LITMIR.BIZ

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or lack of them. All of his left ear and half of his tail were missing.

      Good God. He’s eating the cat. One bite at a time.

      And now the cat was going to eat her.

      “Hey, kitty-kitty,” she said in her best cat-whisperer voice. “Nice kitty.”

      The creature tensed. Then all at once he hissed, scurried across the floor, leaped to the kitchen counter and then to the top of the refrigerator, where he glared down at her with evil yellow eyes. Wendy backed up to the wall, her hand against her chest, trying to calm her wildly beating heart. It couldn’t get any creepier here. No way could it get any creepier.

      Then she looked toward the room from which the cat had just emerged.

      Maybe it could.

      With a compulsion she couldn’t quell, Wendy tiptoed over and pushed the door open just enough that she could see what was on the other side, and anxiety surged through her all over again.

      On a table lay three guns. She didn’t know a derringer from an Uzi, but she certainly knew a firearm when she saw one.

      Then she looked up on the wall.

      At least forty photographs were stuck there. They appeared to be mug shots—mug shots of men who were mean and nasty looking, like particularly despicable serial killers. And through about half of the photos were big black Xs. He was marking them out, one by one, with a supersize Magic Marker, as if…

      As if he’d snuffed them.

      Then it struck her. He’s a serial killer who kills serial killers. Did it get any badder than that?

      She quickly pulled the door closed and turned around. She could hear her captor knocking around in the other room, undoubtedly getting the torture chamber ready.

      She had to get out of there.

      Turning, she spied another door beside the refrigerator, one with as many locks as had been on the front door. He’d told her there wasn’t a stairwell in the elevator landing. Maybe that door led to one. She hoped it did, anyway, because otherwise there was no getting out of this apartment.

      No. Not apartment. More like lair. Or hideout. Or fortress. Or covert base of operations. What in the hell did you call a place that looked more like a bunker than living quarters?

      A place she wanted to escape. Right now.

      She hurried toward the door, looking over her shoulder, watching for him to come out of the back room. As quietly as she could, she opened the first dead bolt, which made a hideous clanking noise. Then she unhooked a chain that had links as wide as her wrist. She was just about to push a heavy metal slide lock aside when she heard footsteps. Spinning around, she saw him walking toward her. With a quick, startled breath, she pressed her back against the door.

      “Where are you going?” he demanded.

      Fueled by sheer adrenaline, she wheeled back around, smacked the last lock and yanked the door open. Just as quickly, he took a few steps forward and grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her back as he shut the door again. She screamed, a hair-raising, penetrating scream that could easily have awakened any dead bodies he happened to have lying around. He slapped his hand over her mouth, shoving her scream all the way back into her throat. She tried to fight him, but he pressed his body hard to hers, pinning her against the door.

      “Will you cut it out?” he said. “You’re not going anywhere!”

      She couldn’t struggle anymore. With a ton of bone and muscle wrapped around her, she was completely at his mercy.

      “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Are you going to scream?”

      She just stood there, terrified.

      “I asked you if you’re going to scream,” he said sharply.

      Finally she shook her head. He removed his hand slowly, and her breath came in sharp bursts that seemed to echo forever in the vast expanse of the warehouse.

      “If you’re going to do this,” she said in a hushed voice, “then do it now. Get it over with quickly. Please.”

      He froze. “If I’m going to do what?”

      She closed her eyes. “Rape me. Kill me. Whatever…whatever it is you do.”

      For a count of three, he stood motionless. “What did you say?”

      She didn’t want to repeat it. She’d barely been able to get the words out the first time. “R-rape me. And kill—”

      Suddenly he let go of her. She spun around, her back pressed to the door, breathing hard. He’d retreated several paces, staring at her with disbelief. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

      She swallowed hard. “If you’re not going to hurt me, then why are you trying to stop me from leaving?”

      “Why am I—?” He stopped short, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. He pointed toward the window. “Is it thirty degrees out there? Sleeting?”

      She looked over at the ice still pattering the window. “Uh…yeah.”

      “Are there lowlifes wandering the streets?”

      Clearly there were. One of them had made off with her car. “A few.”

      “Do you have any idea at all where you are?”

      Hell, no. A global-positioning system couldn’t have helped her out of here. She shrugged. “No. I guess I’m not completely sure.”

      “Those are three real good reasons. One would have done just fine. But if you’re still determined to leave,” he said, his voice a low growl, “there’s a police station about four miles west. Why don’t you hike on down there and tell them there’s a rapist on the loose?”

      She blinked with surprise, startled at this turn of events. Although he was rumbling with anger, she noticed that his dark eyes didn’t seem nearly as evil as they had a few moments ago. Actually, they looked more sleepy than anything. And he’d made a couple of pretty good points about the weather and all those other things.

      Was it possible she could have leaped to a conclusion or two?

      “Okay,” she said, shrugging weakly, “so maybe you’re not a criminal.”

      “Hell, no, I’m not!”

      She recoiled at his angry outburst. “Hey! What was I supposed to think? The abandoned warehouse, the guns, the mug shots, the big black Xs—”

      “You saw all that? What were you doing in there?”

      “I—” She stopped, then pointed to the cat on top of the fridge. “He opened the door. I just…I just kinda looked in.”

      “You were snooping?”

      Her mouth fell open. “I was not snooping! I was just trying to find out what kind of fire I landed in when I fell out of the frying pan!”

      His eyebrows flew up. “Fire? Are you kidding? I bring you someplace warm where you can stay the night, then keep you from running back out there again like some kind of lunatic, and you call that a fire?”

      She opened her mouth to respond, then clamped it shut again. He was making more sense all the time.

      She nodded toward the other room. “What about the guns you have in there?”

      He glared at her. “Those weapons are for my job.”

      “Your job?”

      “I’m a bail-enforcement agent.”

      “Huh?”

      “Bounty hunter.”

      Bounty hunter?

      It took a full ten seconds for the words to register in

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