Standing to one side of the table, backlit by candles, butcher knife in hand, Angie sucked in a breath and made a pitious sound in her throat. She clutched the knife to her as if it were a treasured toy to comfort herself.
Rob's face hardened. He pulled a penknife from his pocket and jabbed it, all the way to the handle, into the bottom of Kate's right foot, and she learned very quickly and painfully the price he was going to make her pay for the strategy she'd chosen.
Kate cried out and her whole body convulsed against the restraints that bit deep into the skin of her wrists and ankles. When she fell back, the bindings seemed to have stretched to give her slightly more mobility.
She pulled her mind back together by focusing on Angie, thinking of the look she'd seen in the girl's eyes earlier, when she'd been struck by the thought that Angie's eyes weren't empty, that as long as there was some light in the darkness, there was still hope. She thought of the way the girl had started to go after Rob with the utility knife.
“Angie, get out!” she rasped. “Save yourself!”
The girl flinched and glanced nervously at Rob.
“She'll stay,” he snapped, stabbing the knife into her foot again, winning another cry from Kate. “She's mine,” he said, eyes glowing with the intoxication he achieved from inflicting pain.
“I don't think so.” Kate sucked in a sharp breath. “She's not stupid.”
“No, you're the stupid one,” he said, backing away a step. He pulled a long taper from the candelabrum he'd taken from her dining room and set on the clothes drier.
“Because I know the kind of pathetic, warped excuse for a human being you are?”
“How pathetic am I now, bitch?” he demanded, dragging the flame of the candle from toe to toe on her right foot.
Instinctively, Kate kicked at the source of her torment, knocking the candle from his hand. Rob pounced on it, swearing, disappearing from view at the end of the table.
“Stupid bitch!” he cursed frantically. “Stupid fucking bitch!”
The scent of the gasoline pressed over Kate's nose and mouth, and she shuddered at the notion of burning alive. The terror was like a fist in the base of her throat. The pain where Rob had already burned her was like a live thing, as if her foot had ignited and now the flames would shoot up her leg.
“What's the matter, Rob?” she asked, fighting the need to cry. “I thought you liked fire. Are you afraid of it?”
He scrambled to his feet, glaring at her. “I am the Cremator!” he shouted, the candle clutched in his fist. She could see his increasing agitation in his respiration rate, in the quick jerkiness of his movements. This wasn't going the way it had in his fantasies.
“I am superior!” he shouted, wild-eyed. “I am Evil's Angel! I hold your life in my hands! I am your god!”
Kate channeled her pain into her anger. “You're a leech. You're a parasite. You're nothing.”
She was probably goading him into stabbing her forty-seven times, cutting her larynx out and running it down the garbage disposal. Then she thought of the photographs of his other victims, of the tape of Melanie Hessler, of the hours of torture, rape, repeated strangulation.
She'd take her chances. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
“You make me sick, you spineless little shit.”
That was the truth. It made her want to vomit to think she'd worked beside him day in and day out, and every time his mind wandered it wandered to fantasies of abuse and brutality and murder—the very things they tried to help their clients live through and get past.
He paced at the foot of the table, muttering under his breath, as if he might be speaking to voices in his head, though Kate thought it unlikely he heard any. Rob Marshall wasn't psychotic. He was perfectly aware of everything he did. His actions were a conscious choice—though, if he were caught, he would probably try to convince the authorities otherwise.
“You can't get it up without the domination, can you?” Kate pressed on. “What woman would have you if you didn't tie her down?”
“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut the fuck up!”
He threw the candle at her, missing her head by three feet. He rushed up alongside her, grabbed a boning knife off the table beside her and jammed the point of it against her larynx. Kate swallowed reflexively, felt the tip of the steel bite into her skin.
“I'll cut it out!” he shouted in her face. “I'll fucking cut it out! I'm so sick of your bitching! I'm so sick of your voice!”
Kate closed her eyes and tried not to swallow again, holding herself rigid as he started to push the small, sharp blade into her throat. Terror tore through her. Instinct told her to jerk away. Logic told her not to move. And then the pressure stopped, eased away.
Rob stared at the tape recorder he'd left on the old barstool. He may not have wanted to hear her criticism of him, but he wanted to listen to her screams as he had listened to the screams and cries and pleading of all his victims. In fact, with her, he probably wanted it more. If he cut her voice out, he couldn't get that. If he couldn't get that, the act of killing her lost its meaning.
“You want to hear it, don't you, Rob?” she asked. “You want to be able to listen later and hear the exact moment I became frightened of you and gave you control. You don't want to give that up, do you?”
He picked up the tape recorder and held it close to her mouth. He put down the knife, picked up a pliers, and grabbed hold of the tip of her breast, squeezing brutally. Even through the buffer of her sweater and bra, the bite was sharp, then excruciating, making her scream. When he finally let go, he stepped back with a vicious smile and held up the cassette recorder.
“There,” he said. “I've got it.”
It seemed an eternity passed before the white noise faded from Kate's head. She was breathing as if she'd run the four-hundred-yard dash, sweating, shaking. The haze cleared from her vision and she was looking at Angie, the girl still standing in the same spot, clutching the knife to her. Kate wondered if she'd gone catatonic. Angie was her only hope, the weakest link in Rob's scenario. She needed the girl with her, lucid and able to act.
“Angie,” Kate croaked. “He doesn't own you. You can fight him. You've been fighting him, haven't you?” She thought of the scene that had played out upstairs—Rob wanting Angie to decribe what he'd done to her after taking her from the Phoenix House, Angie refusing, defying him, taunting him. She'd done it before—in the offices.
Rob's face reddened. “Quit talking to her!”
“Afraid she might turn on you, Rob?” Kate asked with not nearly the attitude she'd had five minutes earlier.
“Shut up. She's mine. And you're mine too, bitch!”
He lunged at her, grabbed hold of the neck of her sweater and tore at it with his hands, trying without success to rip it. Swearing, sputtering, flustered, embarrassed, he fumbled for another knife among the array of tools he had so carefully laid out on the table.
“You don't own her any more than you own me,” Kate said, glaring at him, straining against the bonds. “And you will never, ever own me, you toad.”
“Shut up!” he screamed again. He turned and slapped her across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Shut up! Shut up! You fucking bitch!”
The knives clattered together and he came away with a big one. Kate sucked in what she imagined might be her last breath and held it. Rob grabbed the neck of her sweater again and cut through it with the knife, violently rending the fabric with big, jagged tears. The tip of the knife bit into her breast, skipped along her belly, nicked the point of her hip.