The Watcher (24 page)

“Kate,” he breathed gently against her shoulder.

He liked the way she woke up, stretching in a single feline movement starting with her shoulders and folding her body up in one fluid, yoga-like motion until she sat facing him, her legs tucked beneath her body. She leaned toward him, nipples taut in the cooling room. She raised her arms straight over her head and stretched.

The sight roused Slater with sudden desire, and he smiled with the familiarity of a man who’d explored the body of a woman he cared for.

Kate caught his look. “Hey, if you keep staring at me like that, you’re going to land in jail. That constitutes lewd and lascivious.”

“It’s worth an arrest,” he answered, tracing a finger down the soft mound of her breast. “I’m tempted to risk incarceration.”

She laughed and pushed at his hand, sat at the edge of the bed and reached for the flimsy robe she’d dropped on the floor. She shivered. “Brrr, it’s cold. Should we start a fire?”

He rubbed his hand over her smooth, bare back and edged downward to her bottom. “Lay back and I’ll warm you.”

“Very persuasive,” she murmured.

He reached the soft lace at her panties’ edge and her body went still as she leaned backwards. The robe fell back to the floor. He could barely see the contours of her face in the dim light.

Turning around to face him, she placed her hands on his shoulders and drew his head fiercely to her chest. “Slater, Slater, what are we doing?”

The thumping of her heart pounded against his ear, and the sibilant whisper of her breath increased with each movement of his hands rubbing against her thighs, rear, belly.

“Tell me what you want, what you like.”

“Oh, you know very well what I like.”

She sank onto his body, tumbling them both backwards against the soft texture of the comforter, and hurriedly reached for him. He ripped her panties and pulled them off her body, tossed them onto the floor. As she straddled him, he impaled her with a single, wet plunge. She threw her head backwards, and the lovely arch of her throat distended with the strain of her muscles as she pushed downward to each of his upward thrusts.

This coupling was uninhibited, driven by manic urgency as if they couldn’t get enough of each other. Somehow the primitiveness fit the dark room and their desperate need to have each other again.

Finally Kate shuddered and collapsed on him. “We
should
spend the night in jail for that,” she whispered in his ear.

He chuckled. “Well worth it.”

#

The next to the last thought Kate had as she drifted to sleep was that she’d told Slater her deepest secret, but she knew almost nothing about him. Her very last thought was she shouldn’t get entangled with someone when she was just passing through, even if he might have the power to keep the bad dreams at bay.

Early that morning she woke up drenched in a cold sweat. Her body shook so hard she bit down on her lower lip and drew blood.

She was walking Shamus, the family dog, their frisky chocolate Labrador. He tugged at the leash, trying to get at a jack rabbit that hopped near the creek bed. Pulling her coat lapels closer around the thin dress she hadn’t changed out of after church services, she wrapped the leash tighter around her wrist and dug her hands into the down liner.

“Hurry up, Shamus, it’s time to go home.” She gave a hard pull on the leash, but the dog jerked and frisked away from her. She lost her balance, banging her rear end on the hard ground, tearing a rip in her new yellow dress.

“Shamus! Come back here right now, you naughty dog.” “Shamus!” she screamed, but the wind whipped the words out of her mouth, and the dog frolicked off into the night.

Before she could get off the ground, she sensed, rather than saw, the shadow that leached out of the dusk and overpowered her. She breathed in a funny smell that made her queasy and sleepy at the same time. Her muscles felt spongy. She couldn’t make her legs and arms obey her commands to scream, fight, run. Her body drifted down, down until the blackness etched the perimeters of her sight.

And then nothing.

Kate groaned and tossed from side to side in her sleep, but she didn’t wake up. Subconsciously she felt Slater’s huge body next to her and burrowed into his back, her arm around his waist, her face buried in the familiar smell of him.

When the blackness receded, her head felt like someone was pounding a ball-peen hammer on her skull. Her mouth hurt like the dentist had stretched it wide open and worked for hours filling cavities. She forced her heavy eyes open and tried to look around.

The walls of the room were wooden logs and looked like the cabin where her family had stayed when they visited Yellowstone National Park the summer she was twelve. She was lying on a battered wooden bed, the mattress was filthy, and the muscles of her arms burned because her wrists were stretched straight back over her head. She wanted to be brave, but her arms and legs quivered and her mouth was dry.

She asked herself what her sister would do. Katie was spunky and brave. Katie always knew the answers, how to tackle a problem and solve it, no matter how enormous.

She twisted her neck to look at her hands. They were tied together with a leather strap and then hooked onto the head-board of the bed. Her legs ached too, and when she looked down, she started crying softly because she didn’t know what fearless thing Katie would do to get out of this situation.

Because she didn’t have any clothes on.

Kate gripped Slater’s arm and dug her nails into his skin.

“Ouch, what the – ? Kate? What’s wrong?”

Wake up, she told herself, wake up. This is only a horrible nightmare. It’s not real. She wanted to be back in her own warm bed that was piled high with the quilts her mother had made. Wanted to be sharing the room with her sister and whispering in the night about Tommy Sanders asking Kate to the prom. Trying to be quiet so their parents wouldn’t hear.

Wake up!

Kate watched herself as if she were standing in the cabin beside the bed and lying on the dirty mattress at the same time. She knew it was a dream, but she couldn’t force her Kate-eyes to open, couldn’t make her Kate-mind wake up.

Her cheeks were wet against the pillowcase, and in the dream, Kate saw the girl crying, but she couldn’t claw her way out of the horrible nightmare.

A shadow loomed over her, and she felt the first sharp sting of pain. She looked down in shock to see a bright red line dabbling across her chest, little dots of scarlet popping up one by one between her breasts.

