Zane was adamant. Cool and distant again. And no amount of anger or pleading would change his mind.
Until the phone call.
It came through at eleven o’clock on a rainy Monday night. Kaylie, restless anyway, picked up the receiver only to hear Margot’s frail voice on the other end. “Kaylie?” Margot cried, her voice breaking. “Oh, Kaylie…”
“What?” Kaylie’s heart leaped to her throat. Fear engulfed her.
“Oh, God, Kaylie. It’s Mom and Dad….” Margot wailed. Nearly incoherent and sobbing uncontrollably, Margot cried on and on. Kaylie’s insides turned to ice as she understood part of what Margot was saying—something about an accident and Mom and Dad and another car.
Trevor, Margot’s boyfriend, took control, and his voice was firm as he explained about the accident. As he spoke, Kaylie understood. The room went out of focus. The floor tilted. Blackness surrounded her as she realized both her parents were dead, killed in a hideous accident on a winding mountain road in northern California.
She wasn’t aware that she’d screamed, didn’t realize that she’d sunk to the floor, couldn’t feel the tears drizzling down her face, but all at once Zane was there, holding her, cuddling her, calming her as he spoke to Trevor.
He hung up and tried to get her to talk, to drink some water, to do anything, but her grief eclipsed all else.
“Shh, baby, shh,” h
e said rocking her, but she was inconsolable.
He must have called the producer, who sent over a doctor, because she was given something to help her sleep. Even in her drugged state, images of her mother and father and a fiery automobile fused in her mind.
When she finally roused twelve hours later, Zane was there, his flinty eyes regarding her carefully, his jaw unshaven, his clothes wrinkled from sitting in the chair near her bed.
“I—I can’t believe it,” she said. Her head thundered, and her eyes burned with new tears. Her throat was hot and swollen and she felt as if she’d aged twenty years.
He came to her then. Took her into his arms and stretched out on the rumpled bed with her. “Oh, Kaylie, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “But I’ll take care of you,” he vowed, kissing her crown. “I promise.”
And he had. From that moment on, he’d never left her side. Through the funeral and resulting media circus, Zane was there, protecting her, sheltering her, being her rock in her storm-tossed sea of grief.
When the pain had finally lessened and she was able to put her life back together, Zane had come to her bed as a lover, not a protector. He held her and made love to her and became her reason for living. His caresses were divine, his lovemaking glorious, and she was certain she was in love.
They married in June, and for months Kaylie was in heaven. Living with and loving Zane was perfect. Their happiness knew no bounds, and though Zane sometimes seemed a little more concerned about her welfare than she thought was necessary, she loved him with all her heart.
Then the letters started arriving. Letters about love and lust and weird rituals. An anonymous person wrote her every day, pledging his love, promising that he would “perform an act of supreme sacrifice” for her. These letters were much more frightening than any others she’d received and the fact that the terrifying missives arrived daily put Zane on edge.
Kaylie wasn’t concerned, and even thought Zane was overreacting. And he started calling her day and night when he wasn’t with her, asking about her friends, checking into their backgrounds.
She began to feel smothered.
Terrified for her safety, he spent every waking hour trying to locate the man who was invading her life. He spent days with the police to no avail, and he transformed their home in Malibu, where they were living at the time, into a veritable fortress, with guard dogs, an electronic security system and remote-controlled gates.
Kaylie, always a free spirit, felt as if she were withering. Her home began to seem like a military compound.
Zane even tried to secure the cottage in Carmel, but Kaylie put her foot down. They needed some normalcy in their lives, she reasoned, and against his better judgment, he’d acquiesced.
But they grew further and further apart. Hell-bent on protecting her, Zane refused to see that she was dying inside.
At nineteen she wanted an independence she’d never tasted, a freedom to make her own decisions, to live her own life, and all she wanted from him was his love.
They had worked on the marriage. Oh, Lord, she thought now, as she realized that they had both tried and fought to save their dying union. But they just hadn’t tried hard enough.
Zane had become autocratic, and she’d become fiercely independent.
The letters had gotten worse, and when Lee Johnston, the anonymous person, finally accosted them at the premiere of Obsession, Zane had lost all control.
* * *
Now, seven years later, Kaylie swallowed the taste of fear that still touched the back of her throat as she remembered Johnston’s blank face, his unseeing eyes, his hard body thrust up against hers. And the knife. God, she’d never forget the feel of polished steel against her throat.