Darker Than Night. John Lutz

and stepped back, closing the door. Shaking his head, he returned to the living room.

      “All clear,” he told Marcy, who was standing near the sofa looking worried.

      She let out a long breath, then hugged him tightly.

      He kissed her cool but damp forehead. “Can we go back to bed now?”

      “Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been worried lately and having the damnedest dreams.”

      “Dreams can’t hurt you.” He put his arm around her waist and led her back toward the bedroom.

      “They can sure as hell scare you.”

      When they were back in bed, he moved close to her. “Since we’re awake…,” he said.

      She felt her nightgown being tugged and worked upward, and she dug her heels into the mattress and raised her back until her breasts were no longer constrained by the taut material. His fingertips and then his lips were light on her right nipple. Desire moved at the core of her and she raked her fingers through his damp hair. Still she was outside of herself, of what was happening. She wanted to do this, but it was too soon after being so frightened.

      He was toying with her left nipple now, not going to stop. She knew him so well. He wasn’t going to be talked out of this. And she didn’t really want to talk him out of it.

      “Can I use my vibrator?” she asked. “I need to relax, and I’m still pretty shook up.”

      “You’ll be shook up in a different way soon,” he reassured her.

      “Ron…”

      He raised his head. “Okay.” He kissed her between the breasts, using his tongue on her bare flesh, then shifted his weight and stood up. The vibrator was fine with him, anyway. He’d tell her where and how to use it, then let her decide she was ready, then—

      “Hurry, please!” she said behind him as he opened the closet door to get the vibrator down from the top shelf. He smiled and didn’t answer.

      And gasped when he saw the face and eyes staring out at him, felt the cold blade slice in and up toward his heart. Everything was devoured by the searing pain…his world, his loss, his love, his hope…. All of it fell away and he dropped swiftly and breathlessly in a dark elevator plunging toward blackness.

      He tried to say Marcy’s name, as if it were the magic that might somehow stop the fall and save him, but that, too, died in darkness.

      Marcy, lying back with her eyes closed and massaging her nipples with her fingertips, sensed something was wrong. Then she heard the funny, gasping sound Ron made and sat up in bed as suddenly as if a puppeteer had yanked her strings.

      She saw Ron standing against the black background beyond the open closet door, then watched him sink to the floor.

      Marcy tried to call to him but made only a strangled, cawing sound.

      And out of the closet stepped her nightmare.

      Half an hour later, while walking away from the Grahams’ apartment building, their killer decided this had been much better than his last late-night encounter.

      It was because of the knife.

      He’d left his gun in Martin Elzner’s hand. The police could do wonders with their ballistics tests, and they could connect gun to crime, therefore he could no longer have it in his possession. It was simply too risky, and he’d learned not to take unnecessary risks within the larger risks that he must take. So, as planned, the gun made a convincing prop.

      But it should have been a knife to begin with. Always a knife.

      So he’d left the gun, wiped clean of fingerprints other than those of Elzner’s dead hand. The silencer, too, was of no further use, so he’d disposed of it by tossing it in a Dumpster. Surely by now it was lost in a vast landfill.

      Two days later, at a flea market on the West Side, he’d bought a produce knife, the sort used by warehousemen and shippers of fruits and vegetables. It was a long folding knife, slender, with a bone handle and a high-quality steel blade that would hold an edge.

      When he’d bought the knife, he was sure it would do what he needed, and now it had.