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Reed grabbed my jaw and tilted my head back so I had no choice but to look up into his eyes. “I said no crying.”
I blinked furiously, trying to suppress my tears.
“Good,” he said. “Now you hang tight for a few minutes. I’m almost finished setting the scene. Then we’ll get you into your wardrobe and start rehearsals.”
Left alone, I focused on trying to free my hands or legs. But Reed returned before I’d made any actual progress.
“Time to go to set,” he said. “First you need to get into costume.”
He held up a dress — the same cherry-red dress I had worn to the premiere.
“Like it?” he asked. “I borrowed it from a mutual friend.”
From Marnie … where is he keeping Marnie? My heart sank. Had he already killed her?
“I’m going to cut your arms loose first, then your legs, and you’re going to change. Don’t worry, I won’t look. But don’t bother trying anything, understand?”
I nodded. Where would I go, with my ankles still tied together?
When I’d finished, he clucked approvingly and grabbed my wrists, quickly wrapping a zip tie around them. “It’s not the most accurate dress for the film,” he said, “but I rather like it on you. Sit, please.”
I sat back down in the chair.
He went around behind me, tilted the chair back, and then dragged it, the plastic wrap, and me toward the dining room, talking as he went. “It’s important to be flexible, Willa. To be willing to interpret things. What’s important is the big picture, not the petty details.”
I stared at the table.
It was set for a romantic di
Straight out of The Di
This was my scene.
My death scene.
Reed set my chair at one end of the table. On the plate in front of me were four pages from a screenplay, laid out side by side.
“You’ll be playing Charice.” He tapped her name. “A beautiful but wicked young woman who enticed Henry into marriage and then proceeded to make him the most miserable man on the planet.”
I couldn’t focus at all. The words on the pages might as well have been written in a foreign language.
Reed crouched down next to me. “Willa. I’m going to take the tape off. But you have to promise me you won’t scream.”
I was desperate to be able to breathe through my mouth again … but I didn’t honestly know if that was a promise I could keep. It was like my whole life boiled down to a two-item to-do list: Try to get away and scream.
But I nodded.
“It wouldn’t do any good, anyway,” he said. “No one is going to save you. No one is going to find you — not until Jonathan and Joa
I breathed in sharply. So Marnie was still alive.
And Reed was still pla
And Reed had no idea.
I felt a dim surge of hope.
“Listen,” he went on. “I’m an artist. What I’m going for is the integrity of the scene. So I don’t want to have to force you to cooperate … but I will, if you make me. Do you understand? If I hurt you, it will be your fault. You’ll only have yourself to blame.”
He reached up and gently peeled the tape off of my face. The feeling of being able to stretch my jaw and breathe through my mouth was an overwhelming relief. And somehow I managed to contain my screams. It wouldn’t do any good to make him angry now.
“Let me touch up your makeup,” he said, retrieving a tackle box from the sideboard. With a practiced hand, he dabbed a wedge-shaped sponge in pancake foundation and spread it lightly over my chin and lips. Then he fluffed powder over my whole face. After that, he picked up a lip pencil. “Open your mouth a little.”
I felt nauseated. I couldn’t believe we had kissed. That I had enjoyed his kisses. Now his gentle touch — as if he had the right to touch me at all — made me want to scrub my skin off.
“Good girl.” He wiped at the lip liner with the side of his thumb. “Now pout.”
I closed my eyes and puckered up. I could feel him apply the lipstick with short, dragging strokes.
“Smudge your lips together,” he said.
I obeyed.
“All right, now we’re going to run lines. I’ll be playing Henry.” He set the makeup kit back on the sideboard.
The sideboard.
There are knives in the sideboard.
Obviously, I couldn’t do a thing until he cut my hands free. And my legs. But he’d have to, eventually. When Charice died, she was walking away from the table. I couldn’t do that if I was bound to the chair.
If I could get a knife …
I would have only one chance. If I failed, he’d probably be so angry that he’d kill me before we finished the scene … like Paige? Is that what he’d done to Paige?
I forced myself to stop stealing glances at the sideboard.
Reed went around to the other side of the table and sat down, all business. “The thing to remember about this scene is that even though she married him for his money, she’s grown to love him, in her own way. But Henry’s feelings for her have vanished. At this point, he’s stringing her along — but Charice doesn’t know that. She thinks he still loves her. So there’s this pathetic element of hope in her performance.”
I remembered Diana Del Mar’s shining, begging eyes from the footage I’d seen.
“All right.” He cleared his throat, then picked up his wine glass and leaned toward me. “My dear, this is a night to celebrate our past.”
In less than an instant, he’d morphed from a crazed, twitchy serial killer to a calm, suave guy. I stared in confusion.
He raised an eyebrow.
Remembering myself, I looked down at the script. Then I looked back up. “I’m supposed to be pouring wine.”
“That’s blocking,” he said impatiently. “That will come after we’re comfortable with the dialogue. You need to feel the scene before you try to act it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“My dear, this is a night to celebrate our past.”
I forced myself to focus on the words. “And — and our future, I hope.”
He chuckled softly and sat back. “I remember the night we met. In New York. You were leaving that nightclub….”
“Chico’s,” I read.
“You dropped your handbag, and by the time I picked it up, you were already in a taxi. My father told me to forget it — that there couldn’t be anything of value inside such a cheap, ugly little thing.”
The conviction with which he said the lines made me feel like he was somehow talking about me — that I was the cheap, ugly little thing.
“I remember.” My voice trembled and I fumbled the words as I read. “But my grandmother’s sapphire bracelet was in that bag.”
“So I told the old man to go to Halifax, found your address, and hopped in a cab to follow you home.”
“It’s a good thing you did, too,” I read. “Marge didn’t have the taxi fare.”
“Madge.”