Faces of Fear

23

“WELL, I’M STILL NOT GOING TO TELL YOU I APPROVE,” CINDY KEARNS said, but even though the words hadn’t changed in the half hour Alison had just spent telling her best friend the latest details of her recovery from surgery, Cindy’s tone had softened, and Alison knew that when she finally saw her new figure in person, Cindy would be as happy about it as she herself was.

“I just wish you could come over right now,” Alison sighed.

“I could, if you still lived in Santa Monica,” Cindy reminded her.

“I know. I wish I still lived there, too,” she said, but knew that wasn’t quite true anymore. She hadn’t just gotten used to living in Conrad Dunn’s enormous house, she’d started to feel comfortable in it. When she thought about her old room in the little house in Santa Monica, she realized she didn’t want to go back to it. “It would be even better if you lived up here in Bel Air,” she said.

“Like that’s ever going to happen,” Cindy drawled. “My dad’s a fireman, remember? Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow. What should I wear?”

“We’re going to start inside, and then we’ll go outside for dancing. Just wear what you think you’ll be comfortable in. It’ll be fine.” Alison flipped the phone closed to end the call a few seconds later, then swiveled around in her desk chair to look around her room, trying to see it the way the Santa Monica kids who hadn’t already been up here — which was all of them but Cindy — would see it. They’d be expecting a big house — practically every house in Bel Air was large, and the newest ones were so big they looked ridiculous — but most of them hadn’t ever seen a bedroom as big as hers. Still, the room had started to look like her, with her favorite posters on the walls, her stuffed animals among the throw pillows on the bed, and her track medals and trophies on the bookcase.

Not all that much different from her room in Santa Monica, she told herself, except for its size.

And the thick Oriental rugs on the gleaming hardwood floors.

And the beautiful paper covering the walls above the wainscoting.

And the private bathroom she didn’t have to share with anyone.

Okay, it was a lot different from her old room, but it was hers now, and she liked it, just like anyone would. So why was she feeling guilty? Or maybe the little knot in her stomach was just hunger. She looked at the clock — her mom wouldn’t be home for at least another hour. Maybe she’d go down and see if she could sneak or beg a snack from Maria.

She was just getting up when there were two raps on her bedroom door.

“Come on in,” she called out.

Conrad opened the door, holding a large flat white box. “Hi,” he said. “Am I disturbing you?”

Alison shook her head. “I was just talking to my friend Cindy.”

“I brought a dress I thought you’d look good in tomorrow at your party,” he said, and handed her the box.

Alison looked at it uncertainly. Didn’t he know she already had a dress?

One he’d paid twelve hundred dollars for?

She racked her brain, trying to remember if she’d mentioned it to him. But surely she had at least thanked him for it, hadn’t she? “I–I already have a dress—” she stammered.

Conrad thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh, for God’s sake! How could I have forgotten?” Then his voice changed and he sounded almost like a little boy. “Maybe you could save the other one for another day? I found this one, and it seemed so perfect, and—”

“I guess I could,” Alison broke in. “But what if it doesn’t fit?” Conrad stared blankly at her, and she had the distinct feeling that the thought had never crossed his mind. “Maybe I should try it on.”

“Great!” Conrad said, his expression suddenly clearing. “And if it doesn’t fit, or you don’t like it, you can wear the one you already have.”

Alison put the box on the corner of her bed, then raised the lid.

When she peeled back the tissue paper, she gasped. A gorgeous black V-neck dress, made of the lightest fabric she’d ever seen, lay folded inside.

She stared at Conrad in stunned amazement.

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Take it out.”

She lifted the dress from the box. It couldn’t have weighed more than a few ounces. The back was cut low and the flared skirt, cut on the bias, had a diagonal hem dropping away from right to left.

And a very discreet Valentino label.

“Oh, Conrad,” she breathed. “This is beautiful.”

“Try it on,” he said.

She turned to look at him. “You’re sure?” she asked. “It must have cost—”

“Just try it on,” he broke in, lowering himself into the wing chair by the window. “If you hate it, I’ll return it. If you like it, and it fits, you can either wear it tomorrow or it can stay in your closet until you need it.” His right eyebrow lifted archly. “Trust me — my first wife taught me that you can’t have too many dresses.”

Alison was still torn, balancing the expense of the dress against the vision she had of herself wearing it. And she could see that Conrad truly did want her to have it. “Okay,” she finally said, clutching the gown to her. “I’ll be right back.”

She went into the dressing room between her bedroom and bathroom, closed the door behind her, and quickly shucked her shorts and tank top. She no longer needed a bra, thanks to Conrad’s gift of two weeks ago, so she slipped the dress over her head, letting it drop into place.

It fit perfectly.

A glance in the mirror told her the dress demanded upswept hair, so she rummaged in the bathroom for a clip and pulled her hair up into a semblance of a French twist. Then she slipped her feet into the pair of black high heels she was planning to dance in tomorrow and opened the door. “Ta da,” she said, opening her arms and slowly twirling. “It’s perfect.”

“It’s more than perfect,” Conrad said, standing up. “It’s like that dress was created for you.”

Alison grinned happily at him. “Why don’t I think Valentino’s ever even heard of me?”

“Well, if he hasn’t, he will,” Conrad declared. “How about I take a picture of you for the album at the office? We don’t have an ‘after’ shot of you, and in that dress you’ll sell my services to everyone who sees you.”

Alison hesitated. “What about my hair? And shouldn’t I be wearing makeup?”

“Not needed,” Conrad declared. “Better to see you exactly the way you are.”

“Can’t I at least comb my hair?” she asked.

“Okay, comb your hair while I get my camera,” he said. “But no makeup. I don’t want anything distracting from your figure.”

He left her room, and Alison returned to the dressing room, brushed her hair out, then swept it back up into a real twist, this time pinning it carefully in place. By the time she was finished and back in her bedroom, Conrad had returned, with a large digital single-lens-reflex camera.

“By the window,” he said, motioning her over to a spot where sunlight was flooding into the room.

She moved close to the window and leaned against the wall as Conrad focused the camera and started taking one picture after another. Like Margot, she thought. This is just how Margot must have felt.

As the shutter kept clicking, Alison wondered if Margot Dunn had felt anywhere near as uncomfortable in front of Conrad’s camera as she did right now.

In fact, the whole thing felt kind of creepy — posing for her stepfather in her own bedroom. But what could she say? Conrad had been so generous to her, done so much for her.

Besides, it would be over in a couple more minutes. What harm could there be in humoring him?

If he wanted to take her picture, who was she to say no?

24

ALISON BRUSHED A FINAL TOUCH OF GLOSS ONTO HER LIPS, THEN stood back, took a careful look at herself in the full-length mirror, and decided that Conrad’s procedure had been worth it.

And that’s all it had been, actually — just a simple procedure she recovered from so quickly that whatever discomfort she’d felt was already nothing more than a dim memory. Nothing like surgery at all. Surgery would have hurt a lot more, and would have taken a much longer time to heal. So why had she been such a baby about it? Especially now that she was seeing the results.

The difference the procedure had made was more than simply an augmentation of her breasts. It seemed as if her whole figure had changed from that of an adolescent into one of a young woman. All her curves seemed to have been accentuated by the procedure, and with her hair swept up, some of Danielle DeLorian’s incredibly expensive makeup lightly applied, and the spectacular Mandalay dress, she looked more like a sophisticated eighteen-year-old than the barely sixteen she actually was. Even more important, she looked like the kind of girl who could play hostess to the kind of party her mother and Conrad had arranged, rather than the pizza-and-games-or-a-movie birthday parties she’d had as long as she could remember. If this was how she looked with just the one procedure—

Her mother’s voice on the intercom shattered her reverie. “Alison, your guests are arriving.”

“Be right down,” she answered, then put away her cosmetics, and took one last look around her suite to make certain everything was neat and ready for inspection — every one of her friends from Santa Monica was going to want to see it.

She opened her bedroom door and started down the stairs, seeing her mother and stepfather waiting for her in the foyer as she came around the turn at the staircase’s landing.

“Alison,” Risa whispered, her eyes widening as she gazed up at her daughter. “You look beautiful — just beautiful.”

As she came to the bottom of the stairs, twinkling lights in the garden caught Alison’s eye. “But not as pretty as the garden,” she said, smiling happily.

“Nobody’s going to look at the garden once they take a look at you,” Conrad said. “You look spectacular.”

Alison felt the color rising in her cheeks. “Thank you, Conrad,” she murmured. “Thanks for all of this.”

“Happy sweet sixteen,” Conrad said, and raised the wineglass he was holding.

Before Alison could respond, the doorbell rang, and Ruffles came tumbling down the stairs, barking as loud as he could.

“And that’s our cue to vanish,” Risa said, bending down to scoop Ruffles up before he could launch himself at whoever was at the door. “We’ll be in the media room if you need us.”

“Have fun,” Conrad told her with a wink, then followed his wife down the hall.

Alison opened the front door to find Cindy Kearns, along with Lisa Hess, Anton Hoyer, and Tommy Kline, holding brightly wrapped presents while they watched one of the parking valets Conrad had hired move Tommy’s ten-year-old Honda to a nearly invisible spot next to the garage.

“Wow!” Lisa said. “Look at you!”

Alison grinned happily and hugged Lisa and Anton, but when she turned to Cindy, the girl who had always been her best friend stiffened, and Alison knew why.

Cindy Kearns still didn’t approve of what she’d had done to herself.

A little of her happiness drained away, and the lights in the garden didn’t seem quite as bright as they had a moment ago.

“Where did you get that dress?” Lisa asked.

Alison hesitated a moment too long. “Neiman’s,” she finally admitted.

“Neiman’s,” Cindy echoed, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Alison felt her face burning now as she remembered the fun she and Cindy used to make of the girls their age who bought whatever they wanted in the store. Wait’ll they have to spend their own money, Cindy had said only a few months ago. Then we’ll see how much of this stuff they buy. And now Cindy thought she had become one of those people.

But she wasn’t, was she? This was different — this was a special occasion. Her birthday party! Couldn’t Cindy understand that?

Doing her best not to let Cindy spoil her happiness, Alison ushered the group into the house. “Jesus,” Anton Hoyer breathed as he looked around the foyer, then through to the living room and the garden beyond. “What a place.”

“I want a tour!” Lisa Hess said. “Show us your room.”

Another car door slammed outside.

“In a while,” Alison said, “after everybody’s here. Come on out back.”

She led them through the house to the French doors opening onto the terrace. Spread below them were the swimming pool, which had been covered over with a dance floor, and the perfectly manicured gardens. Tommy Kline uttered a low whistle. “This isn’t like any party I’ve ever been to,” he said. “It looks more like a wedding, only not white.”

Even Alison tried not to stare at the enormous bunches of colored balloons hovering over a dozen small tables, with each tablecloth matching the color of the balloons overhead, and each table displaying an elaborate bouquet of flowers in the same color. A buffet table laden with chafing dishes sat next to a bar stocked with sodas and fruit juices; a second buffet table featured an ice sculpture of a dolphin that seemed to be launching himself out of a sea of shrimp, crab, and chilled lobster.

“I knew I shouldn’t have worn jeans,” Lisa said ruefully, and folded her arms over her pink tank top.

Cindy shook her head. “You’re fine,” she said. “It’s just a house!”

As soon as Alison appeared on the terrace, the three-piece band began to play and the fairy lights in the trees that she’d seen from inside the house began to brighten in the fading daylight. Then a stream of her new friends, led by Trip Atkinson and Cooper Ames, burst through the French doors and onto the terrace. Laden with gifts far more elaborately wrapped than those the Santa Monica group had brought, they piled the packages onto the table set out for that purpose, offered Alison greetings barely less pretentious than their gifts, then went directly to the food and the bar. Tommy Kline and Anton Hoyer followed them, wasting no time filling two plates.

Alison began to relax as she watched the party begin. Though the kids from Santa Monica had seemed overwhelmed by the house, with Tommy and Anton plunging right in, maybe it was going to be alright.

“Hi, birthday girl,” Tasha Rudd called when she appeared on the terrace, Dawn Masin trailing along a half step behind. Alison could almost feel Cindy and Lisa stiffen as they watched the two Wilson girls stride confidently toward them, wearing tiny dresses that were mostly made of spandex and obviously cost several hundred dollars each. Tasha waved a tiny little gift bag at her, then added it to the table that was beginning to fill with presents. “Just something I found at Tiffany that had you written all over it,” she said, kissing the air next to each of Alison’s cheeks.

