Chapter 10

Chapter 10

T hat evening, I almost make it to Johnsons Crossing, the place where I have to get off the highway to get to my property.

I park the camper on a forest path, grab a small bottle of water, and go to Lou in the sleeping area. She sits in the dark, huddled against the back wall.

"You didn't turn the light on," I state, nodding to the light switch just in case she didn't see it. "The chain's long enough."

She doesn't say anything, just stares straight ahead. I pretend not to notice her rejection and push my way past the bed toward the window. She immediately slides to the other side.

I suppress a sigh and pull the shade up. Moonlight floods the bed like a gush of silver water. "Brought you a drink." I hold the bottle out to her. "Just water for now, it's less likely to make you sick. That was how it was for me anyway."

"For you?"

She didn't mean to ask that, I can see it—I too thought for a long time if I should mention it at all. I smile. "I tested the chloroform on myself. I mean, I was trying to knock you out, not kill you."

She looks at me blankly like I'm even crazier than she ever imagined. She ignores the bottle in a way that looks strained.

"Water was always easier to keep down afterward."

"You did it more than once?" Her tone reflects what she really wants to say. You're crazy, you freaking psycho!

"Four times." I shrug with deliberate indifference. It was necessary, I did it, as I have done many things in my life out of necessity. Gather food from the garbage and sleep on the street in the pouring rain, hoping nobody stabs me in my sleep.

I take a step toward the bed and extend my arm further in her direction. "Drink!" I say somewhat impatient because she still doesn't reach for the bottle.

"If I don't, are you going to force it down my throat?" she hisses through clenched teeth.

Only now do I realize how desperately she clutches the iron chain. The ghostly bright moonlight breaks against her face and the soap residue makes it appear waxy. I pull back the water bottle. "If it helps keep you alive."

She closes her eyes and her hand holding the chain relaxes a little. What did I say just now that calmed her down?

"So I'm supposed to stay alive?"

Ah that! "Of course. What, you thought I would go through all this trouble just to kill you?"

"Maybe you're going to do it later."

"Or maybe never. Now drink!" I look down at her, not sure how to get her to do what is good for her. "Please," I finally bring myself to say and I am surprised at how it comes out of my mouth. I haven't asked for anything in years.

This tiny little word expands in space as if it has more power than chains and makes her open her eyes. Her gaze darts back and forth a few times. From me to the bottle, from the bottle to me.

"You first," she whispers harshly. That's when I understand she's afraid I might have added some other drug to it. Possibly knockout drops to make her compliant.

As if I need to! Here in the wilderness, I wouldn't even have to sedate you, nobody would hear you anyway .

Nevertheless, I shake the water and take a sip before I hand her the bottle.

Lou drinks hastily as if unsure when she will get more. After she has drunk half of it, I take the bottle away from her.

"That's enough." She looks up at me, her eyes bright with fever, she's still thirsty. "You can have more later," I promise quickly and nod to the door of the shower stall. "Do you want to shower?"

"No." She might as well have said get lost .

"It smells like a puma cage in here," I try to joke. I haven't done that in years either.

She looks down at herself furtively. "Don't care."

I sigh loudly. "You're still afraid I'm going to hurt you."

She pulls her legs up and wraps her arms protectively around her knees as if hiding from me. "Why else would I be here?" she whispers, avoiding my gaze.

"So that I don't lose you again," I answer honestly.

"You never had me. What makes you think you can lose me?" Lou blinks and rubs her hands over her bare knees. Again and again. It reminds me of something I did in the closet. Always the same movement. Back and forth, back and forth. A gentle, lonely rocking that comforted me.

I understand how upset she actually is. She just needs more time. So I shrug in a relaxed manner. "You're not all there yet. You're still out of it from the chloroform," I explain calmly. "And you're still way too afraid. Your head needs to be clear before we can talk about it."

She closes her eyes again as if she wants to block out everything around her. At least she stops rubbing her hands over her knees.

I step in place a few times, looking at her sitting there, huddled, a pathetic bundle of fear. "Tomorrow you can have some food."

No reaction.

The air between us grows thicker and thicker. It seems to me it is filled with Lou's panic, isolating her completely from me.

"I had to do it," I say abruptly, wanting to get through to her. "I didn't have a choice. There was no either/or. Never."

Little girl hearts.

Louisa Scriver.

404 Not found .

She doesn't move and, frustrated, I give up and take a shower.

