone's been in my house.

Her legs went to jelly; she had to reach out and brace herself. With such a sudden deluge of adrenaline, she was afraid she might slide down the wall and wind up in a heap instead of offering the resistance she'd imagined. But she managed to remain standing.

Was her visitor still around? Watching for her? Waiting?

And what had he done with Sigmund?

She felt the weight of the phone in her hand. She wanted to call Amarok, but she knew whatever was going to happen would happen before he could arrive. She'd be smarter to get out of the house. She could lock herself in her car, call him while she still had the phone within range of its base, then leave.

She turned to do that—and heard a
me-e-ow
.

Sigmund! He was alive. And in her bedroom. Maybe she hadn't latched the door tightly when she left and he'd been able to nudge it open. He was good at that kind of thing, smart. Had she gotten herself all worked up, terrified, over nothing?

It appeared that way.

She inched forward, gun at the ready, craning her neck to see as far ahead of her as possible.

Everything looked normal, exactly as she'd left it. From one vantage point, she could see the swish of her cat's tail. Sigmund was on her bed even though he wasn't supposed to be, but she was so relieved to find him that she didn't care.

If someone were in the room, Sigmund wouldn't simply be lying there.…

Still, caution prevailed. She crept through the door and scanned the outer edges of the room.

Nothing. No one.

She checked the closet, the bathroom, under the bed. Everything was as it should be.

Thank God.

Setting her gun on the dresser, she breathed a sigh of relief and turned to scoop Sigmund into her arms. His name was halfway out of her mouth when the other half froze in her throat.
He
was fine, but what he'd been playing with, the reason he'd been too preoccupied to come when she called, made her sick.

A human arm, cut off at the elbow, lay between the pillows. And that wasn't all. The fingers were taped so that only the middle finger stood up.

 

10

I don't lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it.

—DENNIS NILSEN, MUSWELL HILL MURDERER

Evelyn woke with a start. Oh God …
where was she
?

Heart hammering, she blinked rapidly, trying to peel away the darkness. She wasn't in her bed, where she'd expect to be in the middle of the night.

At first, she was convinced that she was once again in that remote shack with Jasper, the one they'd visited so many times as teenagers. The day they discovered it, it had become their special hideaway, where they'd made love for the first time, where they'd go to ditch school and wile away a lazy afternoon.

But her favorite place on earth had nearly ended up becoming her grave.

Her neck felt wet. Was her throat cut?

Fear clawed at her chest, growing in power and intensity until—

Her cat mewed and shifted at her side, startled when she reached up to check for blood. And then she remembered. She wasn't in the shack. She was in her living room, separated by two decades and almost five thousand miles from the horrific event that had left such an indelible mark on her life. There'd been terrifying events since then, but nothing quite so bad as that.

Amarok was around somewhere, too. When he'd pressed her to lie down, he'd said he'd stay. She trusted that he would, so she was, for the moment, most likely safe—but she couldn't forget that someone else, the owner of that hand, had just lost her life.

Breathe. Come on, Evelyn, in and out through your nose. You know the routine.

Although it had been a long time since she'd had a panic attack, she'd experienced them often in earlier years. The coping mechanisms she'd developed usually worked, more so recently, but only because of maturity and the perspective she'd gained on all that had transpired in Boston. That severed limb had carried her back, unraveled some of her determined progress. It reminded her that Jasper had popped up again last summer and was still out there somewhere.

Was Lorraine's death and that severed arm his work? That was a question she had to ask herself, especially because the hand had been taped to flip her off. Whoever left it was making a personal statement—and who'd want to give her the finger more than Jasper? The person she'd come to know during those final three days at the shack would never willingly let her go on with her life, no matter how much time passed. He'd proven that by tracking her down five months ago.

“You okay?”

Amarok. There he was. Although she couldn't see him in the dark, from the gravelly sound of his voice he'd been sleeping in the overstuffed chair in the corner. Neither of them was prepared to go back into the bedroom. Since he'd finished processing the scene—and bagging the severed limb, which was in his truck until he could have someone take it to Anchorage—he'd closed the door to that part of the house. In the morning, when she'd had some rest and could summon the nerve, she'd pack a bag and move to Amarok's until they could figure out what was going on. Then she'd decide what to do from there.

