bathroom. A tiny cut, a splash of alcohol, over and over again. Do you have any idea how excruciating that is?' Kate glanced down at the stab wound on my leg, seeping red-black through my ruined jeans, and smiled: thin, humorless. 'But of course you do. Although at least you had the benefit of blacking out. I allowed her no such luxury.'
She clenched shut her eyes, fighting back tears. When Kate opened them again, that faraway look was gone, replaced with one of sadness and regret. 'Mom screamed for hours, you know. Screamed until her throat bled, until she forgot her own name. Screamed in fury and in agony, and eventually, she even screamed for mercy. But in the end, it didn't matter. I just kept cutting and dousing, cutting and dousing, until finally the police arrived. Only then, when she was of no more use to me, did I end her pain.'
'That wasn't
'What does that matter? What does it matter when the three of them are dead, and all I'm left with is the memory of their blood on my hands?'
I pulled her close, and held her tight. Kate resisted at first, but then the tears came, and she buried her head in my chest, sobbing for what seemed like hours. There was nothing I could say, so I just let her cry.
Finally, her sobs diminished; she dried her eyes on my shirt and let me go.
'It was a mistake, coming here,' I said.
'No,' Kate replied, 'this was something that I had to do.'
'Still, we shouldn't stay for long. It's not healthy. It's not
Kate nodded, folding her arms across her chest and suppressing a shiver. 'Yeah,' she said. 'Maybe getting out of here is not the worst idea.'
31.
The problem was, I couldn't sleep.
I mean, the bed was plenty comfortable, and probably cost more than the average car, and the pajamas I'd borrowed were cool and clean against my skin, but I just couldn't stop my thoughts from racing. Maybe it was this place keeping me awake, with its echoes of the recent dead reverberating through its halls. Maybe it was the fact that, despite what I'd said to Kate, I hadn't a single fucking clue what we were gonna do next. Maybe it was the lack of food, or the phase of the moon, or any of a thousand mundane things that hold sleep just out of reach, but I doubt it. No, I think that maybe, just maybe, I couldn't sleep because I had a sense that something wasn't right.
I wish I could claim I'd listened to that feeling, that I'd posted myself at Kate's door and kept watch throughout the night. I didn't, though. We'd set up camp in a couple of guest rooms on the second floor – Kate, of course, could've slept in her own bed, but she'd opted not to, and who could blame her? I'd given the apartment a once-over before we retired to our rooms, but rather than allaying my fears, it only served to amplify them. The place was too big, too labyrinthine, with too many closets, nooks, and hidey-holes in which a would-be assailant could hide. Even with Kate by my side, I probably couldn't have checked them all, and after the scene in the kitchen, I didn't want to put her through all that again; so like an idiot, I'd gone it alone. To keep my worries at bay, I'd resolved to stay alert, to keep my ear to the ground – and I would have, had exhaustion not gotten the better of me.
But it did. And not just your garden-variety weariness, either; this was an exhaustion born of running balls- out for going on a week without a moment's peace, not to mention a decent meal. So as I watched the hours go ticking by, lying sleepless in my bed, I made a dumb-ass move. As the clock struck 3am, I dragged my ass out of bed and walked right past Kate's guest room to the bathroom down the hall. Just off the master bedroom, this bathroom was clearly an oasis for Kate's mom – all soft and floral and littered with make-up, a ginormous jetted tub wedged into the corner beneath a bubbled skylight. Like any self-respecting Upper East Side socialite, her medicine cabinet was a veritable pharmacy. I shook a couple sleeping pills from their amber bottle and washed them down with water from the tap. Then I stumbled back to my bed, not even bothering to pull back the covers before collapsing onto it.
I guess the pills did the trick, because that's the last thing I remember – at least until I jerked awake, panicked and sweating. Something had roused me from my slumber, but my brain was fuzzy, dulled from sleep and pills, and I couldn't focus. What was it that I'd heard?
Nothing, said my pillow. Just forget it and come back to sleep. But that pillow was a liar. I'd heard something – I knew I had. If I could just focus…
There. Again. A frightened whimper. A muffled thud. The fog lifted – not much, but a little – and I sat upright in bed, sliding the gun out from beneath the pillow as my feet found the floor. The scrap of fabric I'd used to hold in the powdered remains of the catshard protruded comically from the gun barrel, like a kerchief from a magician's sleeve, as though mocking me for putting my faith in so ridiculous a weapon. But it was too late to worry about that now. I crept over to my open bedroom door and peered out into the hall, but it was dark, and there was nothing to see.
I approached Kate's bedroom, gun held ready. The lights were off, the curtains drawn, but by the faint illumination of the alarm clock, I could tell the bed was empty. I padded barefoot down the hall to the staircase. At the top, I stopped, straining to hear what might be going on below. There, faintly – the whisper of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Something like a body.
The time for waiting had passed. I bounded down the stairs, two at a time, making for the source of the noise. The problem was, the whole damn place was marble and hardwood, and sounds bounced off the walls like an echo chamber. I ducked into three empty rooms before I was forced to admit I had no idea where the sound had come from. It was then that I heard the voice.
'Hello, Samuel.'
It echoed through the darkened apartment as if from everywhere, or from nowhere at all. The voice itself was unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking that smug tone, that knowing sneer.
'Bishop,' I said.
His laughter reverberated off the penthouse walls. 'Of course, that's not my name of choice, but for now it should suffice.'
