Tell me what you did to Katherine,” I say again, twisting the towel that had just been in his mouth.
It’s damp with saliva. An icky, warm wetness that makes me drop the towel to the floor. “Tell me and this will all be over.”
He doesn’t, of course. There’s no reason he would. Not to me.
Not after everything I’ve done. And what I’m still doing. Holding him captive.
Lying to Wilma.
I’ll have a lot of explaining to do later. Right now, though, my only goal is saving Katherine. If that’s even possible. I have no way of knowing until he tells me.
“What happened to her?” I say after a minute passes and the only sound I hear is rain pounding the roof.
He tilts his head to the side, unbearably smug. “You’re assuming I know.”
I mirror his expression, right down to the thin-lipped smile that conveys anything but friendliness. “It’s not an assumption. Now tell me what you did with her.”
“No.”
“But you did do something?”
“I want to ask you a question,” he says. “Why are you so concerned about Katherine? You barely knew her.”
His use of the past tense sends a streak of fear down my back. I’m certain that was his intent.
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “Tell me where she is.” “A place where you’ll never find her.”
The fear remains. Joining it is something new: anger. It bubbles in my chest, as hot and turbulent as boiling water. I leave the room and march downstairs as the lights perform another unnerving flicker.
In the kitchen, I go to the knife block on the counter and grab the biggest blade. Then it’s back upstairs, back into the room, back to the bed where I’d slept as a child. It’s hard to fathom that that little girl is the same person now buzzed on bourbon and wielding a knife. If I hadn’t personally experienced the years between those two points, I wouldn’t believe it myself.
With trembling hands, I touch the knife’s tip to his side.
A poke of warning.
“Tell me where she is.”
Rather than cower in fear, he laughs. An actual, honest- to-God laugh. It scares me even more that he finds this situation so amusing.
“You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing,” he says.
I say nothing.
Because he’s right. I don’t.
But that’s not going to stop me from doing it anyway.
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