The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [60]
“They searched for him everywhere, but they didn’t have many leads. He rarely spoke of the past and the investigators uncovered little. His family was dead, his foster parents dead. His only friends were from the police force, and they were more like acquaintances. There didn’t seem to be anyplace for him to go, and yet he disappeared absolutely, completely, as if he’d never existed. I used to wonder if he wasn’t just some horrible phantom. I guess the cops began to think the same. Originally there were ten men watching my house. But then one week turned into two months. Then four months. Then six months. Just two plainclothes officers were still around. And suddenly Jim reappeared.”
SCRATCHING RESONATED ON the roof.
She lunged across her bed, yanked the receiver from the phone, and stabbed the touch-tone buttons.
Lieutenant Lance Difford would pick up, she’d murmur the code, and the police would descend if they hadn’t already spotted Jim on the roof.
It would be all right.
Except the phone had no dial tone.
“Waiting for me, wife?”
She looked up.
And her husband stepped out of her closet, wearing his Berkshire County police uniform and looking like a young Robert Redford. He was hefting a baseball bat, and she could see dark smudges and loose hairs matting the end.
She leapt for the nightstand, her ragged fingernails sliding ineffectively across the smooth surface, as Jim lunged forward and wrapped his hand around her ankle.
“No! No!” she cried hoarsely, clawing at the mattress.
He yanked her onto the floor. She landed hard, the breath escaping her with a painful whoosh.
“Where is Sam?”
“You’ll never find her!”
“Didn’t they tell you what I can do, Theresa? Didn’t they tell you exactly how I like to inflict pain?”
She bucked forward, but his fingers merely dug into her ankle. Then she felt the hot whisper of his breath as he leaned over her back and pinned her neck against the carpet with his forearm. He spoke. His voice drifted over her like velvet, soft, heavy, and suffocating her word by word.
“You helped them, Theresa. You told them things about me. Did you think it would go unpunished?”
Jim curved his hand almost lovingly around her exposed throat. Her pulse leapt like a captured mouse against the base of his palm. He slowly started squeezing the air from her lungs.
He told her to fight him. He liked it when they fought him.
She squirmed, her heels searching for traction against the old carpet. She knew he would asphyxiate her slowly, then revive her and do it again, and revive her and do it again. Somewhere along the way, he would rape her and torture her. And then, when he finally tired of the sport, he would pick up the bat and she would be grateful that it was ending.
Her fingers flexed and unflexed above his grip. Her hips writhed desperately.
In her mind, she kept calling for the police. She was so sure they would figure out what was going on. That any minute they’d bang down the front door. They’d save her. No one came.
Spots appeared before her eyes, white and dizzying. She felt herself spinning away, sinking into a dark, whirling vortex of nothing. She was dying and a part of her was too frightened, too overwhelmed to care.
If you don’t fight now, she thought dimly, you will die and years from now your daughter won’t even remember your name.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jim whispered in her ear. “You’re looking deep inside yourself, trying to find the will to defy me. You don’t have it, Theresa. I took it from you. I’ve known you since the day I met you, and I’ve turned you inside out and climbed inside of you and now there’s nothing left of you. Every bit of you, every last thought you have, really belongs to me. I made you. I’m inside your mind. I own you.”
The lights grew brighter behind her eyelids. The burning spread from