she?
She stared at the television, at her young naked body. Oh, yes, she could kill him. .
Her teddy bear. The room she’d woken up in, a replica of her bedroom when her mother had still been alive.
The perfect frame. Another killer, someone without a connection to the victims. Someone like Phil Palmer. He hadn’t moved to Sacramento until months after her mother was killed. How did he know what her room looked like? How had he gotten the picture of her and Amy? How had he found her teddy bear?
He’d been in her room before.
“You killed my mom.”
“Yes, I did.”
She reeled as if hit. She’d expected him to deny it, to yell at her, to slap her.
Her voice cracked, but she asked, “Why?”
All these years, she’d been friends with her mother’s killer. She’d blamed her father, and ate dinner and went to ball games with the real killer. She’d been so wrong, both about her father and about Phil. Phil was Dave’s partner. Phil had saved Dave’s life, made a lifelong friend in Bill Kamanski. He’d practically been family.
It was all a lie. All an act. He was a brutal murderer who had slithered his way into her life.
She wanted to throw up. And she wanted to kill him. He’d stolen everything from her: her mother, her father, her privacy, her life. She had lost everything, grew up practically an orphan, angry and lost inside. Unable to love anyone, unable to trust. .
Until Mitch.
“It was nothing personal. I was blackmailed into it.” He sighed, as if it had been a minor irritation. “In college, I accidentally killed a girl. I didn’t know anyone had seen me bury her body. But they’re all dead now. I’m free. Or I will be free, as soon as I bury you.”
He stared at her forlornly. “I protected you all these years. I was supposed to kill everyone in the house. When you walked in, I was already there, hiding in your room. Waiting for the perfect time. I heard the door and feared it was O’Brien. That would have ruined everything. But it was you. I’d already fallen in love with you-I’d spent hours in your bedroom that morning-though I would have had to kill you if you’d seen me. But you ran out. Good thing. That gave me enough time to kill them and leave. You calling your father was icing on the cake. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. All I knew was that he was alone during his lunch hour while his wife was fucking another man. I did him a favor.”
“You bastard! You’re insane!” She pulled at her cuff; it tightened around her wrist. She tried to hit him with her free arm. He grabbed her wrist, holding it so tight it burned.
“It’s time for you to shower. I don’t touch any woman who’s not clean.”
She spat in his face.
He hit her and she tasted blood. Instead of swallowing it, she spat it in his face. He was going to kill her anyway, dammit, she wasn’t going to let him rape her too. Glancing at the television she felt violated already.
He wiped off her bloody saliva with a tissue from his pocket.
“You were always feisty. So smart. But not intelligent enough to put all the pieces together, were you?”
He unlocked the handcuffs and pulled her into the bathroom. He turned on the shower.
“Take off your clothes,” he told her.
“No.”
He took a knife from his pocket and cut off her shirt, nicking her skin in the process. He cut off her bra, leaving her breasts exposed.
He stared at them. Tears welled in her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to cover herself, but he brought up the knife and sliced her forearm. She dropped them to her side. He stared at her breasts. “So beautiful. Even more beautiful than on tape.”
He reached out and touched one breast as if he were caressing a fragile glass figurine. She was shaking and closed her eyes.
Through half-opened eyes, she realized she wouldn’t be able to disarm him. She couldn’t stand on her wounded leg while kicking his arm, and his hand was at an angle that would be hard for her to grab, almost impossible to twist without using her bad leg for leverage.
She would wait for the right time. Claire didn’t want to die. She would live to tell the truth about Phil Palmer. She stood shaking in front of him, dressed only in her small bright pink panties.
“Don’t move,” he said, and cut off the panties.
Tears streamed down her face.
“Shower.”
She stepped into the shower. Hot water stung the nicks on her chest and the gash on her arm. Her leg burned and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out in pain. Maybe she could buy some time. She could withstand the pain if only she had more time!
He was watching her through the glass. Watching her shower. She turned her back on him, but didn’t feel any safer or less violated.
“Use soap.”
She obeyed, more to relax Phil and give herself time to think of an escape. How could she get out of here? Running was out of the question.
Kill or be killed.
“You’re done,” he said after five minutes. His voice was thick. He was turned on by her nakedness. It made her ill.
When he handed her a towel, she noticed how dirty he was. His hands and fingernails were covered with dirt. Had he been gardening while she was drugged?
He’d been out digging her grave while she’d slept off the drugs. She wrapped the towel around her body. He only had a knife in his hand now. What happened to the gun? She didn’t see it anywhere. She didn’t remember where he’d put it. In a drawer? There, on the dresser.
“I know what you’re thinking, Claire.”
His breath was on her ear.
“Accept your fate.”
He steered her at knifepoint to the bed. She let the towel drop to the floor “accidentally,” counting on his sick obsession with her breasts to distract him.
She reached down to pick it up. “Don’t,” he whispered.
She turned to face him, defiant. He stared at her breasts. He reached out and touched her nipple. She resisted the need to slap his hand away.
“Sit,” he said.
She sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned over her, his breath on her chest, and he reached for the cuffs that were attached to the bed.
“You hurt me,” she said, pointing to the three nicks on her chest where his knife broke skin when he cut off her shirt.
“I’m sorry.”
He actually sounded sincere.
“Please, Phil. Please don’t kill me.”
He gently touched her face. “I’m sorry I have to.”
The handcuffs clicked around her wrist.
“I need to shower now. You really are beautiful.”
He picked the gun up off the dresser, went into the bathroom, and shut the door.
The shower turned on again. Claire breathed a sigh of relief. She took the small fragment of soap she had clenched in her fist and rubbed it all around her imprisoned wrist. He’d been distracted by her breasts and hadn’t ratcheted it too tight. She made her hand as long and narrow as possible, pulling her thumb in toward the middle. Between the loose cuff and the soap, she slipped out.
She didn’t have a weapon, but she had time.
