A sudden jolt awoke Zo?. The SUV was bouncing over an uneven surface. She forced herself upright. Out the back window, she saw the main highway. Ahead was an unpaved dirt road.
“You’ve come around at the right time,” Marshall Beck said. “We’ve arrived.”
Beck hadn’t lied. They had arrived. He drove down a dirt road for a couple of minutes at a slow speed. She estimated that at the speed he was doing, they traveled a quarter mile before he stopped. Zo? bookmarked the distance in her mind. She wasn’t far from the real world, if she managed to make a break for it.
He popped the tailgate and hoisted her over his shoulder. Dawn was showing itself, and the sky was turning blue. It meant they had been driving for hours. They had to be way outside the Bay Area. How far could he have gotten in a night—Oregon, Nevada, Southern California? She scanned the horizon, hoping to see a feature, a hill or mountain she’d recognize. It was all alien to her.
She’d asked to be brought here, but this wasn’t the place she’d imagined. The morning light illuminated a stable of some kind. There were also two paddocks and a house. It was easy to see the place was no longer active. It wasn’t derelict by any means, just ignored. The grass in the paddocks was high, and the stable was empty. It had probably been pretty once and could be again, with a little work. It was idyllic and seemed a million miles from the real world. Her thoughts soured. Holli was buried here.
Brando bounded from the SUV and ran in an excited circle.
“Where is this place?”
“This is where I grew up and learned the difference between right and wrong. Where I learned respect.”
Beck carried her toward the stable. Zo?’s heart quickened. She knew how this story ended. There were numerals carved into her flesh to prove it. She bucked in his grasp.
“Enough, Zo?,” he barked and continued walking. “You knew this was happening. You made this bargain.”
“Yes, and you need to hold up your end of it.”
He stopped and lowered her to her feet. He had over a foot in height on her. Brando padded around them in slow circles.
“I have. We’re here.”
“You said you’d take me to where you buried Holli.”
“She’s buried here.”
“Where?”
He threw an arm back in the direction of the larger of the two paddocks. Vagaries weren’t good enough.
“I have to see where.”
Beck examined her with a penetrating stare. She hoped he’d see why it was important.
“Please.”
He shook his head. “If this is a delay tactic, it changes nothing.”
“It’s not.”
“Wait here.”
Beck jogged back to the SUV, while Brando stood guard over her. She eyed the dog. This was no pet. It was a killer. Scars marred its muzzle and crisscrossed its body. The dead-eyed stare it gave her said it would pounce at the first inkling of provocation. Beck returned with a handful of cable ties and his knife.
Zo? couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. It was old but honed from years of hand sharpening. It was the knife. The knife he marked all his victims with.
“I’m trusting you, so please don’t betray my faith in you,” he said. “Now sit down.”
Beck guided her to the ground. The dog sat a few inches too close to her for comfort. Beck took half a dozen of the cable ties and formed a daisy chain with them. She didn’t know what he was doing until he slipped the outer two loops around her ankles and cinched them tight. He’d made a makeshift set of shackles.
He cut the original cable tie he’d bound her ankles with and helped her up.
“Now you’ve got a little movement.”
A little movement was right. He’d sized the shackles to give her about half of a normal stride. There was no chance of running. Just more chance of falling.
“C’mon, this way.”
He led her to a gap in the paddock fencing. She found it hard to walk through the long grass. Progress was slow and tiring. It was waist high on her, and the shackles dragged across every blade. Even the dog was having trouble, forced to bound over the grass instead of through it. Even without the shackles, it would have been hard going. Her knees and back had taken the brunt of the impact when she’d rolled from the SUV, and they protested when she walked. She wondered if he was doing this to her on purpose. Maybe he thought the long hike through the grass would wear her out and make her more malleable.
“Is Holli the only one buried here?”
“No.”
“So all your victims are here?”
“Not all. Not Laurie Hernandez. Not you.”
Zo? swallowed.
“But they’re not victims,” he said. “Society is the victim. They, you, are the perpetrators.”
She’d struck a nerve, and it exposed his warped view of the world. “Perpetrators of what?”