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    Now that she was safely taken care of, he walked the night through the woods, considering what he would do next. He liked to walk the woods at night, think.
    He could imagine the pandemonium back near the motel .
    He had watched one of those scenes once — the distraught parents — the police caught up in the frenzy of the crowd —
    Hidden from view, he had smiled about it all, felt superior. Felt, indeed, almost godlike.
    He jerked to a stop. They had made him a “gift” of the girl—
    Behind him in the forest he heard the noises of intruders.
    He jumped behind a massive oak and sought the shape of his enemy.
    Enemies, rather.
    Conversation.
    There were two of them.
    The beam of a flashlight arced through the canopy of branches and leaves.
    Heavy shoes tramped through soft earth.
    He stayed behind the tree, panting from exhaustion and—
    Fear.
    The terror, the panic was back again.
    Sometimes it thrilled him—it was like taking some kind of drug to almost get caught—but other times it paralyzed him.
    As now.
    He lay behind the tree in the soft earth with the smell of flowers and water and ferns sharp in his nostrils.
    He wanted to be one of the animals. Darting in and out of the darkness. Hiding in places no human had ever been.
    From somewhere within his chest—involuntarily, as if he were demon-possessed—a kind of whimper escaped.
    The sound of it froze him.
    Had the men with the flashlight heard it?
    They came closer.
    He heard them talking. They sounded angry.
    Anger.
    He pushed himself even flatter against the earth. His heart hammering. His legs trembling.
    The closer they got, the more he thought of the girl. Distracting himself from his fear with thoughts of her.
    He had had only moments to get a good glimpse of her body. But she was a beauty. No doubt about that.
    The shape of her in her jeans—the young, firm hips—the swell of her tender breasts—excited him now as he lay there with the men only feet away
    Abruptly, he forgot his images of the girl.
    A dog started to bay.
    A hound.
    Once again the beam of the flashlight caught trees—like silver fire—behind him.
    He started to crawl from behind the tree but then froze as the flashlight beam dropped lower.
    The dogs. He could almost see their canine teeth. Feel their hunger.
    They were hunting him down.
    Icy terror spread through his bones.
    One of the men swore. The voice was ugly in the darkness.
    Then—
    Dogs and men pulled away. Heading east. Back toward the town.
    Taking their silver fire and their harsh voices with them.
    He lay there convulsing. His relief was almost like an orgasm.
    A smile more like a snarl peeled back his lips, and a giddy, effeminate sound came up from his chest.
    They had been so close, but then all of a sudden—mysteriously—
    But it was not mysterious, after all, not when he thought about it.
    Why, close as the dogs were, they’d done such an about-face and—
    No, not mysterious at all.
    And he should have thought about that instead of getting so scared.
    Thought that they weren’t about to let anybody—
    Well, he was taken care of, that was all that mattered.
    He picked himself up from the ground.
    Listened to the night.
    Was that screaming, ever so faint on the dark tides swirling around him?
    Faint screaming from the bottom of the vortex where the girl waited to be taken?
    The smile touched his lips again.
    The tiny, eerie sound of his laughter.
    His eyes were animal-bright in the gloom as he moved toward where the girl waited.
    Toward the feel and pain of her, toward the sumptuousness and helplessness of her—
    He moved through the forest, the excitement powerful in his imagination now—

Chapter Three

1
    She wasn’t there.
    All the way back from the forest, the barking dogs leading the way in the gloom, Carnes had felt an unnatural optimism about the fate of his daughter, a euphoria he later recognized as a condition of shock.
    He had an image of her sitting in the motel office, snuggled safely