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Bliss didn’t drive, and Susan’s car was back in the Pearl District. “I don’t suppose you have money for a cab?” Susan asked her mother.
Bliss frowned. “I don’t carry money,” she said.
“Your purse,” Parker said to Susan, extracting her small black purse from the pocket of his coat and handing it to her. “They found it in Reston ’s car.”
“I’ll drive you both home when you’re ready.” It was Derek the Square. He hadn’t had time to blow-dry his hair, and it protruded straight out from his skull like grass.
“I’m going to need you to file the story, kid,” Parker said. “Get it up on-line before we get scooped. You go home early, don’t expect to see your byline.”
Derek shrugged, throwing a glance at Susan. “There’ll be other stories.”
“I need a new mentee,” Parker said to Ian. “This one isn’t working out.” But Susan could tell he didn’t mean it.
“What do you drive?” Susan asked Derek. “Let me guess. A Jetta? No. A Taurus?”
Derek dangled a ring of keys from his fingers. “An old Mercedes,” he said. “It runs on biodiesel.”
Susan tried to ignore the slow grin she could see spreading on Bliss’s face.
“First, I’ll need to go to my apartment for my laptop,” Susan told Derek as she took a drag off her cigarette. “Then I want to go home. To Bliss’s.” Derek’s eyebrows shot up. “My mom’s house,” Susan explained quickly, digging through her purse for her cell phone. “She lives in Southeast.” She looked at her phone screen. She had eighteen new messages.
“Bliss?” Derek said.
Bliss held out a hand. “How do you do,” she said.
Susan was going to say something clever, but she got distracted by her voice mail. The first message was from Molly Palmer.
A
“Good job today.” It was Archie, standing in the drizzle just outside the door.
A
“No. I’ve got a cab coming.”
A
Archie shrugged. “I’ve got to make a stop.”
“At this time of night?” A
“You heading back tomorrow, or are you going to stick around for all of the congratulatory press conferences?” Archie asked.
A
Archie fingered something in his coat pocket and looked at his shoes. “I need to talk to someone.”
“But not to me,” A
Archie glanced up and smiled at her. He looked exhausted to A
“Have a nice flight,” he said warmly. “It was good to see you.”
A
He looked away, into the night. “I gave up everything I loved in that basement,” Archie explained. His voice was low, controlled. “My children. My wife. My work. My life. I was going to die. In her arms. And I was all right with that. Because she would be there.” He looked right at A
“She’s a psychopath.”
A yellow cab pulled into the small parking lot behind the office. “Yeah,” Archie said, taking a step toward it. “But she’s my psychopath.”
CHAPTER 49
Archie wakes up completely disoriented. He is still in the basement. He is still in the bed. But everything is different. The bed has been moved against the wall. The stench of rotten meat is gone. He looks for the corpse. It has vanished; the cement floor is washed clean. His bandages are fresh. The sheets have been changed. He has been bathed. The room smells like ammonia. He searches the fractured images in his mind for some recent memory.
“You’ve been asleep for two days.” Gretchen appears from behind him. She is wearing a fresh change of clothes, black pants and a gray cashmere sweater, and her blond hair is clean and brushed smooth into a shiny ponytail.
Archie blinks at her, his head still muddy. “I don’t understand,” he manages to say, his voice weak.
“You died,” Gretchen explains. “But I brought you back. Ten milligrams of lidocaine. I wasn’t sure it would work.” She shoots him a twinkling grin. “You must have a healthy heart.”
He lets this sink in. “Why?”
“Because we’re not done yet.”
“I’m done,” he says with as much authority as he can muster.
Gretchen gives him an admonishing look. “You don’t get to choose, though, do you? I get to make all the decisions. I get to be the one in charge. All you have to do is go along.” She leans in close, her face inches away from his, her warm hand on his cheek. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” she says soothingly. “You’ve worked so hard for so long. Always on call. All that responsibility. Everyone always looking to you for answers.” He can feel her breath against his mouth, tickling his lips. He doesn’t look at her. It’s too hard. He looks through her. “They all think you’re dead now, darling. It’s been a long time. I don’t keep anyone alive this long. Henry knows that. I would think you would be pleased. No one needs you anymore.” She smiles and kisses him on the forehead. “Enjoy it.”
He feels that kiss even as she peels back the bandage covering the surgical incision that stretches from his xiphoid process to his navel. Even as he catches a glimpse of the black sutures that hold his flesh together. She looks pleased. “The swelling’s gone down as well as the redness,” she comments.
He stares unblinking at the ceiling. There is no escaping. It is all a sick joke. She could keep him alive down there for years. He is at her mercy.
But he has to know. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Keep you.”
“For how long?” he asks.
Gretchen leans over him again, this time eye-to-eye, so he can’t help but look at her, her blue eyes wide, one eyebrow slightly arched, skin glowing. She smiles and is radiant. “Until you like it,” she says.
He closes his eyes. “I’d like to sleep.”
When he wakes up, she has the X-Acto knife out again and she is cutting into his chest. It hurts, but he doesn’t care. It’s a minor nuisance, a mosquito bite. But it reminds him that he is alive.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asks, not looking up.
“No,” he says. “I’m hoping you’ll nick an artery.” His voice is frail, his throat still aflame with pain.
She puts her palm on his cheek and leans in close to his ear, as if they are about to share a secret. “What about your children? Don’t you want to live for them?”