As I rinse off the foam, the camper sways like a ship in thirty-foot waves.

I jump out of the shower, wrap the towel around my waist, and stagger against the glass wall of the cabin.

Hissing damn! I bump my elbow against it and go to Lou.

"The whole RV is rocking. What are you doing ?" I bark at her.

She's sitting on the edge of the bed, hiding the handcuffed hand behind her back.

"Nothing." A whisper. Her breathing is staccato-like. Fine droplets of sweat run down her temples.

Nothing . Of course, Lou, I believe you!

I circle the bed. I know perfectly well what she was trying to do. What anybody would have done. "Forget it!" I nod to the bracket I've chained her to. "Not even I can tear the plates out."

"Did you try that too?" she snaps.

"Of course." I give her an appraising look, thinking about my flashes in L.A. "I think you'd need a cordless screwdriver and a ton of patience to get those things off." She can know it's utterly impossible for her. "And the handcuffs, forget it. Double lock. The trick with the needle or the paper clip won't work." I point to her necklace. "Or with one of those things."

She bites her lip and looks away. Caught! Of course she thought of it.

Anger rises within me. "You're not going to escape me, Lou. With or without the cuffs, you're not going anywhere. Get used to it!"

"Louisa," she whispers hoarsely. "My name is Louisa."

No, you're Lou to me, I think angrily. Just Lou. And for you, everything is somehow easy .

Yet that is not the case. On the contrary. She tries desperately to avoid my gaze and appears as if she's about to collapse under an invisible weight. But she doesn't cry. And yet it seems to me that I can feel the weight of her unshed tears on my chest.

I'm sorry, Lou , a voice whispers in my darkness. I'm sorry, but I can't make it better for you. Giving you false hope wouldn't be fair. Because to hope is to suffer continuously. Hope is crueler than any other feeling in the world .

Darkness flows out of me. One line at a time, I can't stop it. My eyes are closed as the black charcoal slides across the paper. Usually, there are delicate, quiet sounds, but today, the sounds are swallowed by the campfire. The crackle is like my inner burning.

Drawing has always calmed me. It started in the slums, when I first got my hands on a pencil and pad in Ramon's shack. We were hungry because the trash had yielded nothing to eat except a can of moldy dog food. Ramon lived in a corrugated metal shack with his aunt, who was rarely around. His mom had died and his dad was in jail as were his uncle and cousin.

That evening, I found the pencil and notepad on a broken side table, just thrown there as if neither item had any value. The pencil held a magical attraction for me as I had never done anything else with a pencil than to write or do math. I sat down and started. I drew the bird whose wings were broken by branches. The first try was perfect. It was as if I had never done anything else.

Ramon stood next to me and couldn't close his mouth. "Hey, Hoover," he said, because I forgot my real name at the time. "Can you also draw people?"

I shrugged; I had no idea. Then I drew him—with his fringe of matted hair and the face of Jesus. That evening, we knew what we could do to stay afloat over the next few weeks. We sold my drawings. They didn't bring in much, but it was enough for the essentials. Sometimes, I dared to go out and we sat on Hollywood Boulevard or Sunrise Avenue where I drew portraits and caricatures of tourists. It was a good summer until I happened to spot him on the street. After that, I didn't leave Compton for two years. I would have rather starved than go back to him.

A snapping of the undergrowth makes me look up from the paper, but when I look at the slender birch trunks, only darkness stares back. I sit for a while and watch the crackling flames of the fire.

I don't have to look at what's on the paper, it's always the same image. Rose tendrils on ebony so dark, an outsider would never recognize them. Sometimes, I feel better afterwards. Less angry, calmer, as if I could put my weight on a piece of paper. But that's short-lived and today I'm not paying attention because I'm thinking about Lou the whole time.

I don't feel lighter, I feel heavier; guilty.

Because Lou no longer looks like Lou. No longer bright, no longer radiant. No longer light.

I knew the beginning would be difficult, even if I didn't want to think about it. I just didn't expect it to bother me so much. Somehow, I thought I could block out how she was doing until she got over the initial shock and recovered.

So what am I waiting for? Do I expect Lou to love me and we live like husband and wife here in the Yukon? That's how I imagined it, at least in my fantasies.

But what if she never wants me? I can't force her to love me. I have to think of him . The rare smile he gave me when I was particularly good at helping him sand and varnish the wood. I've been hungry for that smile. I would have given my soul for that smile. It was the only thing that gave my life meaning. It made me valuable for seconds, like he cared about me.