“That dress looks simply fa-boo on you,” Dawn said to Alison as she repeated Tasha’s air kisses. “And your new boobs are perfect.” Alison smiled, but her smile faded as she caught the look of scorn on Cindy Kearns’s face. “Be sure to have Conrad do your chin next,” Dawn went on.

“And that little bump on your nose,” Tasha chimed in. “He could do that at the same time.”

“Actually, I’ve been sort of thinking about that,” Alison said, remembering the perfect cleft in Scott Lawrence’s chin and how he’d gotten it.

“You’re kidding,” Cindy said, making no attempt to conceal her disdain for the idea.

“Well, I haven’t decided anything,” Alison said a little too quickly.

“Why would she be kidding?” Tasha asked, turning to look directly at Cindy for the first time. “It would improve her profile hugely.”

“That’s stupid,” Cindy said. “There’s nothing wrong with Alison’s profile.”

Tasha eyed Cindy. “And you are…?” As the question hung in the air, Tasha let her gaze wander appraisingly over Cindy’s straight brown hair and casual clothes, and uttered a small but audible — and pointedly hopeless — sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Alison said, too hurriedly. “These are Cindy Kearns and Lisa Hess, my friends from Santa Monica.” She shifted her focus to Cindy and Lisa, pleading with them with her eyes. “This is Tasha Rudd and Dawn Masin. They go to Wilson.”

The four gazed silently at each other.

“Why don’t we all go get something to eat?” Alison asked, trying to steer the group toward the steps down to the lawn.

“I’m not eating,” Tasha said. “It’s almost swimsuit season.”

Alison was about to laugh when she felt a hand close on her elbow, and as the rest of the girls started down the steps, she found Cindy Kearns holding her back.

“Swimsuit season?” Cindy repeated, her voice mimicking Tasha’s almost perfectly. “I don’t believe this, Alison. It’s barely been a month, and you’ve already turned into—” She hesitated, then tilted her head pointedly toward Tasha and Dawn, who had paused on the steps and were now looking back up at them. “—one of them,” Cindy finished.

“One of us,” Dawn countered. “Well, it’s certainly better than being one of you. Where on earth did you buy that outfit? Kmart?”

“I’m leaving,” Cindy said, turning to Lisa Hess. “I knew we shouldn’t have come.” She struck a pose, again perfectly mimicking Tasha Rudd. “We’re so not their class, darling. Let’s go have a pizza.”

Lisa hesitated. “Come on, Cindy, we just got here—”

Alison put a hand on Cindy’s arm. “Don’t go. Please?”

Cindy shook her head, her eyes suddenly glistening with tears. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” she said, the words choking in her constricted throat. Then she pulled herself together and drew her arm away from Alison. “You have a new life and new friends. What do you need me for? Go play with your new friends. Have a good time, and happy birthday.”

“Cindy…”

But Cindy had already started back toward the French doors. “Stay if you want, Lisa, but I’m going.” She signaled to Tommy and glanced once more at Alison. “Excuse me while I get your valet to bring up Tommy’s Honda before it brings down property values around here.” She turned on her heel and continued walking.

“I guess I better go.” Lisa looked apologetically at Alison. “They’re my ride.”

Feeling tears in her own eyes, Alison nodded and hugged Lisa, but most of the happiness she’d felt only a few minutes ago drained out of her as she watched her oldest friend walking out of her party.

A soft hand touched her arm. “Let them go,” Tasha said.

“She’s right,” Dawn added. “Forget them — you aren’t like them anymore.” She opened her purse and showed Alison a pint of tequila. “C’mon, birthday girl. Let’s have some fun!”

Alison wanted to ignore Tasha and Dawn and go after Cindy and Lisa, but as another group of Wilson kids arrived, she knew she couldn’t.

This was her party, and she was the hostess, and no matter how much she’d rather be with Cindy and Lisa right now — or even upstairs in her room, calling Cindy and trying to put their friendship back together — she knew she couldn’t give in to her impulses.

Instead, she had to put on a happy face and be a good hostess, no matter how she felt. As she turned back to the garden, the band picked up the tempo and Trip came up the steps to the terrace.

“Dance with me?” Giving her no chance to refuse, he took her hand, and seconds later she was on the dance floor. As the music swelled, Cindy’s words began to fade, though she could still feel the pain in her heart. Tomorrow, maybe, she would call and try to fix things. But for now she smiled as brightly as if she were still at the peak of the day’s happiness, and danced amid her new friends.

25

TINA WONG SIPPED AT THE PAPER CUP OF COLD COFFEE, EVEN THOUGH caffeine had been eating a hole in her stomach for hours. Ben Kardashian, the video tech who’d been cooped up with her in the editing bay all night, looked even worse than she felt, his unshaven face dark with stubble, and eyes so bloodshot it looked as though he’d been out drinking all that time.

But even after working all night, the hour’s worth of tape they’d come up with still wasn’t quite right. But what was missing? Tina had finished all her camera work, completed all the voice-overs.

The interviews melded well, each one flowing smoothly into the next, building the story. Yet she didn’t have the climax. Somehow, despite the grisly horror of everything the hour depicted, it still lacked that final dramatic moment that would tie the whole story together and give it a sense of overwhelming urgency.

Ben leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms and shoulders, rubbed his neck for a moment, then dropped his hands into his lap. “I gotta eat.”

Tina nodded, though she’d barely heard the words. “Why don’t you—” she began, her mind still searching for the missing moment.

Ben cut her off. “No. I need to get out of this room and go somewhere to eat something.”

“Okay,” Tina sighed, leaning back in her own chair. Though she knew food would only distract her from the job at hand, she also knew that Ben was about to get cranky, and she still needed his touch with all the high-tech equipment in the bay in order to finish the final edit of the special. She glanced at her watch: 6:28 A.M. “Why don’t you take half an hour?”

Ben nodded, opened the door to the bay, and left. Outside, Tina could hear the station beginning to come alive with the weekend staff; the soundproof door swing shut, the quiet of the bay closing around her, and she went back to work. Her deadline was ten o’clock; before the special could air, Michael would have to watch it, and he’d undoubtedly want to run it by the legal team. That meant hunting down a couple of lawyers on a Sunday and getting them to come in so they could see what she’d put together in time to make any last-minute changes.

All of which meant she not only had to find her ending, but have it completed by ten.

She was just about to start running the tape for what seemed the millionth time when her cell phone buzzed, vibrating loudly on the metal desk. She found it under a mound of wadded-up sheets of notes and coffee-stained napkins, then swept the trash into a wastebasket with one hand while picking up the phone with the other and looking at the caller ID.

Michael Shaw. Swell — not even seven on Sunday morning yet, and her boss was already on her.

She flipped the phone open and tried not to let her sleepless night show in her voice. “Hello?”

He spoke with no preamble at all. “They found another body, Tina.”

Even as he spoke, the answer to her problem began to form. “What did he take?” she demanded.

“The usual stuff,” Michael said. “And the nose.”

With that final word, the end to her special flashed through her mind as vividly as if it were already on tape. The ending would be perfect now — more than she could ever have hoped for — and Ben Kardashian would know exactly how to do what she needed. “Can I get a photo of the woman before she was mutilated?”

“I don’t know,” Michael replied. “I don’t have much information yet — I called you as soon as I heard. I can give you the woman’s name and address, but for now that’s about it.”

Tina scribbled the information on a napkin, promised Michael the finished special no later than ten, hit one of the speed-dial keys, and waited impatiently for her assistant to pick up her phone. When a sleepy voice finally answered, she didn’t bother with pleasantries any more than Michael Shaw had a minute earlier. “I need a picture, Cheryl. The woman’s name is Molly Roberts, and she lived in Alhambra. Get on the Web and find her — she’ll be on MySpace or Facebook, or one of the dating services. Ben’s out grabbing breakfast, and I need it by the time he gets back.” There wasn’t even a hint of grumbling from Cheryl, though Tina suspected she was silently cursing the day she’d taken her job. She simply took down the information and hung up.

Tina made a mental note to ask Michael to give Cheryl a raise, then dimmed the overhead lights in the editing bay, leaned back in the squeaky chair, and closed her eyes, visualizing how she wanted the handiwork of the Frankenstein Killer to look.

The face she’d constructed with Photoshop, roughly combining the facial features of the murdered women into a composite of whatever the killer was looking for, hadn’t worked nearly as well in reality as in her own visualization. It looked piecemeal — fragmented — and though certainly horrific, hadn’t made a good, cohesive face.

Even worse, it had a hole in its center where a nose should have been, and though she’d experimented with adding various noses, including her own, it hadn’t worked. Partly, of course, it was because the final image was still far too rough; but even more important, as far as Tina was concerned, was the fact that the final image she’d built was incomplete.

With the death of Molly Roberts, though, she could finally complete the picture.

At the end of the hour, she could present to the world the exact face the killer himself was constructing.

And as soon as Ben Kardashian got back, they would go to work.

Tina opened her eyes and smiled.

When she got a photo of Molly Roberts, she’d have the last piece of the puzzle she’d been putting together with Photoshop. She’d finally have a full face, and Ben Kardashian would know exactly how to bring it to life.

And tomorrow morning, they might still not know the name of the Frankenstein Killer, but the entire broadcast world would know the name Tina Wong.

26

CONRAD DUNN OPENED THE DOOR TO THE LABORATORY THAT WAS HIS most private domain and waited a moment before turning on the overhead fluorescent lights. There was something about the laboratory when it was illuminated only by the soft green glow of the sustenance tanks, and the only sound was the equally soft throbbing of the pumps that provided those tanks with the exact level of oxygen they needed to keep their contents as fresh as the day they’d been harvested, that instilled a sense of peace in him that had been rare since the accident that ruined Margot’s beauty.

And nearly nonexistent since the day she died.

Perhaps it was the gentle throbbing of the pumps, which reminded him of Margot’s heartbeat when he used to press his face against her perfect breast. Or the green glow that reminded him of the glint in her eyes when she smiled at him. Or the fact that it was here that he had originally created her. So now he stood quietly inside the door for a moment, just breathing in the calm of this rarely used room.

But a moment was all he could devote to his reverie.

There was work to be done.

He snapped on the overhead lights and shifted his attention to the latest acquisition in the tank.

Opening the lid, with a pair of tongs he lifted out the newest fragment of tissue that had been added to the collection in the tank, then examined it from every angle with a practiced, critical eye.

Danielle had done a superb job, as usual. The choice of Molly Roberts as the donor was perfect: the curve of the nostrils, the straightness of the bridge, were exactly like Margot’s; their perfection was utterly wasted on the bland travesty that had been the rest of the woman’s face. And Danielle had done her work well: the incision was clean, with plenty of surrounding tissue, which would allow him to attach it with ease. Satisfied, he carefully lowered the small mass of skin and cartilage back into the green liquid. Next, he retrieved each of the other fragments in turn, examining them carefully for any signs of deterioration.

They were as perfect as the day Danielle DeLorian had harvested them.

As perfect individually as would be the face they would soon be collectively melded into.

He replaced the cover on the tank, and shifted his attention to the small operating room that was separated from the lab by an airlock that guaranteed nothing could compromise its sterility. Thus, though it had not been used in a very long time, it was in perfect condition for what was about to take place within its walls.

Conrad took two sterile packs of instruments from one of the cabinets and opened them, laying each gleaming metal piece on the instrument tray in the order in which they would be needed. Next he arranged a series of suture packs in the same order, until the precision of the series of scalpels, hemostats, retractors, sponges, gauzes, and sutures lined up on the tray mirrored the precision with which he would carry out the surgery to come. Only when he had made certain that each instrument was perfectly aligned did he finally adjust the tray into position so he could reach whatever he needed from the head of the table.

Closing his eyes, he turned around three times. Then, his eyes still closed, he reached out and closed his fingers around the first object he touched.

It was, of course, the first scalpel he would use to execute the first cut he would make.

Satisfied, he sterilized the scalpel with alcohol and returned it to its place.

He hung the bottle of dextrose with sodium chloride, and readied the IV tube and needle he would attach to it when the time came.

He set three vials of fentanyl on the instrument tray, which would keep his patient peacefully asleep for as long as necessary. The lack of an anesthesiologist would be a handicap, but only a minor one — when he operated, every one of his senses was heightened, and he’d be able to gauge the depth of the patient’s unconsciousness merely by the sound of her breath, and adjust the drugs accordingly.

