I shake my head and say, “I didn’t know, Wade. Honestly, I didn’t know what you were up to. And then thatdrive-byat the diner. And Briana’s tires, that word you carved into her car door...”
Wade nods and sighs, but it’s from nerves releasing the tension that builds now as he finally gets to tell me the stories he’s rehearsed for days. Weeks. And as he gets closer to the end of his plan, I still don’t understand. Not entirely.
“I didn’t make your husband go there. But I knew he would. I’m so sorry about that. Really. I know how painful that must have been. But aren’t you glad you know?”
We cover hisbreak-inat my house, which he says technically wasn’t abreak-inbecause I’d left the front door unlocked. And then the photos and, finally, my visit to the Lucas family.
I pretend to cough. Not once, but over and over. A spell from the chloroform. Wade gets up, looks around for a sink, but there isn’t one in this room. While he’s turned and my body is heaving, I break the zip tie with a quick, forceful motion against the metal of the gun mount. I feel it fall to the floor and kick it beneath the counter.
My hands are free when he turns around again.
“Sorry. No water.”
I get ahold of myself and the fake coughing spell.
Wade continues with his story. “It got a little dicey there. I thought for sure you’d find me sooner. I didn’t count on you watching all the hotels. I thought you’d pick the closest one right away. So I had to move things along. Make you think I’d go after your kids again.”
“Yes,” I say, interrupting him now. I feel for the hunting rifle with my fingers, finding the release of the mount. “I didn’t know what was going on with you. I can see now that you haven’t lost your mind. That you would never hurt any of us. I can see that this is about payback, like you said, for what Billy Brannicks did to us by putting that gun in Clay’s hand.”
He smiles widely. “Yes! Yes! Exactly. I knew you’d understand once I got you here. And this,” he says, sweeping his arms around him, his eyes taking in the room. “You wrote about this place. And how it has a cremation oven. And you said in your class notes... do you remember what you said? About the perfect murder?”
“First, you burn the body,” I tell him.
His face settles down, and he draws a breath. “Right. I signed up for a feminist studies course and got access to the entire portal. It was so easy to find your class and what you posted after. You said this was the perfect kill site. Don’t you see? I did everything exactly right. The Kill Room. The cremation oven. You were just as excited writing about this place as I was to read it.”
His face softens. Relaxes. We are back by the blue truck, out on that deserted road. I’m here with him, alone. The delusion is, right now, a reality. We are together, connected by our hatred for the man in the other room, who is the only one left to blame for what happened at Nichols who is still alive.
“So what now?” I ask. “Are you going to kill him and cremate the body?”
He walks closer and leans over the counter. I hold the rifle in the palms of my hands beneath it and pray he doesn’t notice that I haven’t moved since I sat down. That my arms remain hidden beneath the wood.
“My life is changed, Elise. I have nothing to go back to. I have to leave. And so do you. I’ve been waiting for you to see. To understand. Your life is changed after killing that poor sick young man. You know now about that woman in the dressing room. How I didn’t see Clay Lucas fall. How I wasn’t in the line of fire when you killed him. The guilt will never leave. There’s nothing left for you.”
I feel the hunting rifle with my hand, finding the safety and the trigger. Visualizing it in my mind. I don’t let my eyes leave his. I don’t let his words get inside my head.
“When you wrote, ‘They don’t deserve you’—that’s what you meant, right? That I’m damaged now. That I can’t be a wife and mother and partner. That they’re better off without me.”
He nods and smiles. “Do you know the expression—burn the boats?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “When explorers discovered a new land and they knew it would be hard to stay, they would burn their boats so they had no choice. So their crew had no choice. There is no going back when you burn the boats.”
“Precisely,” he says.
I stop breathing when I hear him finish his thought.
“So I’m not the one who’s going to kill Billy Brannicks. You are.”
ChapterThirty-Two
I am reeling now, fighting to hold my thoughts in place. Fighting even harder to find a response.
“You want me to kill this man? This young man—this boy? With my own gun?”
“Yes. And then you can never go back to your old life. You’ll have to come with me and start over. It will be your bullet they find in the body. Your perfect murder, posted for the world to see.” He waves his hands around the room like he’s presenting his case. “It won’t take long for them to figure it out, and then you will be prosecuted and sent to jail. Dishonored. Loathed by your children and your husband. Rowan will be ashamed. Or you can start over—the way I have to.”
There it is—the reveal of his plan. How he deluded himself into believing he could have what he wanted. This connection with me. Some kind of future where we lived in mutual acknowledgment that we are one and the same. A way for him to feel accepted and to not be alone. Not for one more day.
“You’ve been trying to be someone you’re not, and I’m going to save you. Don’t you want to do it? Don’t you want this man dead?” he asks me.
