Holden clutched the end of it with his left hand. “Up,” he said, and tugged it like a leash. Gillian sat up. Sweat streamed down her body, dripped off her chin and breasts. Sodden newspapers clung to her back.
With his rope hand, Holden peeled the papers off. “Out,” he said. His command was followed by another tug. Gillian winced.
Bracing herself with forearms on the edge of the trunk, she turned and got to her knees. She had papers on her rump. They stayed stuck to her while she swung a leg out of the trunk. Her knee found the bumper. It slipped off when she put her weight on it. She squirmed on the edge. The rope at her throat was yanked, and she tumbled out, rolling. The bumper hit her side. She bounced off it and slammed the ground ... and reached up and caught the rope and jerked it. Holden yelped. His arm snapped forward. The end of the rope flew from his hand.
Gillian flipped over. She rammed the fists of her tied hands against the ground and thrust herself up, and was almost to her feet when Holden’s kick caught her hip and sent her hurling sideways. She crashed against the rear of the car. It knocked her away. She fell and rolled and tried to keep rolling but Holden pinned her down with a shoe on her belly.
He stared down at her. He was breathing hard. He rubbed his lips again with his forearm.
Then he stomped.
Pain blasted through Gillian.
Wheezing and dazed, she was only vaguely aware of Holden picking up the rope, of how he pulled it and how she crawled, and how he picked her up and braced her against a tree trunk. By the time her mind cleared, it was too late.
Holden no longer held the rope. She couldn’t see where it was, but she felt it around her neck, against her right ear, against the side of her head. Its other end, she knew, must be tied to a branch above her.
She tried to grab for it.
Something stopped her.
She looked down. She was wearing a black leather belt. It was cinched tight around her waist. Her bound hands were lashed to it with rope—probably some of the rope that Holden had cut off her feet.
When did he do that? she wondered.
I must’ve been out for a while.
She looked around. The car was a few yards away, its trunk and driver’s door still open. But she didn’t see Holden anywhere.
Soon, she heard him tramping through the woods.
He came into the clearing. His arms were loaded with twigs and sticks. He gazed at Gillian and walked toward her.
Jesus, be’s gonna burn me at the stake like a witch!
But he dropped the bundle a safe distance away from her. He cleared an area surrounding it. He gathered up all the newspapers from the trunk of his car and stuffed them into the heap of wood. He found the paper that had come out of the trunk on Gillian’s rump. The breeze had tossed it into a bush, where it waited for him, snagged.
He touched a match to the pile.
I knew he’d do this, Gillian thought.
The papers had been spread in the trunk like papers at the bottom of a bird cage—to catch her debris so the cops would have nothing to find if they ever searched. Now, the papers were being burnt.
He won’t be putting me back in the trunk.
I’ll be left here.
Panic blew through Gillian like a frigid wind.
“You can’t do this!” she cried out. “Please!”
“Shut up or I’ll cut your tongue out.”
She snapped her mouth shut. She sucked air through her nostrils. The air was acrid with smoke.
Holden walked slowly to the car. He opened a rear door and pulled out Gillian’s suitcase. He carried it to the fire, set it flat on the ground, and opened it.
On top were the white shorts and plaid blouse she had worn to Jerry’s. Holden held the blouse over the fire until flames started crawling up its tails. Then he dropped it into the blaze. He picked up her shorts and tossed them onto the flames. As the white fabric curled and blackened, he looked over at Gillian. “What were you doing in my house?” he asked.
“You told me not to talk.”
“I changed my mind. Talk. What were you doing there?”
“I just break into houses,” Gillian said. “I stay in them when people are away.”
“What for?”
“It’s exciting.”
He laughed. “Real exciting, this time. You must be crazy or something.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“You think I’m crazy?” He looked amused by the idea. “I’m not crazy. I just do what any guy’d do if he had the guts.
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised.” He lifted out her tank-top and gym shorts and tossed them into the fire. “Isn’t a man alive doesn’t take one look at a piece like you and want to rip her clothes off and fuck her brains out. They just don’t have the guts or they’d do it. Me, I do it.”
“Then you kill them,” Gillian said.
“Dead girls tell no tales. How long you think I’d last if I let them live?”
“You enjoy killing people—and hurting them?”
He grinned and threw her skirt into the fire. “Just part of the game. Have to break some eggs if you’re gonna make an omelet.”
“You could get any woman you want. You don’t have to do it this way. You’re handsome and rich.”
“Rich, huh? You’re a little snoop, aren’t you?” He tossed her heels into the fire.
My sandals are still at Jerry’s, Gillian thought. So are my panties and bra. All that he’ll find of me when he wakes up.
“You know what they say,” Holden told her. “Money can’t buy happiness.”
“It’ll buy a lot of women.”
“Whores. Riddled with disease. Who wants that? I’m real particular who I touch.” He took a plastic bag out of the suitcase, opened it, and pulled out Gillian’s bikini. The bag shrank on the fire and burst into flames. “What’d you do, use my hot tub?”
Gillian nodded. She couldn’t let him know that she’d been in Jerry’s pool.
“Wore a bikini in the hot tub. That’s a laugh. You’re a very modest young lady.”
“That’s me,” she muttered.
Holden dangled the bikini top over the flames. Steam rose off its damp fabric. He dropped it, then rubbed the pants on his face. “Mmmm, delicious.”
“You’re a pig.”
“Oink oink,” he said, and laughed. The pants fluttered down into the blaze. He took her camera out of the suitcase and held it toward her. “What’s this for?”
“Dental floss.”
“You babes are such a riot. If you aren’t screaming and weeping and pleading, you turn into wise-asses. There oughta be a bounty on you.” He opened the back of the camera and removed the film cartridge. “You got pictures of my place in here?”
“Develop them and find out for yourself.”
“You’re a real prize, you know that? Where do you get off, breaking into a man’s private domain and taking fucking snapshots?”
“Where do you get off, killing people?”
“Right between my legs, hon.” He dropped the film into the fire. “Seriously, you took pictures of my place?”
“I take pictures of all the places I stay. I have albums full of them.”
“No kidding. And you think I’m crazy.”
“Yeah, a madman.”
“Mad is right. But not crazy. If I was crazy, you think I could’ve done thirty-two babes without ever even getting questioned by the cops, much less busted? You think a crazy man would do that?”
“If he’s smart.”
Black, greasy smoke curled off the film.
“At least you’re right about that,” Holden said. “I am smart. Take you, for instance. They find your body out here, if they find it, they aren’t gonna know who the fuck you are, much less where you came from. I mean, they won’t even think of looking in the goddamn San Fernando Valley. Hon, we’re more than three hundred miles away. If they do find you, they’ll think you’re from San Francisco or Sacramento or some damn place. We’re so far away you won’t even turn up in the LA papers.”