From another cabinet, he took fresh sterile sheets and draped the table. He hadn’t readied an operating room like this since he was an intern; the nursing staff had done this for so many years now that he’d forgotten how relaxing the ritual could be.

Relaxing and enervating at the same time.

Or perhaps he was enervated by the extraordinary procedures he was about to perform. Not that it would be the first time he’d performed it; indeed, he’d performed it twice before, each time with results that were nothing short of perfect. There was, therefore, nothing to be worried about.

And yet the fluttering in his belly was more than the surge of anticipatory energy he felt before every surgical procedure.

Something still wasn’t quite right.

He moved to the other side of the table and double-checked the dressing materials he would need.

He added a second vial to the tray; it contained the special compound Danielle DeLorian made only for him.

The operating theater was ready.

When the patient was sedated on the table, he would turn on the overhead light, adjust the volume of the strains of Stravinsky, or perhaps Vivaldi, that would flow from the speakers hidden in the walls, and begin.

For now, though, everything was fresh and ready.

Waiting.

And yet that sense of something not quite right — something left undone — some tiny imperfection — still pervaded his spirit.

Then his eyes were caught by the lavender Healing Health Laboratories label on the vial he’d just added to the tray and he knew.

It was that small scratch on Danielle’s neck that he’d seen the day after she harvested Molly Roberts’s single perfect feature.

Conrad felt his blood pressure begin to build as he realized what that scratch must have meant.

Danielle had made a mistake.

Another mistake.

And she’d failed to tell him about it.

She had put herself, and him, and everything, in jeopardy.

Almost as bad, his own subconscious had known about her mistake for days now but failed to warn him. Still, in all fairness, he’d realized what had happened in time to deal with the error.

Again he regarded the lavender label, and the answer to the problem came to him.

Returning to the laboratory, he went to the drug cabinet and quickly found what he was looking for. Filling a syringe from the vial, he carefully replaced the plastic cap on the needle and put the vial back in the cabinet.

From another cabinet, he took the small leather valise he had used in medical school, opened it, and set it on the countertop. Taking a cold pack from the freezer, he put it into the valise, then added a plastic emesis basin and a fresh scalpel.

And, finally, the loaded syringe.

He snapped the clasp on his medical bag, picked it up, and left the laboratory, turning out the lights before he closed and locked the door.

Already, the fluttering in his belly was beginning to ease.

RISA GAZED AT the last two bites of Maria’s perfectly seasoned Chicken Cordon Bleu, decided she could work the calories off with an hour in the gym tomorrow, but ignored the half glass of sauvignon blanc that stood to the right of her plate. The calories from the Cordon Bleu were bad enough — washing them down with the extra ones from the wine was further than she was willing to go, no matter how expensive the bottle had been. Besides, the dining room didn’t feel nearly as conducive to lingering over wine as it usually did, what with Conrad still at Le Chateau tending to patients, and Alison silently pushing lettuce around on her salad plate, leaving the chicken and saffron rice untouched.

“Honey?” she said, cocking her head worriedly. “Is something bothering you?”

Alison shrugged. “I’m just not hungry.” She set her fork down and folded her arms across her chest, then unfolded them as they came into contact with her breasts.

“Are they sore?” Now Risa’s brow was furrowed with worry, though both Conrad and Alison had assured her only this morning that the incisions under her arms from the operation were healing as they should and there was no sign of infection.

“No.” Alison sighed. “It’s not that.”

Risa eased her chair back a few inches. “You’ve been very quiet all day. Didn’t the party go well last night? It sure sounded like everyone had a good time.”

Alison finally looked up, and Risa saw tears pooling in her eyes. “I had a fight with Cindy. She left early.”

“You and Cindy Kearns?” Risa asked as she folded her napkin and laid it next to her plate. “What on earth would you two fight about?”

Alison pushed her plate aside. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right,” Risa said carefully. Cindy and Alison had been friends nearly all their lives, and she couldn’t remember them ever fighting before. Obviously, something serious had happened. Still, she couldn’t imagine them ending their friendship. “Friends have spats, sweetheart,” she finally went on. “I’m sure it will blow over.”

Alison shook her head, and when she finally spoke, she didn’t look at her. “She doesn’t like my Wilson friends. And she doesn’t like me anymore.”

Risa resisted the urge to leave her chair and put her arms around her daughter. Alison remained silent, quietly wiping at a tear with her fingertip. “Well, I think Cindy will come around. You two have been friends for too long to let anything come between you now.” Alison closed her eyes as if to shut the words out, and Risa stood up. “Come on, honey, let’s go curl up on the sofa and watch some television and you’ll feel a lot better in the morning.”

Alison sighed heavily once more and opened her eyes, but still didn’t look her mother in the eye. “I’ve got homework to do,” she said, her voice dull. “I sort of let everything slide before the party.”

She stood up, but Risa could tell by her posture how bad Alison was feeling about whatever had transpired between her and Cindy Kearns. Still, broken friendships were part of growing up. Risa remembered when her own best friend had begun dating her boyfriend before she’d even broken up with him, and afterward she never spoke to the girl again. Nor was there anything her mother or anyone else could have done to help her get through the pain — she’d had to take those days one at a time, and so, too, would Alison.

Nothing she could say would help. Not tonight.

“I’ll come up and tuck you in later,” Risa said, putting her arms around her daughter to give her a reassuring hug. “I’m going to watch Tina Wong’s special — your dad called a couple of hours ago and said it’s going to be quite something.”

“The special, or just Tina?” A flicker of Alison’s usual good humor had broken through the clouds hanging over her.

“Probably both,” Risa replied. “Sure you don’t want to watch with me?”

But Alison shook her head. “I hate the way she treats Dad, like he works for her instead the other way around, and I don’t think she cares how many people get killed as long as she gets more time on TV.” Giving her a peck on the cheek, Alison left the dining room.

Deciding it was worse to waste the last of the sauvignon blanc even if it meant an extra half hour on the treadmill, Risa picked up her wineglass and carried it into the media room, when she dropped onto the sofa and clicked on the television.

Tina Wong’s face appeared, along with a montage of half a dozen other faces, all of which, Risa knew, belonged to girls and young women who had been killed by the man Tina had dubbed the Frankenstein Killer.

Was it possible that she’d figured out who that man was and what he was doing?

Risa settled back on the sofa, ready to find out.

OVER.

After twenty years, her slavery was finally over.

But even as Danielle DeLorian silently echoed the thought for at least the hundredth time in just the last twenty-four hours, it still sounded as empty as her house felt.

Yet the house wasn’t empty: the living room in which she now sat was filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture — and millions more of art — that told everyone who entered exactly how full and successful her life was. Just the chair she sat in — one of the original Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, its frame bolted together rather than welded, as in the chairs built after 1950—had cost her more than she wanted to think about even now. But it had been worth every cent, and only Conrad Dunn understood the subtle joke the chair represented. But then, no one else knew her anywhere near as intimately as Conrad Dunn.

And now, finally, her debt to him was discharged and she would be free of him. Except even that wasn’t true, which was why the thought that it was all finally over rang so hollow. Conrad had promised as much before, promised that he would never demand further payment. And it had always been a lie. The debt would never be discharged, and he would go on making demands, more and more demands, bending her to his will until the day she died.

And there it was — the real thought that had been lurking in the shadows of her consciousness for so long.

The day she died.

She gazed deep into the glass in her hand, the merlot it held turning bloodred in her mind’s eye. Then her eyes left the glass to rove around the room. How would her blood look if it were pooled on the white carpet, or oozing across the ivory leather that covered every piece of furniture in the room?

Suddenly the room — and the thought of it all being finally over — seemed not quite so empty.

All she needed was the courage to do it.

The wine!

Perhaps more wine would give her the strength she would need.

She rose to her feet, crossed to the bar, and was just reaching for the decanter when the doorbell rang.

Danielle’s heart began to pound.

Who would come to her house at this hour? Who would have wound their way up the canyon and the hillside without calling first?

No one.

Yet her doorbell was ringing.

Just as she had rung Molly Roberts’s bell.

Was someone standing on her porch cradling a dead animal in his arms, as she had stood waiting for Molly Roberts? She set the wineglass on the bar next to the decanter and walked through the arched doorway leading to the foyer, then peered at the small monitor attached to the camera outside.

Conrad Dunn!

Maybe she should simply turn away from the door and ignore the bell until he gave up and went away. Except that she already understood all too well that Conrad Dunn would never go away.

She turned back the dead bolt and opened the door. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Don’t you think I know it’s still not over?”

“Actually, Daniel,” Conrad said, setting his valise on the foyer table, “it is.”

Just the sound of her birth name sparked a surge of anger in her. “Danielle,” she shot back. “My name is Danielle.”

“Daniel, Danielle, what does it matter at this point?” He was moving closer to her now, and there was a menacing calm to his voice that made her step back. “Too many mistakes, Daniel,” he went on. “I don’t like mistakes. You know that.”

Danielle took a reflexive step backward, felt her heel catch on the edge of the runner that stretched the full length of the large entry hall, and saw Conrad move even closer and reach out to her with his left arm. But instead of catching her before she fell, he spun her around, his right arm slipping around her neck as the weight of his body slammed her against the wall. A second later she felt his right forearm tighten around her neck, and though she could still breathe, she felt strangely light-headed, as if about to pass out….

WHEN SHE AWOKE, Danielle was lying on the floor in her entry hall. Conrad Dunn’s face was hovering over her, and as she looked at him, she saw his lips twist into a dark smile.

“Awake?” he asked. Instinctively, Danielle nodded. “Good,” Conrad went on, and even as he uttered the word, Danielle felt an odd pressure in her right arm.

“What are—” she began, struggling to form the words as her mind shook off the last of the unconsciousness that had overcome her.

“Don’t try to talk,” he told her. “In a couple of minutes you won’t be able to, anyway.” He held up an empty hypodermic syringe. “Pancuronium,” he said. “A wonderful drug, actually. You can’t move, but you stay conscious and hear, see, and feel everything that’s going on.”

Danielle tried to struggle now, but it was far too late — the drug was already coursing through her veins, sapping the strength of every muscle in her body. “Whaa—” she began again, but even the single syllable she was able to form emerged as nothing more than an unintelligible moan.

“This time it really is over, Daniel,” she heard Conrad say. Though she could no longer make her eyes follow his movements, she could see him standing up and moving toward the table where he’d set his medical bag. A moment later he was back, standing above her, his hands covered with surgical gloves.

In his left hand he held an enamel emesis basin, which he set on the floor beside her.

In his right hand the blade of a scalpel glimmered in the light of the chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

“I’m going to put you back the way you were, Daniel,” he said as he knelt next to her. “That’s going to be your punishment for the mistakes you’ve made.” Danielle felt his fingers untying the dressing gown that was all she was wearing, and a moment later felt the chill of the air as he pulled the robe away. Then he was touching her breasts, fondling them almost like a lover. “Some of my best work,” he said.

My work! Danielle wanted to scream out. It wasn’t your work at all! I was the one who found them, and I was the one who figured out how to preserve them!

Though not so much as a hint of sound had emerged from her lips, it was as if Conrad knew exactly what she had said.

“You taught me so much, Daniel,” he said. He was smiling again, and Danielle felt a sudden searing pain as the scalpel slid deep into the flesh under her left breast. “And not just about surgery, either,” he went on.

He changed the angle of the scalpel now, and Danielle felt an agony worse than she could ever have imagined.

“You’re a freak,” Conrad said, his voice taking on a cold clinical tone that made every one of his words slash as deeply into her psyche as the scalpel did into her body. “I knew that when I first met you, you know. But I knew you’d do whatever I asked, once I gave you what you wanted.” The blade sank deeper, and a silent scream rose inside Danielle, but she made no sound at all. “But you made mistakes,” Conrad went on. “And now they’re going to find you. And you’ll talk. You won’t keep my secrets the way I always kept yours.” He suddenly slashed the scalpel upward to rip her breast from her chest. “Except they won’t find Danielle, will they?”

He gazed down into her eyes, and Danielle knew he was looking for the pain she was feeling, wanting to savor the torture his scalpel wielded, and she silently prayed that her eyes revealed nothing of her agony, that all he saw was the same hollow emptiness that she’d been feeling only a few minutes ago.

