Alter Ego

41

It felt like a dream.

A gauzy curtain draped over Cat’s mind. Shapes in the fire-lit room grew larger and smaller as if she were seeing them in a fun house mirror. Her limbs were leaden. She willed her arms and legs to move, but they only stared sullenly back at her. She had trouble keeping her head up; it kept lolling onto the sofa cushion. She was vaguely aware of Casperson slipping off his tuxedo coat, undoing his tie, and unbuttoning a couple of buttons on his shirt. His face had the intense, curious look of a scientist studying the reactions of a new specimen.

“It’s a little different every time,” he told her. “Most women would be unconscious by now, but you’re still awake. That’s interesting. I like it better that way.”

He sat down next to her. Their legs were touching. He put an index finger on her cheek and slowly slid it down her face, along the line of her chin, and into the hollow of her neck. She wanted to slap his hand away, but she didn’t know how. She was watching his face as if through a kaleidoscope, broken into pieces and moving in circles.

“I wasn’t lying about how beautiful you are. That wasn’t just a line. You really are unique.”

He stroked her chestnut hair. He pulled his fingers through it and let the strands fall in a messy pile across her eyes. He traced the outline of her full lips, but his touch made it feel like he was caressing the marble of a statue. She was trapped inside, and she couldn’t feel what he was doing. She was a girl in a box, unable to escape or resist. She was a thing to him. A robot. A doll. Something over which he exerted complete control.

Her mouth formed a word, but her tongue felt thick. She wasn’t even sure if she’d said it aloud. Stop.

“Stop? I wish I could. Truly. I don’t like this part of myself. In the early years, I tried to resist, but the strange thing is, my acting suffered when I didn’t have an outlet. I finally realized that I had to accept myself as a whole package. The good and the bad. I’m not proud of it, but every life requires a balancing of the scales.”

She tried to curse. Two short words. It made him laugh.

“You’re brave. I like that about you. The fact is, you won’t remember anything about tonight. Or if you do, you’ll never really be sure exactly what happened. No one will believe you if you tell anyone, because you’re nobody and I’m me. That’s just the way it is, Cat.”

She wanted to scream. Inside her head, she screamed at him. The effort made her dizzy. She could feel unconsciousness closing over her like an eclipse, blocking out her thoughts like the moon did to the light of the sun, but she fought back. She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t forget.

Yet she was helpless.

“It’s the unwrapping I love,” he said. “Seeing the secrets each woman hides.”

He placed his fingers lightly on the bare skin where her breasts began to swell and gave her the slightest nudge. She found herself toppling backward, slowly, sinking as the room spun. She lay sprawled on the sofa. She blinked as she stared at the ceiling, and each blink took forever. Her arms lay next to her, useless appendages covered in black lace.

She knew what it would be like.

She’d been on this ride before.

The other men from her past were still here with her. She could see them. Every man she’d been with in the bad days leered at her in the hot room. She saw their faces, smelled their breath, heard their panting, felt them between her legs, winced at the pain. She wanted to close her eyes so that she couldn’t see, wanted it to be over, wanted to wake up from a nightmare and be home and safe. But this was real.

His fingers touched her everywhere, and she couldn’t stop him.

His hand followed the skin of her leg until it was under her dress, and she couldn’t stop him.

Her eyes were glazed little slits on her face. In her head, she beat her fists against the bars of her cage, but she was powerless. She wondered if anyone was watching this happen. She wanted to know if people could see her and what they were saying and whether the secret was passing from one person to another. It didn’t matter. Wherever the voyeurs were, they weren’t here, and they didn’t know where she was. For now, she was absolutely alone.

“This doesn’t have to be unpleasant,” he said as he began to peel off her clothes.

She heard that single word over and over, like an echo. Unpleasant. Like an airport delay. Like an overcooked meal.

The eclipse deepened and headed toward totality. The shadow crossed her brain; time stood still; consciousness drifted in and out. She was aware of her bare skin, her body open to him, exposed, making her feel small. She smelled his scent, which reeked of his hunger. He began to shed his clothes, but she looked away so that she didn’t have to see. She heard, oddly, the tearing of foil. He showed her a moist, rolled condom between his fingers with a bizarre pride, as if somehow that would make everything better.

“See? I take precautions.”

Cat lay on her back, paralyzed. She couldn’t even cry.

She thought: Save me.

But no one was coming to save her.

“Where the hell is Dean Casperson?” Stride shouted, shocking the party into silence.

Serena pushed into the ballroom of the resort behind him. Seconds later, so did Maggie, Cab, and half a dozen uniformed police officers. The strangers in the room were frozen, as if they didn’t dare open their mouths.

Saying anything meant going against Casperson.

He spotted a man sauntering toward them with a young woman on his arm and a drink in his other hand. Next to Stride, Cab Bolton tensed like a tiger about to strike. It was Jungle Jack. Stride felt Cab take an ominous step in Jack’s direction, so he shot out his hand to hold the detective back.

“Jack, where did Casperson take the girl?” Stride asked.

