He slugged her in the jaw. She crumpled like a doll but did not lose consciousness. As she struggled to rise, he sat behind her on the bed and unrolled the tape and encircled her head, closing off her mouth. His technique was practiced; he moved like an actor in a play that was regularly performed. He circled her head three times and dropped the tape on the floor and reached for the cuffs. He still had on his condom and he was still hard.

He cuffed her wrists and ankles before she could recover from the initial blow. There was rope in the brown bag. He threaded it through the cuffs and tied it to the bedposts. Now she began to struggle but she was at a severe disadvantage. Kelly noted the calculated force of his first hit. He had only wanted her dazed. He wanted her awake, to watch, to feel …

But what?

He removed a metal vial from the bag and stood at the foot of the bed as if to pronounce judgment over his prey. He had put on black gloves. The vial appeared to be made of an alloy of some type; it held perhaps sixteen ounces. Kelly remembered Slate’s earlier comment and shuddered. The man’s physique was superb. He stood suddenly tall and victorious. Kelly thought him close to an orgasm. He held onto his accent but it was clearly affected.

“You’re a married woman,” he said. “You took a vow of fidelity to your husband and you have broken that vow. If he could see you now—and he will see you—it would destroy him.” The man touched his chest and there was pain in his voice. “There would be a hole in his heart. A hole that would never heal. And why? Just because you wanted to have sex with another man? Just because you thought he would not find out? You’re a temptress and a harlot. The fires of Pompeii could not cleanse your flesh.” He raised the vial and slowly unscrewed the cap. “It’s right that you should die.”

The man—his name could not be Mike—climbed onto the bed and knelt beside her. He had tied her like a pro. She could move an inch, no more. Her eyes bulged as he tilted the vial above her chest. The duct tape muted her screams. But the horror in her face—Kelly could not bear to watch. Nor could she look away. A portion of her felt trapped in the same room as the woman.

The vial held acid.

As it dripped onto Teri’s chest, the skin ignited in a frenzy of choking smoke and peeling flesh. But that was only a preview of things to come because it was no ordinary acid and he was no ordinary man. The potency of the liquid must have been formulated to push the upper limits of chemical corrosiveness. With a shallow hole in Teri’s breastbone already dug, the man continued pouring, without wasting a drop.