Above her, Conrad’s eyes glowed with hatred, and as she stared up at him, unable to look away even if she wanted to, she knew that the hatred had always been there, had always been simmering beneath Conrad Dunn’s placid surface. Smarter than you, she wanted to whisper. I always was, and I always will be.

As if he’d heard the words, Conrad slashed at her body once again, and this time Danielle felt it tear through skin and muscle from just below her breastbone to just above her groin. Her blood was flowing freely now, and she knew that soon — but not soon enough — she would fall into the unconsciousness that would come just before death. So here, tonight, in the emptiness of her own home, Conrad was doing what she knew she would not have found the strength to do herself.

Now she felt his hands plunging into her, tearing at her, pulling at her guts, ripping at her organs.

“They won’t even recognize you,” Conrad was saying now, but finally his voice was fading, seeming to come from somewhere far away. And the pain, the searing, unbearable torture as he ripped at every nerve in her body, was fading, too. “All they’ll find is whatever I choose to leave. Scraps, Daniel. That’s all that will be left — all you ever were is what I made you, and now I’m taking it all back.”

The last of the pain was dying away now, and suddenly she felt herself rising out of the body she had hated for so long, the body she had tried to mold, tried to change to fit the spirit she knew was truly hers. Oddly, the ears still seemed to work, and the eyes as well. Yet as she watched Conrad Dunn rip the glands from her body, tear out her adrenals and her thymus, and knowing exactly the purpose to which he was going to put those precious organs, she no longer felt any pain at all.

And now the sound of Conrad’s voice was dying away, and so, too, was the carnage that lay on the floor below her. She was floating now, floating upward and away. Away from the body she’d always hated, from the house that had always felt empty, from the life that had never felt right.

Without knowing it, Conrad Dunn was finally giving her peace….

CONRAD DUNN GAZED down into Danielle DeLorian’s eyes and knew it was over. There was a blankness in them that told him she was dead, and the flow of blood that had gushed from her vessels only a moment ago had already slowed to a mere trickle.

Yet in his mind he could still hear her voice, whispering to him as if she were right behind him. They were never your secrets, Conrad. You remember, don’t you? I made the compounds that made it all possible. I taught you how to make everything perfect. Smarter than you, Danielle’s voice finally whispered. I always was, and I always will be.

Tearing the last scraps of useful tissue from the corpse on the floor, Conrad Dunn closed his ears to the terrible words.

Danielle was gone and would never be back, and had never been his greatest creation at all.

His greatest creation had been Margot.

And Margot, he knew, would be back.

27

RISA HAD PICKED UP THE REMOTE CONTROL FIVE TIMES TO SHUT OFF Tina Wong’s special on what she’d dubbed “The Frankenstein Killer,” and five times she put it aside, and felt a small wave of shame each time she set the remote down. Now, as grotesque images of Molly Roberts filled the screen — some of them so blurry they were barely recognizable as having once been a human being, but others so vivid that she had to turn her head away — she knew she wasn’t going to turn the TV off.

She was going to watch it through to the end.

Then maybe she’d call Michael and ask him why he’d agreed to put the show on at all. Or maybe she wouldn’t, since she already knew why he’d okayed it — ratings. And the ratings, she was sure, would be just as high as Michael expected.

The section on Molly Roberts came to an end a few moments later, and Tina Wong, her expression a careful mask of concern for the victims that didn’t quite succeed in concealing the triumphant gleam in her eyes, was now recapping the cases one by one, giving her an opportunity to show the worst of the carnage yet one more time. Risa pulled a light silk throw over her knees to quell the chill she felt, and drank the last of her wine.

And then, in the last minutes of the show, an oval-shaped frame containing nothing inside appeared on the screen. “What, then, is the Frankenstein Killer trying to make?” Tina Wong asked. “Why is he selecting the women he’s chosen? What is it they have in common? Certainly not their age or their looks. The youngest was in high school when he attacked, the oldest in her mid-thirties. Physically, they were all different, but he took certain things from all of them. The adrenal and thymus glands. All of them were mutilated, but from each he also took a facial feature. Is he is collecting parts to construct a new face? This reporter, at least, believes that that is exactly what he is doing. But what does this face look like? Who is the woman he is trying to put together? Let’s see what she looks like.” As Tina Wong continued to talk, naming each of the victims and identifying which of their features had been taken, each feature appeared in the oval, and a face began to emerge.

And as the face took shape, Risa found herself leaning forward, her head cocked as she gazed at the image on the screen.

“Who is she?” Tina Wong asked as the last of the features appeared and some kind of computer animation filled in eyes and melded all the features smoothly together into a face. “Or should I ask, ‘Who was she?’ because it is highly likely that the woman he is trying to re-create is dead. So, then, who was she? His wife? His sister? Perhaps his mother as he remembers her from his boyhood?” Hair now appeared on the face that filled the screen, framing the features, but arranged so none of them, including the ears, was obscured.

And finally the face was finished. It was recognizable as human, but there was something wrong with it — it hardly seemed a face at all. Though the features struck Risa as individually quite nice, the whole seemed oddly to be less than the sum of the parts. The face had no personality; it was the kind of face you’d never see in a crowd and would never be able to describe later. And yet, as Tina Wong began exhorting her viewers to try to identify the woman whose face had been constructed out of the features torn from other women’s faces, Risa had the odd sensation that she had indeed seen the face before.

But where?

“Who is the woman that this modern-day Frankenstein is trying to create?” Tina asked as the camera cut to her sitting on a stool in front of a wall-sized rendition of the assembled face. “If you know who this woman might be — if you recognize her as someone you once knew — call the police. Maybe together we can stop this monster before he kills again. But if we don’t stop him, we know he will kill again. Maybe someone in your neighborhood. Maybe someone in your family.” She fell silent for a perfectly timed moment, then: “Maybe even you. I’m Tina Wong. Thank you for watching.”

A computer commercial came on, and Risa finally clicked off the television, but the memory of the strange composite face stayed with her. The face had reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on who it might be.

Maybe an old client?

But already the image was fading from her mind. Not that it mattered, really. Those artists’ renditions never wound up looking like the person anyway, and there had been nothing particularly memorable about this face to begin with.

She folded up the throw and laid it across the arm of the sofa, took her empty wineglass to the kitchen, then headed upstairs, turning most of the lights out as she went, but leaving enough on to offer Conrad a welcome when he came home.

Alison’s light was still on, so she knocked softly on the bedroom door and went in.

Alison was at her desk, textbooks open in front of her, her fingers flying over her computer keyboard.

“Hi, honey. It’s getting late.”

“I know,” Alison said. “I’m almost finished.” She turned in her chair to face her mother, and Risa was relieved to see that her daughter didn’t look nearly as depressed as she had at dinner. “So how was Tina’s special?”

“Actually, it was even worse than I expected. The charming Ms. Wong went way overboard, but I’m sure she’ll get the ratings she was looking for. I suspect your father can hardly wait for her to move on.”

“So what was the worst part of it?” Alison asked.

Risa’s brows arched. “Probably Tina’s hypothesis that whoever’s killing all these women is trying to re-create someone by using other women’s body parts.”

Alison’s eyes widened. “Gross!”

“Oh, it was gross, all right. But the weird thing was, when she put up a composite of the face, I had the strangest feeling that I’d seen it before. Like it was someone I know…or at least once knew well enough so she looked familiar. But I can’t put my finger on it.”

“So what did she look like?” Alison asked.

Risa thought a moment and shrugged. “That’s the other weird thing. I can’t really tell you what she looked like — it was just a woman’s face. Certainly not ugly, or even just homely. But not really pretty, either. Just sort of — I don’t know — nondescript, I guess.” She moved closer to Alison, bent over, and kissed her on the cheek. “Actually, I’m glad you didn’t see the show — it would give you nightmares. Speaking of which,” she added, straightening up, “don’t forget it’s a school night. I’m going to go to bed and read until Conrad gets home.”

“Okay. ’Night.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t.”

Alison turned back to her keyboard, and Risa went to her bedroom, undressed, and put on her nightgown. But when she finally slid into bed, picked up her book, and tried to start reading, she couldn’t concentrate. Instead of taking in the words on the page, she kept thinking about the nondescript face from Tina’s special, and the nagging feeling that it was somehow familiar, despite its utter forgetability. Maybe it was the hair — maybe she’d have recognized her if the rendition had shown her with blond hair, or short hair.

Or maybe it was nothing at all, and the face had simply been so bland it reminded her of everyone and no one at the same time.

She knew if she kept thinking about it, she wasn’t going to sleep at all tonight. Deciding that if it was still bothering her in the morning, she’d watch the show again on TiVo, she turned determinedly back to her book.

ALISON CLOSED the lid of her laptop. Even with the distraction of trying to figure out how to make things right with Cindy, she’d still gotten a good start on two of the papers due before the end of the week. If Cindy had replied to her e-mail or responded to the Instant Message she’d sent when she saw that her oldest friend had logged on to MySpace, she would probably have finished at least one of the papers. But Cindy logged off without even acknowledging that she was online, and Alison’s hurt at the snub had been gnawing at her ever since.

She stood up and stretched, but didn’t feel like going to bed — she’d only think about the fight with Cindy, and dreams with her best friend walking away, telling her to “Go play with your new friends,” would haunt her again tonight.

Maybe she’d just read awhile.

But none of the books on her nightstand inspired her.

Maybe she’d watch Tina Wong’s special. She might recognize the face her mom thought looked familiar. At least it would keep her mind off Cindy Kearns and her other old friends.

Alison put on her bathrobe, padded downstairs in her slippers, and closed the door to the media room. Curling up on the sofa, she clicked on the TV, found the show on the TiVo list, and snuggled in to watch.

And instantly found Tina Wong’s material as disgusting as her mother had said it was. What was her dad thinking, letting this go on? Feeling faintly sick at the bloody images flashing across the screen, she fast-forwarded to the very end, where her mother had told her the face slowly came together. Clicking the TiVo back to PLAY, she watched in fascination as the blank face began to fill in.

Then, when it was complete, she paused the image.

The face did look familiar. The trouble was, it seemed flat, and there was no life to it. Nor did it have the normal contours of a real face; instead, it looked more like a balloon with features glued on so well they seemed to have merged with the rubber.

But it was still a balloon.

And yet, something about the features…she gazed at the screen for a long time, trying to recall where she’d seen this woman, and then it came to her.

But it wasn’t possible.

Was it?

Goose bumps crawled over her arms and a cold chill ran through her.

She clicked off the television and hurried upstairs, grateful that the light was still on in her mother’s bedroom and the door stood slightly ajar.

“Mom?” she said with a tremble in her voice as she pushed the door farther open.

Her mother looked up over the top of her reading glasses.

“I watched Tina Wong’s special.”

Her mother frowned, and looked at the clock. “Honey, it’s almost midnight.”

“I know. But I also know who that face reminds you of.”

Her mother lowered her book and took off her reading glasses. “Who?”

“Margot Dunn.”

Her mother’s jaw dropped open. “Margot?” she said. “Sweetheart, Margot Dunn was an international supermodel — she was beyond beautiful. And the face that Tina Wong showed was…” Risa searched for the right word, then shrugged. “…pretty ordinary.”

“I know. But if that face hadn’t been round — if it had had the kind of angles Margot Dunn’s had—” She stopped abruptly, seeing the doubt on her mother’s face, and shifted gears. “Whoever’s killing those women is some kind of weirdo. What if he was obsessed with Margot Dunn? What if—”

“What if you go to bed?” Risa declared. “I think you’ve been reading way too many supermarket tabloids.” She cocked her head. “You didn’t watch the whole thing, did you? It’ll give you the worst kind of—”

“I fast-forwarded to the end. And if I have nightmares, I’ll come crawl in bed with you like I did when I was little.”

“Not with me and Conrad, you won’t,” her mother told her. “Now off to bed. And think good thoughts before you go to sleep, okay? I think maybe I should call your father in the morning and lodge a complaint about the lovely Tina.”

“Come on — she’s just doing her job,” Alison said, then kissed her mother. “And no matter what you think,” she added as she left the room, “I bet I’m right. I bet it is some nut who’s got a thing about Margot Dunn.”

WHEN ALISON WAS GONE, Risa put the reading glasses back on and picked up her book again. But Alison’s words were like worms burrowing holes in her concentration, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to get through another page.

