CHAPTER EIGHT As a boy, one of his favorite pastimes was to sit out on the back porch and watch their cat stalk around the yard. It was particularly interesting whenever it came upon a bird or, on one occasion, a squirrel. He’d watched that cat spend up to fifteen minutes stalking a bird, toying with it until it finally pounced on it, tearing out its neck and sending its little feathers into the air. He thought of that cat now, as he watched the woman arrive home from yet another night at work—a place of employment where she stood up on a stage and pandered her flesh. Like that cat from his childhood, he had been stalking her. He’d nixed the idea of taking her at her workplace; the security was tight and even under the murky glare of the early morning streetlights, there was too much of