Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [78]
“Get me up at three o’clock,” Savich said.
“I’m outta here,” Adam said. He looked over at Becca, saw that she was white-faced and couldn’t help himself. He walked to her and pulled her tight against him. He said against her hair, “Sleep well and don’t worry. We’re going to get him.”
Becca didn’t think she’d be able to slow her heart down enough even to consider sleeping, but she did, deeply and dreamlessly, until she felt a strange jab in her left arm, above her elbow, like a mosquito bite. She jerked awake, her heart pounding wildly, and she couldn’t breathe, just pant and jerk. She was blind, no, it was dark, very dark, the blinds drawn because nobody wanted him to be able to see into the house. She saw a shadowy figure standing over her, gray, indistinct, and she whispered, “What is this? Is it you, Adam? What did you do—?” But he said nothing, merely leaned closer and finally, when her heart was slowing a bit, he whispered right against her face, “I came for you, Rebecca, like I said I would,” and he licked her cheek.
“No,” she said. “No.” Then she fell back, wondering what the silver light was shining over her face. It seemed to arc toward her, a skinny silver flash, but then it wasn’t important. A small flashlight, she thought as she breathed in very deeply, more deeply than usual for her, and eased into a soft warm blackness that relaxed her mind and body, and she didn’t know anything more.
NINETEEN
Her heart beat slow, regular strokes, one after the other, easy, steady, no fright registering in her body. She felt calm, relaxed. She opened her eyes. It was black, no shadows, no hint of movement, just relentless, motionless black. She was swamped with the black, but she forced herself to draw in a deep breath. Her heart wasn’t pumping out of her chest now. She still felt relaxed, too relaxed, with no fear grinding through her, at least not yet, but she knew she should be afraid. She was in darkness and he was close by. She knew it, but still she breathed steadily, evenly, waiting, but not afraid. Well, perhaps there was a tincture of fear, indistinct, nibbling at the edges of her mind. She frowned, and it slipped away.
Odd how she remembered perfectly everything that had happened: the jab in her left arm, the instant terror, she remembered all of it—him licking her cheek—with no mental fuzz cloaking the memories.
The nibblings of fear became more focused now, she could nearly grasp it. Her heart speeded up. She blinked, willing herself to know fear, then to control it.
He had gotten her. Somehow he’d gotten into the house, past the guards, and he’d gotten her.
There was suddenly a wispy light, the smell of smoke. He’d lit a candle. He was here, inches from her. She calmed the building fear. It was hard, probably the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but she knew she had to. She remembered, very suddenly, her mother telling her once that fear was what hurt you because it froze you. “Don’t ever give up,” her mother had told her. “Never give up.” Then her mother had gripped her shoulders and said it one more time: “Never give up.”
It was so clear in her mind in that moment, her mother standing over her telling her this. She could even feel her mother’s fingers hard on her shoulders. Odd that she couldn’t remember what had happened to make her mother tell her this.
“Where are we?”
Was that her voice, all calm and indifferent? Yes, she’d managed it.
“Hello, Rebecca. I came for you, like I said I would.”
She laughed, choked, “Please don’t lick my cheek again. That was really creepy.”
He was dead silent, affronted, she realized, because she was laughing at him.
“You gave me a shot of something. What was it?”
She heard his deep breathing. “Something I picked up in Turkey. I was told that a side effect is a temporary sense of euphoria. You won’t feel like laughing for much longer, Rebecca. The effects will fade, and then you’ll be heaving with fear, you’ll be so scared of me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
He slapped her. She didn’t see his hand, it