Margot Dunn? The image at the end of the show hadn’t looked anything like Margot.

Had it?

Of course not.

And yet…

Before she’d even made a conscious decision, Risa slipped out of bed, pulled on her robe, shoved her feet into her slippers, and made her way down the darkened stairs.

In the media room, she sat on the still-warm couch where Alison had curled up, turned the television on and fast-forwarded to the end of the special.

She paused it when the composite filled the screen, as Alison had not long before.

And as she gazed at the image, she realized that something about that face did, indeed, remind her of Margot.

But that was ridiculous. The woman depicted on the screen was pretty enough, but hardly beautiful. If she had a picture of Margot, she thought, the differences would be apparent. She’d see it, and so would Alison.

Except that there were no pictures of Margot in the house; the only ones she’d seen were in the weird room in the basement Conrad had called the Margot Museum.

Had he cleaned it out yet? Maria hadn’t said anything about clearing anything from the basement.

Risa turned off the television, got up, and walked through the house to the kitchen, then into the stairwell that led down to the basement.

She could hear the machinery of the house humming steadily.

She switched on the solitary light that was mounted halfway down the stairs, descended into the vast area beneath the house, and started down the dim hallway to the storeroom that had held all of Margot’s things.

Twenty yards away she could once again smell the sweet scent of the perfume that still pervaded the area.

She opened the door and reached in to turn on the light. The room was exactly as it had been before — though Conrad had told her he would have it dismantled, he obviously hadn’t. And as she gazed around at the pictures of Margot Dunn, she realized that Alison had been right: the resemblance to the composite image Tina Wong had created was definitely there.

Risa moved slowly around the museum, looking closely at each of the old photographs of Conrad Dunn’s first wife, and with each image she studied, the truth of it became clearer. It wasn’t that the features stolen from each of the dead women were different from Margot’s counterparts, but that Margot’s face had been shaped differently, the framework of her cheekbones and jaw and upper skull all combining to support each of her features at the best angle to show them off and meld them into the perfect beauty that had made Margot famous.

She scanned the images one more time. Yes, the resemblance, at least feature by feature, was uncanny. But what did it mean?

She turned away from the last one, the huge blow-up of the Vogue cover that had been Margot’s favorite, and her eyes fell on the mannequin that stood below it.

It had been displaying the dress Margot wore for the Vogue shoot, but it now stood naked, stripped of the elegant black dress.

Except she saw that it wasn’t quite naked; there was something pinned to it.

A photograph.

Another photo of Margot?

Risa moved closer, reached out, and pulled the eight-by-ten loose, holding it so the light from Margot’s vanity fell fully upon it.

And she froze.

The picture wasn’t of Margot Dunn at all.

It was of Alison.

And the dress Alison wore in it was the black Valentino that had hung on the mannequin the last time she’d been in this room.

The room seemed to swirl around her, and she sank onto the velvet vanity stool, the photograph of her daughter clutched in her hand.

CONRAD OPENED the closet door in the dressing room adjoining his private office and found a clean shirt, fresh from the laundry. The clean one would betray no evidence of his visit to Danielle, and the one he was wearing would soon be burned in the furnace below his house. He shook the clean shirt out and unbuttoned the collar, but before he could change into it, the cell phone buzzed in his pocket. Frowning, he glanced at the caller ID.

The silent alarm in the room where all of Margot’s things were gathered had been set off by the motion detector.

Damn.

Abandoning the clean shirt, he left his office and took the private elevator to the underground garage of Le Chateau. But instead of getting in his car and driving through the twisting streets that would get him up to his home, he unlocked a nondescript door that appeared to hide nothing more than a storage closet and turned on the lights.

Behind a sliding door at the back of the closet, a series of recessed lights illuminated a steep stairway that led directly up through a tunnel from Le Chateau to the private lab connected to the basement of his house.

The lab that only he and Danielle DeLorian had ever used.

Taking the stairs two at a time, he unlocked the laboratory door, switched on the lights, and looked quickly around.

Everything was as it should be. The tanks were undisturbed, the organs he’d harvested from Danielle floating in the gel exactly as he’d left them before he’d gone back to his office to change his shirt.

He moved through the laboratory and paused at the door that opened directly into the room where Margot’s treasures were on display.

He could see a line of light beneath that door.

Sighing tiredly, knowing what he would have to do, he opened the door.

RISA’S HEAD SNAPPED UP when she heard the sound of a door opening from behind the dressing screen in the back corner.

“Hello, Risa,” Conrad said softly as he stepped into the room.

She rose from the vanity stool, instinctively trying to hide the photograph of Alison behind her back, her mind racing. What was Conrad doing here? Where had he come from?

“Are you looking for something?” Conrad asked as he approached, then stopped and frowned. “What’s that behind your back?”

“N-Nothing,” Risa stammered, staring at the spatters of blood on his shirt.

Conrad’s gaze flicked to the mannequin, and a slight smile came over his lips. “Ah! The picture of Alison. Doesn’t she look lovely in that dress?”

He stepped closer, reaching out as if to take the picture from her, and Risa took a step back.

Conrad’s smile faded. “She’s going to be beautiful,” he said. “Did you know that her face has the exact same bone structure as Margot’s?”

And in an instant the truth — the unimaginable truth — exploded in Risa’s mind.

She had to get Alison out of the house!

She turned toward the door, but it was too late. In two strides Conrad was next to her, his right arm curling around her neck. “I’m going to show you something, Risa,” he whispered in her ear. “Something wonderful.”

The pressure on her neck grew, and though she could still breathe, she felt herself starting to black out.

“But you have to behave,” Conrad whispered. “Do you understand?”

As her vision began to fail her, Risa managed a slight nod.

The pressure on her neck eased slightly, and Conrad began to move her toward the dressing screen.

Even if she could scream, she knew no one would hear her. The house was empty, except for Alison, who was two floors away.

Without a struggle, Risa let him walk her through the door that lay behind the screen.

28

THE PRESSURE ON RISA’S NECK EASED JUST ENOUGH THAT SHE DIDN’T black out, and Conrad’s grip on her arm kept her from falling even though her knees were buckling.

Stay calm, she told herself. Stay calm and save Alison.

Having moved her through the door behind Margot’s changing screen, he slammed it shut behind him.

Looking around, it seemed she’d sunk into a nightmare.

Everywhere she looked there were tanks filled with a greenish fluid, and objects floating in them.

Grisly objects.

Objects that looked as if they had been cut away from human corpses.

Or living human beings.

“My laboratory,” she heard Conrad say. “This is where I do all the truly important work.” His stress on the penultimate word sent a chill through her. “Interesting, aren’t they?” he said as his eyes followed her gaze to the objects in the tanks. “They don’t look like much at the moment, but wait until tomorrow.” Risa, repeating the two words—Keep calm—over and over in her mind, tore her eyes away from the tanks. “T-Tomorrow?” she rasped, her throat raw from the pressure of Conrad’s arm.

“Alison’s surgery,” he said, still moving her through the laboratory and into the operating room, where motion-sensitive switches turned on blindingly bright overhead lights.

Risa blinked in the sudden glare, saw the operating table, an IV stand, monitors, instrument trays already laid out — everything a surgeon would need.

All of it there.

All of it ready.

She struggled to comprehend what she thought she’d heard him say.

Alison’s surgery?

What was he talking about?

Then her mind flashed back to the photograph of Alison in Margot’s dress.

Then further back, to the television special she’d watched that evening.

“No,” she whispered, barely able to hear her own choking voice.

Instead of answering her, he strong-armed her into a metal chair, then bound her arms and legs to it with surgical tape. She saw him step out into the laboratory and tap at a computer keyboard. A moment later one of the large wall-mounted monitors on the wall of the surgery room came to life.

As Conrad returned from the laboratory, Alison’s face, at least three times larger than life, appeared on the monitor.

Risa gazed at the image of her beautiful daughter.

“It’s her features,” he said. “That’s the problem — nature was not as kind to her as it should have been.” Risa felt her blood run cold.

“Now you’ll see how God intended Alison to look.” He flicked some kind of remote control toward the computer in the laboratory and the image on the monitor began to change.

As Risa watched in growing terror, Alison’s face slowly morphed into a perfect replication of Margot Dunn.

“You see?” Conrad said, his glistening eyes fixed on the monitor. “That is what God intended, and that is what I am going to do.” Risa’s belly churned, and for a moment she thought she might throw up.

“It’s going to be quite simple,” he went on. He pressed the remote again, and Alison’s face reappeared, this time with black ink marks around her eyes, her nose, and her lips. “And her ears, of course,” he said. “All the soft tissue. That’s the wonderful thing about Alison — her underlying bone structure is perfect. The moment I met her, I knew. It was as if I could see right through her flesh to the perfection of her bones.” Risa struggled against the surgical tape that bound her to the chair. “No,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Not Alison. I’m not going to let you—” “Let me?” Conrad cut in, wheeling around to face her, his eyes glittering as they bored into her. “You should be thanking me!” Risa gazed up at him, no longer recognizing the man she’d married. It was as if Conrad had become someone else, someone gripped in an obsession she’d assumed was only a fading memory.

Margot.

He was consumed with her, and she was dead, and now he was going to re-create her.

And make Alison — her daughter — disappear.

Risa scanned the room, looking for a weapon.

If she could knock him out — if she could get out of the surgery and the lab and call the police—“You’ll thank me,” Conrad said. “And so will Alison.” “No,” Risa said again, struggling harder against her bonds. “I won’t—” “You won’t do anything,” Conrad said, as if instructing a child. “It’s too late for that now. It’s not up to you. It’s up to me.” Now all the doubts she’d ever felt about Conrad flooded back.

The night in Paris, when he’d called her Margot.

The shrine in the basement that no woman would ever have built to herself.

His careful seduction of Alison, until she actually wanted him to cut into her body, to make it different.

To make it beautiful.

And she’d let it happen. She—not Alison — had let it happen. She never should have married Conrad, never should have moved into his house, never should have let him so much as look at her daughter, let alone touch her.

Cut her.

Change her.

“No!” she screamed now, her guilt coalescing into pure fury. With a sudden lunge, she tore free from her bindings, her rage lending her more strength than she could have imagined. She hurled herself toward the tray of surgical instruments, reaching for a scalpel or a pair of scissors or anything else that came to hand.

Cut him!

That’s what she had to do.

Cut him, as he was going to cut Alison.

Cut him, before he could cut Alison.

Cut him, and kill him, and—

The chair, still bound to her right leg, caught on the corner of one of the cabinets, and she lost her balance. She felt herself plunging forward and threw out her arms to break her fall, and — Conrad’s arm was once again around her neck, and he was squeezing. Once more the blackness gathered around her, and once more she tried to force herself to stay calm, to do whatever she had to do to save Alison.

Too late.

The blackness closed in, and she felt herself slipping away.

“Alison,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry…so very sorry….”

• • •

CONRAD SWITCHED OUT the last of the lights in the laboratory. It had been a long, complicated day, and he could feel the exhaustion in his bones.

He needed sleep.

A good night’s sleep, given the surgery he would perform tomorrow.

A few minutes later he gently opened Alison’s bedroom door and peered inside.

A pink nightlight softly illuminated the girl’s young, elastic skin. Her breathing was slow and regular, and he knew that her strong young body would easily withstand the many grueling hours of surgery ahead.

It would be worth it.

Worth it for her, and worth it for him.

Alison Shaw would be more beautiful than she had ever imagined she could be.

And finally, Margot would once again be his.

“Tomorrow, then, my love,” he whispered.

Closing the door, Conrad Dunn went to bed.

29

ALISON FELT THE DIFFERENCE THE MOMENT SHE ENTERED THE DINING room the next morning. Somehow, it seemed larger and emptier than usual. Conrad sat at the head of the long table, and the morning sun was bright on the garden outside the French doors. But there was no sign of her mother, nor did Maria appear with her orange juice as she always had. Then, as she slipped into the chair at her usual place, she noticed that her mother’s place wasn’t set for breakfast.

“Conrad?” Her stepfather’s eyes shifted from the morning paper folded neatly in front of him. “Where’s Mom?”

“I think she must have had an early appointment. She was already gone when I came down.”

As his eyes returned to the newspaper, Alison glanced toward the kitchen. “Is Maria here?”

“She’s not coming in today — something about her mother having to go to Immigration, I think.”

Alison cocked her head. “She usually takes me to school if Mom has to work early.”

