Dark Pursuit Part 9

CHAPTER seventeen

The description captivated me.

Black silk cloth with green stripes.

I stared at the words, a flush spreading across my skin. Like the warmth of a campfire on a cold night, the way it reaches out, envelops you, and you don't want to leave, don't want to move.

Black silk. Green stripes.

I could feel feel this cloth in my hands. this cloth in my hands.

The smoothness of it. Its delicate strength, one rough fingernail enough to snag a thread, ruin its perfection.

My heart thudded.

I closed my eyes and imagined the exposed neck, its fluttering pulse. My hands rose, fingers spreading, curling. Longing, aching aching for the black silk. for the black silk.

What was happening to me?

The last couple of months I'd been restless. I did my work, went about my business. n.o.body would know. But my insides felt ... unsteady. Mushy. Like concrete trying to harden but missing some major ingredient.

My sleep had been affected too. I had vague, dark dreams of childhood, never able to remember the details when I awoke, but filled with foreboding and dread. Of what, I didn't know.

I sensed a blackness in the world that I hadn't before. And somehow I understood it wasn't new, was in fact ancient. But only now had I become aware. I wasn't sure of my place in it. But I did know I was fully bound to it and helpless to escape on my own.

And now-this. The black silk cloth.

A sudden yearning for it rose in me, lifting me out of my chair. I glanced at the time. Shortly after four. How late did fabric stores stay open?

Where was a fabric store?

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a phone book and checked its yellow pages. Found a shop about five miles away. I hurried to my car and headed for it, feeling antsy and compelled and oddly out of place in my own neighborhood. Here was this store now so essential to my very life, on a street I'd driven countless times-and I'd never even noticed it before.

How strange I felt going inside. Like everyone was looking at me, wondering what in the world I was doing there.

I wandered the aisles, trying to take it slow, appear normal, while my mind revved like an overpowered engine. My nerves tingled as I looked at all that cloth, thinking no, no, wrong, wrong no, no, wrong, wrong. I saw cotton and polyester, all kinds of colors. Some designs with stripes, even green ones. But nothing other than the black silk would do.

It wasn't there. That whole store, with hundreds of different designs, offering everything some seamstresscould ever want. Except the one cloth that I wanted. Needed. Needed.

The urge overpowered me, possessed me. I went home and paced the rooms, unnerved and having no idea what to do.

I found myself at the computer. All that evening I searched online for the fabric. I scoured dozens of sites, thousands of designs. The longer I looked the more desperate I became. The fabric obsessed me, taunted me, and I still didn't know why didn't know why.

And suddenly-there it was.

Black silk. Green stripes.

"Ah!" My hand flew up from the keyboard and pressed hard against the screen. My heart beat in my throat. I wanted to climb inside the monitor, curl up with that bolt of fabric. Feel it, hear the swish of it, smell it.

I was going mad.

I ordered five yards. Express delivery.

The next two days are a blur. My life felt on hold, the world stopped on its axis, waiting for the cloth to arrive.

When it came I tore into the package, shaking, petrified at what was happening to me yet helpless to stop it. At first sight of the fabric I froze, overwhelmed at being in its presence. I reached out to touch it, afraid, so afraid it would be less than my imaginings.

The cloth was silky. Cool. Utterly mesmerizing.

I balled up a corner of it and pressed it to my nose. It had a tangy, vaguely sharp smell I hadn't expected. Exotic. Heady.

My legs trembled.

I unwrapped all five yards from the bolt and gathered them to my chest.

That night I slept with the cloth.

I told myself the next day I would be back to normal. Whatever this ... thing was, it couldn't last. I would toss the cloth in a dumpster. A few days later I'd be laughing at my own idiocy.

Morning dawned. Time came to leave for work.

I couldn't leave the cloth.

I cut a piece of it and slipped it in my pocket.

Throughout the day whenever I was alone I pulled it out, felt it, smelled it. Luxuriated in it.

What was was happening happening to me? to me?

That night I cut a bigger piece. A strip about ten inches wide, running the fabric's width of three feet. I laid it out across the kitchen table and stared at it.

This was it. What I had longed for.

Cut this way, the fabric vibrated heat. For a minute I had the crazy idea it would self-ignite, burn up right before my eyes.

