His (20 page)

“Gav?”

I waited to make sure he wasn’t just in the bathroom, but there was no response.

The bathroom. I had to go to the bathroom. As soon as I realized it, the urge to pee hit me even harder. I’d drunk way too much wine last night, and if he wasn’t around to let me out, I was going to pee the bed.

I yelled a bit louder, to carry my voice downstairs. Surely he wouldn’t have left me tied up without letting me go to the bathroom.

“Gav!”

Nothing.

I twisted my body, curling my body close together. My feet could reach the knots if I stretched, I bet. I could even escape, if he was gone. Maybe he was gone. But where would he—

Oh, shit.

My mind focused in an instant. Yesterday, the only thing stopping him from killing that man had been the trade. But today—

No, he wouldn’t.

Of course he would. He was a killer.

“
GAV!”
I screamed at the top of my lungs, and my dry throat ached with the strain of the shouting. I didn’t care.
“GAV!”

I had to get out. Sure, I had to get to the bathroom, but more than that, I had to stop him from killing another person. If he was gone, he would be driving over to wherever he’d said he’d found the next victim. As I thought about it, I realized that I wasn’t scared for his next victim. I was scared for him.

Where had he gone? I racked my brain even as I twisted my body up, trying to get my feet to reach the knot. He’d said a hundred miles away. That means I had time, if he had left not too long ago. But how could I know?

My toes touched the rope, and I curled them around the top of the knot, trying to get a grip. My neck was bent at a weird angle, and I had to pee, oh god, I had to pee so bad.

I had to get out. My toes slipped off of the rope, and a shooting pain crossed my abs. I nearly cried out loud. Trying to keep myself from peeing was too much in this position.

But I couldn’t let him do it. I couldn’t let him kill.

“GAV!” I screamed. My chest began to tighten.

No.
Not a panic attack. Not now.

“No,” I said to myself, as I gasped for breath. “
No, no, no, no!
”

Anxiety gripped my throat so hard that I thought my windpipe had collapsed. I didn’t have my pills. If I had my pills, I would be fine. But no pills. No way to move, to sit up. My arms were stretched out to the sides, and I couldn’t relax.

“GAAAAAAAV!”

God, I had to pee. Oh god, I had to pee. It was going to come out if he didn’t show up…
now
. I clenched my thighs together and tried to hold it. The tenseness in my chest grew. Was I having a heart attack? Jesus, what would happen to me if I had a heart attack?

It wasn’t a heart attack. It wasn’t a heart attack.

“Breathe, Kat,” I repeated, my belly full and tight and needing release. “Deep breaths. In, out.”

I couldn’t breathe deeply, not with my bladder so full. It was no use. I had to try to get out of this bed, no matter what.

I twisted my legs up above my head again, and again my toes slipped. This time my leg fell down, and I couldn’t stop myself. My body was too tense, and I had to let go.

Warmth spread as I pissed myself. I moaned, trying to shift my body over to the side of the bed, but it was no use. I soaked through my underwear, my dress, the sheets. The pungent odor of urine rose from below, stinging my nose.

Tears filled my eyes as I gasped for air. The humiliation was enough to make me cry, but apart from that I was no closer to escaping, to preventing Gav from bringing another man back here to kill him.

He would stick him with a needle, just like the other man.

Breathe, Kat.
I sucked in air, but it wasn’t enough. The whole room seemed to close in on me, fuzzy and dark. I twisted my leg up again, but I couldn’t even see the ties around my wrists.

He would tie the man down on the table, tighten the straps.

No, Kat. No.

I shook my head and clenched my eyes shut, breathing through my teeth. My teeth were hurting from my jaw being clenched so tight. The wetness on my lower half turned cold in the air as I twisted up, trying to find the knot with my toes. If only I had a knife…

He had a knife. He would cut the man open.

“NO!”
I shouted, gasping for breath. My chest clenched and I felt a muscle spasm rip through my neck, cramping my throat.

He would stab him through the heart.

