Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

a delicate thing. It needed tender care to grow and mature into something wonderful. Right now she didn’t have time for an orgasm, let alone for romance.

      If she and Michael could have something meaningful together, she didn’t want to ruin it by rushing into bed, especially not at a time when the pressure of work was half crushing her.

      And that indicated how deeply and irretrievably she loved him. She was in the water over her head.

      She drove all the way home without killing herself or anyone else. If she had been as awake and clearheaded as she claimed to be, she wouldn’t have taken such goofy pride in this accomplishment.

      Between the car and the house, the sunlight seemed bright enough to blind her. Even in her bedroom, daylight at the windows stung her bloodshot eyes and made her wince.

      She shut the blinds. She closed the drapes. She considered painting the room black, but decided that would be going too far.

      Fully clothed, she fell into bed and was asleep before the pillows finished compressing under her head.

       CHAPTER 47

      THE FOURTH TIME that Roy Pribeaux opened the freezer to see if Candace was still there, she was still there, so he decided to rule out the possibility that he might be delusional.

      He had not taken his car the previous night. He lived within strolling distance of the Quarter. They had walked everywhere.

      Yet he could not have carried her all the way from the levee to his loft. Although he was a strong man and getting stronger by the day, she was a heavy person.

      Besides, you couldn’t carry an eyeless corpse around the heart of New Orleans without drawing comment and suspicion. Not even New Orleans.

      He didn’t own a wheelbarrow. Anyway, that wouldn’t have been a practical solution.

      He poured another glass of apple juice to accompany what remained of the muffin.

      The only credible explanation for Candace’s surprise appearance was that someone had brought her here from the levee and stowed her in his food freezer. The same person had put the three plastic containers, with organs, in the other freezer, the love locker.

      This meant that someone knew Roy had killed Candace.

      Indeed, that someone must have watched him kill her.

      “Spooky,” he whispered.

      He had not been aware of being followed. If someone had been dogging him, watching him romance Candace, the guy had been a master of surveillance, nearly as ephemeral as a ghost.

      Not just someone. Not just anyone. Considering the human organs in the three tacky containers with ugly green lids, the perpetrator could be none other than the copycat killer.

      Roy’s work had inspired an imitator. The imitator had by these actions said, Hi there. Can we be friends? Why don’t we combine our collections?

      Although Roy was flattered, as any artist might be flattered by the admiration of another artist, he didn’t like this development. He didn’t like it at all.

      For one thing, this organ-obsessed individual was a burrower whose fascination with internals was gross and unsophisticated. He wasn’t of Roy’s caliber.

      Besides, Roy didn’t need or want the admiration of anyone. He was sufficient unto himself – until the perfect woman of his destiny entered his life.

      He wondered when the copycat had visited. Candace had donated her eyes only a little more than twelve hours before he had found her in his freezer. The intruder would have had only two opportunities to bring her to the loft.

      Satisfied with his life, immensely satisfied with himself, Roy had no reason for insomnia. He slept soundly every night.

      The copycat, however, could not have brought such a heavy person as Candace into the loft and to the freezer while Roy slept unawares.

      The kitchen was open to the dining area. The dining area flowed into the living room. Only a pony wall separated the living room from the bedroom. Sound would have traveled unobstructed, and Roy would have been awakened.

      Now he went into the bathroom at the far end of the loft from the kitchen. He shut the door. He turned on the water in the shower. He switched on the vent fan.

      Yes. Entirely possible. The copycat could have brought Candace into the loft when Roy had been enjoying his predawn shower.

      He took long showers: the exfoliating soap with loofa sponge, the moisturizing soap, two superb shampoos, a cream conditioner.…

      The visitor’s precise timing suggested that he knew a great deal about Roy’s domestic routine. And he must have a key.

      Roy had no landlord. He owned the building. He possessed the only keys to the loft.

      Standing in the bathroom, surrounded by the susurrant rush of water and vent-fan blades, he was overcome by the suspicion that the copycat was in the apartment even now, preparing another surprise.

      This concern had no merit, based as it was on the requirements that the copycat be omniscient and omnipresent. Yet suspicion grew into conviction.

      Roy cranked off the shower, switched off the fan. He burst out of the bathroom and searched the loft. No one.

      Although alone, Roy was at last alarmed.

       CHAPTER 48

      SHE WAS RIDING a black horse across a desolate plain under a low and churning sky.

      Cataclysmic blasts of lightning ripped the heavens. Where each bright sword stabbed to earth, a giant rose, half handsome and half deformed, tattooed.

      Each giant grabbed at her, trying to pull her from her mount. Each grabbed at the horse, too, at its flashing hooves, at its legs, at its silky mane.

      The terrified horse screamed, kicked, faltered, broke loose, plunged forward.

      Without a saddle, she clamped the mount with her knees, clutched fistfuls of its mane, held on, endured. There were more giants in the earth than the horse could outrun. Lightning, the crash of thunder, yet another golem rising, a huge hand closing around her wrist—

      Carson woke in unrelieved darkness, not thrown from sleep by the nightmare but pricked from it by a sound.

      Piercing the soft thrum and shush of the air conditioner came the sharp creak of a floorboard. Another floorboard groaned. Someone moved stealthily through the bedroom.

      She had awakened on her back, in a sweat, atop the bedclothes, in the exact position in which she’d fallen into bed. She sensed someone looming over her.

      For a moment she couldn’t remember where she’d left her service pistol. Then she realized that she still wore her street clothes, her shoes, even her shoulder holster. For the first time in her life, she had fallen asleep while armed.

      She slid a hand under her jacket, withdrew the gun.

      Although Arnie had never previously entered her room in the dark and though his behavior was predictable, this might be him.

      When she slowly sat up and with her left hand groped toward the nightstand lamp, the bedsprings sang softly.

      Floorboards creaked, perhaps because the intruder had reacted to the noise she made. Creaked again.

      Her fingers found the lamp, the switch. Light.

      She saw no one in the first flush of light. At once, however, she sensed more than saw movement from the corner of her eye.

      Turning her head, bringing the pistol to bear,