“I’ll kill you, you bitch!” he bellowed, and she instantly recognized him as the homeless guy from the party in Central Park. He’d caught sight of her on his wanderings and amused himself with a little game of cat and mouse, it seemed to Kat, as much thought as she put into it, which was damn little.

She smashed him hard in the chest again, her flat-palm assault enough to once again send the man stumbling back. But this time he was ready, stronger, and he charged her again. Kat’s body reacted in a flurry of defensive power, a side kick snapping his leg with a loud crack, her fist smashing into his grimy face, his last few teeth flying out of his rotting mouth.

He fell to the sidewalk, an instant heap of filth and stink. She stood in a ready stance, fists clenched, but the guy was down and out. And around her, a crowd of pedestrians stood silent, then broke out into a little round of applause and cheers, people holding their phones up to capture the action on video. Kat looked around, suddenly feeling conspicuous, and turned to scurry off down the street, hoping to leave the whole mess behind her and unable to convince herself that she’d be able to do so.

* * *

Jackie shook her head, waving her hand in front of her face. “Girl, you’re a freak magnet—there’s just no two ways about it.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Kat answered back, turning to look out that window, the laundry slowly getting pulled in off the lines. They seemed like ghosts drifting across a hellish landscape that consumed every damned soul sad enough to sink so low.

“Anyway, you’re lucky you had that training. And I’m proud of you. See, you’re not just some damsel in distress at all.”

Kat turned at that remark. “Oh, I’ve known that for a long time now, Jackie, thanks to you. And thanks again for doing that thing, with Ms. McBride.”

Jackie could only shrug, crossing to the kitchen for her other best friend, a chilled bottle of white wine. “It’s good for you, it’s good for me, why should I worry? More I thought about it, more I thought I wanted in, tell you the truth. Two grand for a day’s work whuppin’ some white boy’s ass? Sign me up!” The two old friends laughed, a chorus of unity, each one seeing more in the other than had been possible before. “But one thing, babe…watch yourself.”

Kat squinted as she tried to puzzle out that cryptic warning. “Watch…for what?”

“I’m not sure. Lemme see what I find out when I get on the inside. Until then, just…watch your back.”

* * *

Kat headed straight for the mall for the right clothes, and then to the gym. She had a few days before her window opened and she was determined to make the most of them. The weight room in the local Gold’s Gym was filled with the faint trace of sweat, the clanks and clunks of metal machinery a steadily chaotic rhythm in the background. Kat walked through the weight room looking for an empty machine. She felt like she was walking through a museum of living displays: beefy men and superb women pushing levers and pulling handles, weights swinging or rising in response.

The men were often gorgeous, thick legs and arms and broad shoulders and chests. But their faces were strange, mutated by steroids and anger, eyes fixed forward while they huffed out their rage. The women lacked any kind of aggression that Kat could sense. They were concerned with their own beauty, with what that beauty could win them, what it could buy them.

Kat just didn’t feel at home among that crowd, though she could sense the men eyeing her as she sat down at a bench press, her back flat and legs splayed, her breasts heaving as she pumped that iron.

They want me, she knew. They’d jump me right now if they could.

She went on pumping those weights, eyes fixed upward, muscles fixed to their task. She didn’t notice the gradual cease of the clanking and clunking sounds around her—her panted breath and steely determination the only thing in her mind.

So it was easy for her not to notice the slow receding of those sounds as the machines became still around her. It was easy not to realize that the other men and women were slowly standing up and approaching her, one by one, from every angle.

Kat set the weights down and sat up on the bench, looking around at the zombie stares of the other gym bunnies as they approached her, hairy arms and legs, muscular, unemotional expressions as they bore down on her.

She tried to lurch up and off the bench, but it was too late. They were already upon her, their hands around her arms, wrists and elbows and upper arms, she unable to wrench away. They grabbed at her legs, grasping her ankles and calves, her thighs flexing as she kicked against their greater strength and numbers. They had her back on the bench in a frenzied instant.

“Let me go! Get your filthy hands off me!” But they paid her no mind at all, staring at her and even past her, their weight pushing her down, pinning her squirming limps, hands groping closer and closer to her most intimate corners. “Let…me…go!”

Hands slid up her thighs, nearing her crotch.

“Stop,” she cried out, “stop it!”

But as much as she strained to raise herself off that bench, Kat knew she was pinned solid, no chance of escape. But what worried her more was that her hypnotized captors’ attention was suddenly turned to a new point in the room, somebody walking toward them all, slow and sure.

Carter! She hoped. It has to be!

But it was a strange man who stepped around from the other machines, a devious expression on his face.

Kat’s eyes shot open to look around the gym, everybody going about their rounds as they would normally be doing, no one paying her any attention at all. She shook her head and huffed, struggling only to refocus from her sexy daydream.

Gotta get a grip!

The music in the aerobics class was a throbbing disco beat, pulsing and intense, but it had an undeniable effect on her hips, her shoulders, syncing up in some strange way with her heartbeat and propelling it forward in a stout and healthy rhythm. She tried to keep up with the others—men and women following the instructor’s enthusiastic calls of one pattern or another: one cycle of running in place followed by twists to the side, deep-knee bends and other familiar but suddenly strenuous exercises.

She noticed herself in the mirror with the others, her crop top revealing a body, taught and lean, her tight spandex pants accentuating her firm ass.

Carter’s gonna love this, was her only thought. He’s gonna love me.