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I woke. I breathed. A nightmare... it was a nightmare. Then I coughed, and my throat flared in pain like I’d swallowed barbed wire. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move.
There was a click, and light flared. The brightness was so painful, I had to close my eyes. I heard footsteps on hardwood, leisurely going in circles around my body. They stopped for a few seconds before starting up again then pausing again. I lifted my eyelids a little at a time, looking anywhere but directly into the light. I’d been tied naked and spread-eagle to the stakes hammered into the floor. We were back in Nick’s office, where Gabe had killed Amanda Kellogg. A couple of feet above me dangled a construction lamp with a heavy aluminum reflector. Gabe started walking again, and I followed his progress around me. The lamp prevented me from seeing anything above his thighs.
“Gabe?”
“Call me Michelangelo.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“No, no, that was foreplay.”
I didn’t know how long I’d been out. “What time is it?”
“When I am most creative.”
Where is Baker? “What are you going to do?”
“Make love to you—create art.”
“A sculpture?”
“No. You of all people, Lise, deserve something unique, something I have yet to craft.”
“What?” I asked.
He spoke in a voice filled with wonder. “You will be a mosaic.” A butcher knife flew down and stuck in the floor, inches from my right hand.
The significance struck with a wave of nausea, and I fought to keep my dinner down.
In reverence, he said, “Before I assemble my mosaic, I will first disassemble you.” Thunk. Another knife pierced the floor by my leg. He went on in a tone that sounded as if he were offering the greatest honor possible. “My math may be off, but considering a cut at each knuckle, wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, thigh, knee, ankle, toes...” Thunk. “You shall be a masterpiece made up of fifty separate pieces.”
Nick’s meat cleaver fell to the floor by my head. I screamed. A handsaw dropped to the floor. A pair of pruning shears fell next to it. He stepped away and returned with Nick’s circular saw in one hand and its battery in the other. Standing over me, he shoved the battery in place with a click and pulled the trigger a couple of times. The saw sang. The blade slowed and stopped. He stood there. Though his upper body was in darkness, I could feel his eyes on me.
The artist was scrutinizing his blank canvas. My mind shifted, and instead of trying to understand why, I concentrated on how I could get out of this nightmare. I tried to reach the closest knife, but it was an inch too far. I could scream my head off, but no one would hear me. Nick’s nearest neighbor was too distant. All I could think to do was talk, to get him talking, hoping to delay what seemed inevitable until Baker arrived.
“Gabe? We’re friends. Why?”
“Love.”
“Love?”
“You’ve kissed my cheek countless times, Lise, said you loved me.”
“I did.” Though I was no longer sure it was true, I added, “I do.”
“Uh-huh. A brotherly love. But, Lise, all of this is love. Real love. The act of love. The consummation of love.” His voice was sincere and gentle as he knelt at my side and placed the saw on the floor.
I looked at the man standing over me. He was Gabe, and yet he wasn’t. It was like he wore a Gabe mask that was slightly askew and twisted. A smile stretched his mouth wider than I’d ever seen. His eyes were wide and feral, reflecting madness and ecstatic joy. He didn’t blink. I saw his arm was bleeding where I had scratched him. My fingernail marks merged with the scabbed bite mark made by Angela. Without warning, he brought his fist down on my left cheek. For an instant, there was no pain, then agony blazed on my face. I squeezed my eyes shut until the pain lessened. I opened my eyes to see another strike descend. I turned my head so that he smashed my temple and left ear. He lowered himself, putting his face inches from mine, and panted like some large beast, his breath sour.
“Gabe?”
He grabbed my cheeks with one hand and squeezed. He kissed my lips softly and whispered, “Michelangelo.”
The two blows to the head had knocked rational thought from my mind. I felt a surge of surrealism, a feeling that there was no way this could be real. It had to be a prank. Dizzy, I grinned, wanting to be in on the joke.
“Lise, you’re smiling,” Gabe said. “I knew you were special. You can grasp the significance of what’s to play out.” He stood and raised the lamp so that it dangled inches below the ceiling. He knelt by my side again. “You of all people should understand my artistic journey. It began with my summer visits to a friend in Kuta, Indonesia. A fellow artist, he owns a private club that caters to the prurient interests of men of means. But it is out of that degradation that I’ve honed my art.” He put his hands on my shoulders and, with his face inches from mine, asked, “Do you understand, Lise? True art.”
Come on, Baker, where are you? “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
He stared at me, eyes intense, then nibbled at his lower lip. “His connections include other locations where similar things can be attained, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Malaysia. Do you know what I’ve learned, Lise? Art is not a simple depiction. Art is emotion and feeling. I pursue the purest emotion—love. And love is reflected in lust. And pain is the purest feeling, an agony reflected in my art.”
“I’m scared.”
“Embrace it. The best inspiration and insight, for you, the model, comes from fear. Your fear heightens my love and my lust, the agony of creation, and my own fear.”
“You’re scared?” I asked.
“Yes, I am always frightened at the moment of transformation, when flesh becomes stone or metal or canvas.”
“What?”
“Or you, Lise. You when you become fifty random pieces of colored glass put together in a way that will be creation.”
Gabe stared at nothing. I wanted to say something, to come up with some strategy to snap him out of whatever spell he was under.
Gabe shifted his gaze to me. “I loved every woman who has been my muse.” He stroked my cheek. “I love you, Lise. I love you most of all.” His fingers traveled down my neck and to my breast, which he squeezed.
When his hand moved farther down my body, I shouted, “Don’t touch me!”
“It’s no coincidence that Nick is in Vienna.”
“What?”
As his fingertips reached my mons pubis, he said, “I’ve wanted you for some time. I arranged the fellowship to get him out of the way. When the fellowship was in place, I couldn’t contain my desire, and I had to act. Therefore, the first.”
“Kristin Harmon,” I said.
“The others were just a prelude to what I want—need—crave. You, Lise, you.”
I heard a rhythmic sound—rapid footsteps on the stairs. Gabe stopped. I lifted my head.
“Lise? Where are you?”
I recognized the voice. “Ortega!”
Gabe hit me again.
My vision returned in time to see Gabe grab the knife stuck into the floor by my leg and pull it free. A second later, Ortega charged into the room, his pistol held in a two-handed grip.
Gabe launched himself at Ortega. Their bodies collided, and Ortega’s gun went off. There was pain under my left arm near my armpit, and I yelped. As they wrestled, I lifted my head. I hadn’t been hit, but the bullet had gone into the hardwood floor, sending a chunk of wood at least five inches long into my arm. The men continued to grapple. I heard grunts, growls, and heavy breaths. Gabe’s arm pulled back, the knife in his hand, and he thrust it into Ortega. The movement repeated, over and over, piston-like, until Ortega collapsed to his knees. Gabe kept thrusting until Ortega fell on his face.