EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
HUSBANDS AND OTHER STRANGERS
CHAPTER ONE
PROLOGUE
IT WAS TIME.
He could feel it in the air, taste it on his tongue. Every fiber of his body told him that it was time, that it was Sunday. He knew without looking at the calendar, without hearing the thud of the Sunday paper as it landed on his rickety doorstep.
Because only on Sundays did the feeling come.
And it made his palms sweat, his fingers tingle, his loins tighten in anticipation. The need was getting too large to manage.
It was time again.
Sunday was his time to kill. Because only with death did salvation come.
It had to be quick. Before it was too late.
Each Sunday, the feeling grew until close to exploding within his veins. He was just the instrument.
He looked at his reflection and smiled. No one would ever suspect. No one would ever keep him from his work. He looked so kind, so harmless. There was a time when he had been all that. Oh, he hadn’t looked like the reflection in the mirror—that had taken time and talent and patience to achieve. But he’d been kind, harmless. Eager even. Eager to do the right thing, to be loved.
But all that was before.
Before the betrayal.
Before the need to purge and purify had begun. Before the deaths.
Before he had discovered that he liked it, the feeling of dispensing everlasting redemption. Because it was up to him to make it right. His father had seen to that. It was because of his father that the calling had come to him. The calling to set troubled souls free.
The calling came now.
He took a deep breath and began the ritual.
Because Sundays were for murder. And redemption.
CHAPTER ONE
STACY PEMBROKE WAS angry. Very angry at being shoved into second place.
Second place meant runner-up. Nobody ever remembered who came in second in anything. Second place was an insult. And lately, it was a position she was becoming all too familiar with. A position she had been forced to occupy much too often in the last few weeks. Maybe even the last few months if she was being honest with herself.
It was time for Robert to make up his damn mind.
“I don’t need this kind of grief,” she shouted into the telephone receiver, which she held in a death grip. She was squeezing so hard, if the receiver had had a pulse, it would have been erased by now. “Just who the hell do you think you are, canceling on me at the last minute this way? You think I have nothing better to do than sit around, waiting for you to show up on my door?”
The fact that she didn’t have anything better to do didn’t change her indignation. It was the principle of the whole thing. Robert was taking her for granted, something she had sworn would never happen to her. And if by some chance it did happen to her, she’d promised herself to take drastic measures. Like castrating the bastard who was guilty of the crime.
“I’ll make it up to you, baby, honest I will.”
Stacy fumed. He was whispering. Keeping his voice low so that she wouldn’t hear him. That harpy of a wife he supposedly hated. If she listened very closely, Stacy could almost hear Robert sweating. He had to be fidgeting, the way he did when he was caught in a lie.
Good. She hoped his damn blood pressure went through the roof, killing him. He deserved it. Nobody treated her like day-old trash and got away with it. For two cents, she’d pay a call to his precious Emily, tell her what her husband had been up to all those nights he’d told her he was working to provide a better future for them.
As she toyed with the thought, her full, freshly made-up lips peeled back into a smile. It would serve him right if she did just that.
“I am through rearranging my life for you, Robert.” And she meant it. She was through serving up her heart only to have it carved into small, bite-size pieces. “Now you’re obviously not going to leave that frozen Popsicle of a wife—”
On the other end of the line, Robert Pullman drew in a shallow breath. She could hear it. God, but he was a mouse. “I told you, the kids—”
“The kids. The kids. The kids!” Stacy shouted into the receiver, her face turning red, a stark contrast to her ash-blond hair and her all but alabaster skin. It was an effort for her to keep her temper from really breaking free. Her nerves were frayed and strained. These days, she reached the boiling point at lightning speed. But if she finally let go, she knew that she ran the imminent danger of falling completely apart.
If that was going to happen, it would be because of someone who was a hell of a better catch than Robert Pullman.
But her dwindling opinion of him didn’t stop her from verbally assaulting her lover for his transgression. “Don’t you think that I want kids of my own?”
Frustration throbbed in his voice. “Stacy, I know. Look, I don’t have much time to talk. Emily thinks I’m in the garage, working on a project.”
Emily. She’d have thought by now that Emily Pullman, along with her bratty kids, would have been a thing of the past. Hadn’t Robert promised her as much? When he couldn’t make Christmas last year because he had to take his family on a trip to Lake Tahoe, he’d promised her that this year, they would be ringing in the New Year together. Well, it didn’t look as if he was capable of ringing in a Sunday night, much less the New Year.
And she was sick of it.
“I hope to hell that it’s a noose to hang yourself with!”
“Honey,” Robert pleaded as loudly as a whisper would allow. “I know you’re mad—”
“Mad?” Stacy scoffed. “Mad? I am way past mad, Robert. I rounded the corner at ‘furious’ a long time ago. But you know what? I just don’t care anymore.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t. You’ve stood me up for the last time. I’m having a cleansing bonfire tonight. I’m going to burn all the things you gave me—and the clothes you left here,” she added as the idea took on breadth and form. She knew how particular Robert was about his clothing, how everything had to be hung up just so. Well, she was going to take extra pleasure in stomping on all of it before she sent the articles to their final resting place. “As far as I’m concerned, you are just an unfortunate chapter of my life and I’m closing that chapter, Robert—”
“Stacy, please,” he begged, “don’t you think I’d rather be there with you?”
“If you wanted to be here, you would be here,” she retorted flatly. “I’m not
