He slips a loose plastic bag over my head to keep the chemicals in the air I’m forced to breathe into my oxygen-deprived lungs and from there into my blood. This frees up both of his arms so he can place me in the same choke hold he did the last time we met. I feel the pressure against my carotid arteries.
And I think, as my mind begins to go dark, that I was right. This is the day it will end.
Chapter Thirty
I’m sick the moment I come to. My stomach is empty, and nothing is expelled when I heave. My head throbs. I open my eyes, and my first thought is that I’m still alive.
Panic rushes in next, and I try to free myself. My wrists pull against a plastic zip tie. I try to stand, but my feet are tied as well, together but also to something cold and hard. A metal pipe. I am forced in a prone position, lying on my stomach with my arms beneath me. I lift up onto my elbows, then tell myself to stop moving. I’m alone, which means I have time to figure out where I am and what holds me in place and, from there, how I can escape. Pushed from these thoughts is the fact that I have moved to the dreaded second crime scene, and that never ends well.
Light washes in through the closed panes of one window. I scan my surroundings and feel an eerie sense of familiarity. I haven’t been here before, but this room reminds me of a case our department handled three years back—the execution of a drug dealer in one of the odd hunting structures in the backcountry.
There is no furniture. Just a sink with a small metal shelf on the wall beside it and a hand pump beneath it. I follow the pipe, which snakes across the wall to where I sit. This is why I can’t move. My feet are tied to the plumbing that exits to the outside through a small opening. I can feel the cool air seeping in against my calves.
Across from me is a closed door. The floor is wood but covered with plastic. I can see the blood stains that lie beneath, having seeped into the grains over the years.
The detectives who worked that case called this the Kill Room. The place where the hunters field dress the deer they’ve shot. The place where that drug dealer was executed three years ago.
And then I remember.
Not only did I tell Wade about this case on that back road, I wrote about this case for the college. I uploaded it to the portal. Every detail I was free to disclose. How the hunters use these shelters and how the large one has a basement with a cremation oven for the deer carcasses. This was an unnecessary fact, but I knew the students would find it fascinating. Anything to keep them engaged. I even wrote about the room with the blood.
The KillRoom.
What have I done? I thought if I let him catch me, if I let him take me somewhere alone with no chance of being followed and captured, I could finally put an end to things. But he hasn’t brought me to his hotel or on a long drive where we could talk. Where he could convince me we should be together. He didn’t want to be alone with me so he could be with me.
What have Idone?
I twist my head as far as it will go to look down at the pipe and the wall. I am less than two feet from the pump and the sink, and I know, if I have the time, I can disconnect the pipe and free my ankles. Then maybe I can find something sharp enough to cut through the plastic.
But there is no time. The door opens, and there he is. Wade.
He wears the same outfit as last night. Blue jeans, a red jacket, and a white baseball cap. And I remember that the couple leaving earlier that morning wore the same colors—red, white, and blue head to toe.
“It’s a One America convention,” Wade says with a smile. This is how he’s been blending in. This is why he chose that hotel. “Two hundred patriots all in one place. Celebrating America and watching baseball.”
Yes, I think. That explains the bat he carried last night.
I stare at him like an animal in a cage. I can see myself reflected in his eyes. The satisfaction runs deep. He is calm. Nonchalant. High on control.
I take a breath and fight to mask the fear in my eyes. I force myself to stop shaking. I have to change the narrative. Shift the balance of power.
“Do you know what’s been so surprising?” he asks me.
I don’t respond.
He leans against the doorframe and stares at my face, waiting. When he sees my defiance, he shrugs it off. “What’s surprising is that it’s so much easier to be the criminal once you learn the technique. Thinking backward. I needed you to come to me alone when you thought I wasn’t expecting you. So I asked myself, how can I let her find me? The rented car. The plastic bag. The little cameras under the bike seats. You’ve been a busy girl, Elise.”
I draw a deep breath and let it out slowly.Change the narrative.He has to question himself. He has to feel enough doubt to tap into that place inside him, the same one that made him follow Vera Pratt into the changing room. The damaged little boy.
“Now, a smart girl would have called for backup. The moment you saw me walk into the hotel after my stroll downtown. You should have been patient.”
I see the opening and grab it.
“How do you know I didn’t?” I ask him.
And for a split second, his face changes. I see a twitch as his confidence is shaken by the emotional fault lines that lie beneath the surface. He’s thinking now what he should be. Maybe I baited him. Maybe I lured him out of the hotel where it would have been far too easy for him to hide and then escape. So many rooms. So many corners in the guts of the place. The basement where they prepare the food and wash the sheets. So many people coming and going.
His face changes back when he finishes this silent line of questioning. “Afor effort,” he says. “Except Rowan is at the station. I called there before we left. And no one followed us here. There’s one way in and one way out. I removed the memory cards from the game cameras. There’s no live feed. And I checked you for trackers, not that it would matter. There’s no service up here.”
