“Her hand,” Rachel said. “My handwriting.”
Dryden started to ask what the point was, but stopped. He thought he saw it.
“It’s the same with talking,” Rachel said. “I can force you if it comes to it, but—” She stopped. She turned to him. “It won’t be as convincing as I’d like. I’d rather you did it yourself.”
“I’m not going to. You’re wasting your time asking.”
“I think you will,” she said. There was something almost like sadness in her voice.
She set the phone back down on the chair. As she did, Dryden glimpsed a surgical scalpel next to it.
“You’ve tortured people before,” Rachel said. “You’ve been there, at least. You’ve stood and watched it happen.”
Dryden said nothing.
“You’ve also been trained to resist torture,” Rachel continued. “But I have to think this is one of those areas where training is different than the real thing.”
“I’m not calling her,” Dryden said. “Nothing you do to me is going to change that.”
“It’s not what I’m going to do to you. It’s what you’re going to do to me.”
She came forward and sat astride his knees, facing him with her arms draped behind his neck. Her face hovered six inches from his own.
“You were very good to me,” she said. “Even I can appreciate that. I don’t really want to see you hurting. I think you should call her, before this gets bad.”
She waited for a response.
He offered none.
“Okay,” she said.
Her arms slipped down behind him, to the handcuffs binding him to the back of the chair. He heard the lock disengage, and then his arms were free.
Rachel stood and stepped back from him. She reached behind her and picked up the scalpel, studying its blade in the light.
Dryden considered the distance between himself and her. Five or six feet. He could cross it in far less than a second and knock her unconscious with a blow to the head. Audrey, wherever she was, would be armed, but he’d deal with that problem in its own— The will to do any of that simply left him. Blew away like a piece of lint in the wind.
“Not even worth thinking about,” Rachel said. “Any plan you come up with, I can stop you from even wanting to try it.”
He looked up at her. What he’d heard in her voice earlier—that edge of sadness—was in her eyes now. Just barely, but it was there.
“In a few seconds you’re going to take this scalpel out of my hand and attack me with it,” she said. “You won’t be able to help yourself.”
Dryden stared. There was no point pleading out loud.
“All you have to do is call her,” Rachel said.
“You can hear what I’m thinking. Can’t you already tell I’m not going to do this?”
“I know what you’re thinking right now. I have no idea what you’ll be thinking in thirty seconds. Neither do you.”
“I’m not going to call her.”
“We’ll see.”
It happened before he could say anything more. The change came over him so quickly it altered the color saturation of his vision, as if the blood vessels in his eyes had distended. Then contemplation itself was gone and there was only the girl, standing before him, flinching back as he exploded from the chair and grabbed the scalpel from her hand. Her eyes were huge and terrified, her breath rushing in. He grabbed her and pivoted and threw her across the table, slamming her onto it, feeling it buckle and snap beneath the two of them. Her arms came up, fighting him, both of her hands grappling for one of his—the one that held the scalpel. He broke the grip and slashed the top of one of her forearms, shirt fabric and skin opening up, blood spilling fast. He could hardly think of it as blood, though. It seemed more like nectar, her whole body a vessel full of it, pulsing with it, intense as her desperation to live. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her head back, baring her throat, and his teeth had just touched her skin there when— As quickly as it had come, the mindset vanished. As if she’d pushed a button and released him from it. Dryden threw himself off of her and fell backward, propelling his body across the floor until his back hit the wall. Not stopping even then; pushing away until he’d reached the corner, the farthest he could physically get from her.
He could remember it all: the intensity of the compulsion, the almost erotic craving to put his teeth into her skin, to feel her blood gush inside his mouth.
Tears now, stinging his eyes, the first tears he’d cried since the day he buried his family. Within seconds he could see nothing but the swimming colors of the room.
Rachel sat up. She turned sharply toward the sound of footsteps crossing the house, stopping just out of sight.
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “Go back to your watch. Now.”