He fingered the buttons on her shirt and idly popped the first three and spread the fabric apart. His hand pressed on her chest and felt it rise and fall. 'Maybe I won't need to kill you. Maybe we can leave together. Both of us. Would you go with me?'
She grimaced. 'Go where?'
'Away.'
'What if I did?'
'Are you saying you'd stay with me?'
'To save my life?' she stammered. 'Yes.'
Slowly, he undid the rest of her shirt and let it hang open. 'You forget, you can't lie to me. I'm just like you.'
'Why ask if you won't believe me?'
'Because I like to hear you say yes. I like it when you're scheming and ruthless. What would you do if we went away? Would you plot to kill me? Would you spend every minute looking for your chance?'
'You know I would,' she snapped. There was no point in a charade. She wasn't going to change the outcome.
'You may be the most exciting woman I've ever met,' he said with admiration.
He laid the flashlight at his feet. From inside his pocket, he pulled out Kasey's knife. She sucked in her breath. He extended the thin strip of elastic at the base of her bra. Dragging the rusted point of the knife against her skin, he sliced through the elastic and nudged the cups of the bra apart, baring her breasts. In the cold, her rose nipples puckered into rocks. He bent down and covered each nipple with his mouth in turn and sucked on it. She felt her breasts releasing milk.
He licked his lips, tasting her. 'I hear breast-feeding gets a woman horny. Is that true?' He straightened up, stroking the globes of her breasts with his hands.
'Don't touch me.'
'I can't stop,' he said.
He reached down to the button at the waist of her jeans and undid it. Her jaw hardened with fury as he slid the zipper down. She shunted her knees tightly together and made it hard for him to strip her. He paid attention to her clothes, not to her, and when she saw her chance, she took it. She jacked her knees into the air, dangling from the pipe above her, which groaned and sank two inches, pulling slack from the noose and nearly strangling her. Her knees caught her tormentor solidly under the jaw and snapped him backward, where he tumbled off the long desk and landed in a crash on the floor. The flashlight rolled away and went black. She hunted for the swaying table with her feet and caught it before it wobbled out of her reach. With a gasp, she eased on to the table and let go of the pipe. The rope remained taut, and she struggled to inhale.
Below her, she heard him moving slowly and painfully. Getting up. Limping. Hunting through debris for the light.
'That was a mistake, Kasey,' he growled from the darkness. The teasing in his voice was gone. Only the cruelty remained. She didn't care.
The light went on again, but it was dimmer. He climbed back on to the desk, and she could see his face. Blood trickled from his mouth. His eyes had narrowed into dots of fury and coldness. He reared back and drove his right fist underhanded into her abdomen. Her body doubled over with pain, and the rope grew more constricted, and air flooded from her lungs. Each breath felt labored as she tried to suck in oxygen. She thought she would gag and choke on her vomit.
'I was going to leave you like this to wait for me,' he told her. 'But not now. The test just got much harder.'
He drew out a key from his pocket and reached up and undid the handcuffs from each of her wrists and let them clang to the floor. Kasey dropped her arms back down to her sides. She didn't know what he was doing. Why he was freeing her.
Then he got down from the desk and dragged it away from her, and she understood his plan. She stood on the table with only its shaky base propping her up. The noose dragged on her neck, pushing her head forward. If the table fell, she would hang herself.
He breathed heavily and tended to the blood on his face. 'How long can you hold on to the pipe, Kasey? Five minutes? Fifteen?'
She didn't talk.
'I have to leave, but I'll be back soon. Can you hang on until then? Or will you just give up and die? I'm giving you a choice, Kasey, but remember, if you fail the test, your family dies. It's not pretty, but those are the stakes. Understand?'
She didn't say anything.
'Yes,' she gasped.
'Good. That's good. Now hold on tight.'
Kasey knew what was coming. She watched him closely, but she didn't put her hands up immediately. She wanted blood flowing into her arms as long as possible to give her strength. Only when she saw him moving closer, his face dark and menacing, did she finally reach up and take hold of the pipe again. The freezing metal was like a flame. Touching it burned her, and she could barely hold on. But she had to hold on.
He swept the table from under her feet. Her legs dangled in midair. Only her grip on the pipe kept her suspended.
'If you survive the next few minutes, the rest will be easy for you,' he said, stroking the bare skin of her stomach as she twitched over the floor. 'I want you to prepare yourself while I'm gone, because your family is counting on you. You see, I'm going to bring someone here for you, Kasey. A new student for our classroom. And all you have to do to pass the test… is kill them for me.'
Chapter Forty-five
Serena slid inside the patrol car next to Denise Sheridan, who propped a cigarette outside the driver's window and tapped ash on the ground. When Denise wasn't smoking, she jammed the fingers of her other hand between her teeth and chewed on her nails. They sat in silence on the dirt road near the cemetery. Fifty yards away, bright lights beamed like white sunshine through the trees. Silhouettes of evidence technicians came and went, carrying plastic bags. They'd been searching and digging in the forest for an hour, making their way through frost-hardened soil toward whatever was buried below.
'I'm sorry it's come to this,' Serena told Denise.
Valerie's sister sighed. Her face was tight with anger and resignation. 'I knew we'd end up in a place like this sooner or later.'
A place like this. A place to dig up the dead.
Serena was just as happy not to be in the woods. She wasn't sure she could handle it when the searchers found what they were looking for. This was a case where she couldn't switch off her emotions. She had sacrificed her objectivity by getting too close to Valerie and too close to Callie.
'It's better than not knowing,' Serena said.
Denise shrugged. 'If you don't know, you can still hope.'
Snow gathered in a wet film on the windshield as they waited. When it became hard to see, Denise flipped the windshield wipers, pushing the slush aside and clearing an arc on the glass. Inside, heat blasted from the vents, keeping the car warm.
'How are you?' Serena asked.
Denise said nothing. She chewed her nails harder.
'Sorry,' Serena said. 'Bad subject.'
