53

Cray pulled on his black slacks and shirt, then smiled at himself in the bedroom mirror.

Black. His favorite color. Camouflage for a predator.

Camouflage that was unnecessary tonight, of course—but he felt the need to clothe himself in darkness.

It had been months since he’d taken Sharon Andrews from the parking lot outside the auto dealership. The deepest part of him, the elemental self that announced its presence only in the dark, was restless for blood sport.

What he’d done to Walter had sated his urges not at all. He needed a worthy victim. Kaylie. That was the prey his blood required. And he would have her. In mere minutes, she would trouble him no more, ever.

He checked his shirt pocket for the cigarettes, the lighter. The only other item he would need was a syringe filled with sedative. Then he would be ready for this special kill.

With his hair combed back, his heart beating fast and steady, he descended the stairs to the living room. Mozart played on the stereo system wired throughout the ground floor of his house. He found the music relaxing, and he preferred to be relaxed before the start of a nocturnal outing.

The piece now playing was the Requiem. It had been composed as a tribute to things spiritual—the majesty of God, the highest aspirations of the human heart. In Mozart’s era, so long ago, such notions had not yet been rendered laughable and quaint. People had believed, back then. They had yearned.

Cray knew better. He was a man of the new millennium. He believed in nothing but brute facts, measurable, reducible to numbers. He yearned for nothing high, great, or noble. He knew that Mozart’s gift had been no more than the excited firing of neurons, his moments of highest passion merely a surge of stress hormones—adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol—triggered by electrical overstimulation of the brain. Cray himself could duplicate this neurological phenomenon quite easily in the operating room adjacent to the anteroom of Ward B, where he sometimes performed electroconvulsive therapy on the most recalcitrant patients. By passing a hundred joules of voltage through a patient’s two cerebral hemispheres, he could produce a storm of excitation equal to anything Mozart had experienced.

But he could not produce the Requiem. This stray thought, irritatingly provocative, teased him as he went into the den and turned off the stereo.

The house was silent, Mozart’s hymn muted.

Cray was leaving the den when the phone rang.

“Yes?” he answered, hoping it was nothing important, impatient to get going.

“Sir, it’s Blysdale.” Bob Blysdale was the Institute’s chief security officer, and he sounded nervous. “Got a problem. The new patient, the forensic case—McMillan.”

Cray stiffened. Kaylie.

Was it possible she’d accepted his advice? Taken her own life? Part of him would be almost sorry if she had. Although it would simplify matters a great deal, he would prefer to take care of her personally.

“What about her?” Cray asked, proper concern in his voice.

“She broke out.”

Cray heard this, but it made no sense. It was some sort of unintelligible message in another language, or a joke, or insanity.

“What?” he breathed.

“She ambushed the RN and a tech. Got out into the yard. She’s on the loose right now.”

On the loose.

Kaylie, on the loose.

The only successful escapee in his tenure as director of Hawk Ridge, and now again she was out, she was uncaged—and his plan—the fire, the fake suicide—it was all spoiled now.

She’d cheated him, the bitch.

He held his voice steady. “When did this happen?”

“Couple minutes ago, is all.”

Then she hadn’t had time to go far.

She could be caught.

Cray’s anger vanished, replaced by a sudden warmth of good feeling. Every crisis, as the cliché had it, could be seen to represent an opportunity.

“I’ll meet you and your men outside the administration building,” Cray said coolly. “In five minutes.”

“Ten-four. And, sir? Should I call the sheriff?”

“Not yet. We’ll handle this on our own.”

“She’s a felon, sir. I think procedure—”

“On our own, Bob.”

He slammed down the phone, then ran to the foyer closet. With all the repair work that had been done on his Lexus in the last week, he had felt it prudent not to keep his satchel in the vehicle’s storage compartment. It was stowed in the back of the closet, behind an empty suitcase.

He hefted the satchel and swung it in one easy motion onto the sofa by the front window, then rummaged in it for his flashlight—a mini-flash with a red filter to preserve his night vision. He pocketed it, then searched further until he found his knife.

Justin’s knife, originally. But Cray’s, for the past twelve years.

The leather sheath, blood-spotted and worn with use, was as familiar to his touch as a lover’s hand.

He slipped the sheath inside his jacket. There was nothing else in the satchel he could use. His burglar’s tools were of no value in this situation, and his gun, the Glock 9mm, had no silencer. He couldn’t risk firing a shot. The noise would travel for miles in the stillness of the desert foothills.

That was all right. He wouldn’t need a bullet for Kaylie. Only the knife’s keen blade.

He left the house at a run. Crossing the hospital grounds, passing the cemetery where Walter had been laid to rest a few hours earlier, Cray reflected that Kaylie would have been better off had she committed suicide, as he’d suggested.

A slipknot, a short jump, an instant’s pain. Her death would have been quick that way.

Not now.