Urge to Kill

Lavern’s friend and sometimes confidante, Bess, said that manipulating men claimed such things sometimes, for no purpose other than to instill uncertainty and guilt in a woman’s mind. According to records at the Broken Wing Women’s Shelter, it wasn’t all that unusual for men to create devices that would make sounds in the basement or garage so that they could skeptically go investigate and then return to reassure and tell their frightened mates that they’d only imagined hearing something. If the sound came again, the abuser might simply claim he hadn’t heard it, knowing full well it was real because he’d arranged for it.

Was it any wonder women subjected to that sort of treatment began to doubt their own sanity?

Something else: Lavern suspected that Hobbs might be moving objects when she wasn’t looking, so she’d think she’d forgotten where she’d put things. Was she misplacing more and more objects lately—keys, her purse, half-read books, the cell phone—or was it that Hobbs was stepping up his program of shifting her reality so she could distinguish it less and less from her imagination? That’s what Bess said it was called at the shelter: shifting the victim’s reality.

Lavern knew the shotgun was real, even if it remained unloaded. If Hobbs were to awaken and stare into its dark muzzle, he wouldn’t know the breach was empty. Lavern smiled. Let the bastard think he was a second away from death. Shift his reality.

Do I really want him to wake up?

She thought about what Hobbs would do once he realized she’d pointed an unloaded shotgun at him. Made him so frightened he’d pissed in his pants. Took away some of his manhood.

What would he do then?

Lavern knew, so as she sat alongside the bed fondling the shotgun and watching Hobbs sleep, she was very careful not to wake him.

It was exactly like that snob Thomas Rhodes to try leaving town in the means of transportation anyone who knew him would figure as his last choice. As for renting a car, Dunn knew that like many wealthy New Yorkers who’d moved to the city years ago, Rhodes had let his out-of-state driver’s license expire. These days he traveled mostly by limo.

Dunn had studied the dossier on Rhodes with the utmost care and hadn’t been fooled.

The hunter inside the mind of the prey. Two heads, one mind. Older than mankind.

Dunn’s heart beat a stronger rhythm as his fingers caressed the compact .25-caliber revolver in his pocket. It was cool and heavy. Hefty for its size. Deadly.

Be careful, not cocky. Doing this wrong could cost you your life. You’d barely have time to realize you were the hunted instead of the hunter.

Every hunt should be like this.

While it scared the hell out of him, Dunn loved this part of it. He wasn’t good ol’ Jer’ now; he was Thomas Rhodes’s final nightmare walking.

Though it was evening, the Port Authority Terminal was crowded, which was exactly how Dunn preferred it. There would be a loud, echoing noise at the boarding gates, startling everyone, momentarily freezing them, and giving Dunn time to act while Rhodes was dying. To onlookers—those few who actually looked his way—the memory of what was about to happen would always at best be a series of mental stills, scenes like obscure slides or photographs that would, day by day, fade until they were impossible to interpret for sure. When it came to dealing this kind of death, there was, strangely enough, safety in numbers. So much to take in, so much sensory overload. Dunn was counting on it. He had only to act decisively, rapidly, and not waste motion.

Dunn had found a spot to watch the lower level, where tickets were sold by the various bus lines. There were boarding gates on several levels, but Rhodes would have to stop here first to purchase his ticket.

As Dunn had projected, Rhodes was attempting to flee the city by bus. After he’d bought his ticket, it had been simple for Dunn to follow him to the second level, where most of the gates were located, along with some shops and restaurants.

The “gates” were actually doors that led out to a concrete area where the buses came and went, disgorging and taking on passengers. Lines of people were standing or sitting on the floor, waiting for doors to open so they could board.

Rhodes made his way to Gate 322 in the North Terminal.