Chapter 26

Cat was growing more and more relaxed. He could see it. She didn’t look around nervously nearly as much any-more when she left the house or work. Sometimes she wouldn’t even turn around when she was walking alone on the street. He smiled at himself in the rearview mirror of the stolen sedan.

He imagined himself forcing Cat in the car. He would take his time with her. It wouldn’t be like the others. He watched as she came out of her parents’ house in her skimpy biking outfit. She looked like a whore. Just like all the others. She wasn’t any different. Except that he hadn’t killed her yet. He licked his lips as he watched her sit on her bike seat and put her feet on the tiny plastic petals. He laughed out loud as her foot slipped off the pedal and nearly falling over. She looked around then, he noticed.

“You are more worried about looking like a fool on that stupid bike than you are about me,” he chided her aloud. He imagined how she would look naked, tied up and gagged.

He wanted so badly to hurt her that it made him ache all over. He continued to watch her as she pedaled down the street. He didn’t start the car until she was a block away. The windows weren’t tinted in the sedan, so he would have to be careful.

He hung back while she was in residential neighbor-hoods. He wanted to take her when no one was around so no one would hear her when she screamed. Fifteen minutes later he was getting frustrated. She usually went out on the two-lane road north of town. The hills were challenging out there. He watched through binoculars on more than one occasion from a seldom used bird watching tower in the park that paralleled her favorite route.

He wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and took another swig of beer from one of the cans he had brought along in a mini-cooler. He was relieved when he saw her finally take a right turn out of the ever-expanding housing addition and stand up on the bike to pedal uphill. He tossed the empty can onto the floorboard next to the nylon rope. He’d brought it and a large kitchen knife, pliers, and a gag for her pretty mouth that had made from a pair of her own panties. He watched her buttocks and legs as she pumped the pedals over and over. He swallowed the saliva that had pooled in his mouth.

Cat was admonishing herself for riding on an empty stomach, she felt exhausted as she pushed and pulled the pedals with her legs. She felt the cool breeze rush through the air vents of her helmet as she dipped her head. She was cold when she first started riding and thought about just staying in the neighborhood. But the longer she rode, the better she felt. So she got out on the newly resurfaced road and challenged herself.

Her thighs and lungs burned as she reached the top of a little hill. She coasted and took a swallow of water from the water bottle that was attached to her bike frame and repositioned her sun glasses. As she started up the next hill she caught a glimpse of a tan sedan in the little side mirror attached to her helmet. She saw how fast it was driving, so she got as close to the right-hand side of the road as she could. She couldn’t see the driver clearly, but she could tell it was a man. She waved her arm, signaling for him to go around, but he didn’t. She watched as the car got dangerously close to her rear tire and then slowed, backing off.

Several times the car got close to her and then retreated. Cat’s heart was crashing against her ribs. She prayed it wasn’t the killer, but her gut was screaming that it was. She stood and pumped as hard as she could, her mind racing to think of a plan. The next cross street was nearly a half-mile away. If this was the killer, she was alone on a two-lane stretch of highway outside of town and no way to escape.

Her eyes darted to the side mirror on her helmet. Where had the car gone? She thought it had disappeared when she heard the roar of its engine. She dared a glance over her left shoulder just as the tan sedan smashed into her back tire. The force knocked her violently off the bike and slammed her in a rolling heap onto the blacktop road.

She rolled and tumbled for what seemed like an eternity. When she finally came to a stop she lifted her head and looked at her bloody knees. She didn’t feel the pain at first – it just stung a little. Then she glanced at her elbows, hip and shoulder. All of a sudden, they were burning like fire. She lay still, but then lifted her arms off the ground. The pain was intense as she attempted to move.

“You are going to be okay,” he was saying. “Just be still. Do you hear me?”

It felt like he was dragging her. She couldn’t be certain, but it felt like he was checking her for injuries. His hands were all over her body. She slid in and out of consciousness moaning and groaning from her wounds. She was thinking she knew him when she caught a whiff of his cologne. He smelled familiar. He managed to lift her up and lay her in what she thought was the back seat of his car.

She couldn’t understand what he was doing with the rope. Her injuries must have been severe, because he was tying her down so she wouldn’t roll around. The searing pain had her trying to rise off the seat, but the rope held her arms down firmly. Why was he tying her up? She tried focusing on his face as he bent over her and took her helmet off. He had a hat pulled down on his head and the dark glasses prevented her from seeing his eyes. She thought she was dreaming and closed her eyes until he stuffed something into her mouth with a hard shove. Then he cussed her as he lifted her head and tied the gag tightly behind her left ear with a jerk.

He whispered some horrible things in her ear then. He promised to hurt her. He said she would bleed. He swore it would hurt horribly bad and she would scream, but no one would rescue her. He slammed the door as she rocked with fear and disbelief. She watched with crazy, pain-filled eyes as he slid behind the wheel and jammed on the accelerator.

Her racing bike lay mangled in the street. It was in two separate pieces when a lady in a red sports car started to go around it a few minutes later. When she realized what it was, she slammed on her brakes and reached for her phone. She dialed 9-1-1 as she exited her car and hurried around the mangled bike, frantically searching for the bike’s rider.

Several miles away, while sitting at one of only a half-dozen stop lights in Guthrie, his mind was running through the next several hours, maybe days. He would have so much enjoyment with Cat. In less than five minutes, he would have her safely tucked away in a large wooden shed behind his house. She would be naked, scrubbed clean and chained up within the hour. And she would be all his, to do with as he pleased.

He turned up the radio to drown out her whimpering and gagged cries from the back seat. He didn’t know a semi driver directly behind him at the traffic light could see into the back seat of the sedan. The frantic semi-truck driver had called the police and they were working their way through traffic behind them.

One minute he was congratulating himself on his catch and plotting Cat’s demise. The next, he spotted a black and white car weaving through traffic behind him, approaching quickly. The blue and red lights came on as the black and white patrol car went around the semi and behind the stolen sedan. He screamed a list of expletives, slamming his hand on the horn. Without so much as a good-bye, he jumped from the car, with it still in gear and ran like a rabbit from a wolf.

He sprinted through an intersection, narrowly missed a guy on a motorcycle, jumped over the hood of a parked car and plowed into an old woman carrying groceries on the sidewalk. He was up and running again when he heard the squeal of tires followed by the crinkling of metal and breaking of glass.

Scaling a wood fence, he fell to the hard ground on the other side. It knocked the wind out of him, so he lay there cussing, sucking air in and pushing it out with exaggeration. Before running again, he crouched behind the fence and looked through the slats for trouble. When he saw none, he ran around the side of the house, straight into the path of the biggest pit bull he had ever seen.