When he'd made the offer to let her stay with him, she'd agreed almost immediately. She didn't have anywhere else to go. Nowhere she would feel as safe as she would with him. Jasper—or whoever else—had invaded the sanctity of her home and destroyed her fragile sense of safety, and it didn't matter that she'd had a security system. He'd picked the lock to her back door and dismantled the alarm, and he could've taken all day to do it since she was home only late at night.

Having the sergeant nearby, waiting to help get her things, reassured her that nothing terrible was going to occur in the next few minutes. But the relief occasioned by that thought made her feel selfish. Poor Lorraine. And Danielle. That limb, with its purple fingernail polish, was obviously from a much younger woman than Lorraine. Evelyn had no doubt Danielle was dead, too.

“Evelyn?”

She hadn't answered. Wiping the sweat from her upper lip, she strove for calm. “I'm fine.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” She'd rather he not know that finding that arm had further shattered the sense of well-being she'd struggled so hard to rebuild, bit by painstaking bit, over the years. She'd done everything possible to overcome her ordeal, to give what she'd suffered meaning by letting it spur her in a direction she would never have chosen otherwise. It didn't seem fair that, after so much time and effort, Jasper could harass her again last summer and follow her all the way to Alaska.…

“You didn't sleep long.”

Maybe not, but she couldn't take a sleeping pill, as he'd suggested earlier. No way would she do
anything
that could impair her ability to think and move. Amarok didn't understand what she was up against, how important it was that she remain vigilant
always
. Unlike some of the other psychopaths she'd studied, Jasper was armed with effortless brilliance. His agile mind and gregarious nature were partly what had drawn her to him.

He wouldn't get the better of her again.…

That reminded her—she'd had her GLOCK in her hand when she lay down. It wasn't there now and, although she patted the area around her, she couldn't find it.
“Where's my gun?”

“Here. After you fell asleep, I took it away. I didn't want you to shoot me because I got up in the night to go to the bathroom.”

Jostled by her movement and supremely irritated as a result, Sigmund jumped down.

“I'd only shoot you if you tried to harm me,” Evelyn said. “After what I've been through, I'd shoot anyone. If only I could kill Jasper.”

Her cold determination seemed to take him aback. And she could see why. Her willingness to resort to violence alarmed even her. But she believed the only
sure
way to be rid of the monster who'd tormented her was to end his life. She'd seen far too many psychopaths con their way out of a long prison sentence and achieve parole.

“Why would
I
ever try to harm you?” Amarok asked.

He wouldn't. She knew the difference between him, and Jasper and the other men at HH. At least her
conscious
mind did. What happened in her subconscious she couldn't control, or she would've been able to make love last night.

Briefly closing her eyes, she tried to overcome the fear that had momentarily strangled her internal editor. “Sorry,” she said. “Don't mind me. I'm … I'm a little freaked out and defensive.”

“You have every right to be. I just want to make sure you can keep the good guys separate from the bad guys.”

What you suffered when you were sixteen, and then this last summer, has you so frightened of men you can't trust 'em anymore.
He'd said that at his place. And he was right.

“Amarok, I have to tell you something.”

“What's that?” He'd been so busy photographing her bedroom, dusting for fingerprints and getting that severed arm out of her house that she hadn't told him the real significance of what she'd found. Unable to cope with the sickening sense of déjà vu that had come over her, she'd been too busy vomiting into the toilet.

“Lorraine. Danielle. This is Jasper's work.”

“Whoa, we don't even know Danielle's dead. That hand could have belonged to someone else.”

“It's most likely hers. Who else has gone missing?”

“There could be someone. I have to confirm it.”

“No. Jasper's here. He didn't get the satisfaction he was aiming for last summer, so he followed me to Alaska.”

She heard some rustling, guessed Amarok was getting up. A moment later, he pulled his chair into the soft light filtering in from the kitchen. “Evelyn, if Jasper's here, why didn't he kill you the moment you walked in? Be done with it?”