Twisted by Jeffery Deaver

first noticed him in a crowd of onlookers when she was on a job for Vogue two years ago.
    People always watched photo shoots, of course. They were fascinated with physiques they would never have, with designer clothes that cost their monthly salary, with the gorgeous faces they’d seen gazing at them from newsstands around the country. But something had seemed different about this man. Something troubling.
    Not just his massive size—well over six feet tall with huge legs and heavy thighs, long, danglingarms. What had bothered her was the way he’d looked at her through his chunky, out-of-fashion glasses—his expression had been one of familiarity.
    As if he knew a great deal about her.
    And with a chill Kari had realized that he was familiar to her too—she’d seen him at other shoots.
    Hell, she’d thought, I’ve got a stalker.
    At first David Dale would simply appear at shoots like the one in Pacific Grove, California, parking his pickup truck nearby and standing silently just outside the ring of activity. Then she began to see him around the modeling agencies that repped her.
    He began to write her long letters about himself: his lonely, troubled childhood, his parents’ deaths, his former girlfriends (the stories sounded made-up), his current job as an environmental engineer (Kari read “janitor”), his struggle with his weight, his love of Dungeons & Dragons games, television shows he watched. He also knew a frightening amount of information about her—where she’d grown up, what she’d studied at Stanford, her likes and dislikes. He’d clearly read all of the interviews she’d ever given. He took to sending her presents, usually innocuous things like slippers, Day-Timers, picture frames, pen-and-pencil sets. Disturbingly, he’d sometimes send her lingerie: tasteful Victoria’s Secret items, in her exact size, with a gift receipt courteously enclosed. She threw everything out.
    Kari generally ignored Dale but the first time he’d parked his gray pickup in front of her house inSanta Monica, California, she’d stormed up to and confronted him. Tugging at his damaged ear, breathing in an asthmatic, eerie way, he ignored her rage and simply stared at her with an adoring gaze as he studied her face, muttering, “Beautiful, beautiful.” Upset, she returned to her house. Dale, however, happily pulled out a thermos and began sipping coffee. He remained parked on the street until midnight—a practice that would soon become a daily ritual.
    Dale would dog her on the street. He’d sit in restaurants where she was eating and occasionally have a bottle of cheap wine sent to her table. She kept her phone number unlisted and had her mail sent to her agent’s office but he still managed to get notes delivered to her. Kari was one of the few people in America without e-mail on her computer; she was sure that Dale would find her address and inundate her with messages.
    She went to the police, of course, and they did what they could but it wasn’t much. On the cops’ first visit to Dale’s ramshackle condo in a low-rent neighborhood, they found a copy of the state’s antistalking statute sitting prominently on his coffee table. Sections were underlined; David Dale knew exactly how far he could go. Still, Kari convinced a magistrate to issue a restraining order. Since Dale had never done anything exactly illegal, though, the order was limited to preventing him from setting foot on her property itself. Which he’d never done anyway.
    The incident that finally pushed her over the edge occurred last month. Dale had made a practice offollowing the few men whom Kari had the effrontery to date. In this case it’d been a young TV producer. One day Dale had walked into the man’s health club in Century City and had a brief conversation with him. The producer had broken their date that night, leaving the harsh message that he would’ve appreciated it if she’d told him she was engaged. He never returned Kari’s