“Wrong answer,” the Cole on the screen says.
What follows is a bloodbath.
I stare and stare, all feeling draining from my body. All emotion, too. I become strangely calm, my head floating above my shoulders, my body a block of ice below.
I watch Cole murder Randall slowly, brutally, with obvious pleasure.
I watch my vengeance unfold in front of me.
When it’s finished, Randall is nothing but meat on the floor. Those heavy hands can’t hurt anyone anymore.
I feel hollow inside, all the anger, all the pain, all the resentment scooped out of me.
It’s over now. Truly over.
I close the laptop screen and turn to face Cole. I can’t tell if he’s a monster or my savior. He looks the same as always: stark, beautiful, serene.
“Did it feel good to do that?” I ask him.
“Yes. It was deeply satisfying.”
“Why? I already won. I’m happy now. I moved on.”
Cole raises one black slash of an eyebrow. “There’s no moving on. I learned that with my father. If Randall died of old age, the anger wouldn’t die with him. You have to kill it. I killed it for you.”
I don’t know how I feel.
Or perhaps I feel everything at once.
It’s wrong, so incredibly wrong.
And yet … it also feels like justice.
I wanted Randall dead. Now he is. He made me suffer. And he suffered in return.
Cole plucks the flash drive out of the laptop and holds it out to me once more.
“You put your life in my hands once, the night you came to my studio. Now I’ll bet mine. Here’s the tape. You won’t turn it in. You know this was right.”
He pushes the flash drive into my hands, forcing me to close my fingers around it.
I could leave the house, and carry this directly to Officer Hawks.
But just as I knew Cole wouldn’t hurt me, he knows exactly what I’m going to do.
I walk into the kitchen and drop the drive down the garbage disposal.
The next morning, I wake up alone in the bed.
Cole is giving me space to process what happened.
I understand now that all of this was planned out by him, probably beginning weeks ago. All through dinner, he knew what he was about to show me. He probably knew how I’d react. Even what I’d say.
He once told me that there are very few surprises for him. In social situations, he always has a quick reply at the ready because he plays out the entire conversation in a fraction of a second, already knowing what he’ll say and what the other person will respond, back and forth a dozen times, before either of them ever opens their mouth.
Everything is chess to him, eight moves ahead.
When his opponent plays by the rules, he almost never loses.
I throw a spark of chaos into the game.
Perhaps, so does Shaw.
Or Shaw becomes less predictable when I’m in the mix, distracting Cole, forcing him to make decisions against his best interests.
We’re entering the endgame now. Am I a valuable asset—a queen to his king? Or only a pawn that Cole can’t bear to sacrifice?
I keep waiting for guilt to overwhelm me.
The people Cole killed before were faceless avatars to me. I never met any of them. Most seemed to deserve what they got.
Randall is different.
I knew him. We sat at the same table. Ate the same food. I knew his favorite sports teams, the names of his sons. Which movies he liked, and even what he sounded like grunting and puffing as he fucked my mother.
I hated the intimacy between us, but it was there. I knew him as human, as a man.
And I watched him die.
Should I be sorry for him?
I felt some pity last night, in the moment. Seeing his graying hair and his wretched begging.
But because I know Randall, I’m well aware how little goodness lived inside of him. I can’t remember a single instance of kindness to me. Not one, not even when I was very small. Whatever he gave, he gave grudgingly. Angrily. Always rubbing it in my face afterward, lording it over me.
He was a petty tyrant.
Does anyone care when the tyrant’s head is put on a spike on the city gates?
Does anyone shed a tear?
I’m certainly not crying.
In fact, as I rise from the bed, I feel clean and whole. A little bit lighter, as if I shed off a weight I didn’t even know I was carrying.
I float out of the room and down the stairs, looking for Cole.
I find him down in the kitchen, readying his customary breakfast.
It’s nice starting the day with the same meal every morning. Knowing that you have control over the day ahead.
He passes me my latte, fresh and flawlessly prepared. Cole would never slap milk and coffee into a cup. Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well. He perfects his art, even when that art is only a latte.
I sip my drink, naked under my silk robe. Feeling the fabric against my skin, and the clear morning light streaming in through the windows.
Cole stands behind the counter, sleeves rolled to his forearms, damp waves of hair neatly combed back.
He looks like a man ready to work.
I say, “If we’re really going to do this, then you’re right, I have to be prepared. Tell me everything. Tell me how you met Shaw.”
16
Cole
I knew I had to explain all this to Mara, but I’ve been dreading it.
I don’t often feel regret. In fact, one of the few times I’ve ever felt it is the night I fucked up with Mara and she left the party with someone else.
I didn’t use to regret anything about Shaw.
Now … I wish I had done things differently.
I look out the kitchen window to the bright, sparkling waters of the bay, not watching the boats drifting past, but instead visualizing the flat green lawns and low modern buildings of the California Institute of the Arts.