words come from him without inspection, and hoped they were right.
He looked at his wife. 'You are a work of art,' he told her. He looked at his daughter. 'Olive juice,' he said, smiling. Sarah stared at him for a moment, surprised, and then she smiled the smile that had stolen his heart from the beginning. 'Olive juice, Daddy,' she said.
Linda looked at her husband and fought to keep herself from choking with grief. What was she going to say to this man? To her Sam, who'd saved her in so many ways? He'd saved her from her own self-doubt, had saved her from living a life without loving him. A sentence? She could speak for a year without stopping and it still wouldn't be enough.
'I love you, Sam.' She blurted out the words, and at first she wanted to scream, to take them back, they weren't enough, that couldn't be the last thing she ever said to her husband. But then she saw his eyes and that smile, and she understood that while it wasn't the perfect sentence, it was the only one. She'd married her first love, the love of her youth. She'd loved him through laughter and anger, with kisses and yells. Love is where it started, love is where it was going to end.
She expected The Stranger to say something, to make fun of these last words, but he didn't. He stood and waited, silent. He seemed almost respectful.
'Thank you for complying,' he said. 'I really don't want to have to burn Sarah.' A pause. 'Now we're going to begin the strangling. It's not as easy as you might think, so please listen to what I tell you.'
Linda and Sam listened to the man, but kept their eyes on each other. They talked without words. The Stranger droned on, giving Linda matter-of-fact advice on how to kill her husband.
'I don't need it to be painful, or to last for a specified time. If he goes quickly, that's fine. It just needs to happen. The areas you'll want to concentrate on are here and here.' He touched areas high on each side of Sam's neck, near the jawline. 'The carotid arteries. Cutting off the blood flow in those places will knock him unconscious before the lack of air kills him. Concurrent with that, you'll need to exert pressure forward with both hands in order to cut off the airflow through his windpipe.' The Stranger demonstrated without actually touching Sam's neck. 'Then you hold on till he stops breathing. Simple. I will re-cuff him from behind so he can't reach up to try and tear your hands away.' The Stranger shrugged. 'It happens, even with suicides. One man had pulled a plastic bag over his head, had taped it closed around his neck, and then had handcuffed his own hands behind him. I suppose he changed his mind once it started getting difficult to breathe. He almost tore his thumbs off trying to rip his hands from the cuffs. We don't want any of that here.'
Sam was sure The Stranger was right. He could feel his own fear, far off but persistent. Knocking at his door.
Little pig, little pig, let me in . . .
No. He didn't want to die, that was true. But he was going to. This leads to this leads to that, and the sum is always the same. Save Sarah. You can't always get what you want. Life's a bitch--
Sam sighed. He took one more look around. First at the room, the kitchen, the shadowy front area beyond that. His home, where he'd loved his wife and raised his child, where'd he'd fought the good fight. Then at Sarah, the living, breathing result of the love between him and Linda. Finally, he looked into his wife's eyes. A deep, lingering look, and he tried to tell her many things and everything, and he hoped she understood all of it, or some of it, and then he closed his eyes. Oh, Sam, no . . . Linda understood what he was doing, what he'd just done. He'd said good-bye. He'd closed his eyes, and she knew he didn't plan to open them again. Logic was a big part of who Sam was. It was one of the things she loved about him, it was one of the things about him that drove her crazy. He had this ability, to see things three moves ahead, to arrive at an understanding while she was still puzzling over it. Sam had probably known they were going to die long before The Stranger ever told them so. He'd examined the situation, had weighed the possibilities of the man's motivations, and had realized the inevitable. Everything since had been him waiting. And feeling.
'You go
The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them, driven by emotion, not logic. The Stranger paused, looked at her, cocked his head.
'I'm sorry, what did you say?'
'I told you to go fuck yourself,' she snarled. 'I'm not doing it.'
She looked over at Sam. Why hadn't he opened his eyes?
The Stranger leaned toward her. He gazed at her for a long moment, and she was reminded of a statue. Stone, unfeeling, resolute. 'You're mistaken,' he said.
He put the tape back over her mouth, and then Sam's. He didn't seem angry as he did it. Without speaking, he walked over to Sarah, gagged her, grabbed her handcuffed wrists, and yanked her hands forward. He stuffed his gun in his pants, and reached into his back pocket, pulling out the flashy gold-plated lighter. Linda's heart froze when she heard the 'snick' of it opening. His thumb pumped once on the wheel, and there was fire.
He made sure that Linda was watching as he held Sarah's palm over the flame for three full seconds.
Sarah screamed the whole time; The Stranger did what he had said was the only duty of the strong: He kept on breathing, calm and sure.
21
SARAH COULDN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH IT HURT. SHE'D BEEN forced to stop crying so that she could breathe through her nose. All the far-away things were now close. Her emotions were a blinding sheet of white lightning inside her, terror, grief, horror. The monster was inescapable. She knew that now. This knowledge was destroying her. Her mother had raged as Sarah had been burnt. Linda had yanked so hard against her handcuffs that she would have torn the flesh on her wrists to the bone, if the insides of the cuffs had not been padded. Mommy was still Mommy, but she crackled with a threatening energy Sarah had never seen.
Even The Stranger was impressed.
'Magnificent,' he'd said. 'You are one of the scariest things I've ever seen.'
Sarah had agreed.
'The problem, Linda, is that I'm scarier.' He'd shaken his head.
'Don't you understand? You can't win. You won't beat me. I am strength. I am certainty. Your choices are unaltered: Do what I say, or watch as I burn Sarah into a semblance of a circus freak.'
Her mother had quieted down then. Sarah had tried to look at her daddy, but his eyes were closed.
'I'm going to give you a few moments to collect yourself. A full minute. After that, you'll either tell me that you're ready, and we will move forward, or I will put the torch to Sarah in
Sarah quivered in fear at the thought of more fire, more pain. And what did he mean by 'moving forward'? She'd been in her far-away place, waiting for the monsters to go away. He'd talked during that time, said something important. She strained to remember. Something about Mommy and Daddy . . .
Mommy killing Daddy . . .
She remembered, and her eyes opened wide, and the far-away place beckoned once more.
Linda struggled to get herself under control. She was full of white noise and static, one big short-circuit of the soul. Rage had taken over. She hadn't been able to hold it back. She'd seen red and the anger and futility had marched in, banishing what little equilibrium she'd had left. Her wrists ached, and she felt over-oxygenated and sick to her stomach from the adrenaline rush.
Sam, damn Sam, still had his eyes closed. She knew why, and she hated him for it. Hated him for being right. For knowing it was over, knowing there weren't any other choices, and for accepting that. No, no, she loved Sam, she didn't hate him. This was him, who he was. His mind was one of the things she loved most about him. His clarity, his brilliance. He was being so courageous right now. He'd said good-bye, closed his eyes, and left his neck exposed, ready for her strangling hands.
WWSD?
The saying had jumped into her mind: What Would Sam Do?
It was a mantra that she used when her emotions battled with her common sense. Sam was calm, Sam was logical, Sam was steady-asshe-goes. Capable of rage when it mattered, but able to let the small things go with a shrug.
When someone cut her off on the freeway and she started swearing out loud at them in front of Sarah, she'd
