Yes, in fundamental ways.
Then, why bother?
Slowing where a red oak hung an arm across the road, he turned onto the narrow track at the property’s edge and nudged deeper into the trees, stopping when he got to the gate he’d installed years ago. Out of the car, he opened the big lock and dragged the gate open. The road behind him was empty, but he moved quickly, pushing the car deeper into the trees, then sliding the gate closed. Once inside, he considered the question again. Why bother at all?
Because failures built one upon the other.
Because all roads led to Elizabeth.
“It is in suffering that we are withdrawn from the sway of time and mere things, and find ourselves in the presence of profounder truth.”
It was one of his favorite quotes.
“Profounder truth…”
“The sway of time and mere things…”
The car bounced through the scrub, and he felt hope’s fitful rise. He loved Elizabeth, and Elizabeth loved the girl. He thought this one would work and in the shadow of the silo felt more convinced than ever.
“The sway of time and mere things…”
Out of the car, he studied the tree line and the clearing. Nothing moved; no one was there. Opening the car, he removed the tarp, the bucket, and ten gallons of water. He’d prefer to give this one another day in the silo, but things were moving fast and would end with Elizabeth.
That would happen soon.
He felt it.
He dreaded it.
Fishing out the stun gun, he closed the door and threw another glance around the clearing. It was small in the trees, a slash of grass and weed and old machines rusted solid.
He looked at the silo, the lock on the chain.
The key made a lump in his pocket.
* * *
Channing thought he would never come. After hours on the ladder, her muscles were burning, her tongue, dry and swollen. She hadn’t counted on the heat, the constant strain. She was eight feet up, but thought she’d be invisible when the small door opened.
Bright light outside.
Constricted pupils.
Most people would be blind when they stepped into the dark, and she was counting on that, praying quietly as engine noises rose beyond the wall. She told herself this was not the basement. She wasn’t tied up and wasn’t the same person. But, it was a hard line to hold.
He was here.
He’d come.
She heard a chassis bottom out, the grind of an engine, and how it ticked in the stillness, after. He would expect to find her tied and helpless, worn down by heat and fear. But, that’s not how it was going to happen. The broken rung was rusted, yes, but still steel, still solid in places. He’d come in headfirst, blinking.
She held her breath as the chain clattered through the handles, and her legs started shaking. She couldn’t help it.
Oh, God, oh, God …
Who was she kidding? He would drag her off the ladder as if she were nothing. He would drag her down and rape her and kill her. She saw it as if it had already happened, because in so many horrible, unforgettable ways it already had.
“Elizabeth…”
The chain made a final scrape.
He was coming.
When the door opened, she saw his shadow, sensed his movement. He stooped beyond the door, but nothing happened for twenty seconds, a minute. Then a flashlight clicked on and shot a spear of light into the silo. It brushed the far wall, then touched bits of plastic and settled there. After a few seconds, the light disappeared. “Are you on the ladder, child?”
No …
“I had a young lady fall off the ladder, once. Don’t know how high she was when it happened. High enough to break her neck, at any rate. Did you make it all the way to the roof? It’s a pretty view from up there.”
Channing started crying for real.
“In the wintertime, you can see the old church across the valley, like a smudge on the hillside.” He turned on the flashlight, swept the interior a second time. “Do you like a church? I like a church.”
The light clicked off.
“Why don’t you come on down?”
His clothing rustled.
“I can lock the door and let you cook, if you like. It wouldn’t be pleasant, I promise. You still with me up there?”
Channing scrubbed the tears away.
Gripped the rung tighter.
* * *
He wasn’t bothered in the slightest. Some got out of their restraints, and some didn’t. Those that did usually found the ladder; and that was part of it, too: the will to overcome darkness and fear, then the realization that the roof, too, was a trap. It was a difficult combination for most: the ladder in blackness, then fresh air and sunshine, a world of hope, and then the loss of it. Some got clever, and that was fine, too.
It wasn’t just the heat that broke them.
* * *
Channing forced herself to stop crying. She couldn’t go up the ladder and couldn’t stay where she was.
That left down.
“If you make me lock this door again, I might have to let you cook in there for a good long time.” Channing didn’t move. “Three days. Four days. I’m not sure when I can make it back, and I’d rather you not die pointless and overhot.”
“Okay, okay.” Her voice shook and cracked. “Don’t lock the door. I’m coming down.” She moved one foot, then another; made it to the bottom rung. That left six feet to the ground. She sensed him in the door. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage.”
She’d have one chance. She needed him close. “I hurt my ankle.”
“‘Profounder truth,’” he said, and she had no idea what he meant. He stayed where he was, hunched in the door and watching. If she lowered herself gently, he’d see the rung in her hand, so Channing stepped out and dropped. She kept the bar close and folded at the waist to hide it, steel ripping skin from her stomach as she landed. She cried out, but that was okay.
She needed him close.