“Not a problem,” Conrad said. “I can take you.”

Alison went to the sideboard, where a pot of coffee was sitting, then went to the kitchen, found a bowl and cereal, added milk to it, and returned to the table.

Conrad pushed his newspaper aside. “Just the two of us,” he said. “Kind of nice, isn’t it?” Before she could answer, Conrad spoke again, only now he was looking at her the way he had when she was at Le Chateau, recovering from her surgery. “How are you feeling? No fever? Pain?”

“I’m fine,” she said. But instead of going back to his paper, Conrad continued to look at her, and suddenly she wanted to be out of the house.

Something, she was certain, wasn’t right.

She glanced at her watch.

“Oh, my God! I’m going to be late,” she said, though she still had almost thirty minutes before either her mother or Maria usually drove her down to school. She dug into her bowl of cereal, eating as fast as she could.

“Relax,” Conrad told her. “We have all the time in the world.”

Alison cast around in her mind for something — anything — she could use as an excuse to go to school early. “I have to go to cheerleader sign-ups this morning,” she said. “Maybe I’d better call Tasha and have her pick me up.”

“I’ll drive you,” Conrad replied. He reached for his coffee cup, then pulled his hand away. “Better not have any more of that,” he went on, his eyes fixing on Alison. “Big surgery today.”

“I’ll get my books,” she said, finishing the last of her own coffee. “Be back in a minute. Want me to meet you in the garage?”

Conrad hesitated, then smiled. “Perfect.”

Alison ran upstairs and threw her books into her backpack. She grabbed her cell phone and clipped it on, then looked in her closet for the green vest she always wore with her jeans and yellow silk tank top.

Not there.

Had Maria taken it to the cleaners?

No — her mom had borrowed it the other day when she went to lunch with Alexis.

Grabbing her backpack, she hurried down the hall to the master suite, went directly to her mother’s dressing room and began pulling open drawers until she found the vest. Pulling it on, she was about to turn off the light and head back downstairs when she saw her mother’s big Louis Vuitton bag sitting on the dresser next to the vanity.

The bag that her mother never left behind if she was working.

Never left behind, and never forgot.

Suddenly, the house seemed even emptier than when she’d gone into the dining room. A knot of fear began to tighten in her belly.

Where was her mother?

Maybe she’d just forgotten her bag.

But then when she opened the bag and looked inside, she found her mother’s cell phone, her appointment book, and her keys.

Without her keys, how had she gone? Could someone have picked her up? Alexis, maybe?

But her mother hadn’t said anything last night about an early appointment, and even if she’d had one, she would have come in this morning and said good-bye.

Wouldn’t she?

What was going on?

What had happened?

Something had happened — she was sure of it now.

Suddenly, every dark thought she’d ever had about Conrad came flooding back.

And she remembered the way he’d been looking at her.

And what he’d said:

Just the two of us…. We have all the time in the world.

What was happening? What was he up to?

Out!

She had to get out of the house and get away from Conrad, and she had to do it now.

But where could she go?

Her dad! All she had to do was call her dad and tell him to come and get her.

She turned away from the dressing room and started toward the bedroom door, fishing in her backpack. She was almost at the door when she found the phone, opened it, and speed-dialed her dad’s cell phone.

But before it even began to ring, Conrad Dunn was looming in the doorway, blocking her way.

“This isn’t the way I wanted this to go,” he said softly.

“Where’s Mom?” Alison demanded, her voice low. He moved toward her, and she backed away. “What did you do?” she yelled. “What did you do to my mother?”

Reacting to her shouts as if jolted by electricity, Conrad’s right arm shot out and his fingers closed on her wrist. He jerked her around, and the phone flew from her hand, hitting the wall four feet away and falling to the floor.

“I’ll show you,” he whispered, his voice so low and cold, the words filled her with a new terror.

“No!” she cried out, trying to jerk her arm loose from his grip. “Get away from me!”

But instead of letting go, Conrad’s arms enfolded her in a bear hug that felt as if it would squeeze the breath from her lungs, and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t get even one of her hands loose to hit him or scratch him.

He pushed her against the wall, and one of his arms moved up around her neck and she felt the pressure of it.

“You need to go to sleep for a little while,” Conrad whispered in her ear. “And when you wake up, you’re going to be calm again, and I’m going to show you what’s going to happen, and you’re going to be beautiful. So beautiful…”

His words echoing in her mind, darkness swirled around the periphery of Alison’s vision, and with her terror becoming panic, she willingly gave herself over to the dark swirl.

• • •

MICHAEL SHAW WALKED OUT of the boardroom with his ears ringing, which told him his blood pressure was far past the point his doctor would call “critical.” Still, he wasn’t dead, nor was he about to take a fall for the legal team that had signed off on Tina’s special without anticipating the reaction from the TV audience. The reactions ranged from the threat of a lawsuit from a distant relative of one of the victims, who was claiming “severe trauma” due to her third cousin’s corpse being shown on television, to the threat of an injunction from the LAPD itself.

By the time the station’s owners had gathered in the boardroom, the finger-pointing had begun and the legal team, being lawyers, were already claiming they hadn’t signed off on exactly the show that had aired.

They claimed there had been changes made.

Michael finally called a ten-minute break, if for no other reason than to let his blood pressure settle down a little. He needed fresh air, fresh coffee — the hell with his blood pressure — and a fresh shot at getting Tina Wong herself into the boardroom. Maybe between them they could convince the suits that the ratings would be worth the trouble, and the increased advertising rates would more than make up for the cost of defending against the third cousin, whoever she was.

“Coffee, please, Jane,” he said as he passed his assistant’s desk on the way to his office.

“Scott is on line one for you.”

“Got it. And find Tina Wong and tell her to be here in ten minutes. Ten, not eleven. And I’m telling her, not asking her.”

He collapsed into the squeaky old chair that should have collapsed years ago but wouldn’t quite give up the ghost, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone. “Hi,” he said.

“How’s it going?”

He took another deep breath. “Don’t ask — it’s a nightmare around here. What’s up?”

“Risa was supposed to show a house to a couple of my friends this morning, and she stood them up.”

Michael frowned. “Risa stood them up? Impossible.”

“That’s what I told them, but they say she didn’t show. And she’s not answering her cell phone, either. Any idea what might be going on?”

“Risa’s never missed an appointment in her life. And she doesn’t get sick, so they must have gotten the time or the place wrong.”

“She confirmed with them yesterday afternoon,” Scott said.

“And she’s not answering her phone? That’s not good.” He sipped at the coffee. “Let me check into it.”

“Okay. Sorry to add more to your load this morning.”

“It’s okay. I’ll call you back.”

Michael hung up and immediately dialed Risa’s cell, but it rang through to her voice mail. “Risa, it’s Michael. It’s eight-forty on Monday morning. Please call me as soon as you can.”

Jane brought in a fresh cup of coffee, and he tried to get his mind back to the problem in the boardroom. Somewhere on his desk there was a sign-off from the lawyer who had seen the final edit of the show, and he intended to find it. He began searching through the clutter, hoping he hadn’t given it to someone to file. If he had, they’d never find it.

He picked up his cell phone to flip through the pile of papers underneath it and noticed that he’d missed a call.

Risa?

No. It was from Alison’s phone, and she hadn’t left a message. And that was as strange as Risa missing an appointment, because Alison always left messages — it had become a game with them over the years, and they often had long, involved, convoluted — and generally very funny — conversations back and forth via voice mail.

There was no way Alison would call him and not leave a message, even if it was only some kind of fake gibberish he wouldn’t be able to understand but would spend hours trying to decipher. He speed-dialed her phone, knowing she’d be in class and most likely had turned it off.

Sure enough, her voice mail came on. “It’s me, cupcake,” he said. “Call me at the office as soon as you can, okay? Call me between classes. It’s important.” He hung up, but the ringing in his ears told him his blood pressure was not better, and it was now accompanied by a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He spotted the sign-off from the lawyer pinned to the cork board on the wall next to his desk and pulled it down. But now his mind was no longer on the meeting in the boardroom.

Alison had called but left no message.

Risa failed to show up for an appointment.

Something was wrong.

He hit the intercom button. “Jane, get me the Wilson Academy.”

A moment later Jane’s voice came over the intercom. “It’s ringing on line two.”

“Good morning, Wilson Academy,” an efficient female voice answered on the third ring.

“Hello — this is Michael Shaw, Alison Shaw’s father. I have an urgent situation and need to speak with her as soon as possible.”

“Just a moment,” the voice said. “Let me see where she is right now.” There was a long pause, then the voice came back on the line: “Mr. Shaw? Alison isn’t here today. Nor have we received a notice of an excused absence.” Michael read the careful phrasing very clearly: they thought Alison was cutting school.

Another thing she simply wouldn’t do.

“All right, thank you,” he said, and hung up. Now the meeting in the boardroom was forgotten. He grabbed his cell phone and the memo, handing the memo to Jane on his way out. “I’ve got a family emergency,” he said. “Give that to Tina and tell her to take it into the boardroom. That should let the lawyers know the ball’s in their court. I’ll call you when I can.”

Jane looked at him in shock. “You’re leaving? Just like that? They’re all in there waiting for you!”

Michael shook his head, already heading toward the elevator. “Something’s going on with Alison — I’ve gotta go.”

As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic, he called Scott. “Something’s haywire — I can’t find Risa, and now I can’t find Alison, either. I’m on my way up to Risa and Conrad’s place.”

“What do you mean, you can’t find Alison? Isn’t she at school?”

“Not as far as they know,” Michael said. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Be careful.”

“I will,” Michael said.

Closing his phone, he stepped on the accelerator.

COLD.

Freezing cold.

Alison’s teeth chattered as she struggled to reach the blanket at the end of her bed, but she couldn’t get to it.

Indeed, she couldn’t move her arms at all.

What was wrong?

The blackness that had surrounded her only a moment ago began to recede, and as her mind rose through the layers of unconsciousness toward the gathering light, she felt a terrible tiredness overwhelm her.

If she could just sink back down into her bed and retreat into the soft, warm escape of sleep…

But she was too cold.

And there were noises in her room.

Noises she’d never heard before.

Strange, gurgling noises.

Alison opened her eyes and found herself staring straight up into an enormous overhead light. She reflexively closed her eyes against the painful glare, then turned her head and opened her eyes again, more slowly this time.

This wasn’t her bedroom, this was…

A dream?

It had to be. She was dreaming that she was back in Conrad’s operating room at Le Chateau.

But this time she didn’t want the surgery.

Didn’t want it at all.

A wave of panic rising inside her, she tried to sit up, but couldn’t move either her hands or her feet.

She was strapped to the operating table and there was an IV needle in her arm!

She caught a movement in the corner of her eye and turned her head the other way. A figure was looming by the operating table, and though the surgical mask covered all of the face but the eyes, she instantly recognized Conrad Dunn.

“L–Let me up,” she stammered, struggling once more against the surgical tubing that had been tied around her wrists and ankles.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Conrad said, his voice calm and reasonable. “You see, we’re about to get started, and with no one to assist me, I can’t run the risk of you accidentally moving.”

Started? Her mind honed in on that single word. She still felt confused, foggy. What were they about to start?

Another operation?

But that was impossible — after what had happened with Cindy Kearns, she was already wishing she hadn’t let him do the implants. So what was he talking about?

“Just relax,” Conrad said. “It’ll only be a few more minutes before everything is ready.”

As he turned away again, she struggled to clear her mind, to banish the strange fog that made this feel like a nightmare. But it wasn’t a nightmare — she was sure of it.

She was awake, and what was happening was real, and she had to remember what had happened.

How she had gotten here.

Breakfast.

Conrad had lied about her mother having gone to an early appointment.

“Where’s my mother?” she asked, but without the force she’d intended to put into her words. Instead of sounding commanding, her voice seemed tiny and almost inaudible in the cold, cavernous room.

Conrad turned and looked down at her, his dark eyes ominous over the top of the surgical mask. “She didn’t approve of our project.”

There was a note almost like sadness in his voice, and it sent a terrible chill of certainty through Alison.

Her mother was dead.

And she was alone.

She wanted to cry out, wanted to give in to the terrible grief rising inside her, but she knew she couldn’t. Her mother was dead, and she was alone, and if anyone was going to save her from whatever Conrad was planning, it would have to be her.

“P-Project?” she said, cursing herself for the stammer and determining not to let it happen again.