The piece seemed too big to keep in my pocket. The next morning I folded it carefully and placed it in the glove compartment of my car.

There it called to me. All day as I worked. And the next, and the next. Wooing me but keeping its secrets.

One day-soon, I hoped, or I would go completely insane-it would answer my questions.

It would tell me why why.

CHAPTER eighteen

Kaitlan pulled into her carport and shut off the engine. Her brain had stayed numb all the way home. She'd driven like a total robot.

The engine ticked as she got out of the car, purse in hand. She glanced around, half expecting Craig to jump out at her. But there was no sign of him.

Wait! If Craig was here when she'd gotten home around three o'clock, where had he left his car? If Craig was here when she'd gotten home around three o'clock, where had he left his car?

Kaitlan froze.

A narrow private road formed the Jensons' east property line, leading to three houses about a half mile down. Craig could have parked there, out of Kaitlan's sight. But then how would he have gotten his victim here?

Grandfather hadn't mentioned Craig's vehicle at all. Hadn't he thought of it?

Kaitlan's hope soared. This was huge huge. If Craig had been here when she arrived unexpectedly, where was his car where was his car?

Why hadn't she thought of this before? It was so obvious.

If her grandfather missed it-what else had he missed? He couldn't even possibly know if Craig was the killer.

But if he wasn't, wouldn't the body still be on her bed? Then Then what would she do? what would she do?

Kaitlan tried the door. Locked. As it should be.

She pulled the key from her purse and inserted it. Pushed open the door. For a moment she stood there, listening. Feeling. Feeling.

She stepped into the kitchen, her body turning to lead. Whatever she found in the next sixty seconds was going to change her life. Either she would become the most desperate actress on earth or the most desperate fugitive.

Kaitlan put her purse on the table. She took a deep breath and turned around. Walked to the doorway into the living room.

Everything looked in perfect order.

The red throw blanket-draped over the couch. Her lamp sat on its end table. The coffee table and magazines-all as she'd left them this morning.

Panic and disbelief punched her in the stomach. She sagged against the doorway, face in her hands. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she'd come home, nauseated and tired, and imagined the whole - Craig's pen. She'd left it on the kitchen table. She'd left it on the kitchen table.

Kaitlan whirled around. It wasn't there.

She strode back to her purse and picked it up. No pen underneath.

With a cry she dropped the purse and ran for the bedroom. She swiveled around its angled entrance.

Her bed was empty. Coverlet smoothed, pillows at the top. No strangled woman, no black fabric with green stripes.

The memory of the smell hit her-the flowery perfume mixed with urine. She lifted her face and sniffed.

No scent remained.

In a half-daze Kaitlan sidled to her bed and ran her hand across the coverlet where the woman's hips had lain.

Dry.

She placed her palms on the mattress, leaned over and breathed in. The faint smell of urine wafted up her nose.

Kaitlan jerked up and stumbled two steps backward. She stood, hands clenched, air stuttering in her throat, as panic rappelled down her spine. She wasn't crazy. That woman had been here.

And so had Craig.

Kaitlan turned toward the sliding gla.s.s door, her focus landing on the carpet. The footprint. He'd forgotten to clean it up.

She stared at it, visualizing Craig's flurry of activity as he restored the apartment, his fear of being caught. Or had he been methodical, so confident he could control her that he hadn't bothered with the print?

Maybe he thought she was too dumb to notice it.

She couldn't believe this.

She had had to believe it. to believe it.

Margaret. She and Kaitlan's grandfather would be waiting to hear what happened.

Kaitlan hurried back to the kitchen. She fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. With shaking fingers she dialed the unlisted number she'd never forgotten.

"Kaitlan?" Margaret's voice pinched.

"She's gone." Kaitlan's tone sounded flat. "Everything's in place."

Margaret sucked in a breath. The sound chilled Kaitlan's blood. It was a sound squeezed by fear.

Her grandfather had been right. Craig was a killer. Now her life depended on what she did next.

You play your charade, he' ll play his.

Kaitlan's eyes bounced to the clock on the kitchen wall. Ten after six. Craig would arrive in twenty minutes.

This was insane insane.

"Gotta go, Margaret. I'll call you tonight when I get back home."

"I'll be praying for you."

"Thanks. I believe in that."