Perhaps the smile was even the cruelest. It gave me hope that one day he might change. But people don't change. At least not in the deepest core of their soul. A sadist is always a sadist, a loner is a loner, a bad person stays bad.

Will Lou feel the same about me one day? Will she hunger for my smile? For my words?

But I'm not him. I treat her well. I don't even want to chain her. And I will not punish her by putting her in the box.

Again, I stare into the orange-red flames. They hiss like snakes' mouths in the darkness, feeding on it, but they never manage to devour it. Eventually, the fire goes out, but the night is still black. Perhaps darkness is the basic principle of life and all good, bright people are like the stars in the firmament. They are born, they shine, and one day they die. But the darkness survives.

Lou is my star, my light in the dark.

When she gets used to me, one day she will love me. Suddenly, I'm certain of it. It's like a basic principle, even I would have loved the monster simply because I was alone.

Maybe it doesn't matter why she loves me as long as she does love me at all.

In my mind, I see the image of the teddy bears swaying in the wind. Father, mother, child. The perfect family.

My chest burns with this hot, agonizing tug so strongly, it might burn me if I give in to it.

I want that, dammit! Exactly that.

Perhaps life is better with the illusion of love than without love at all. Maybe there is no difference between real love and the illusion of it.

When I wake up the next morning, the sun is shining through the long window of the bunk. The sky is a royal blue and the shadows of the birches fall narrow and long on the forest road. It must be early in the morning.

As I climb into the RV's living room, I realize that today is my first day with Lou. The thought makes my stomach tingle like it did when she got out of the car in the parking lot at Sequoia National Park.

In order not to wake her, I refrain from using water and slip into dark green cargo pants and my favorite black shirt with the Jack Wolfskin logo across the chest. After that, I tie my hair in a ponytail since it keeps falling in my face. Maybe Lou can cut it for me sometime. Someday, when I no longer have to be afraid of her stabbing me with the scissors.

In the bathroom, I check my appearance again in the mirror cabinet. I'm satisfied actually—the wild, brooding aura is still there, but it's less pronounced than in winter. For a moment, I smile at myself the way I want to smile at Lou, but it still feels like a grimace.

I go back outside and set the table as quietly as possible. Later, when Lou wakes up, I want her to feel at home, so I rummage through the closets for everything I bought her. Chocolate donuts, her beloved lemon cookies, and peanut butter.

After a while, I decide it's late enough to fire up the generator to make coffee, but even that doesn't wake Lou up. I assume the aftereffects of the drugs are still incapacitating her.

Almost silently, I step over to her bed. When she finally fell asleep last night, I disinfected and bandaged her wrist. The skin under the cuff was reddened from her attempt to free herself and in one place the skin was scraped. She lay there curled up like a young hedgehog, completely exhausted from the day and the drugs. She didn't even wake up when I put iodine on it. She spoke in her sleep; unfortunately, I didn't understand anything.

Now she is lying on her back. She has uncovered herself and the blonde hair is fanned out around her head. It looks inviting. I want to lie down with her and play with it. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by her hair, but maybe all men feel that way about hair.

For a while, I watch her sleep and, imperceptibly, remove the chain from her handcuffs so she doesn't feel so trapped when she wakes up.

Without further ado, I decide to make scrambled eggs with bacon; I know how much she loves that. Avery does this for all his siblings every Saturday morning. Its secret ingredient is crème fraiche. Lou once posted a video titled: Avy-best-cook-ever! Thank God I made a note of everything before Lou logged off Facebook, or else I might have forgotten.

I crack the eggs into a pan and put on another for the bacon. Avery-style scrambled eggs with bacon is a science in itself, but I practiced in Los Angeles: start by melting the butter, then add the eggs. Cook over medium heat, remove from heat as soon as firm and still moist, not dry. Keep stirring with a spatula. At the very end, add mineral water and crème fraiche. And salt and pepper, of course. Don't add salt beforehand or it will ruin the texture, or so Avery explained while Lou pointed the camera at the pan.

When I hear a noise from the back of the RV, I turn around. Through the half-open folding door, I see Lou climbing out of bed.

"Oh, you're awake!" I call out to her.

She flinches.

I try to ignore it, I'm just in too good a mood. "Breakfast will be ready in a minute."

"I have to pee." There is uncertainty in her voice.

I point to the bathroom with the cooking spoon. "You don't have to ask for my permission."

