“I know who you are,” she said, eyes level. “I’ve seen you on TV.” She took off her glasses. Her hair was dyed chestnut and tied in a loose knot at the base of her neck and she was wearing a turtleneck tucked into blue jeans. She was holding a paperback thriller, the place where she’d been reading marked with one thumb. The glasses left a sore-looking red impression on the bridge of her nose. “You’re that cop who was kidnapped by Gretchen Lowell.”
Gretchen’s name sent a stab of electrical current down Archie’s arms. His fist tightened around the pillbox in his pocket. “I need to know which boats Dan McCallum has moored here.”
She looked away and rattled the handle of the screen door a little. “Dan’s boat burned down.”
“Is there another one?”
She hesitated.
“It’s important,” Archie said.
“I let him keep it here, even though it’s not registered. He’s a good tenant.”
“It’s okay,” Archie assured her. “You’re not in trouble. Where is it?”
She studied Archie for a moment, and then she came out from behind the screen door and pointed down to the docks below. “Slip twenty-eight. Down there. Second boat from the end, on the left.”
“You can do what you want to me,” Susan said. “But you have to let Addy go.”
Reston’s face was all shadow and light. The corners of his mouth twitched. “I can’t.”
It took everything Susan had to keep her face composed. “You’re going to kill her?”
“I have to.”
Susan felt the small room close in on her. Even if she were unbound, she wouldn’t be able to get around him, get to the door, get out of the boat. And then what? Swim? The porthole above where Addy lay was the size of a dinner plate. There was no way out. “And me?”
“Look at her.” Reston reached out tentatively and touched the girl’s hip, letting his finger trace the deep curve down to her slender waist and over the bones of her ribs. Outside, water lapped at the hull. The boat rocked, uneven skittish bumps and rolls. “Isn’t she beautiful?” Reston asked.
Susan couldn’t understand how he had done it. “They said they were watching you. They said you didn’t leave your house.”
“I didn’t kidnap her, Suzy,” he said softly. “She came to me.” He closed his eyes. “I told her we could be together. I told her to break her bedroom window from the outside. I told her what bus to take to get out here. I told her to wait on the boat until I got done with school.” His eyes fluttered open and he gazed at Susan with a hatred she had never seen before. The boat rocked and the door to the room rattled in its hinges. “She did exactly what I told her to do.”
“You’re crazy,” Susan said.
He smiled to himself as he ogled the semiconscious girl. “Rohypnol. I got it on the Internet.”
Susan was disgusted that she’d ever let him touch her. She saw every encounter, every fumble; the images ticked through her brain, a sad slide show of her sad adolescence. She had wanted so badly to be in control. She had convinced everyone she was. The truth was more pathetic.
His breathing became more rapid and his face flushed with his arousal. He was touching Addy’s breast now. He circled her small pink nipple with his thumb. She stirred. “I only want them so badly because they remind me of you.”
Susan told herself to be strong, to get out of this. “That’s self-justifying bullshit. You’ve always had a hard-on for teenage girls.”
“No,” he said, his voice cracking. “No. You made me into this. I never lusted after students. Not until you. You did this to me.” He slid his hand from Addy’s breast back down over her ribs, her waist and her hip, and then down along the waistband of her underpants.
“Don’t do that,” Susan said, turning her head, unable to look. “Please.”
“Did I mean anything to you?”
Susan squeezed her eyes shut. “Of course.”
“I think about that day after school all the time. How you were standing, what you were wearing, what we said. You made me that tape, remember?” He touched her face, and she jerked away and felt the belt tighten, gagging her again, forcing her to remain still, afraid to move. Don’t cry, she told herself. Just don’t fucking cry.
“Your favorite songs,” he said, and she felt his lips brush against her cheek and it made her want to vomit. “I still have it. There was a Violent Femmes song, ‘Add It Up,’ with the line ‘Why can’t I get just one kiss?’ You handed it to me and you said, ‘This is who I am.’ You gave yourself to me.” He kissed her again, dragging his bottom lip up the side of her face, leaving a path of wet saliva. “You had handwritten all of the titles of the songs. They were so carefully lettered. It must have taken you hours.”
She squeezed her eyes tighter, until they felt like fists. “It was for rehearsal, Paul. I volunteered to make a tape for rehearsal. For the warm-up.”
“It was that day in my classroom. After school. When we first kissed.”