“I’ll take it out of your hide.”
“Can’t wait,” he’d said, and another snowball flew past her head before the image stopped altogether. The last movie he’d ever taken of her. Three days later he was called to an accident. She’d been driving, hit black ice, slid off the road, down a steep canyon to Cougar Creek. Her neck had snapped. She’d been killed on impact.
Carolyn.
His wife.
The woman he’d sworn to love until death.
And he had.
Oh God, he had.
Long after he shouldn’t have.
Faye just wasn’t right.
Standing naked near the clear glass tank, he eyed the woman’s near-dead body as it hung in the freezing chamber and wondered why he’d thought she’d do. True, she had a slight resemblance to Jenna Hughes, but her skin wasn’t the correct shade; the tattoo of a ring of roses around her ankle was all wrong. The set of her jaw was sharper, her eyes smaller, her nose not quite as straight. She just wasn’t perfect.
But then no one was.
Except Jenna.
Unhappy with his choice, he unstrapped this pale replica from her bonds and couldn’t help but feel a thrill as her cool skin brushed over his. The sensation of cold flesh touching him caused his heart
to pump, his blood to flow more freely. There were things he could do to her. Sensual acts he’d been planning for a long while. And he could do them now, while she was still alive, breathing so shallowly from her near-frozen lungs.
He drew in a short breath. Shut his mind to any erotic image with this woman—this fake. Lying with her, touching her, kissing her in this state would be sacrilegious. He had to save himself.
For Jenna.
The time was near…so near. He had to force himself to be patient. With the woman draped over his shoulders, he glanced around the room again, his gaze moving to the walls where he’d trained floor lights upward to the artwork surrounding the entire room. Pictures of Jenna Hughes stared down at him. Photographs he’d downloaded anonymously from the Internet, movie posters he’d bought over the years, blown-up pictures from magazines and newspapers, even grainy shots from the scandal sheets. She was everywhere, her image carefully and lovingly fastened to the ceiling and walls.
And to think that he’d even considered fornicating with this…this sad, pale, bald replica.
Shame burned through him as he carried her to a dark corner of the room and gently placed her into his specialized long box. She twitched a bit as her skin touched the previously mixed alginate, but he settled her into the coffin, where the gelatin-like substance oozed over her. Slowly, her body sank lower. The trick was to make sure that the alginate would suspend her body, that her buttocks and shoulders wouldn’t rest against the bottom of the tank while the alginate was at the perfect consistency, to ensure that the mold of her body was flawless. It was tricky work, as the stuff congealed quickly.
He was trying to create a full-body mask, though so far his attempts had proved unsuccessful, and he’d been forced to use mannequin bodies with head casts. His hope was to hone the process so that by the time he’d abducted Jenna, he would be able to cast her perfect body over and over, perhaps in different positions if he could find a way to keep her alive long enough, and build his shrine to her. He’d already made some mistakes.
In his first attempt, he had not shaved the woman’s head properly, leaving her hair to mess up his image. A stupid, amateurish blunder. That mistake had been time-consuming. A waste. What had he been thinking? Since then, he’d worked more carefully, had honed his art to a science, planned the smallest detail, knew who he would use for his work…He’d spent the last two years creating a list of women who would be as near-perfect as possible for his shrine though he hadn’t started actually sculpting his creations until last winter. Before Jenna Hughes had moved up here, he’d been studying specimens, looking for women with the right facial structure, acceptable frames.
Now, as Faye sank into the pink, oozing depths, he felt a sense of accomplishment. She didn’t move. Couldn’t, as she was immobile from the freezing. The alginate seeped upward between her legs, through the space between her arms and torso, over her closed eyes. It slithered into her most intimate recesses and molded to her. The process would only take minutes. She would die of suffocation, but not struggle, as she was comatose, already a victim of the frigid ice water and relaxants.
Soon he would have a perfect mold. With extreme precision, he would extract her from the solid alginate, then stuff her useless body into the freezer before he disposed of it permanently.
He watched as the alginate began to solidify.
Just as he’d planned.
Leaving the coffin, he walked through a separate doorway to his computer room and sat at a desk with several keyboards. Anonymously, he logged on, and, starting with e-Bay and some of his favorite vintage dress shops, he began searching. Somewhere, if he took enough time and exercised patience, he would find articles of clothing and jewelry that would suffice as a full costume for Zoey, his next project, the character Jenna played in A Silent Snow. Smiling to himself, he imagined showcasing Zoey as well as all the others. He already had found the costume for Faye Tyler of Bystander, and the black dress he’d picked up at the theater that Anne Parks of Resurrection would soon wear.
His grin widened as he thought about what Jenna would say when she saw his tribute to her. No doubt she would be awestruck. Speechless. Forever in his debt.
That would be a time to savor!
He hoped to keep her alive long enough for her to realize how much he loved her, how much he cared for her, how he planned to immortalize her.
Through the glass door, he peered into the freezing chamber where the alginate was hardening over Faye Tyler.