“Afterward?”

“After dinner, I mean.” Yeah, yeah. They both knew the possibilities.

He smiled and nodded. Knowing when not to press. Half the battle was getting them slightly drunk. Putting them at their ease. Half the battle was the bottle.

Dinner went fast. A blur of food and music. The killer couldn’t pronounce half the food, but it was good. Jeanine picked at it. Accompanied by some kind of string instrument, a woman was singing in what the killer presumed to be Vietnamese. He thought she sounded as if she had a flute stuck in her throat.

After dinner they had green tea, which was okay. They still hadn’t touched the bottle of wine. That was okay, too, the killer thought. Let it age. And if it didn’t taste quite right to Jeanine later in her apartment, after he poured, that would be okay, too, as long as she drank it down. It would be the ketamine, one of the many date drugs he employed. He figured that with the dosage he had in mind, she would be very compliant in a very short time. She’d be thinking clearly enough, but her muscles wouldn’t respond to her signals from the brain. Her body would be his. And then her mind. And then the truth that would follow.

It was a BYOB restaurant, so nobody raised an eyebrow when they eschewed more tea and decided to enjoy a few glasses of wine before leaving.

“How come,” Jeanine asked, not yet beginning to feel the ketamine he’d added to her glass when she was in the restroom, “you aren’t on Facebook?”

“I’m a Twitter guy,” he said.

“I looked there, too.” Her words were just beginning to slur.

“You must have missed me somehow. If you have a computer, I’ll show you when we go to your place.”

“ ’Kay,” she said.

He glanced at his watch as if they had to be some specific place at a specific time and were running late.

As for Jeanine, she was beginning to feel kind of odd. As if the restaurant had become much more spacious and she . . .

“I think I’m growing smaller,” she said. It was simply an observation.

He smiled. “That’s impossible.”

What did he mean by that. What the hell . . .

She saw him signal for the check. Time seemed to lurch as he paid cash, leaving a large tip, judging by how the waiter thanked him.

And just like that, it seemed, they were out on the sidewalk. He was still carrying the folded raincoat, and he’d brought the bottle of wine. The sidewalk tipped slightly, and she leaned on him for support. He patted her hand that she noticed now was clutching his arm.

They began walking arm in arm. Everything seemed normal except that she was so damned small all of a sudden. She tried to say something about that to Thomas but couldn’t articulate it. Her voice, which had moved off about two or three feet to the side, said something incomprehensible.

A man was standing near them, leaning slightly. He had a raincoat on even though it wasn’t raining. His head seemed to be off center on his shoulders. “She okay?” he asked in a concerned voice.

“Fine,” Thomas said, rolling his eyes. “She had too much to drink again.”

Well, that’s not true . . .

There was her apartment building. They were up the steps to the vestibule and inside. Then wham! There they were at the elevator. What the hell had happened to time? Thank God Thomas is here.

He helped her walk along the hall to her apartment door, or she would never have made it. Thank God . . .

“I have the key,” she managed to say.

He laughed softly. “I hope so, darling.”

Darling . . . That was nice ...

The soreness in her back was what brought her around. As Jeanine regained consciousness, she was aware of Thomas Gunn looming over her.

“Thomas . . .” is what she started to say, but something—she realized it was silky material, wadded . . . her panties—was crammed into her mouth so she could merely make a humming sound if she tried to speak or scream.

He held up a long-bladed knife with a sharp point. Rotated it nimbly so it danced with reflected light.

Ignoring her muffled screams, he started with her armpits. The pain was incredible, causing her bound body to vibrate and bounce on the table. She felt her bladder release. He was ready for that, and swiped the table around her with a wadded dishtowel.

“Quite a mess,” he remarked.

He tossed the dishtowel onto the floor and held up the knife as he had before. This time it had blood on it. Her blood. She began to whimper.

He waited patiently.

When she was quiet, he said, “I’m going to remove your gag, and you’re going to be quiet unless spoken to. Is that understood?”

Pain in her neck flared as she nodded.

Smiling at her as if it were an act of love, he little by little removed the wadded panties from her mouth.

Her eyes were wide, unblinking. She did not make a sound.

“There,” he said, when he was finished. He held the knife up where she could see it and rotated it again to catch the light.

He placed the very tip of the blade in the hollow just beneath her larynx, exerted light pressure that wasn’t quite enough to draw blood. But it stung. Oh, how it stung! He had only to apply the slightest more pressure and...

Her entire body began to tremble. He placed the spread fingertips of his free hand lightly on the soft vibrating flesh of her stomach. He saw, felt, knew that the fear had her. It had consumed whatever resistance she might have tried to maintain.

So there could be no misunderstanding, he moved the knife up so its point touched her forehead, where he would soon be carving his initials. The vibrancy of her body tingled through his fingertips at an even higher pitch. It heightened his own anticipation and hastened his heartbeat.

This was a woman who read the papers, who kept up on the news. There could be no doubt that she knew who he was.

Her terror was unbearable. She was ready to do whatever he told her. Small favors were all she might earn.

“Now,” he said, “we’re going to have a conversation.”

He didn’t mention that afterward they were going to share, from two different perspectives, a remarkable and transforming experience.

Both of them, for very different reasons, were looking forward to it with keen anticipation.

20

England, 1940

Finally Betsy Douglass’s shift was over. Which seemed to her a godsend, as she felt close to the limits of her endurance.

She denied herself the doses of medications some of the other nurses employed to artificially increase their energy. Betsy had seen the eventual results of that, the slurred speech, the permanently haggard features that aged young women before their time. And sometimes the breakdowns. She drank tea. Endless cups of tea. And she chewed chocolates, which contained sugar and caffeine enough to boost her energy level.

But the human body could take only so much, and Betsy knew she was on the verge of trembling and losing her concentration. There was a time for a nurse to push on despite exhaustion, and a time to realize more harm than good can be done by pressing on.

She slipped a light jacket over her nurse’s uniform and made her way to the vast basement of the hospital. The part of the building above the basement had been bombed so that much of the rubble remained. The sagging ceiling had been bolstered with heavy wooden supports, and tarpaulins had been set up to divert rain leakage. Still there were a few puddles to be avoided, and a dank, persistent dimness. All over the floor, in some semblance of order, were stacked the patients’ personal belongings, with identification cards pinned where it was most convenient, listing the items and their owner.