She stays in the bathroom for quite a long time, longer than anyone needs for anything, but I'm not getting impatient today, even if the scrambled eggs are getting cold. There's nothing she can do in there.

I put the pan on the table, lean against the kitchen counter, and look out the window. A few fir branches sway up and down in the wind, are calming and meditative, almost like drawing.

I mentally go through the route again and estimate how long it will take us to get to the leased property.

My land sits right in the heart of Unorganized Canada , areas rarely found on any public map. The occasional trapper shack can still be found there, but almost all are now empty since most of the gold mines have been long abandoned.

When the bathroom door opens, I look at Lou. For a moment, I am startled by the deep black circles under her eyes. They look like shiners after a fight; then again, I didn't expect her to be Miss Sunshine after five days in a semi-coma.

"Sit!" I point to the kitchen nook.

Lou's gaze darts past me and lingers on the side door.

She's thinking about escape, Brendan, all the time. Look out!

I watch as she walks to the table and flops down on the bench. Is she just pretending or is she still exhausted? Or is she apathetic?

Growing suspicious, I pour her coffee and hold it in front of her face so that she can see it too. "Coffee?"

She takes it and I take that as a gesture of concession.

"Black with two spoons of sugar." I squeeze onto the bench across from her. "I didn't know what you'd be hungry for, so I just made everything." For some dumbass reason I'm proud to know everything about her.

I lean back against the bench and feel Lou staring at me the whole time even though she thinks I don't notice. She hasn't touched anything apart from the coffee, maybe she doesn't dare. I think of our encounter at the visitor center when she seemed so shy. Perhaps this anxiety is a trait of hers.

Perhaps she just doesn't want to have breakfast with the psycho who holds her captive? Not inconceivable!

I quickly dismiss the thought. "You want some eggs?" I ask, deliberately cheerful.

She nods.

"Lemon cookies?"

She nods again.

Relieved that she wants to eat anything at all, I pile a mountain of scrambled eggs onto her plate. "Make sure to eat slowly and chew every bite or you won't be able to keep it down. And maybe no peanut butter yet, now that I think about it." It was stupid of me to put that greasy stuff in front of her. The bacon's greasy enough, she may not be able to keep it down. I push the glass away with the back of my hand, just to emphasize my words.

Lou peers down at her plate again, her hands on her lap. After a while, she starts to eat. Well, she tries, but her fingers tremble so much, the scrambled eggs keep falling off her fork.

Okay, I guess she still doesn't believe me.

I deliberately grab a donut and examine it more closely so she doesn't feel like I'm watching her.

Suddenly, she clumsily sets the fork on the plate. "How do you know what I like?" She stares at me accusingly.

Is she serious? "Don't you know?" Apparently, she's even more na?ve than I thought.

"No!" she replies stubbornly.

"Think about it, then." I put the chocolate donut back and look straight at her.

"Were you spying on me? Sitting in the yard with binoculars watching us through the windows?"

"Nope. But I still know." I actually have to smile, although that's unfair. Sharing her life with the world, she honestly thinks someone would bother lying down in the field with binoculars. No, no, Lou, you volunteered all this information yourself .

She's still looking at me, suddenly her eyes narrow: "You followed me. When I was walking to the visitor center. You were tailing me in the woods, parallel to the gravel road."

I have no idea how she came up with this. "Possibly." I don't avoid her eyes since I have no reason to lie.

"You were the shadow," she whispers, then covers her mouth with her hands for a moment. "Which was why you knew about me and Ethan fighting about the camping lanterns. You heard. You were listening."

I hadn't imagined breakfast would go this way. I look out the window and mechanically nod. I don't want to lie to her. I kidnapped her, anyway, she knows something is wrong with me. She just can't find out how much is actually wrong with me. At least not right away, or else she'll freak out.

"You heard me tell him that I wanted to run away."

I look at her again and smile briefly as I think back on it. "It was convenient, yeah. It could have turned out differently though. I'd been expecting a long wait, but you were easy to catch." While it's true, it sounds awful.

Lou promptly presses her hand to her stomach as if she were nauseous. "How long…was I unconscious?" she abruptly asks.

I shrug in a vague gesture. It doesn't matter now anyway; it's better she finds out right away and then gradually forgets about it. "About five days. But it wasn't only chloroform, that would have been too dangerous."

She swallows hard. "What else, then?"

"Atropine, dimenhydrinate, gamma-butyrolactone, barbiturates…"

"What?"