No!

I gasped for air. My vision was blotted with gray spots and I grew dizzy. The ropes around my wrists were tight, so tight. There was no blood. I couldn’t escape. I would die here in a bed of my own piss.

“Help!”
I called, my voice rasping between shallow breaths. There was no air in the room. I was choking, choking. There was no air at all, no matter how much I gasped. The room spun around me.

He would kill him. Kill him.
Kill
.

“Gav…”
I cried weakly, and then everything went black.

     Gav    

I did something stupid.

Before, I’d said that I was not a stupid person - I always made my moves carefully, cautiously, rationally. If I slipped up, I might get caught, and I knew what the consequences were if anyone discovered me.

But I was curious. Like my kitten.

And so I did a stupid, careless thing. I went back to the library where I had seen the girl. I told myself I was going to pick up some more books for her to read, to keep her company. But that was only another lie that I told myself.

The truth of it was, I wanted to know more about her.

As I walked in, I darted a quick cross-glance over to the counter. Her friend was nowhere to be seen, and whether that was good news or bad news I couldn’t decide. I made my way over to the elevator and got inside.

This was where she had kissed me. The impertinent girl. Thinking about it now made me heat up - her soft body against my chest, her hungry lips seizing mine. I licked my lips and pressed the button to go up.

On the third floor, the elevator jerked to a stop. Wandering aimlessly down the aisles, I let my fingers run across the spines of the books. Crime novels, science fiction tomes. Romance novels down at the corner, their spines red and gold and well-worn.

Fiction. This was all a fiction, I thought. My kitten, back at home, tied safely to the bed - all of it was a story that I told myself. A story that led, in every possible path, towards a tragic ending.

Tragic, for how else could this story end? It was impossible that we would figure out a way to live together. Outside of the house, she had seemed so happy, so enchanted with the world. And for all my pretensions at objectivity, she had managed to slip underneath, into my calm world, and ripple the surface with her desires.

At the end of the row of books, I turned around, then stopped dead in my tracks.

It was her friend, the other girl. She was sitting down in the middle of the aisle, a handful of books at her side. Her hair was dyed green where before it had been purple, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but it was her.

This was why I had come here, but now that the girl was in front of me I didn’t know how to react. Recognition flashed over her face as she looked up at me, but if I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have found it.

“Can I help you?”

Her voice sounded tired, and although her words were polite, she narrowed her eyes while looking at me. Not blinking.

“Just browsing. I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?”

She rolled her eyes and thumbed toward her face. I didn’t know whether she was pointing at the piercings or the hair, or both.

“Can’t miss me,” she said.

“You worked with that girl, didn’t you? The one who ran away?”

“She didn’t run away.”

Now her face sharpened into rapt attention. I could almost smell her suspicion. Rather than make me cautious, though, her suspicion emboldened me. Here I was, right where I had met her. It almost made me understand those killers who leave notes or other clues. Before I thought that they were trying to get caught, but right now, standing next to the one girl who could link us together, the world was so bright that I couldn’t even remember the shadow.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I saw on TV—”

“That’s what they’re all saying,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair, brushing her green bangs back. Under all the eyeliner and metal, she was actually quite a beautiful girl. Not my type, but classically pretty. “Even her parents.”

“You don’t believe them?”

“I don’t—look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to believe. Kat wasn’t that kind of girl.”

“You knew her well?”

“Well enough.” She squinted up at me. “How did you know her?”

“I don’t. I only met her here that one day. When she was working with you.” My voice was calm, smooth, remembering all the details. The romance novel on the cart.

“I can see how you would remember
me
,” she said, tossing her green bangs back. “But how did you remember
her
?”

“Well, she did kiss me.”

Now the girl’s eyes widened.

“She
what
?”

My mind stumbled. Kat had told me that it had been a bet. That this girl had bet her to kiss me. Was that a lie?

