Chapter Forty-six

Katie.

Why had she put herself at risk for him?

Cuffed to the bed on the floor, Chris stared across the room at his sister. She was struggling to get to her feet now, but he could tell the old man's punch had badly disoriented her. She kept shaking her head, sending droplets of blood flicking off to either side. His heart clenched at the sight. Her being hurt horrified him, especially because she had come here trying to help him. After everything he'd done, he didn't deserve that.

Even now, she was still trying to stand.

He wanted to call out to her to stop—or tell her that if she managed to get to her feet she should run. Leave him. Right now, he would have done anything to protect her, even if it was simply giving her permission to stop protecting him.

But then she collapsed back down and shook her head again.

The old man hadn't noticed. In fact, he seemed wholly entranced by the book he was holding, staring down intently at a page at the end. Chris could see the man's eyes moving, his gaze tracking back and forth, but aside from that he was motionless.

Chris would have killed him right then if he could.

Not for what he had done to him, or even to save himself, but because of what he'd done to Katie. And yet he was no more able to reach the old man than his sister was capable of rising to her feet. All he could do was stare at him, hating him, while imagining the hundred things he should have done differently so that he and his sister had not ended up here.

I'm sorry, Katie.

The room was silent for a moment.

And then there was a gentle creak of leather.

The old man closed the book and turned slowly to look at Chris. His face had gone white, and his expression was slacker now. For a moment, he didn't seem able to process what he'd just read. But then he shook his head, as though trying to dislodge something, and walked slowly across the room, anger beating off him in waves.

Still holding the lighter.

Chris felt his heartbeat accelerate as the old man approached. Keep calm, the voice inside his head told him. If he was going to have a chance of surviving this, he needed to do everything right. The man crouched down in front of him, his fingers flicking against the top of the lighter.

Chris could almost feel the soft whump of the fire taking sudden hold.

The lick of it everywhere against his skin.

The agony as he burned.

You should never have been born.

"Look at me," the old man said.

Chris did. The expression on the man's face was the naked hatred of someone who had been tricked. Who had just had everything taken away from him at the very moment he had been supposed to succeed.

"What have you done with it?"

With his free hand, Chris reached under his leg. While the man had been downstairs, he had remembered something that Alan had told him once, when it seemed like his mind had been slipping.

Oh God, it's under the bed.

It's under the fucking bed!

Chris took out the knife he had found taped there. And with all the strength he could muster, he plunged the blade upward into the old man's throat.