“Oh, God…” She curled in the dirt, praying he’d think it was her ankle, that he wouldn’t see the blood. She felt it though, hot on her stomach, and soaking the shirt. She rocked onto her hands and knees. He was through the door.
Coming.
“It’s my ankle.…”
His shadow moved closer. Hair swung across her face, and when he touched her, she swung the rod with everything she had. It struck something hard. A shoulder. An arm. She didn’t know, didn’t care. She felt the shock and saw a slash of red in the gloom. She hit him again, stumbling once and falling toward the door. His hand caught her ankle, and she fell facedown, the door just there, light burning her eyes as she pulled herself through, kicking back twice, hitting some part of him as she fell out into the grass, smelling it, feeling it tear beneath her fingers. She dragged herself faster, finding her feet and falling again as the car rose in front of her and seemed to spin. She was dizzy, her legs not right as she lurched at the car thinking, Keys, road, escape. Halfway there, she risked a look back.
He was coming fast.
She wasn’t going to make it, falling against the car as she left a smear of blood and ran for the door on the other side. She heard a thump and saw him on the hood, sheet metal buckling as he leapt and caught her and tried to drag her down. She shrugged out of the shirt, felt the bloodstain slide across her face, and ran for the trees. It was what she had, shadows and hope and desperation.
He had the speed.
He caught her three steps into the woods, cupped the back of her head, and slammed her face into the trunk of a tree. Something burst; she tasted blood. He did it again, flung her down; and though his face was swollen and stained with blood of his own, it was the eyes that sucked all the heat from the day.
They were that dark and empty.
That terribly unforgiving.
33
Adrian sat in a broken-down room staring at a small fortune in gold. Half a
million in the room. Another five and change still in the dirt. He thought of Elizabeth’s last words. Stay away from me. Stay away from this place.
Could he really do that?
The only feelings he’d known were fear and lonesomeness and rage. The love was for a dead man, and that had been a shadow for so long he didn’t know what to do with the feelings he had now.
Liz was real.
She mattered.
Flicking the curtain, he peered out at a fifteen-year-old Subaru he’d rolled off a dirt lot in exchange for a handful of coins. He’d been ready to leave before news of his wife broke. He was going to go west—Colorado or Mexico—but things were different now. His wife was dead, and there was this thing in Liz’s voice, a quiet desperation not every man would recognize.
“What do I do, Eli?”
He touched his lips where Liz had kissed him.
Eli didn’t answer.
* * *
The girl passed out as he carried her to a shady place beside the car. The tremble stopped, and she went limp on his shoulder, a tiny thing he could lift with a single arm. But she was a fighter, and there was clarity in the fighters.
They were more like Liz.
The eyes went deeper.
He put the girl in the grass and checked himself in the mirror. His neck was cut low, near the collarbone. He touched a bloody lump on his scalp, then pulled an old towel from the car and pressed it against his neck. The cut hurt, but he accepted the pain because he’d hurt the girl, too. It was the shock of pain and wounded pride. They drove him to needless harm, yet that was the cycle. Sin feeds sin. The spiral draws deeper and down. He studied the girl’s face, swollen and bloody, and it wasn’t the first time he’d hardened himself. Julia Strange was not an easy kill, either. He’d found her in the church, alone and on her knees. No one was supposed to be there, and even now he wondered what his life would be had he left a step sooner. But she’d heard him and turned. And when she’d looked at him with those bottomless eyes, the sight of her anguish jolted him. She’d been beaten and humbled, but the hurt ran more deeply than the swollen jaw or bloody lip. It plumbed the depths of her eyes and rendered her into something … more. The glimpse lasted but a moment, but he saw the hurt, and beneath the hurt, the innocence. She was a child again, and lost. He wanted to take away the pain; that’s how it started. But he didn’t know what he’d find in her eyes, or what the finding would do to him. Even now it was a blur: the whirl of emotion, the feel of her skin beneath his fingers. That’s where it started; she was the first. Thirteen years later, it would end with Elizabeth. It had to, so he hardened himself.
But for now there was the girl.
He was gentle as he stripped and cleaned her. He kept his thoughts chaste, as always, but wanted to be done because already it felt wrong. The altar he’d made was in the trees and was only of plywood and sawhorses. He tried to keep the frustration in check, but she didn’t look right when he roped her down and spread the linen. Too much yellow was in the light, and not enough church. He wanted the pinks and reds, the vaulted hush. He dragged a hand through his hair, trying to convince himself.
He could make it happen.
It could work.
But the girl was a mess, her face battered from the tree, a red stain where her stomach wound leaked through the linen. He was bothered because the purity mattered, as did the light, the location. Would it work like this? He pushed the question down. He was here. So was she. So he leaned close, hoping to find what he needed at the bottom of her eyes. It never happened fast. It took trial and error, his hands on the neck not once or twice, but many times.
