What happens next takes place with the very ease, grace, and speed with which she tried to shoot him moments ago.
She is standing now, facing the living room, and Jason is on his knees. Somehow she is holding one of the wide-screen monitors in one hand. The same monitor it took both hands to get out of the box when she first installed it. The same monitor that was so top heavy she was afraid of dropping the thing before she managed to lower it to her desk for the first time. Now she’s holding it one hand, her fingers gripping the open O in its A-shaped stand, as if the whole thing weighs no more than a flyswatter, and that’s exactly how she’s just used the thing on Jason’s head.
Jason sways back and forth, his eyes wide and unblinking. Blood spurts from his right temple. In another second he’ll be spitting it from his lips. Or drinking it, because his jaw is slack and the way he’s swaying looks like he can’t tell up from down, as if he might keel over at any moment.
“Don’t get up,” she says.
He doesn’t listen. He throws one leg out in front of him, knee bent, foot steady on the floor.
So she hits him again.
This time she’s fully present while she does it. The miracle of it leaves her in a daze. It truly feels as if the monitor weighs almost nothing. Its impact with his skull causes only the slightest recoil in her arm. To accomplish all of this, she needed only a few short breaths. And now that she’s done it, she needs only a few more, and then she feels fully recovered. And she’s still holding the thing in one hand like it’s a costume shield.
This is impossible, she thinks. But how else can she explain the fact that Jason Briffel is now sprawled on his back, looking as if he’s just been dropped from a great height? He doesn’t even stir as she picks up the gun he dropped, keeping it aimed at him as she grabs for the nearest phone, the one that wasn’t pulled to the floor by their collision with her desk.
Her landline is hooked to a satellite Internet connection, and he’s cut the line between the base and the wall. Cell phone service out here is passable, thanks to the three signal boosters she installed on the roof. But her phone’s probably back at Dylan’s office, if she didn’t leave it in the car.
And Jason might not be alone.
Gun raised, she cases each room, the way she taught herself to do after watching countless YouTube videos posted by retired cops. She’s never been so grateful to have such a small house with so few hiding places.
In her bedroom closet, she finds his backpack. But when she reaches for it with one hand, it seems to take flight into the air behind her.
Adrenaline, she tells herself. Just adrenaline. It won’t last.
But the tingling’s still there. The bone music is still there. And there’s no denying that by reaching for the bag with what she thought was a minimal amount of effort, she’d somehow ended up throwing it into the air behind her.
Breathe, she tells herself. Shrink!
She almost laughs at this second command. But that’s exactly what she has to do. Whatever crazy hormonal event is taking place inside her system, the only way she can think to counteract it so she can function normally is to shrink every action, her every move.
She bends down. Gently gripping the zipper’s pull between a thumb and forefinger, she slowly and carefully opens the bag. And even with all that deliberate restraint, the bag ends up opening like some horny dude’s jeans.
When she sees the rope and the rolls of duct tape and the Ziploc bags full of her bullets, all thoughts of shrinking are forgotten.
Jason’s still dead to the world when she returns to the living room.
He might actually be dead, but she doesn’t give a shit. The only thing that matters to her is that he stays exactly where he is so she can bring the cops back here and show them how he broke in. How he violated her space.
She’ll tell them everything. She’s got nothing to hide. By then this crazy adrenaline rush will have subsided, she’s sure. He can’t get away. That’s all that matters to her now. No way will she let him slip away into the shadows so he can lie in wait for the right moment to shatter her sanity and sense of safety again.
First she wraps his head in tape, making a muzzle across his mouth; then she binds his wrists, his ankles. When she starts binding his ankles to his wrists, she realizes she’s hog-tying him just like Daniel and Abigail used to bind their victims, but she banishes the thought before it can take hold. She’s trying not to beat him up, but she still can’t control her own strength entirely. Her tugs and pulls knock his head against the floor with sickening whacks.
Gun drawn, she backs out of the living room.
“I’ll be right back, fucker.”
Amazing, the confidence with which she’s issued this proclamation, the steadiness. Like her voice has recognized the magnitude of her newfound strength even as her mind refuses.
With the lightest touch she can manage, she hits a button on her key fob and opens the trunk of her Escape. With just as much care and restraint, she roots through the plastic bags from the office supply store. No sign of her phone.
Carefully, so as not to pull it off its hinges, she opens the door to the back seat, scans the floor. No sign there, either.
She slides behind the wheel like someone easing into frigid water.
She places the gun in the cup holder, barrel down, within easy reach, positioned to aim right through the windshield if she needs to. Ever so slowly, she reaches for the glove compartment, pops it open with three times less effort than she might ordinarily use. The phone’s not there, either, which means it has to be in Dylan’s office. Which means she’s got to drive to the nearest police station herself.
Just then she realizes there’s one place she hasn’t checked for accomplices.
Outside.
She hits the key fob. The garage door starts to open. Gun raised, she approaches the growing square of dark. It takes a few minutes for her eyes to adjust. By then she’s swept the opening. By then she can see there are no lurking shadows of cars hiding with their headlights turned off. The ground is flat. The nearest hiding place is an arroyo a good fifteen-minute walk away, the same place she does target practice with the Berettas. Besides, Jason has always worked alone.
Jason has always wanted her all to himself.
But how did he get my code?
She’s got no time to speculate. She’s confirmed that there are no vehicles waiting to ram her as soon as she leaves the garage. And that means she’s free to go.
As she slides behind the wheel of her Escape and places her Beretta back in the cup holder, she sees that her fingers have left indentations in the metal handle of her gun.
Not just adrenaline, she thinks. This can’t be just adrenaline.
8
The bikers roar out of the darkness, headlights winking on the minute their tires hit the road.
When Charlotte first met up with the highway, she went to give the pedal the usual amount of pressure and ended up marrying it to the floor, which sent the Escape rocketing through the night at more than a hundred miles an hour.
She’s been soft pedaling it since then. It’s kept the Escape close to eighty. That’s what she’s doing now as they cage her in.
They’ve been waiting for her, she realizes, maybe since they heard her approach. No doubt her third trip past their hideout in one day has them convinced she’s casing the place.
Thor’s next to her again, gesturing for her to pull over.
Her refusal to comply causes his mouth to contort into a snarl. The sight of his anger awakens something in her, a recognition that she’s been impossibly changed. And not changed like that guy, possibly an urban legend, who was able to lift a car in one hand to free an accident victim pinned beneath it. This is ongoing, whatever this is. It’s sustained. My body knows it. My mind’s starting to accept it. And that’s why Thor’s pissed—he doesn’t see any fear in my eyes.