She scrubbed her scalp, feeling the nearly imperceptible outlines of the curved tangle of old scars that tracked up the back of her nape and into her hairline. She rinsed away the soap, then squirted some of the conditioner into her palms and smoothed it on.
In the other room of the suite, a game horn sounded on the television, marking the end of a shot clock. The men's voices carried as they argued the last play and made cutting remarks about the out-of-town team.
Tavia took her time rinsing off, dousing her hair and body, reluctant to let go of the warm, wet peace she was enjoying. But with her stomach starting to growl and the men waiting to order dinner for themselves until she was ready to eat too, she finally reached out to crank the lever on the tub and shower's water supply. It cut off with a squeak.
And then ... silence.
An unnatural, ominous silence.
Naked and dripping, she peeked out from behind the plastic curtain. Listened for a long moment.
Nothing but quiet - not even the sound of the television running now.
"Hello?" she called anxiously. "Officer Murphy?"
She stepped out onto the bath mat. No time to bother with a towel, she grabbed the terry hotel robe from its hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around herself. Wet strands of hair drooped into her face as she hastily tied the belt at her waist and crept forward to put her hand on the doorknob.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. She could feel it in every fiber of her being, nerve endings jolting with sudden, certain alarm.
She slipped out to the empty bedroom and padded silently toward the closed door that led to the suite's living quarters just down the hall.
As she neared, a muffled groan cut short in the other room, followed by a hard thump that vibrated the floor beneath her bare soles.
Tavia froze.
She didn't need to open the door to know that death waited on the other side, but she couldn't keep her hand from quietly turning the knob. She peered out through the smallest wedge of space she dared. Her eyes met the unseeing gaze of Officer Murphy, lying motionless at the other end of the hallway. A big man, yet his neck was twisted and broken like a doll's, his head turned at a morbid angle on the floor.
Tavia's heart slammed hard against her rib cage.
Had the intruder killed them all?
It was him, she knew it with a visceral certainty that throbbed in her veins.
Her instincts screamed for her to get out of there now. She spun on her heel and hurried to the curtained slider on the far side of the bed. Fumbling with the lever lock on the handle, she finally wrenched the glass door and screen open. A wintry gust swept inside, blowing fine icy snowflakes into her eyes. Two steps out onto the frigid concrete balcony, she stopped short and exhaled a hissed curse.
The room was ten stories above the street.
No way out, not from here. Whatever was going on in the suite outside her bedroom, she was trapped in the middle of it.
"Shit." Tavia backed away from the open slider. She turned around ... and came up short with a gasp.
The man from her nightmares - the deranged psychopath who'd murdered Senator Clarence in cold blood and undoubtedly now wanted to finish her off too - stood less than two inches from her face.
She opened her mouth to scream but didn't manage even the smallest sound before he clamped one hand around the back of her neck and the other came down swiftly across her lips. His grip was strong, unbreakable. Wild-eyed, terrified, she reached up to grab at his fingers, but they resisted like iron.
"Be still," he rasped, a curt command. His voice was rough and deep, far more powerful up close than it had been last night at the police station. There was something fuller about the grim set of his mouth too, and something not quite right at all about his eyes.
At first she dismissed their odd emberlike glow as a trick of her panicked mind. The pupils seemed distorted somehow, stretched thin and narrow in the center of his burning irises. Impossible that it could be anything but imagined.
But no ... it wasn't distress that made her see it. This was real. As real as the unrelenting heat of his hands on her, fingers searing her nape and pressing hotly against her mouth.
As real as the sharp, elongated white tips of his teeth, which glinted as he parted his lips to speak once more. "I'm not going to hurt you, Tavia."
Oh, God.
Here was her nightmare, standing before her in real life.
He wasn't human; he couldn't be. Her mind rejected the word that leapt at her from out of the horror stories and dark fiction Aunt Sarah had chided her for reading when she was a child.
Tavia wasn't sure what he was, but she didn't believe even for a second that he wasn't going to kill her in that next instant like he had the senator and the men in the other room. She struggled against him with all she had now, attempting to twist and fight her way free. But she couldn't budge him off her.
He was strong - as strong as any monster should be.
And with the sudden surge of adrenaline into her bloodstream, Tavia felt her body begin to rebel beneath the forced calm that her medicines provided. Her heart rate jackhammered, sending her pulse throbbing in her temples. She groaned against the fingers that held her mouth closed, all the while trying to will herself out of an anxiety tailspin.
He maneuvered her around and pushed her down onto the bed.
"No!" her mind screamed, the physical cry snuffed in her throat.
She was on her back and struggling uselessly, his hand still flat on her lips. The other had come around swiftly from behind her neck, only to rest across her brow. Here he touched her lightly, the warmth of his broad palm barely skimming the surface of her skin.
"Relax, Tavia," he said, that low, graveled growl not so much menacing now as coaxing. "Close your eyes."