“She kissed you? Are you
serious
?” The girl stood up,

“I—I mean, yes, she kissed me. Out of nowhere. I didn’t know her before, and when she asked me on a date I said I wasn’t interested. I was dating someone else at the time, you see.”

I clamped my mouth shut, stopping myself before I rambled off into a world of explanatory lies. Only liars ever gave explanations without being asked.

“Wow.”

The girl leaned on the wall of books, and a title caught my eye:
Caught In the Act
. I blinked my eyes back to her face.

“So she really did kiss you. I didn’t think she had the balls to do it.”

I shrugged, affecting nonchalance.

“When I saw her on TV, I thought:
what a coincidence
. One day she’s flirting with me, the next day…” I waved my hand away into the air.

“She told me that she chickened out,” the girl said in a half-whisper.

“I’m sure she didn’t want to bother me after I’d turned her down. You really think she didn’t run away? You think something else happened to her?” I leaned forward, and the girl looked up at me, frightened.

“I don’t know.” The girl shook her head, her bangs and earrings swinging in the air. “I mean, she had her demons, we all do. God, I don’t know anymore. She told me that she would never do something like that again, but… I don’t know. Maybe she was lying about that, too.”

“What was she like?” I asked softly.

“Kat? She was great. Funny, smart. She would have been finished with school already, except for all the loan stuff. I told her—”

Her eyes welled up suddenly with tears. Trembling, her lips pressed together so tightly they went white.

“I told her she was boring,” she said. “I called her a slacker. That was the last thing I said to her.”

Her face contorted with grief. I had the thought of putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, but that would be worse than nothing. The cause of her grief was standing right in front of her, and there was no way for me to fix it.

“Excuse me,” she said. Her hand wiped away tears, held back her sniffling. “I—I have to go now.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “I hope they find her.”

She nodded and fled, leaving the books on a pile in the middle of the aisle next to the cart. I could hear her sobbing as she walked down the aisle, her feet nearly running away from me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

     Gav    

When I got back home, the house was quiet.

“Kat?”

I called her name as I walked up the bedroom stairs, holding the books I’d picked out for her. Hopefully these were better. A couple of suspense novels, and a book of short stories. A bit more literary than the romances I’d originally picked out.

“Sorry I took so long. I—”

I stopped in the doorway. My heart stopped too.

Kat’s head lolled to one side, grotesquely. Her eyes were closed.

The books dropped to the floor as I strode forward. The smell of urine hit me as I leaned over the bed.

“Kat? Kat!”

I shook her shoulder, but she didn’t move. Quickly I pressed my ear to her chest. My heart was pounding so hard that I could barely hear over it, but it was there. Her heartbeat. She wasn’t dead.

Stupid. Stupid, to leave her chained up with no way to get to the bathroom. I needed locks on the outside of the bedroom door. I needed—

I needed her to wake up.

Shaking, I untied the knots that bound her wrists. Her hands were limp and white, cool in the air. I rubbed her wrists with my thumbs, urging the circulation back into them.

“Kat? You’re okay, Kat. You’re okay.” I whispered the words like a chant, like a prayer. Had she fainted? I went into the bathroom and turned on the cold faucet in the bath. I took a washcloth and ran it under the stream of water. And ammonia—I could use ammonia.

I fumbled through the cabinet, trying to find the inhalant. It would be a last resort. There it was. I tucked the bottle into my pocket.

I ran back out to the bed and pressed the washcloth to her forehead. Her lips fell apart but there was no other sign of motion, just her breath, warm against my arm. The water dripped down her cheeks like tears. It turned her hair dark brown with moisture.

“Kat! Kat!” I shouted desperately, choking on her name. Still she would not open her eyes.

This—this was my guilt, my true sin. All of my life, I’d known that I was different. I did not care for others. I had a horrible urge to kill, to destroy. And now, through my own stupidity, I’d destroyed the one thing I’d come to care for.

“Please wake up, kitten. Please.”

My hands flitted over her body, squeezing her limbs as though that would bring her back from wherever she was. And in the back of my head, the shadow taunted me.