He waited for her to wake, then choked her once so she would know it was real. “We’ll start slowly,” he said; then choked her like that so she would have no doubt. He took her to the edge of blackness and held her there. Small movements of his hands, whispers of air. “Show me the girl. Show me the child.” He let her breathe once, then rose to his toes and leaned into it as she fought and choked. “Shhh. We all suffer. We all feel pain.” He put more weight on his hands. “I want to see the real you.”
He choked her long and deep, then hard and fast. He used every trick he’d ever learned, tried a dozen times more, but knew it wouldn’t work.
The eyes were swollen shut.
He couldn’t see her.
* * *
Channing didn’t know why she was still alive. She knew pain and darkness, thought she was in the silo, then realized there was movement, too. She was back in the car. Same smell. Same tarp. She touched her face with bound hands and realized most of the darkness came from swollen eyes. She could barely see, but knew she was dressed and breathing and alive.…
A strangled sound escaped her throat.
How long?
She relived his hands and the blackness, the yellow trees and his hungry face.
How long had he tried to kill her?
She swallowed, and it was like glass ripping her throat. She touched her neck and curled more tightly in the dim, blue space.
Where was he taking her?
Why was she still alive?
Those worries ate at her until a more disturbing one twisted through the tangle of her thoughts: his face beneath the trees. No hat. No glasses. He’d looked different in a way she couldn’t process; but sober now, and desperately alive, she remembered where she’d seen him.
Oh, God …
She knew exactly who he was.
The revelation terrified her because the truth of it was so perverse. How could it possibly be him?
But it was, and it wasn’t just the face. She knew the voice, too. He was making calls as the car worked from one street to the next, making calls and muttering angrily between them. He was looking for Liz and getting frustrated that he couldn’t find her. No one knew where she was; she wasn’t answering her phone. He called the police station, her mother; and once—through a crack in the tarp—Channing saw the blur of Elizabeth’s house. She recognized the shape, the trees.
The Mustang was gone.
Channing sobbed after that and couldn’t help it. She wanted to be in the car with Elizabeth, or in her house or in the dark of her bed. She wanted to be safe and unafraid, and only Liz could make that happen. So she said the name in her mind—Elizabeth—and it must have leaked through into the real world, because suddenly the car slowed to a hard, rocking stop. Channing froze, and for a long moment nothing happened. His voice, when it came, was quiet. “You love her, don’t you?” Channing squeezed into a ball. “It makes me wonder if she loves you, too. Do you think she does? I think she probably must.” He went quiet, fingers drumming on the wheel. “Do you have a phone? I’ve been trying to reach her, but she won’t pick up. I think she might answer if she saw your number.”
Channing held her breath.
“A phone.”
“No. No phone.”
“Of course not. No. I’d have seen it.”
A long silence followed, heat under the tarp. When he started driving again, Channing watched a stretch of buildings and trees, then a span of chain-link stained with rust. The car started down, and she felt the sun disappear, caught glimpses of yellow houses and pink ones, the long slide into some dim hollow. When the car stopped again, he turned off the engine and silence filled everything for another terrible minute.
“Do you believe in second chances?” he asked.
Channing smelled her own sweat, the fog of her breath.
“Second chances. Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be useful to me if I ask?”
Channing bit her lip and tried not to sob.
“Useful, damn it! Yes or no?”
“Yes. God. Please.”
“I’m going to take you out of the car and carry you inside. There’s no one around, but if you make a sound, I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
She felt the car rock and heard the hatch open. He lifted her, still in the tarp. They crossed b
are dirt, went up stairs and through a door. Channing saw little until the tarp came off; then it was his face and the four walls of a dingy bath. He put her in the tub and cuffed an ankle to the radiator beside it.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
He stripped silver tape off a roll.
She watched it, terrified. “Please, I want to! I want to understand!”
He studied her, but she saw the doubt. It was in there with the crazy and the sadness and the grim determination. “Be still.”
But she could not. She fought as he slapped tape across her mouth and wrapped it twice around her head.
* * *
When it was done, he stood above her, looking down. She was small in the tub, and horrified, a tiny thing the color of chalk. She said she wanted to understand, and maybe she did. But no one looking in could appreciate the beauty of what he was trying to do. She’d use the same words as the cops. Serial killer. Dangerous. Deranged. Only Liz—at the end—would understand the truth that drove him, that he did these things for the noblest reason of all, the love of a precious girl.
* * *
Gideon liked the hospital because everything was clean and people were nice. The nurses smiled; the doctor called him “Sport.” He didn’t understand a lot of what was said and done, but followed parts of it. The bullet had made a small, clean hole and hit no organs or major nerves. It nicked an important artery, though, and people liked to tell him how lucky he was, that he’d made the hospital just in time and that the surgeon had stitched him just right. They liked to make him feel good, but sometimes, if he turned his head fast enough, he’d catch the whispers and strange, sideways looks. He thought that was about what he’d tried to do, because Adrian Wall was all over the television and he was the boy who’d tried to kill him. Maybe it was about his dead mother and the bodies under the church. Or maybe it was about his father.