Conrad laid a cold gloved hand on her arm, sending shivers all the way up to the back of her head. “I am going to do for you what no one else on earth could do.”

Alison searched for the right words — the words that would stop him from what he was about to do, or at least slow him down long enough for her to find some way to escape the bindings that held her to the table. She said, “I–I don’t understand. What are you going to do?”

He reached out as if to touch her, and she instinctively turned her head away.

And saw the green tank that stood next to the table to which she was bound.

The tank that had to be the source of the gurgling sounds that seemed so loud when she was first waking up, but now was no more than a murmur in the background.

She focused on the contents of the tank, and suddenly found herself back in the grip of the nightmare.

An ear.

Lips.

It wasn’t possible — in a second she would wake up and be back in her bed and the dream would be over and—

And she remembered the woman in the composite who had looked like Margot.

Margot Dunn.

The cords in her neck strained as she struggled yet again to sit up, to get loose, to get away.

And once more she failed and fell back, gasping for breath.

“Let me show you,” Conrad said. “What we’re going to do is very exciting — absolutely revolutionary, in fact.”

Alison lay still, trying desperately to take a deep breath. She needed her strength — needed to keep her wits.

Conrad stepped over to a computer keyboard.

An enormous flat-screen monitor came to life, and she saw an image of herself, wearing the black dress he’d brought to her to try on. The screen zoomed in on her face, then split in two.

Next to her face there appeared a photograph of Molly Roberts — the same photograph from Tina Wong’s special.

The special on the Frankenstein Killer.

And now she knew who that killer was.

Conrad Dunn.

Unable to tear her eyes away from the screen, she watched in mute fascination as Molly’s face faded away, except for her nose, which moved — almost by magic, it seemed — over to her own face, replacing her nose.

And she understood with terrible clarity exactly why she was here.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh God — please, Conrad.”

She twisted her head again, and saw the flesh that had been Molly Roberts’s nose suspended in green gel.

“That’s just the beginning,” Conrad said.

Unable to bring herself to look away, Alison stared at the monitor as his fingers manipulated the keyboard with as much skill as they could manipulate a scalpel. She watched in growing horror as her face slowly morphed, piece by piece, element by element, into the face of Margot Dunn.

“This will be our end result,” Conrad whispered when the transformation was complete. His voice was rapt now, as if he were caught up in religious fervor and beholding the Madonna herself. “I will make you into the most perfect woman in the world.”

“No,” Alison breathed. Everything that she was, he was going take away from her. He was going to make her into someone else, and the person she was — the person she had always been — would be gone.

Alison Shaw would no longer exist.

And Margot Dunn would live again.

Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks as a great sob racked her chest and throat.

“You’ll thank me when it’s over,” Conrad assured her. He moved around the end of the table to the tank. “I hated putting those implants under your breasts,” he went on, dipping his gloved hand into the tank and pulling out what at first looked like nothing more than some kind of misshapen mass. But as Conrad cradled it in his hands, turning it so Alison could see it from every angle, she realized what it was.

She felt her gorge rise, and struggled against the wave of nausea that gripped her.

“We should have done this graft the first time,” he went on, his tone still utterly clinical, as if he were discussing nothing more than a minor adjustment that would amount to practically nothing. “But the timing wasn’t right. After today, though, your breasts will be perfect. As perfect as Margot’s. And with nothing false in them — no silicone, no fatty tissue stolen from your thighs or buttocks.”

As his voice droned on, Alison realized that there would be no escape, that she didn’t have the strength to free herself from her bonds.

There was, though, one weapon he hadn’t taken from her.

Conrad had a whole staff of nurses and aides at Le Chateau twenty-four hours a day, and if she could just make them hear her — just make even one of them hear her—

With all the strength she could muster, Alison filled her lungs with air and let out a scream.

A scream that built, growing louder and louder, echoing in the operating room, its force straining every fiber in her.

She screamed again, then repeated it until even her own ears were ringing with the sound.

Her eyes shut, praying that someone — anyone — would hear her, she screamed out her terror and her rage and her grief. Even as a burning that felt like liquid fire began to course through the vein in her arm, she kept screaming.

Yet no matter how loud she screamed, the fire consumed her and the darkness began to close around her once more, and when the last iota of her strength had been drained away, she dropped back down into the void, praying that she might never wake up again.

30

MICHAEL KNEW CONRAD DUNN’S HOUSE WAS EMPTY AS SOON AS HE entered through the unlocked French door after walking around to the terrace at the back of the mansion. The air itself felt vacant, abandoned. Though he had yet to look anywhere but in the library in which he now stood, he knew that no hearts but his beat in this house.

Still, he couldn’t keep calling out for his daughter and ex-wife. “Alison! Risa! Hello?” He moved from the library into the living room, calling out again in the irrational hope that someone — maybe a housekeeper — would respond, but his certainty that the house was empty was reinforced by the echo of his voice coming back to him, bouncing off the cavernous ceilings.

He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, heading straight for where Alison had told him her room was.

Empty — not only of Alison, but her backpack as well! Hope suddenly flared within him. Maybe she was all right after all. Maybe she’d merely cut school today and didn’t want to answer her phone.

But what about Risa?

He moved on, coming to the master bedroom, where his brief flash of hope faded as quickly as it had come: Alison’s pink cell phone lay cracked on the carpet next to the wall. Just the sight of it — abandoned, vulnerable, broken — brought a silent prayer for her safety to his lips. He bent to pick it up, then stopped.

Better not to touch anything.

Not yet.

He straightened up, struggling against the panic rising inside him.

A panic that intensified when he saw her backpack open on the floor near the bed, books spilling out.

The phone, broken.

The backpack, open and spilling out its contents.

So Alison hadn’t gone anywhere without at least some kind of fight.

Michael forced his panic down — if she hadn’t given up without a fight, neither would he. The last of his panic dissolving into cold resolve, he backed away from the bedroom door, opening his own cell phone to speed-dial Scott.

“I’m at Conrad Dunn’s house,” he said when Scott answered. “Something’s happened — call the police.”

“What do you mean, something’s happened?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t have time to explain. I’m looking for Alison, and I can’t do that and answer the questions 911 will ask — I don’t even know the address up here. So just call them for me and tell them to get up here right now.” Before Scott could say anything else, Michael folded his phone and dropped it back in his pocket.

In Risa’s closet he found the Vuitton bag, complete with cell phone and wallet.

Now he moved quickly from room to room, calling out Alison’s name, throwing open every bedroom door, but knowing in his heart she wasn’t up here.

Nor was Risa.

Back downstairs, he took in the remains of breakfast on the dining room table with a single glance, and when he looked into the garage from the kitchen, he saw Conrad’s Bentley and Risa’s Buick.

With a growing sense that he was missing something — that he was wasting time — he went through the rest of the house.

Empty.

Every room, empty.

It was as if three people — four, if he counted the housekeeper — had suddenly vanished from the face of the earth.

He went back to the kitchen, trying to decide what to do next, when his eyes fell on an unobtrusive door just off the kitchen that he’d been in too much of a hurry to notice the first time around.

He threw it open and stared down a flight of stairs leading into the basement. Without a second’s hesitation, he ran down the stairs into darkness below, shouting once more.

“Alison? Risa!”

One room after another opened off the corridor that seemed to run the full length of the house: wine cellar, pool equipment room, furnace room.

All empty.

None of them with places to hide, let alone doors to the outside.

Then he caught a whiff of something sweet, and followed the fragrance around the corner to one more door.

A door that stood ajar, with a soft light emanating from the opening.

His heart suddenly beating faster, Michael pushed the door wide, and found himself looking at some kind of dressing room.

But why would there be a dressing room in a basement?

Then he saw the photographs that covered the walls.

Photographs of Margot Dunn.

CONRAD DUNN’S CELL PHONE BUZZED in his pocket.

“For God’s sake,” he muttered. “Always when I’m sterile.” He tried to ignore the interruption, but the phone continued to buzz, and at last he peeled off a glove, pulled the surgical gown aside and reached into his pants pocket.

The silent alarm in Margot’s room!

But who could be in there?

He’d sent Maria home.

Someone looking for Alison?

Or even Risa?

Damn!

Still, he’d locked the door behind the screen, and even if whoever was in the house found the laboratory, the operating room was impenetrable.

And it was far too late to stop the surgery — Alison was already unconscious, and he couldn’t leave her alone on the table while he went to see what was happening in the house. If Alison died on the table, he’d never find anyone else with her bone structure.

He threw the two dead bolts on the airlock door that kept the lab and the operating room from contaminating each other, turned off his cell phone, and stepped over to the basin to begin scrubbing his hands all over again.

MICHAEL GAZED around the room once more. Was it possible that Margot Dunn had built a dressing room in the basement? It made no sense — it was two floors away from the master suite, and there were enormous closets and dressing rooms up there — he’d just seen them.

So if it wasn’t a dressing room, what—

The answer came to him before he completed it in his own mind, for as he scanned the walls once again — walls covered nearly completely with life-size photographs of Margot Dunn — it was suddenly obvious.

A shrine.

A shrine that Conrad Dunn had built to his first wife, hiding it away in the basement so no one — especially his second wife — would know it was there.

Rage gripped him as he realized that once again Risa had married the wrong man. He, at least, had loved her, even though it wasn’t in a way that could satisfy her.

Clearly, Conrad Dunn hadn’t loved her at all — he’d still been in love with Margot.

So why had he married Risa?

He looked around again, certain that the answer to that question was somewhere in this room.

He saw the magazines stacked on the vanity, and quickly went through them, then the drawers of the vanity itself. Then he spotted a crumpled piece of paper on the floor near the screen in the corner.

He picked it up, smoothing it.

It was a photograph of Alison.

Alison, in a dress that was far too old for her.

But a dress that looked somehow familiar.

He looked up, trying to think, and found the answer hanging on the wall directly above the vanity.

It was a blow-up of a Vogue cover depicting Margot Dunn wearing the same dress Alison wore in the photograph.

The image his eyes beheld was suddenly replaced by a whole series of images that rose in his memory — images he’d seen over and over again in the past few days, images hundreds of thousands of people had seen last night as they watched Tina Wong’s special.

And the last image — of the face the killer was building — suddenly came clear.

It was Margot Dunn’s face, and he knew that Conrad Dunn was going to build it on his daughter.

He was going to turn Alison into his dead wife.

A howl of fury and frustration rose in his throat. Without thinking, he seized the dressing screen, lifted it from the floor and hurled it at the image of Margot. As it shattered both the glass over the picture and the vanity mirror below, he saw what the screen had hidden.

A door.

He tried the knob.

Locked.

With both fists, he pounded on the door and howled his daughter’s name.

The door held, solid.

He looked around for something he could use to break it down, to burst through it, to smash it.

But there was nothing. Nothing but a flimsy floor lamp and an equally fragile clothes rack.

Then he remembered something.

Something he’d noticed but hadn’t thought about while searching in the vanity. He went back to the vanity, opened Margot Dunn’s jewelry box and began pulling out its drawers.

And there, in the bottom one, he found it.

A key.

A perfectly nondescript, ordinary key.

Could it really be this simple?

He picked it up, the spent adrenaline in his system making his hand tremble.

His heart racing, his breath ragged, he tried to slip the key into the lock.

It fit.

Not breathing at all now, he tried to twist the key.

It turned.

Suddenly wary, Michael paused to take a deep breath, then opened the door.

A dark vestibule lay before him, with another door beyond.

The second door was not locked.

A moment later he stood in Conrad Dunn’s laboratory, gazing through a glass wall at the masked figure of Conrad himself.

He was leaning over Alison, and he held a scalpel in his hand.

• • •

“I DON’T KNOW the exact address!” Scott Lawrence said, taking the cell phone from his ear just long enough to glare at it. “It’s up on Stradella Road, way up near the top, near Roscomare.”

“And what exactly is your relationship to Dr. Dunn?” the impersonal voice of the 911 operator asked.

Scott swore under his breath as the stream of traffic ahead of him on the San Diego Freeway slowed to a near stop. He was still two miles from the Skirball Center exit and now he was going to have to waste time trying to explain—

He swore out loud as a black Mercedes cut in front of him, then decided that breaking two laws wasn’t any worse than breaking one, and dropped over to the shoulder of the freeway. “Can’t you just send someone up there?” he pleaded with the operator as he drove on the shoulder. “Surely there’s got to be some way for you to get Conrad Dunn’s home address!”

