HOLDEN PUTS A hand on his stomach. It causes a physical pain, a rumble in his stomach like hunger for food, a growl that resembles the angry hum of the motorcycle on which he’s riding at the moment.
He needs it again. He needs the thrill of the chase, the anticipation, the climax itself. It’s been over a year since Dede and Annie, and he can’t decide what was most invigorating: the initial approach, sneaking into the mansion; the physical act; the pain and suffering …
… so much to choose from. It’s kind of like deciding what you like best about pizza, the cheese or the sauce or the toppings; they are inseparable ingredients of a delicious experience. But if he had to choose, it was none of those things. No, it was the aftermath, what’s happened every day since, the feeling of invincibility that comes with knowing he got away with it, that he can do whatever he pleases and nobody can catch him, nobody can stop him.
Oh, there was an investigation. Apparently the girls, Dede Paris and Annie Church, hadn’t told anyone where they were spending the summer. They had told their friends one lie, their parents another, but nobody the truth. It was only through cell phone records that authorities were able to place them in the Hamptons at all. But it was over two weeks after he’d killed them that a search even began, and it wasn’t much of a search. Nobody had any idea where the girls were staying in the Hamptons. They never even focused on Bridgehampton, much less the house at 7 Ocean Drive. The best guess was that the girls were staying in Montauk, because that was where they found Annie’s car, in a tow yard after it had been parked illegally in a church parking lot, stripped of its license plates. (Yes, Holden has congratulated himself for moving her car.) It was when the authorities found the car that they officially determined … drumroll, please … that “foul play” was involved.
Ta-da! They don’t have a clue. The lesson: You can do whatever you want. If you’re smart. If you’re disciplined. If you take care in choosing your victims. If you don’t get greedy.
He drives by the nightclub again, passing the alley where they congregate in the shadows, waiting for any car that might pull over. He slows his motorcycle to an idle and looks to his right, directly where he knows they are. Several of them step out from the shadows into the light of the streetlamp in their skintight dresses, hiked up to show plenty of leg, their hair teased up, their boobs pushed out, hoping to make eye contact with potential customers. There are a half dozen of them, a nice variety of busty and petite, white and black and Hispanic. A smorgasbord of potential victims.
Victims. It’s fun to think of them that way. Not women but prey.
He immediately crosses the tall, leggy blonde off the list, because she is too much like Dede—though Dede ended up being great fun in the end. Still, variety is the spice of life, and, more to the point, an intelligent man like Holden realizes that he cannot leave a pattern of any kind in his wake.
He quickly narrows it down to a busty black woman and a petite blonde.
The blond one it is! Smaller, probably no more than a hundred pounds, and therefore easier to subdue, should any difficulty arise.
But why should any difficulty arise? He has his Fun Bag back at the motel. And unlike last time, when Dede and Annie surprised him, this time he’ll have the chance to show off his charm, to gain her trust, lure her in.
She’ll have no idea what’s coming. She’ll probably think the corkscrew is for a bottle of champagne. She’ll think the handcuffs are just a kinky sex thing.
She might wonder about the handheld kitchen torch, though.
It’s past midnight and there is a healthy stream of people coming and going from the club nearby. Witnesses, potentially—a careful man like Holden thinks of such things—but most are drunk and, in the end, what could they say about him? He’s wearing a helmet with a tinted face shield, and he’s removed the license plate. All anyone could possibly describe is a guy in a leather jacket wearing a helmet on a black motorcycle.
Anyway, if it was entirely risk-free, it wouldn’t be any fun.
Yet he feels a pang of doubt, even as he nods toward the petite blonde. Can he go through with it? He’s rusty; it’s been over a year. As much as he’s been romanticizing it since then, he now remembers how scared he was at the time. Exhilarated, yes, but scared, too.
On his nod, the blonde saunters up to him, wearing a black outfit that covers little more than a bikini would. Her belly is flat, with a piercing through her navel. She has the body of a twenty-year-old, the face of someone older, more seasoned, more worked over. Her heels make her two inches taller, but she’s a little thing.
“Hi, handsome. You want some company?”
“I want … all night,” he says, keeping his helmet on, the face shield down.