“Your mother?” she asks.
He nods.
“I didn’t,” she whispers. “I never saw any of them. I’m sorry. I would tell you the truth if I had.”
“I know,” he whispers back. “I know.”
Either he hasn’t seen what he expected to out in the woods, or he’s given up looking for it. He turns to her now.
“Forgive me, Charley. It wasn’t my plan to involve Cole and Graydon right away. I didn’t want to snare you in their net so soon. I thought we’d have time. I thought we’d have time to work together. To come to an understanding.
“I knew you’d see the worth of what I was trying to do. The implications. For our mothers. For women everywhere who live in fear. For people everywhere who live in fear, overpowered and silenced and erased by those who lack morals or possess brute strength . . .” He studies the altars all around them, and she wonders if these general, academic words are the closest he can come to describing his mother’s murderers in any kind of detail. “Or are pure evil.”
There’s a tremor in his voice when he speaks these last two words. He’s turned in to the shadows so he can face her. If there are tears in his eyes, she can’t see them.
“I take it Cole’s made it clear he has a continued desire to work with you,” he says.
“He has.”
“Has he said what will happen if you turn him down?”
She can’t bring herself to lie, but she can’t bring herself to answer, either.
He looks up, stricken by her silence.
“What has he said to you?” she finally asks.
“That your decision will determine everything.” She nods, avoiding his stare for the first time since entering the house.
“Has he offered you a graceful exit plan by chance?” he asks.
I look forward to seeing your decision. Black and white. Staring back at her from her phone’s screen. She imagines a bullet striking Dylan between the eyes right there if she . . . does what? Runs from the cabin in tears? Slaps him? Or is the place bugged and Cole’s listening to their every word right now?
“Not graceful,” she says. “No.”
He steps forward. Behind her, Luke stiffens and matches Dylan’s step with two of his own. But Dylan doesn’t go any farther, and she realizes he’s searching her expression as intensely as he did the woods outside.
“So if I had given you a choice, if I’d told you the risks, would you have said yes?”
It’s an impossible question, but she’s closer to an honest answer now than she was just twenty-four hours before. It’s what she wrote in her journal.
She closes her eyes, imagines those twinkling vistas that stretched out before her and Luke as they chased Pemberton across Southern California. She tells herself that somewhere out there in those glittering lights are young women, about her age. They’re settling in for the night or getting ready to head out on a first date or maybe even driving to pick up their kids from the movies. Because of Charley, they will make it to their destinations. They will hear the delighted laughter of their children as they slide into the back seat of the car. Or they will lock eyes with their date across the table and have the privilege of asking themselves if this person is the one. They will have a night full of dreams before the sun rises, and they will wake in their own beds. In their own rooms. Not in Pemberton’s basement. Not in the Bannings’ root cellar. Someday they will die, of course, but until then they will be spared the degradation of dying at the hands of someone who derives sexual satisfaction from their agony.
She answers before these images can leave her mind and be replaced by her current, decaying surroundings.
“Yes,” she says. “I would have said yes.”
It’s like she’s slugged him in the center of his chest.
He blinks, stares at her. He works his jaw suddenly to hide the fact that it just started to quiver. Does he think she’s lying? She isn’t. It’s the truth, as much as she’s capable of telling the truth about a possibility that no longer exists, an opportunity that was stolen from her by a man who’s only just now realizing that his belief in what’s best for others can bring him close to committing the kind of violent acts that destroyed his life. Or one of his lives. A life that will never be, with a mother he never got to know.
So what if he doubts her answer? That’s his burden to bear. He’s the one who stole the choice from her. He’s the one who made sure they’ll never truly know if she would have accepted the risks, the challenge. The opportunity.
For the first time since she’s met him, he looks miserable.
Maybe he regrets it all. The loss of life—the slaughtered bikers, the chaos that followed. Maybe he really does regret stealing the choice from her, putting her through hell in the name of his warped view of scientific research.
Maybe he cares about her as much as he’s capable.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that she has the answer she came here for.
She can’t let him die.
“So,” he finally says, voice shaky. “What will you tell our mutual friend about our meeting?”
“Nothing he probably doesn’t already know,” she answers.
With a smile, he looks to the woods, nods. “Makes sense. You’re one of his most valuable investments now. I’m sure he’ll do anything to protect you.”
“Maybe,” she says. “He took some of my blood after I was triggered. He’ll be able to work with that for a while even if I choose not to do any more tests.”
“And what about me?” he asks.
“What about you, Dylan?” she asks.
“If you decide to go no further with him, what did he say about me?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“I never do,” he says.
“You played the therapist for me. What did you play for him?”
“I didn’t play anything. I just offered him a release of his tension; that’s all. So that he could focus.”
“A well-timed one, given what you were asking of him.”
“Cole Graydon doesn’t fall in love with people. If he’s threatened me it’s because of the risk I pose to his company. And to his secrets.”
“Or that. But you’re both more alike than you realize.”
“How’s that, Charley?”
“You’re both more human than you’d like to be.”
He nods, tries for bitter laughter, but it gets caught in his throat. “I see,” he says. “So he did give you an out, just not a graceful one. He said you could walk away, but that it would be the end of me.”
Her expression confirms his suspicions. He laughs, looks to the woods outside again.
“It’s genius, when you think about it.” He approaches what remains of the nearby wall, which only comes up to his knees. He steps into the shafts of bright sunlight pouring through where one corner of the roof used to be. “This way, you can agree to go along with him out of a crushing sense of obligation. You almost killed Jason. You almost killed Pemberton. And you may very well lose control and kill someone during a future test. And so even if things do get bloody in the months ahead or the years ahead or however long it takes us to isolate whatever it is about you that makes this drug work, you’ll always be able to console yourself with the fact that you spared my life. It will keep you going. For him. And you think I’m the master manipulator.”
“I think you two were made for each other.”