Standing in the center of the study, heart pounding, Frye listened for movement in the house, for a sign that she had heard him.
There was only silence.
She was able to rise up from the dead and come back to life in a new identity, but that was evidently the limit of her supernatural power. Obviously, she was not all-seeing and all-knowing. He was in her house, but she did not know it yet.
He grinned.
He took the knife from the sheath that was fixed to his belt, held it in his right hand.
With the penlight in his left hand, he quietly prowled through every room on the ground floor. They were all dark and deserted.
Going up the stairs to the second floor, he stayed close to the wall, in case any of the steps creaked. He reached the top without making a sound.
He explored the bedrooms, but he encountered nothing of interest until he approached the last room on the left. He thought he saw light coming under the door, and he switched off his flash. In the pitch-black corridor only a nebulous silvery line marked the threshold of the last room, but it was more marked than any of the others. He went to the door and cautiously tried the knob. Locked.
He had found her.
Katherine.
Pretending to be someone named Hilary Thomas.
The bitch. The rotten bitch.
Katherine, Katherine, Katherine….
As the name echoed through his mind, he clenched his fist around the knife and made short jabbing motions at the darkness, as if he were stabbing her.
Stretching out face-down on the floor of the hallway, Frye looked through the inch-high gap at the bottom of the door. A large piece of furniture, perhaps a dresser, was pushed up against the other side of the entrance. A vague indirect light spread across the bedroom from an unseen source on the right, some of it finding its way around the edges of the dresser and under the door.
He was delighted by what little he could see, and a flood of optimism filled him. She had barricaded herself in the room, which meant the hateful bitch was afraid of him. She was afraid of him. Even though she knew how to come back from the grave, she was frightened of dying. Or maybe she knew or sensed that this time she would not be able to return to the living. He was going to be damned thorough when he disposed of the corpse, far more thorough than he had been when he’d disposed of the many other women whose bodies she had inhabited. Cut out her heart. Pound a wooden stake through it. Cut off her head. Fill her mouth with garlic. He also intended to take the head and the heart with him when he left the house; he would bury the pair of grisly trophies in separate and secret graves, in the hallowed ground of two different churchyards, and far away from wherever the body itself might be interred. Apparently, she was aware that he planned to take extraordinary precautions this time, for she was resisting him with a fury and a purpose the likes of which she had never shown before.
She was very quiet in there.
Asleep?
No, he decided. She was too scared to sleep. She was probably sitting up in bed with the pistol in her hands.
He pictured her hiding in there like a mouse seeking refuge from a prowling cat, and he felt strong, powerful, like an elemental force. Hatred boiled blackly within him. He wanted her to squirm and shake with fear as she had made him do for so many years. An almost overpowering urge to scream at her took hold of him; he wanted to shout her name–Katherine, Katherine–and fling curses at her. He kept control of himself only with an effort that brought sweat to his face and tears to his eyes.
He got to his feet and stood silently in the darkness, considering his options. He could throw himself against the door, break through it, and push the obstacle out of the way, but that would surely be suicidal. He wouldn’t get through the fortifications fast enough to surprise her. She would have plenty of time to line up the sights of the gun and put half a dozen bullets into him. The only other thing he could do was wait for her to come out. If he stayed in the hallway and didn’t make a sound all night, the uneventful hours might wear the edges off her watchfulness. By morning, she might get the idea that she was safe and that he wasn’t ever coming back. When she walked out of there, he could seize her and force her back to the bed before she knew what was happening.