“This is an emergency line, sir,” the operator explained with a patience that was starting to grate on him. “If you can’t give us any specifics at all, I can’t see how—”

“Fine!” Scott barked into the phone. “I’ll call you when I get there and know exactly what’s going on.” Snapping the phone shut and dropping it on the passenger seat, he pressed down on the accelerator and in less than a minute was pulling off the freeway.

And not a cop in sight, which he wasn’t sure was a blessing. At least an actual officer might have been willing to follow him up to Dunn’s place. Barely glancing to the left as Skirball Center Drive merged into Mulholland, he passed half a dozen cars before abruptly cutting back into the right lane to turn on Roscomare. Minutes later he pulled into the Dunn driveway and parked behind Michael’s car.

Though nothing looked terribly wrong, a chill still ran up his spine.

He retrieved his cell phone from the passenger seat, got out, and approached the front door.

He rang the bell a couple of times, then circled the house, searching for a way in.

On the back terrace, one of the French doors stood half open. He pushed it wide. “Michael?” he called out.

No answer. And the sound of his own voice had that oddly hollow note peculiar to empty houses.

“Anybody home?” he called out, stepping into the library. “Michael?”

Scott’s fingers tightened on the cell phone, and he opened it as he moved farther into the house.

“Michael! Risa! Alison!”

No answer.

He dialed 911 for the second time in less than fifteen minutes, and when the operator answered, knew he still couldn’t tell her exactly what the emergency was. But now at least he had an exact address, and a door that had been standing open at an apparently empty house.

A house Michael had been in fifteen minutes ago, and in front of which his car was still parked.

“Something is terribly wrong at the residence of Conrad Dunn,” he said, then gave the operator the exact address.

“What do you mean, ‘terribly wrong’?”

“I mean I got a call saying something was wrong and to call the police. Nobody would do anything because I didn’t have the address. Now I’m here and my friend is missing. His car is here, but he’s not. Nobody’s here. A door was left standing open and there’s no one here.”

“All right, sir,” the operator said calmly. “I’m sending a car right away. I don’t want you to do anything at all. Do not go into the house or anywhere else until the officers arrive, unless you are in immediate danger. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Scott said, but even as he folded his phone and dropped it into his pocket, he knew he wasn’t about to follow the woman’s orders. Michael was in trouble, and if there was anything he could do to help, he would do it.

And there was no telling when the cops would arrive.

Doing his best to make no sound whatsoever, Scott Lawrence made his way through the house.

Somewhere — somewhere not far away — Michael needed him.

Needed him right now.

He could feel it.

31

MICHAEL SHAW GAZED ABOUT HIM IN STUNNED CONFUSION. WHEREVER he’d thought the door behind the screen might lead, he’d never imagined the bizarre scene spread before him.

He was in a huge windowless room that was obviously underground.

It was some kind of laboratory, with stainless steel counters and sinks, all of it lit by the shadowless glare of the fluorescents that filled the entire ceiling. But even in the white brilliance of the lights, a large tank glowed a poisonous shade of green, as if it were filled with some kind of algae.

A pump was running steadily, and he could see some kind of gas being slowly forced through the green substance in the tank.

To the right, taking up nearly half the space in the laboratory, was what looked like an operating room, entirely enclosed by glass walls, with what looked like an airlock sealing off its interior from the rest of the laboratory.

Every wall of the operating room held a large flat-panel monitor, and both the monitors he could see displayed the same image.

His daughter’s face.

Her face, marked with heavy black lines.

But it wasn’t possible — none of it was possible!

Yet even as he tried to reject the reality of the scene, he found himself charging toward the glassed-in enclosure and pounding on it with both fists. “Alison!” he howled. “Alison!”

He moved around to the outer door of the airlock and wrenched at its handle, but it was locked. Swearing, and bellowing his daughter’s name again, he scanned the area for something to smash the glass with. On one of the stainless steel counters there was a metal stand holding some kind of beaker. Michael seized the stand, knocking the beaker to the floor, and ignored the shards of the shattered object as he swung the stand at the glass.

Nothing — not even a chip, let alone a crack.

THE SCALPEL IN CONRAD DUNN’S RIGHT HAND STOPPED in midair, barely a millimeter above the cut line he’d so carefully drawn on Alison’s face. The noise that had penetrated the strains of Vivaldi filling the operating room had come from behind him, and now he turned and looked for its source.

The ex-husband.

How had he gotten in here?

Not that it mattered. The surgery had already begun, and there was no point in stopping now. Even if the ex-husband were to call someone, he would be far enough along by the time they arrived that no one would dare stop him.

If they did, they would not only destroy Alison Shaw’s beauty, but might easily kill her as well. And when he was finished, and everyone saw what he had accomplished — saw that he had once again created perfection — that would be the end of it.

Taking a deep breath to recover the total concentration he needed to finish the surgery, Conrad turned back to his patient.

He gazed at the monitors for several long seconds, rehearsing each careful incision in his mind.

Using the remote control to turn the Vivaldi up enough to cover any further commotion from outside, he used the fingers of his left hand to pull the skin taut around Alison’s upper lip.

Once again he readied the scalpel.

MICHAEL SEARCHED for something else, and spotted a chair almost hidden by a large bundle wrapped in a plastic sheet. In two steps he crossed to the chair and yanked it off the floor. The bundle tipped over and the plastic sheet fell away, and he was staring into Risa’s face, ashen in the pallor of death, her empty eyes staring up at him.

It froze him for a moment, and he was seized again by the certainty that none of this could be real, that it was all a terrible dream from which he would awaken and find himself home in bed, with Scott sleeping peacefully next to him.

He took an involuntary step back, his heel catching in the plastic sheet and pulling it all the way off Risa’s body, and now he saw her ruined torso, slashed open from just above the pubis all the way up to her chest.

Her ribs had been cut open, and what had once been her internal organs lay in a bloody heap on her thighs. Michael’s gorge rose and a wave of towering fury came over him. Turning away from Risa’s body, he crashed the chair against the wall of the operating room, but instead of the glass shattering, the chair’s frame broke.

The figure on the other side of the glass turned, and Michael found himself staring into Conrad Dunn’s darkly hooded eyes. The surgeon held up the scalpel in his right hand as if it was explanation enough, then shifted back to his unconscious patient.

Michael dropped the broken chair, already searching for something else to use against the barrier between him and his daughter.

The computer stand! It was big, looked heavy, and had enough sharp angles on it that—

He swept the computer off the stand and sent it crashing to the floor.

Every monitor on every wall in both the laboratory and the operating room instantly went dark.

Now Conrad Dunn whirled around to glower furiously at him, his eyes dark and menacing above the white surgical mask.

“I’m coming for you, you bastard,” Michael whispered, and seizing the heavy computer stand in both hands, lifted it up. Using every bit of strength he could muster, he swung the stand against the glass wall. A searing pain shot up Michael’s arms as the shock of the blow knocked the stand out of his hands and sent it crashing into the racks of test tubes on the countertop behind him. Though Michael was knocked almost to his knees, the heavy tempered glass held.

Taking a deep breath, and wiping the sweat from his palms, he pulled the stand from the countertop, gripped it even tighter than he had a moment ago, and swung it again.

The stand hit the glass and bounced back, but this time Michael let it go and ducked out of the way.

A small crack appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the glass panel.

Michael took a deep breath, heaved the computer stand up for a third time, and swung it once more into the glass.

CONRAD DUNN STARED at the crack in the glass panel with unbelieving eyes. The glass was supposed to be unbreakable — bulletproof!

And now Alison’s father had broken it.

Broken it!

Suddenly everything he’d been working on for so long — every careful plan he’d laid, every perfect feature he’d collected, every sacrifice he’d made, was in jeopardy.

Everything—everything! — could be ruined.

All the work he had done could be ruined right here, right now.

But that wouldn’t happen — he wouldn’t let it happen.

Not now, not in the final moments, not when he was on the verge of creating perfection.

So he would deal with it.

He would deal with — what was his name? Michael! — yes, he would deal with Michael Shaw just as he had dealt with Daniel DeLorian.

The way he had dealt with his wife.

Nothing — nobody — would stand in his way. Not now, not when he was so close.

Not when everything could be so easily ruined.

Conrad Dunn took a fresh grip on the scalpel just as the computer stand crashed through the wall, showering shattered glass everywhere.

Over him.

Over his instrument tray.

And — worst of all — over his patient’s unfinished face.

MICHAEL LEAPED into the operating room, but his pant leg caught on a thick shard of glass still jammed in the window frame. He tripped, his pant leg tore loose, and he skidded over the thousands of pieces the single pane of glass had exploded into.

Trying desperately to hold his balance, he slammed into the operating table, sending it crashing against a glass-sided tank filled with the same greenish substance he’d seen in the lab. The tank shattered and the green stuff spilled out onto the floor.

But the green slime wasn’t all the tank had contained.

Against his own will, Michael’s eyes closed against the gruesome sight of the fragments of human flesh that were now mixed in with the broken glass on the floor.

• • •

A ROAR OF PURE FURY FORMED in Conrad Dunn’s throat as he watched years of work spew across the floor. But even before he gave vent to his rage, he’d already repressed it.

Not now!

This was not the time to indulge himself in mere anger.

It wasn’t ruined yet — not all of it. If he worked quickly—

A new sound now rose over the blaring strains of Vivaldi.

Sirens.

Conrad snaked his arm around Michael’s neck, knocking his feet from under him and squeezing off his carotid artery.

Michael thrashed wildly on the floor, trying desperately to get his feet back beneath him but succeeding only in slashing dozens of cuts into the palms of his hands as he tried to grab hold of something that might help him escape from the choking arm around his neck. But Conrad only increased the pressure on his neck, and then Michael could no longer breathe.

He clawed at the arm around his neck. He wouldn’t die — not here, not now, not as long as Alison needed him. But even as he tried to find new strength, he felt his body weakening.

And with the weakening, a strange blackness began to gather around him.

The blackness of death…

I’m sorry, he silently cried out to Alison and to Risa. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Just as the blackness was enveloping him, Michael reached over his head and tried to grab Conrad by the back of the neck to pull him down to the floor with him.

Then his muscles went slack and he slid into the blackness.

CONRAD BARELY NOTICED a new shadow in the room before he felt fingers close on his hair and jerk his head backward. The attack came so quickly that he lost his grip on Michael Shaw and let his body drop away from him. Then he was twisted around and forced down as well.

Michael rolled over onto his back and lay still. Then, as his lungs took a deep, convulsive breath, the darkness began to clear from his vision.

He saw Conrad Dunn squirming on the floor next to him, and heard a scream of agony as an oddly familiar tan shoe ground the fingers of Conrad’s right hand into the broken glass.

As the music of Vivaldi that still filled the air faded to a quiet passage, Michael could hear the crunching of glass beneath the heavy shoe — or maybe it was the sound of the surgeon’s fingers being crushed.

Next to the shoe lay the scalpel that Conrad Dunn had clutched only a moment ago, and without hesitation, Michael picked it up.

With a quick glance up at Scott Lawrence, who still gripped Conrad’s hair in both his hands, Michael’s rage suddenly came into tight focus.

His eyes fixed on the wide expanse of Conrad Dunn’s throat.

Without making any conscious decision at all — without even thinking — he slashed the blade upward, its razor-sharp blade cutting deep into Conrad Dunn’s exposed flesh.

A gush of blood spurted from the artery the scalpel opened, pouring down Conrad’s surgical gown to mix with the green gel that covered the operating room floor.

“Are you okay?” he heard Scott ask.

He nodded quickly, then: “What about Alison? Did he cut her?”

The ensuing silence seemed to go on for an eternity, then he heard his partner say, “He was just beginning. I think she’s fine.”

As the sirens in the background abruptly fell silent and he heard voices shouting in the distance, Michael took a deep breath, chasing away the last dark cobwebs of unconsciousness.

The voices came closer, growing louder.

He heard the squawk of a radio.

At last he stood up, battling the weakness in his legs and the wrenching pain in his back. With Scott’s hand steadying him, he moved through the shattered glass wall into the laboratory.

He limped over to Risa’s still form and knelt next to her, then gently pulled the sheet away from her face. Laying a gentle hand on her cheek, he felt a terrible wave of grief wash away the last of his energy.

“She’s safe,” he whispered to Risa, gathering her body into his arms. “Our little girl is safe.”