Kiss the Girls Page 0,46

the house! She had made it somehow.

Kate McTiernan was half blinded by the streaming bands of sunlight, but the world had never looked so beautiful. She breathed in the sweet smell of the gums of trees: oaks, sycamores, towering Carolina pines, with no limbs except at the very top. Kate looked at the woods and the sky, high, high above, and she cried. Tears washed down her face.

Kate stared up at the tall, tall pines. Scuppernongs reached from treetop to treetop. She’d grown up in woods like these.

Escape; she suddenly thought of Casanova again. Kate tried to run a few steps. She fell again. She did the hands-and-knees waltz. She lurched back to her feet. Run! Get away from here!

Kate turned around in a full, sweeping circle. She kept on turning—once, twice, three times—until she almost fell again.

No, no, no! The voice inside her head was loud, screaming at her. She couldn’t believe her eyes, couldn’t trust any of her senses.

This was the weirdest, craziest thing yet. It was the scariest daydream. There was no house! There was no house anywhere Kate looked as she whirled and turned in circles under the towering pines.

The house, wherever she had been kept, had completely disappeared.

Chapter 45

RUN! MOVE your damn legs fast, one after the other. Faster! Faster than that, girl. Run away from him.

She tried to concentrate on finding her way out of the dark, dense forest. The tall Carolina pines were like umbrellas that filtered light onto the hardwoods that grew beneath them. There wasn’t enough light for the young saplings, and they stood like uptight tree skeletons.

He would be coming after her now. He had to try to catch her, and he’d kill her if he did. She was pretty sure she hadn’t hurt him very badly, though God knows she had tried.

Kate settled into a herky-jerky rhythm of running and stumbling forward. The forest floor was soft and spongy, a carpet of pine straw and leaves. Long spindly briar brambles grew straight up from the ground, reaching for the sunlight. She felt like a bramble herself.

Have to rest… hide… let the drugs wear off, Kate mumbled to herself. Then go get help… logical thing to do. Get the police.

Then she heard him crashing about behind her. He screamed out her name. “Kate! Kate! Stop right now!” His voice echoed loudly through the forest.

His bravado had to mean that nobody was around for miles; nobody to help her in the godforsaken woods. She was on her own out here.

“Kate! I’m going to get you! It’s inevitable, so stop running!”

She climbed a steep, rocky hill that seemed like Mount Everest in her exhausted state. A black snake was sunning itself on a smooth patch of rock. The snake looked like a fallen tree limb, and Kate almost stooped to pick it up. She thought she could use it as a support. The startled black snake slithered away, and she was afraid she was hallucinating again.

“Kate! Kate! You’re doomed! I’m so angry now!”

She went down hard in a mesh of honeysuckle and pointy rocks. Excruciating pain shot through her left leg, but she pushed herself up again. Ignore the blood. Ignore the pain. Keep going.

You have to get away. You have to bring help. Just keep running. You’re smarter, faster, more resourceful than you think you are. You’re going to make it!

She heard him pounding up the steep hill—the mountainside—whatever she had just climbed herself. He was very close.

“I’m right here, Kate! Hey, Katie, I’m coming up behind you! Here I am!”

Kate finally turned around. Curiosity and terror got the best of her.

He was climbing easily. She could see his white flannel shirt flashing through the almost-black trees below, and his long blond hair. Casanova! He was still wearing his mask. The stun gun, or some kind of gun, was in his hand.

He was laughing loudly. Why was he laughing now?

Kate stopped running. All hope of getting away suddenly left her. She experienced a jolting moment of shock and disbelief: she cried out in anguish. She was going to die right here, she knew.

Kate whispered, “God’s will.” That was all there was now, nothing else.

The top of the steep hill ended abruptly in a canyon. Steep, sheer rock dropped at least a hundred feet. Only a few bare scrub pines grew out of the rock. There was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run. Kate thought it was such a sad, lonely place to die.

“Poor Katie!’ Casanova screamed. “Poor baby!”

She turned to