EVERMORE

CHAPTER 1

c h a p t e r 1 :

Gaspard wasn't sure it was her until that moment. A dull bloom of warmth settled in his spine, his vision blurred, and then he knew Kate Cross was the killer. He realized that he had been drugged, but it was too late. Hands fumbled for his gun, but they are ham-fisted and could only lift it awkwardly from his belt clip and hold it out as if it were a gift. She took it and smiled. Then she reached into his front pocket and collected his cell-phone, turning it off.

He was almost paralyzed now, slumped on the twin-size-bed of his motel-room, but his mind was a prison of utmost clarity. She knelt down next to him, the way a child might, and leaned her red-color-stained-lips close. His pulse throbbed in his throat. He could not swallow—He could not protest.

"It's time to go, love." Her accented whisper consumed him. She stood, and he was lifted from behind, another's elbows under his armpits. It was a man, he knew, no woman could lift him so easily. A heavy, red-faced man appeared at his feet, and took hold.

Gaspard was carried from his own comfort under the cover of night and loaded into an unidentified vehicle—he could only assume it was the one his task force had been in search for—but he did not have time to process this because she crawled on top of him. Straddling his torso, a knee pressed on either side of his waist. He couldn't move his eyes anymore, so she narrated for his benefit.

"I'm rolling up your left sleeve. I'm tying off a vein." Kate held up a hypodermic in his sight line. Medical training, he thought. Gaspard stared at the van's ceiling. Gray metal. Stay awake. Remember everything, every detail; it will be important—if I live.

"I'm going to let you rest for a little while." Her flat, pretty face, lowered itself for him to see. Blonde strands of hair fell against his cheek, though he could not feel it. "We'll have plenty of time for fun later."

There was no response, not even a blink now. His breath came in long, shallow rasps. He could not see her push the needle in his arm, but he assumed she did, because then there is darkness.

He woke on his back. Still groggy, it took him a moment to realize that the red-faced man stood over him. In this moment, the very first moment of Gaspard's awareness, the man's head exploded. Gaspard jerked as blood and brain matter surged forward, splattering his face and chest. A vomit of warm, clotted fluid.

Limbs strained as he tried to move, but his hands and feet were bound to a table. Something hot slid down his neck and slopped onto the floor. Gaspard pulled hard against the bindings until his skin broke, there was no budge. His body betrayed him as bile climbed up his throat, but he was unable to gag, his mouth taped shut. Through burning eyes he saw her. She stood behind where the man's body had fallen, holding his gun she had just used to execute him.

"I want you to understand how committed I am to you." Kate said, with a gesture to the dead man. "That you are the only one." She turned and walked away.

Left to contemplate what just happened, he swallowed hard, willing himself to stay calm—to look around. He was alone. The man, now dead, secreted liquid on the floor. Kate was gone. The driver of the van gone too. Gaspard's blood pulsed violently.

—Time passed. At first, he thought he was in an operating room. A large space, walled with white tiles and well lit by fluorescent lights. He turned his head from side to side and saw trays of instruments, medical-looking machinery. Six trays counted in all. Gaspard strained again at his binds, lifting his head from what he now noticed to be a gurney. Over the side, passed the dead man, there was a metal drain on the cement floor. And that constant drip-drip sound—

Tubes were coming in and out of his naked self : a catheter, an IV, and little drawn ink markers spread down across his torso. No windows in the room decreased a sense of hope. Gaspard let his head fall back to the gurney's base. This was it—I'll be found rotting in a bloody basement—No. He couldn't think like a victim, he needed to think like a cop. A young cop, but a cop nonetheless.

The others had been tortured for a couple days and "Turned into art," she said. The victims had been ridded of their eyes and tongue in a poetic literary tribute, then were set on display for the world to see. But that meant he had time. Two days. Maybe four. They could find him in that amount of time .... How much time had passed since he had been taken?

There she was again. On the other side of the table where the body still laid, thick, purple skin, dyed red within its puddle. Gaspard's eyes shifted to her figure, he remembered when she first introduced herself—just months ago—the young English professor who was dedicated to her work and had offered her services. They had been working on the case for weeks. Seven bodies on one college campus. Gaspard knew a few. It had taken a toll. She offered to, talk. Just talk. However, he woke many mornings with her pressed against him underneath cheap motel sheets, until her husband became the next victim.

She pulled a white sheet over him, dragging it up past his toes, knees, hips, finally settling its edge across his navel. No self-consciousness was attached to being exposed. It was merely a fact. Her hand felt warm, placed flat on his breastbone. He knew what this meant. Gaspard had memorized the crime photos, empty eye-sockets, dug to black pits and some too disfigured to recognize. It's part of the profile, one of her signatures.

"Do you know what comes next?" She asked, knowing that he did.

He needed to talk to her. To stall. Garbled noise sounded through the duct tape and head motioned for her take it off. Kate touched her slim finger to his lips and shook her head.

"Not yet, my little Gaspard." She said softly and asked again. A little more harsh. "Do you know what comes next?"

He nodded.

She smiled, satisfied. "That is why I prepared something special for you, love." She drew an instrument tray beside her and withdrew something from it. A carving knife. So far passed victims had strict guidelines followed, young, alternating female-male, all students until her late husband. Although the ritual had evolved, and remained notably consistent, she never used a simple kitchen knife.

She seemed pleased. "I thought you'd appreciate some variety." She let her fingertips dance up his rib cage, bending from each ink-blot to ink-blot, until she seemed to find one that suited her. Her palm held the hilt tight, forcing its tip into his soft skin.

He felt an eruption of heat. The blade sliced through every thin layer of skin, catching on the crevices of each rib. His chest burned with pain. He fought to breathe. His eyes watered. He pressed his head back into the metal underneath—fingers curled into palms. She reached toward his face, wiping a tear from his flushed cheek and caressed his dark hair, and then she started to carve again.

Kate repeated the process. And another. When she was done, the blade was wet with blood. She let it drop with an innocuous clink back on the instrument tray. Gaspard couldn't shift his body without searing pain, like none he had ever felt. His nasal passages were clogged with mucus, he couldn't breathe through his mouth, he had to brace himself for the agony of every lung expansion. Still he couldn't make himself breathe shallowly, couldn't slow the panicked, heavy pants that sound like sobs. Maybe two days was optimistic, he thinks. Maybe he would just die now.