“Smooth.”
“Thank you. I wanted to be a magician when I was a kid. Sleight of hand, distraction, the works.”
“I wanted to draw comics. How did you know where I was?”
He’s smiling. “I’ve got trail cameras all over the property.”
There’s anticipation in his silence. He’s leaving an opening for me to jump in with questions and accusations. He wants me to ask so he can tell me. No one loves a story more than Ellis. I don’t ask. He says it anyway.
“This would have been so much easier if you behaved like a normal person. Who chooses some hick’s house instead of the nice one next door?”
Click,click,clickgoes the turn signal, and then we’re back on Harmon Road.
Branches scrape against the car. The sound covers my seat belt unclicking. This isn’t a cop car, so unless the child locks are on, all I have to do is press one button to get out.
Ellistuts. He reaches down between his seat and thedoor to bring up the gun. It rests on his thigh with the muzzle pointed at me.
“None of that.”
We pass Clarence’s place. I don’t look in the yard.
Click,click,clickgoes the turn signal, and then Ellis is pulling into the driveway of the new-construction home I chose to pass. That I wasrightto pass.
Three people emerge from the front door as soon as the wheels touch the driveway. Two men and a woman. All white, each wearing bloodred scrubs. I recognize the woman and one of the men. Leah and Greg.
Greg’s nose is swollen and covered with a bumpy gauze bandage. The third is older. Late fifties, white and the sort of tan that lets everyone know he went on vacation this year. He could be any one of the businessmen with two-hundred-dollar haircuts walking around Downtown Columbus.
Ellis puts the car in park.
“Was it real?” I ask. The need to know is overwhelming now that we’re stopped. “That thing in the woods. Was it real?”
Ellis turns his handsome face to look at me. The gun on his lap, a soft smile on his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Greg and the guy who I’ve decided to call Haircut approach the SUV. Haircut opens my door. Moist summer heat and the drum of cicadas roll over me. Haircut smells like the on-sale cologne kids buy for their dads on Father’s Day.
Ellis lifts the gun in an out-of-the-car gesture, then sends a look back at Ripley.
“You behave and we’ll take good care of her. If you don’t…” He shrugs.
Slime, says the goblin.
The tendons in my jaw itch with the urge to bite down, toeat him.
I flinch, making him smirk. I’m no stranger to violent thoughts. But this animal urge toeathim? I don’t know where it came from; I just know it wasn’t me.
Haircut puts a hand under my arm to help me out. I think he might have a chance at being charming if I knock his teeth down his throat.Thatthought is 100 percent mine.
An arm wraps around my chest from behind, and a wet cloth is smothered over my nose and mouth. I inhale, startled. Mistake.
My mouth and throat are flooded with the familiar smell of chemical cleaner.
The cicadas stop singing. My limbs go numb. The world shifts. I’m not falling; I’m being lowered.
The last thing I see is Ellis looking at me from above, one corner of his mouth quirked.
CHAPTER 12
Chloroform doesn’t work the way movies say it does. You’ll wake up in a few minutes unless the rag stays on or is put back repeatedly.