Jungle Jack looked unimpressed by the sight of the police. He handed his drink to the woman with him and wandered up to Stride as if he had nothing to fear. “What girl are you talking about? The last time I saw Dean, he was shooting pool with some of the producers.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Stride replied. He gestured to Maggie. “Arrest this son of a bitch.”

Jack’s calm faltered. “Arrest me? For what?”

“For murder,” Stride snapped.

The cuffs appeared in Maggie’s hands like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat, and before Jack could protest, he’d been spun around with the cuffs snapped onto his wrists, and the police were shoving him out of the resort.

The ballroom was still in a state of suspended animation, and Stride woke them up with another shout.

“In five more seconds, I start arresting everybody here,” he called. “Now where did Casperson take the girl?”

No one wanted to be the first to talk. No one had any courage. Then, finally, an attractive young woman in a magenta dress stepped forward from the silent crowd and pointed at the glass doors to the patio. She called to him in a loud voice, as if she were freeing herself from prison. “They left through there. Dean rented the first waterfront cottage down the path.”

Her phone was in her hand. She’d been watching. She knew.

“You better hurry,” she added.

Stride ran. So did Serena. The crowd parted to let them through, and Stride reached the windows at the back of the room and slammed through the outer doors onto the balcony. Gales and snow surged into his face. He saw the darkness of the lake and the dragon flames of the fire pit on the beach. Looking left, he saw the dark outline of a two-story cottage facing the water. Its lights were off, but he saw footprints on the path leading that way that were being erased quickly as the wind blew.

In a second, he was down the balcony steps. He sprinted along the snow-covered trail, where the trees clawed at him. The ground was slick underfoot, slowing him down. He ran for the cottage door and didn’t pause as he reached it. His shoulder hit the wooden door and crashed it inward, slamming it off its hinges with a splintering crack of wood. He wasn’t aware of the pain. He took two steps into the room, and there they were.

Dean Casperson.

And Cat.

The firelight licked at both of them. Cat lay on the sofa, stripped naked, her eyes unfocused and half closed. Casperson knelt between her legs. His shirt was unbuttoned, his pants and underwear pooled at his ankles. He looked over at Stride as the door crashed in, and in that one split second, he knew he was done. He put up his hands in defense as Stride closed the distance between them. With adrenaline storming through his blood, Stride lifted Casperson bodily into the air and threw him like a toy across the room. Casperson’s head slammed into the stone wall, and he sank to the floor. Blood trickled from his hairline across his face and onto his neck.

Behind Stride, Serena was already at Cat’s side. She gathered the girl up in her arms and covered her with a blanket from a wicker basket on the floor. She hugged her with a fierce protectiveness.

“Cat, are you okay? We’re here, it’s over.”

But for Stride, it wasn’t over. It wasn’t over at all.

He didn’t even know how it happened, but his gun left his pocket and found its way to his hand.

His fist tightened on the grip.

The safety came off.

His index finger moved onto the trigger.

He bent down and yanked Casperson off the floor with a hand clenched around the man’s throat. His other hand shoved the gun into Casperson’s forehead. The actor choked, and his eyes bulged; he couldn’t breathe. Stride’s rage was so deep that he couldn’t even form words. His hatred burned like the heat of the fire on his back. It wasn’t enough to see terror in Casperson’s face, or surrender, or humiliation, or defeat. He wanted this man dead on the floor, with blood and brains sprayed on the wall behind him. He wanted to kill him, to erase him, to murder him, to send him to hell.

All he had to do was squeeze the trigger.

“Jonny!”

It was Serena, screaming over and over.

“Jonny! Put it down! Don’t do it!”

Her voice was frantic, but he barely heard her. His fury boiled. He had never felt anything so primal toward another human being. He didn’t care about the consequences, or the rest of his life, or anything except destroying this man. Pull the trigger. Watch the wretched life vanish from Casperson’s eyes.

Then another, tremulous voice called to him.

“Stride.”

It was Cat.

Her drugged, dreamy voice reached out to him and cut through his anger. “Stride, please don’t. Please.”

He took a breath. His fever broke. He let go of Casperson’s throat, and he could see the red imprint of his fingers on the man’s neck. Casperson gasped for air and fell backward, coughing. Stride slid his finger off the trigger, secured his weapon, and returned it to his holster. His fingers curled into a fist, but this man wasn’t even worth the broken bones. Instead, he grabbed Casperson’s collar and shoved him facedown on the floor, where his ass was still obscenely displayed. He cuffed him, then went to Cat on the sofa and put his arms around her.

This girl was always saving him. Again and again.

She had no strength to hug him back, but a tiny smile flitted across her face and melted his heart. She mumbled something he didn’t understand. “How many?”

“What?”

“How many watching? A hundred?”

That was when he remembered that Cat’s phone was still broadcasting the entire scene to the world on Facebook Live.

He glanced at Serena, who retrieved the phone from beside the television. Before she disconnected it, she checked the stats on the video and shook her head in disbelief.

“More than a hundred, Catalina,” she said.

“How many?”

Serena went over to Casperson, took him by the hair, and shoved the phone screen in the man’s face. “Let’s tell Dean how popular he is. Congratulations, dirtbag. Four and a half million people just watched your latest film, and they all saw the disgusting pig you really are.”