Kate tried to see the form that hovered over her dream-self, but the sharp blade terrified her. She couldn’t breathe as she watched herself struggling on the bed, scrabbling to get away from the awful descent of the deadly knife.

She squeezed her eyes tight. Please, please, let me wake up, don’t let this be happening. Let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Please, please. Don’t hurt me, I won’t tell.

I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise.

The figure smiled a terrible twist of thin, cruel lips and bent to whisper in her ear, but the Kate standing nearby couldn’t hear what he was saying to the girl on the bed. His pale skin stretched over wiry muscles and sinews that bulged beneath the surface. Veins popped from his arms and neck, and goose bumps rose on his naked body.

Below his waist hung a grotesque stubble of flesh that rose from a thatch of coarse-looking hair. For all its diminutive size, it was like a snarling, hideous animal.

He giggled, and the sound was breaking glass and the scrape of fingernails on a chalk board. He’s enjoying himself, the dreaming Kate realized. He wants her – me – to suffer. He enjoys hearing her – me – plead and beg.

He’s insane.

Kate stretched her arms toward the mass of trembling muscles writhing on the bed. She wanted to throw herself between the monster with the knife and the helpless girl the monster hovered over.

The girl’s tightly-closed eyes flung open. The lashes were spiked with wetness, and the violet color of her irises darkened to the purple of concord grapes. She stared at the blood flowing down her arms and legs, across her hips, and between her thighs. Her pupils constricted to tiny pinpricks as she took in the madman’s nakedness.

She started screaming.

“Kate, what’s wrong?”

She bolted upright, gasping for breath, holding back a scream that threatened to erupt like a projectile from her throat. She struggled to suck in huge gulps of air.

“Kate, Kate, wake up. Shush, it’s all right. I’m here, don’t worry.” Slater’s big body wrapped around her. “I’ve got you now. Everything’s okay, it’s okay.”

He held her and kissed her, rocking her like a baby until the scream at the back of her throat and mind slowly subsided.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The watcher walked a circular path around the large, high-ceiling room. Tattered and dusty curtains fell from the windows, casting gloomy shadows except where tiny slivers of light pushed through. Round and round, back and forth, Smith paced. He folded his wiry arms around his waist and flapped them against his sides like a wounded bird. Sweat dripped from his forehead and soaked his dingy tank top. His bare feet padded on the scarred wooden floor.

When he first arrived in California four months ago, he’d immediately contacted his Uncle Mark, who’d lived here all his life. Smith needed help remembering the location of the family home, just inside the county line in the tiny town of New Haven. Neither of the men had been up there in nearly twenty years.

Smith hadn’t contacted his grandmother in years, so he’d been shocked to learn he’d inherited the old house where he’d spent most of his childhood. Moving there meant putting down roots, but he wasn’t disappointed by the news. He saw unlimited possibilities for residing in the run-down family homestead.

First, the house was practically in ruins and looked deserted, and the nearest neighbors lived at least a mile down a narrow, two-lane county road. The house sat on a twenty-acre tract of land that hadn’t been grabbed up by speculators. Access was gained only by a rutted and narrow dirt road, much of which was overgrown with weeds.

Second, ten feet below the ground level his grandfather had built a bunker, traversing the length of the main floor, and lined with one-foot thick, sound-proofed cement walls. Grandfather had predicted that the bunker-basement would provide shelter when the Russians aimed nuclear bombs at the west coast. No one was uncertain about this probability in the 1950’s, least of all Grandfather.

Smith had hated his grandfather, but he had to admit that the old man knew how to fortify a bunker. The room was divided into three sections accessed by wooden stairs leading from the kitchen at the rear of the house.

One section of the room contained the food supply. Shelves lined three of the walls, the fourth opening into the main living area. Canned foods were stacked row upon row on six-foot shelves. Fresh water containers lay flush against one wall. Grandfather had thought of everything from food and water to medical supplies, soap, and hygiene products. Blankets and extra clothing were stashed in a corner of the main room.

The largest room, the middle section, was the living area and contained a wireless radio, an emergency generator, and several cots and folding chairs, as well as oil lamps, oil, and matches for lighting without electricity. Magazines and books, mainly hunting magazines and soft-core porn, filled a bookcase on the south side of the room.

The section that intrigued Smith most, however, was the third one, originally designed for dressing the game that his grandfather shot and killed – deer, rabbit, pheasant, occasionally an elk, if he was lucky. Grandfather didn’t worry about hunting off-season. Out here in the boon docks, no one ever checked a license.

The dressing room contained two large utility basins, several hoses, and a drainage area in the center of the floor. The toilet and a make-shift shower were behind a room divider in the corner. His grandfather said that shit and blood were smells that belonged together.

The minute Smith set eyes on the underground bunker, he understood its potential use for his particular interests.

Though polite, Uncle Mark had shown little affection for his nephew by marriage, not when he’d first come to live there, and certainly not now. Nevertheless, his uncle had driven Smith up through the foothills and over the dam, then wound up the narrow, two-lane county road for ten miles or so until he finally turned onto the dirt road that led to the house. It would’ve been impossible for Smith to find the place on his own, even though he’d lived there for a dozen years.

After realizing the ideal set-up of the house, Smith was glad he hadn’t given his uncle a tour. In fact, Uncle Mark said he’d only been up there once in all these years, and had never set foot inside the house at all. Smith got the idea that his uncle, his grandfather’s brother-in-law by marriage, knew next to nothing about their side of the family. Mark had seen Grandfather only once or twice in town when he was getting supplies. And his uncle seemed more than willing to leave Smith to himself up in the northern California foothills.