“Why in God’s name are you so heavy?”
Novak dropped Cassie to the ground. Her torso hit with a thud. It always seemed when someone was unconscious, they weighed thirty pounds heavier. He stood over her, watching the empty expression on her face. It was unlikely she felt the collision with the ground. With the drug he’d injected into her, she had three or four more hours in dreamland before she felt anything.
She looked peaceful, lying there on her back, twisted at the waist, right leg draped over her left.
Novak looked around the deserted overgrown field. The grass swayed in the stiff breeze left behind by the storm. Not a soul in sight. No one to stop him from doing anything he wanted. He could strip her bare and have her on the spot where she lay.
Don’t be a fool. You never know what lurks behind the veil.
His gaze drifted away from her exposed flesh and traveled toward the tree line. What if a wayward hunter or a couple of day trekkers lingered just out of sight?
More killings.
Fundamentally, not a problem. Practically? Another story. It would involve effort. And risk. One could get away from him, and the last thing he needed was for authorities to close in on his special place. Even all of the probing he went through during the trial and afterward in jail, they had never uncovered this spot.
The place where he brought the special ones.
Novak knelt next to Cassie, shielding himself from view in the waist high grasses. “You are the most special one, Cassie,” he whispered. “Maybe not at first. I was blinded that night, I suppose. Didn’t have the sight to realize the magnificence of you.”
He hovered over her, waiting for a response that would not come. At least, not yet. Novak dragged his fingertips lightly along her arm. Her skin pricked in response. Not all senses were dulled or deadened.
“Now, I don’t want you thinking that you’re gonna make it out of this, Cassie. No one does. You’ve just got a little more time. And perhaps the most minute of chances to sway me.”
Rising, he scouted the field and wood’s edge and determined it was safe to move on. Cassie felt like a hundred-and-thirty-pound sack of sand. He scooped her up, hoisted her over his shoulder and moved on.
“Only a couple hundred feet to your new home.”