"Belladonna, knockout drops, sleeping pills…the dimenhydrinate was for the nausea. To keep you from puking." I look her directly in the eye and see terror spreading across her face line by line.

"You gave me knockout drops?"

I can see what she's thinking. "A small dose," I concede. "Don't you remember?" Stupid question, of course she doesn't remember! But I remember. Her arms around my waist, her cheek against my stomach. "You woke up a couple of times," I continue. "I explained everything to you and gave you some water. Not much, just a few sips at a time."

"Why five days?" She still looks absolutely stunned.

I shrug. "The first part of the trip was dangerous. I couldn't risk anyone searching the RV and finding you. That's the only reason. And I knocked you out so you wouldn't be scared in the box. On the last day, I gave you some more chloroform so I wouldn't give you too much of the other stuff."

She gets up and immediately flops back onto the seat. All color has left her face, which is as white as chalk now.

"There never were any bears on the path, were there?" Her voice is dripping with contempt, oozing out of her like water from a saturated sponge. "You preyed on my fears to lure me away. You…you're…"

A nasty pig? A motherfucker? A bastard? A piece of shit? Spit it out, Lou, I've been called so many names!

"Think what you want of me, I'll still keep you with me," I snap back when she doesn't say anything else.

She opens her mouth, her eyes suddenly shimmering with tears. "But…"

"You're staying with me. Forever," I cut her off. "There's nothing you can do about it." I tell myself I can ignore her disgust, but of course I can't.

A tear escapes the corner of her eye and rolls thick and round down her cheek.

Shit! My gut clenches. She looks even cuter when she cries. Shit! Shit! Shit! But she shouldn't cry. And she shouldn't look at me like that!

I want to stick my head in the sand and not pull it out until she's done. But she doesn't stop. On the contrary.

I take a deep breath and focus on the me who is hard and cold, who can mercilessly drug and chain her without batting an eyelid. This part shakes his head. "Crying isn't going to help you. Crying never helps. Not with me." I feel strange. Far away. I look grimly out the window, concentrating on my old anger. "Where I grew up, it's the law of the strongest and that's me, not you. Sorry."

Suddenly, I want to get out of here. When I'm almost at the door, I turn back to her. "I know how hard this is for you. I'll do anything I can to make it more bearable." Lou's tears form two streaks down her cheeks and drip onto the Avery-style scrambled eggs. "When you're angry, be angry. When you're sad, be sad. I'm not going to forbid you to have feelings. I can handle them until things get better. If you think you want to spit on me or whatever, then do it, but don't overdo it…" I pause for a moment, feeling my eyes drill into her and how vulnerable she is to it. "There's only one thing I absolutely forbid you from trying."

"What's that?" Just a whisper.

"Escaping." The word comes out hard like an icebreaker, much harder than I meant.

"What would happen?" Her eyes are wide open for me to fall into.

You're thinking about it, aren't you? All the time!

Just thinking she could run away from me upsets me to no end. Involuntarily, my hands clench. Lou grabs the butter knife—no explanation necessary.

"Just don't try," I say as calmly as I can, then storm out, slamming the door behind me.

I drain the gray water at the side of the road and fill the fresh water tank with several water cans. My reserves, in case we don't stop near a stream or lake.

I'm still beside myself. In the slums of Los Angeles, I saw so many people cry. Widowed mothers, starving children, even Ramon once when he thought I couldn't see him. So far, I've been immune to tears. They didn't touch me inside, as if my capacity for compassion had withered. But Lou's tears hit me in a way that upsets me. It's as if they can soften something hard the way water can round a stone. I feel helpless and vulnerable, yet it's her who's crying, who's helpless and vulnerable, not me. I hate feeling like this. It reminds me too much of my past. And that is dangerous because it reawakens things in me that are better left dormant. Locked away.

A little later, when I enter the RV again, Lou's still sitting at the table. I ask her a couple of times if she feels like doing the dishes to do something she's familiar with, but she declines. At some point, I turn on the TV and flip through the shows. Coming across a missing person announcement, I immediately click to the next channel in case it's about Lou. I have to think about the newspaper articles—I could use a current issue to keep up to date. Maybe I can pull over after Johnsons Crossing somewhere outside so Lou won't be the wiser.

"Do you want to see something in particular?" I ask her after I've channel surfed about a hundred soap operas.

"That missing person announcement!" she replies promptly.

"Except that!"

"How about Hero of the Week , then."

