Mason and Jo had clung together that evening, crying in the darkness. "Don't feel too sad about him," Mason had said. "He was faithless. He was a faithless mongrel."
With the dog gone, a heavy burden lifted from Mason.
He never forgot the lesson he'd learned from Seymour. Life was full of disappointments, and nothing was what it looked like from the outside.
He let the girl named Gillian go to the bathroom; then he made her walk downstairs. He shoved her along in front of him, down the aged wooden steps into the stone basement with its dirt floor. The smell of dampness and earth hit him, and again he thought of Seymour.
The bare lightbulbs that lit the way from room to room were dim.
They wound along to finally come to the door with the chipped green paint. He reached around the girl, opened it, and then gave her a push.
Gillian stumbled forward, her heart hammering. The room was no wider than six feet across, each side lined with wooden shelves. On one of the shelves was a thin gray mattress and pillow. Attached to the shelf supports were handcuffs. In the back of the room, lying horizontally on the ground like a coffin, was a mustard-colored refrigerator. Dangling above her head, covered with cobwebs, was a bare, low-watt lightbulb.
He spun her around and yanked the tape from her mouth.
She didn't respond to the pain. "Mason, please, let's talk. I want to talk to you-" When she talked to him, he changed.
"I'm going to work," he said.
He pulled a wrapped sandwich out of his sweatshirt pocket and put it on the mattress. Out of his other pocket came a jar of water. He put that next to the sandwich. "If you scream, nobody will hear you. But I don't want you to scream. If I come home and hear you screaming, I'll have to discipline you. I'll have to hurt you. If you're bad, you'll be punished. If you're good, you'll be rewarded."
"Mason, please-"
He turned and left, shutting the door behind him. She heard the jingle of metal as he locked the lock, then muffled footsteps as he walked away. A minute later the light above her head went out, plunging her into darkness.
Trying to keep her fear tamped down, she felt her way to the door and ran her hands across the rough wood. There was no handle on the inside. She pushed, then threw her weight against it. Solid, with no movement. She threw herself at it again and again until her shoulder ached.
She expected her eyes to adjust to the dark, expected the room to eventually lighten, but that didn't happen. It remained as dark as it had been when Mason turned bff the light.
She thought about prisoners who'd been secluded in dark holes for months, sometimes years. If they hadn't been crazy to begin with, they were when they got out.
He was coming back, she told herself. He'd just put her down there while he was at work. Yet she couldn't keep from wondering, What if he never returns?-either intentionally or unintentionally. He could be in a car wreck. He could be killed. Nobody would know where she was.
Every instinct told her to scream as loudly as she could.
What if he hasn't really left?
What if he's upstairs, listening, waiting to see if you've disobeyed?
What if he's standing right on the other side of the door?
She rapped lightly on the door. "Mason?" she whispered. "Are you out there?" She paused, listening for an answer.
Silence.
Left alone in the dark with just her thoughts, she felt fear begin to grow.
He was different this morning.
He didn't like me this morning.
Even though he was a kidnapper and a killer, he seemed to be in awe of women in his own weird, twisted way. But this morning he'd been all business, hardly looking at her. She'd sensed disappointment in him. What had she done wrong? What had set him off?
Was he riding the downside of a manic episode? Now that the thrill of the capture was over, had the high evaporated, leaving him deflated and depressed?
She crossed her arms at her waist and pressed them to her empty stomach. It hurt. Her stomach hurt. She remembered the sandwich he'd dropped on the bed, along with the jar of water.
She couldn't inspect it with her eyes, couldn't examine it for bugs or anything else he may have decided to put inside. Even if she could see, she wouldn't be able to tell if he'd laced it with anything from rat poison to some kind of drug that would knock her out for the rest of the day.
Maybe that would be a good idea.
No, she decided, thinking of lying down on the filthy mattress, virtually unconscious for hours while roaches nibbled away at her. No, she couldn't make herself eat the sandwich or drink the water.
How much time had passed? Two hours? Five minutes? Impossible to tell.
She had to focus her mind on something solid. Think about getting out. Think about what she would say to Mason when he returned to convince him never to put her here again. Think about not doing anything wrong. Think about being good.
But thoughts of Mason's return increased her anxiety and made her more aware of the slow passing of time. She had to dwell on something else, had to think of something nice.
A picnic in the park.
Fried chicken.
No, can't think about food.
Still standing, she leaned her back against the door and closed her eyes. "Swimming," she whispered to herself. She'd always loved to swim. When she was in high school, she used to force the air from her lungs. Airless, her body lost all buoyancy and she would let herself sink to the bottom of the deep end. She would lie there, looking up at the surface from her skewed perspective. When her lungs could wait no longer for air, she'd fold herself, then push against the pool bottom, shooting up to the surface, flying into the sparkling light, feeling exhilarated because she'd flirted with death.
"What are you doing?" Mary would shout in a frantic voice from the edge of the pool.
"Pretending to be dead."
"Don't scare me like that! I was ready to dive in and pull you out!"
Mary rescued people. It was what she did.
Gillian used to be brave. She used to be tough. She used to be scared of nothing. But that was all a facade. A teenage facade.
Fear is a terrible thing. An awful, horrible thing.
Maybe the most terrible, awful, horrible thing. It made you rearrange yourself, made you willing to compromise all principles. Made you desperately want to please a sick man.
Mary pulled up in front of Gavin Hitchcock's house, turned off the ignition, and got out of the car. After Gillian's abduction and Holly's statement, Gavin's confession had been tossed out and he'd been released on bail, the rape charge still standing. Now Mary was after reassurance and information. Sometimes killers worked in pairs, and she needed to be absolutely certain Gavin wasn't in some way connected to the recent murders-and possibly to her sister's abduction.
He answered the door dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, his hair clipped close to his head, his face clean-shaved, his eyes dark-rimmed and hostile. Evidence of his overdose clung to him. He was pale and thin, and he looked as if he'd dropped thirty pounds since the day Mary had seen him at the auto repair shop.
"What do you want?" He chose a pose of intimidation, chest out, one bent arm high on the doorframe, fingers dangling.
"May I come in?"
He stared at her a moment, then dropped his arm and backed up to let her pass. "Have you heard anything about Gillian?" he asked, his tone warring between resentment of Mary and desire for news of her sister.
Mary sat down on the couch. His house was clean and tidy, very different from the last time she'd been there.
He remained standing. "What do you want?"
"You love Gillian, don't you?" she asked, trying to establish a foundation for the questions that would follow.
"That's no big secret."
"And you'd like us to find her, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would." He became animated, angry at the implication that he might not want Gillian to be found. "I'm going crazy here. If I find out who did this to her, I'll kill him." He began to pace. "I don't care if I go to prison for the rest of my life." He jabbed a finger in her direction. "I want that son of a bitch dead. If I find out he did anything to hurt Gillian-" He stopped, and his voice cracked. Emotions and energy spent, he collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes were red. "She has to be okay," he said hoarsely. "She has to be okay."