I lay on Billy Kitchens’s sofa and stared up at his stained ceiling. My head spun, and sour saliva filled my mouth. I wanted to throw up, but the possibility, the relief of it, felt light-years away.
“I need to be sick,” I said, struggling to sit up.
He pressed me back down, easily, with just one hand. “Lie still. Go with it. If you don’t fight it, it can actually be quite an enjoyable experience. A spiritual one, in fact.” I swiveled to face him. He was on his knees by the sofa, watching me.
“Forgive me.” He reached for me, but I shrank back. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re stubborn, which isn’t surprising. It’s just that now I got to figure out what to do now.”
“I’ve got a medical condition,” I said. “Whatever you gave me—” I sat up fast, the room tilted, and he pushed me back down. Firmly this time.
“What I gave you won’t kill you. I, on the other hand, could.”
I froze.
He shook his head, like he regretted the statement. “Poor choice of words. You just need to lie still. Okay?”
I shut my mouth and scanned the room. The gun was still on the TV. And across the room, my purse on the table. I looked back at him. His eyes were narrow and cold, studying me. I could smell his breath. Toothpasty, with a hint of rum. He touched my arm, and I flinched.
“I’m sorry I said that.”
I turned my face away.
“You have to know I would never do that. I would never hurt you, not on my life. You can trust me. I just didn’t expect you to come out here. I wasn’t ready.” He ran his fingers down my arm, and I jerked away.
“What did Susan Doucette tell you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I answered through clenched teeth.
He grabbed my face, and I cried out.
“Nothing. She just told me how to find her blog. That’s all.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Envisioned running to the table, reaching my hand into my purse. Digging beneath the wallet, Kleenex pack, and compact.
He moved closer. I held my breath.
“I saw that site when she put it up,” he said. “I know everything it said. She didn’t tell you anything else? You swear?”
“No.”
He let go of me, and I cracked open my eyes. He’d dropped back on his heels. Was rubbing the scruff on his cheek. This lunatic, hiding in this disgusting yellow town—I wanted to claw out his eyes, kick him in the balls. I rolled my head so I could see the TV, where the silver pistol still gleamed. My purse was still on the table too.
“Susan Doucette,” I panted, “was nothing but a nerdy little kid. She didn’t know what she was saying.”
He slumped. “Oh, Jesus. Goddammit all to hell.”
I struggled to keep my eyes open. To swallow down the sour liquid rising up my esophagus. “Just tell me the truth. Did Frances really do it? Did she pay you in exchange for the murder weapon?”
He looked really distracted now, plucking at his beard, scratching his chest.
“I gave everything I had to that godforsaken place.” He was looking over my head, at the picture of the sea-washed tree trunk and the horse on the beach. His eyes were shiny. “Perfect Bonny. Paradise.” He smiled down at me. “You know, no one even knows what the Guale called it originally because there’s no record of their language. It died, along with a whole people. It was paradise, at first. But things happen. Doro and I had a falling-out, and I had to go. Paradise lost. People have to move on, for their own good. You understand that. That’s why you’re writing the book.”
“I have to go,” I said. “They’re expecting me back at Ambletern.”
He looked at me, his eyes full of pity. “You can’t go back there, Meggie.”
I lay completely, utterly still. Maybe, if I could sit up and hold on to something, I could walk. I could take him by surprise, if I could just get control of my limbs.
“You’re not safe,” he said. “Not at Ambletern. Not on Bonny Island.”
Did he mean Doro was dangerous? Or Frances? Or just that he had concocted some horrible plan for me?
He was still talking. “You need to stay here, in this house, with me. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I swear it on my wife’s grave.”
My eyes slid past him to my purse. I was feeling a break in the nausea, and suddenly, my thoughts arranged themselves in something resembling logic. A plan.
A handy trick I’d picked up from the girls in boarding school.
I opened my mouth and jammed my finger down my throat as far as it would go. I bucked once, heaved, and vomited up a fountain of macaroni and cheese, red wine, and rum iced tea, directly onto Billy Kitchens’s soft plaid shirt. He jerked back, hitting the coffee table and knocking the board off its base. The magazines and remotes flew in every direction. I rolled off the sofa and scrambled around him, just as he grabbed at my ankle. His nails tore my skin.
I ran to the TV, reached for the gun, but felt a shove. I pitched forward, crashing headfirst into the TV and toppling it off its stand. The gun glanced off the wall. As Billy pawed through the broken tangle of cart and TV and wires, I ran to the table and tore open my purse. The contents sprayed out—wallet, phone, coins, tampons, lipstick, and my little pink canister of pepper spray. I grabbed the spray, flipped open the cap, and pivoted.
He was coming at me, fast. Hands trembling, I aimed and pressed hard, arcing the stream in the general direction of his face. As the spray hit its target, I saw his eyes bulge and mouth gape. He leapt back with a strangled cry. Flung one arm over his face.
“Shit!” he yelped. He staggered back, moving in circles. “What the hell—”
I scrabbled through the spilled contents of my purse. My keys. Where were my keys?
Pocket.
I patted my jeans pocket and, feeling the lump of keys there, went to snatch up the wallet and phone. I jammed them back in my purse and ran for the door. I flung it open so hard it banged against the wall and smacked me on the shoulder.
The yellow-clay drive was empty. Captain Mike’s truck was gone.
Gone.
I felt two hands grab my shirt and pull me back. I twisted around. Billy, his chest slicked in vomit, head tucked, and eyes blinking frantically to rid themselves of the pepper spray. He pushed me toward the sofa.
“You aren’t safe,” he gasped. “I’m telling you, you have to stay with me.”
I ducked, and he tripped over me. I swung an elbow then, hard, against the side of his head. He gasped and staggered away.
“Where’s my truck?” I screamed at him.
He straightened, a puzzled look on his face.
“Who stole my truck?”
He just stared at me in confusion. I clutched my purse to my chest and sprinted for the open door. The outside.
“Meg!” I heard him shout behind me.