"You like that?" I'm learning something new about her. Properly taken aback, I click to the channel and start doing the dishes. I watched the show a few times in Los Angeles, or at least I tried, but it was that typical heroic kitsch that you can only endure for five minutes or you'll end up throwing up.

And Lou likes this? I glance over at her. She's glued to the screen and I'm glad to see she's distracted.

The banter of the moderator and the hero rushes past me, though my ears perk up when the moderator, David O'Dell, asks Andrew Franklin about his story.

"Okay, so tell the nation how you came across Henry Clark," the moderator asks the hero, Andrew.

I turn to the screen. This Andrew looks like a pompous ass-kisser with hair parted on one side and a grin like a prick. "Well, David, can I call you David?"

The inconspicuous moderator merely nods—for there's no time to reply as Andrew takes the floor:

"David, a few weeks ago I saw that picture in the paper." He looks intently into the camera for attention. "Some teenagers had assaulted a homeless man. Another photograph of a subway station and a literal whipping boy. I mean, we all know those pictures, don't we, David? Not that I would describe myself as jaded, but it is what it is."

The account from this attention-seeking man sounds rehearsed. He probably practiced it in front of a mirror. Along with that permanent grin of his, he looks like a wide-mouthed frog that inhaled too much air. Irritated, I continue to listen because he is in rare form.

"Nobody knew the man and something made me want to look more closely. I mean really closely, David," he says earnestly. "God knows why. Anyway, I looked at him and I thought, wow, that old man literally looks just like a good friend of my father's. God rest his soul."

I look at Lou again. The thought of her liking this Andrew makes me want to stick my head in the toilet. Is she into Harvard students like him?

I glance back at the screen. Andrew is still doing his monologue.

"So I recognize him, but it's been so long that I have no idea what his name is."

"So what did you do?" David O'Dell asks.

Andrew doesn't look at David. "I started putting the word out on Facebook and Do you know ? And eventually, I managed to find a friend of a friend of a friend, you know, the usual route, who was able to identify him."

"And now you're going to pay Henry Clark's rent for the rest of his life?"

"Absolutely, David. I mean, it's a matter of honor, isn't it? He and my father were both in the Marines."

"That is truly heroic."

I sneer, "Hah!" Lou flinches and half-turns to me. I point the dishcloth at the TV. "That Henry Clark guy is probably dying of lung cancer and only has two months to live. That Andrew guy is doing it just for attention." In the slums, we hated slick guys like that!

"Do you know him as well as you do me?" Lou asks, turning back to Andrew.

I ignore her comment. "You seriously think he gives a shit about the old man?" I stroll over to her, trying to be extra casual. She is totally trusting, no mistaking that. "He wants people to think he's important. He's probably a mediocre student and thinks this will help him land a better job."

"Maybe he simply wants to help." Lou looks at me as if she doesn't know how far she can go before she starts to piss me off. That really pisses me off since I've already told her a hundred times that I wouldn't hurt her. And her way of defending that self-important asshole is driving me mad as hell.

"If he truly wants to help, he should let that lonely old man live with him, if he was actually his father's best friend." I give her a scathing look, then pick up the remote from the counter and turn off the television. Enough of this Hero of the Week !

"Go on, go to the back room! We're leaving in a minute," I instruct her.

She obeys immediately, which I'm thankful for. I follow her, still feeling the anger creating a lump in my throat. Lou can't possibly like a guy like Andrew! I realize I have no idea what guys she's into since there has never been one on Facebook.

"Sit on the bed…now scoot to the left." I grab her wrist and snap the loosely dangling handcuff onto the iron chain still attached to the clasp. A bit like a leash, but it has to be this way.

Once I'm done, I notice Lou watching me.

"Where are we headed?" she asks in a weak voice.

"Onward and upward."

"Onward where? You must have a destination."

"You won't like it, so why do you want to know?" I snap at her. In any case, we're not heading to see Andrew , I'd like to add sarcastically and feel like a little shit again.

She slides a little away from me. "Where are you taking me?"

She merely wants to know what you're up to, Brendan. That's only natural .

I go to the window and set the slats of the blind horizontally so that she can look out later. As my eyes fall on the unpaved country road, I feel a pressure on my chest that I can't explain.

I drugged and kidnapped her; she's scared, she's homesick, not to mention she doesn't know me. And I get upset simply because she showed sympathy for a Harvard student.

"Away," is all I say. I'm at a loss for words and hate myself for it.