Chapter 16

Undisclosed Location

His face is so familiar to me that I'm not sure how to take this level of violence seriously.

"You're awake," he says.

I'm almost happy to see him. I've spent the past few hours drifting in and out of consciousness, a side effect of whatever he used to drug me. At some point, I urinated on myself and was too out of it to be embarrassed. At least with him here, I won't be alone when I die. What a comfort that will be when he wraps the rope around my neck and tightens it until I'm no longer breathing. In the window across from me the sun is setting, the only clue as to how much time has passed.

I pull at the restraints. Movies have given me the unrealistic expectation that at any moment the ropes will suddenly loosen and I'll be free. The protagonist always has some secret skill that comes in handy during their deepest moment of need. Nothing I've done in my life has prepared me for this. Gentle flow yoga classes seem silly and ineffectual in retrospect.

"It wasn't a great nap," I reply.

"I didn't want to do this," he says.

He doesn't need to clarify what "this" is. We both know that he means death.

"I think you do. You've done it before."

"Yes, but that was different. I didn't know them the way that I know you."

He talks about "knowing" like the victim knowing the perpetrator has ever prevented any kind of harm. Historically, knowing a man is only ever a detriment to a woman's safety.

"You could let me go."

"I can't."

"I won't tell anyone."

"I don't believe you."

He's probably right not to believe me. I've never been a good secret keeper. The whole fun of obtaining secrets is figuring out whom to tell them to. To be fair, almost every secret that someone has told me has been inconsequential. In high school, it was all about who liked whom, information that was protected like a bank vault. I can't remember why this mattered.

He's holding a briefcase in his left hand. Illogically, I wonder if he's going to have me sign an NDA. Everything makes more sense when he sets the briefcase on a chair and pulls out a rolled-up piece of cloth, which he unrolls to reveal a set of knives typically used to fillet fish and a coil of rope. I can no longer pretend that this is anything other than a crime scene.

I think of the picture of Anna Leigh's face rotted beyond recognition. I can't stop myself from caring what I'll look like as a corpse. Please let me be beautiful in death.

"You could at least make it quick," I say. "Something painless; pills, maybe."

He looks at me.

"I don't think that's what you want, Hannah. I think you want to suffer."

"No one wants to suffer."

"Then why have you brought yourself so much suffering? Everything that's happened has been your choice. You chose to keep investigating even after the trial. If this isn't what you want, then I don't know what is."

Dotty once said something similar to me.

"It's kind of sexy, isn't it? How dangerous William is," she said with a wink. "Of course, I believe he's innocent. We all do."

I look at the man before me. I'm not turned on, not exactly, though my body tingles all over. I'm not sure if this is a side effect of the adrenaline or the drugs he fed into my system. Whatever it is, I feel electric.

"Is that your psychoanalysis of me?" I say. "Please, tell me more. What else did you learn in Psychology 101?"

He comes closer to me, knife in hand. I tremble involuntarily.

"I know that an ordinary relationship will never be enough for you, Hannah. You don't want to be with someone that loves you and you love in return. You're in love with longing. You want someone that always withholds a part of himself from you. The type of man that never reveals himself completely. Fortunately for you, I'm that type of man exactly. Unfortunately for you, it means that I need to kill you."

I resent the way that he's read me fully. Uttered things that I've only thought about myself. I want to tell him that he's wrong. I could live the American dream if only I was given a chance. Two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. I don't need to let murdered women lurk in the recesses of my brain. I don't need a man to be a killer to be in love.

He's not wrong though. There are ways in which the world has destroyed me and there are ways in which I have welcomed that destruction. As much as I want to deny it, there is a kind of pleasure that comes from being tied up with a knife against my throat.