I stared down at the floor.
He put his arms over the back of the couch and let out a breath.
“Hold up. What’s this?” he said, suddenly jumping up and grabbing a Yankees hat off the TV stand.
He looked at me with disgust before he sent it flying, like a Frisbee, over my head.
“Not bad enough ya had to abandon ya ol’ hubby?” he said, reverting to a perfect Southie accent. “Ya had to go and become a Skankee fan, too!”
His eyes went wide and wild as he suddenly lifted the gun off the couch. He came over and pressed it to my forehead, dug it right between my eyes.
“Remember on the beach all those years ago,” he said quietly. “I saved you, gave you everything. A house. A life in paradise. This is how you pay me back? Lies. Faking your death? You’re fucked up, you know that?”
“I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want. Just please let her go.”
He shook his head. “That’s the best you can do? You’ll do anything I want anyway. Request denied. Emma stays with Daddy. You should have thought about our precious bundle of joy before you came back down to Florida and set my whole entire world on fire.”
He racked the slide of the automatic.
“I knew I should have killed you myself,” he said.
“You killed your first wife. And your baby,” I whispered. “You killed Elena and Teo and that gas station guy. Your new wife, your kids.”
“Yes, I did, Jeanine,” Peter said. “And now for my next act, ladies and germs. I’m going to kill my second wife as slowly and painfully as possible.”
Chapter 113
PETER TOSSED THE GUN back onto the couch and undid my cuffed ankle. He pulled me up by my hair and brought me into the bathroom.
He stoppered the tub drain and turned on the hot tap. He pulled a rubber kitchen glove out of his back pocket and put it over his right hand. When the steaming water reached the top of the tub, he turned off the knob and tossed in some scented bath powder that was sitting on the tub’s edge.
“Smell that. Nice, huh?” he said. “Ocean breeze? No, calla lily. Now, for a little experiment. Let’s see if mermaids really can breathe under water.”
He wrapped his gloved hand around my hair and dunked me, headfirst, under the water. It was burning hot. I tried to struggle, but his hand was like an iron bar pinning me to the tub bottom. He started scraping my forehead against the enamel, as if I were a Scrubbing Bubble. A minute passed. Then two. I was about to open my mouth when he ripped me back up into the world.
I made an animal moaning sound as I sucked air, my face on fire.
“Wheee,” Peter said. “Doesn’t this remind you of something? See, I remember your worst fear, Jeanine. Drowning. Remember the story you told me when you were at the beach with your dad when you were a kid and got caught in a rip current? How you actually stopped struggling and were sinking when Daddy came to your rescue. But guess what, Jeanine? Daddy’s not here. Daddy’s dead. I’m your daddy now.”
My head went back under the scalding water. I held my breath until it felt like my eyes were about to pop, until my skull felt like it was being filled with acid.
I was about to give in and swallow to get it over with when he pulled me back up a second time. When my ears emptied of water, I realized that Peter was laughing. Not a creepy mad-scientist laugh, but a kind of unableto-catch-your-breath, uncontrollable fit of hilarity. As if instead of torturing me to death, he was watching an Eddie Murphy DVD.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes after a second. “Forgive me. I always promised myself not to take enjoyment from stuff like this, but this one time I’m making an exception. I knew coming back would be worth it. Oh, and before I forget. After we’ve had our fun, our little daughter is heading down to Mexico with me. I’m going to sell her to the highest bidder. Her fate is on you, Jeanine. I just thought it was important for you to know that. Husbands and wives shouldn’t keep things from each other.”
He burst into laughter again, snorting as he fought to contain himself.
“Now, come on. What are you waiting for? Dunk for those apples,” he said as he slammed me under again.
Chapter 114
PETER WAS WRENCHING MY HEAD out of the water for maybe the fourth or fifth time when I had the hallucination. I must have been deprived of oxygen because all of a sudden, I thought I saw Emma in the doorway behind Peter.
She looked like an angel. There was something over her head. Wings?
No, I realized. It was the glass-and-metal table from my bedroom. She had it reared back like a baseball bat.
At the last second, Peter turned.
But it was too late.
An elongated, rattling explosion of shattering glass rang off the tile walls as Emma crashed it onto his skull like a sledgehammer.
Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head as he went over and down, spurting blood. Burned and feeling dizzy, my palms getting cut by broken glass, I wriggled over his legs on my hands and knees out of the bathroom. I made it as far as the living room when Emma knelt down beside me and cut my taped wrists free with kitchen shears.
“Run,” I said hoarsely. I gained my feet. “Door. Go. Police. Run!”
“Leaving so soon? Without giving Daddy a kiss?” Peter said behind us.
I turned slowly and froze. I had trouble registering what I was seeing.
The glass table had injured Peter. Grievously. His left ear was hanging off, flopping against his jaw, dangling by a string of skin. More skin had been shorn from the side of his head, from his temple to his jawline, the exposed pink tissue like bloody bubble gum.
Peter reached up and grabbed his damaged ear between his thumb and forefinger. He grunted and, with a quick hard tug, tore it free. It made a small, wet, ripping sound, as if he were removing a Band-Aid. He frowned as he looked down at the detached ear. He shook his head before he laid it carefully on the picture shelf on the wall by his shoulder.
“Someone,” he said, nodding to himself with conviction, “is going to have to pay for that.”
Then he smiled, his blue eyes flashing like neon, like a gas burner cranked up all the way.
“Bitches, bitches, bitches!” he said in his Southie accent. “All the same. Can’t live with ya. Can’t kill ya.”
The razor-sharp kitchen scissors were on the floor at his feet. He stooped and picked them up.
“No, wait. Spoke too soon,” he said, snip-snapping them open and closed like a barber about to get to work. “Actually, I can.”
Chapter 115
EMMA AND I stood in the living room like statues, kids caught in a game of freeze tag.
“Daddy doesn’t like bad little girls,” Peter said, grabbing Emma by her wrist with his free hand. He pivoted on his heel as he leaned back and swung her like a rag doll. There was a shattering sound as she crashed face forward into our glass bookcase. It teetered and fell over on top of her, raining down books as she hit the carpet.
That’s when I saw it. Peter’s gun was where he’d left it, on the couch next to the tape. It was my only chance. I spun, my feet sending fallen books flying, as I dove for the couch.
The gun bounced with a double thud off the carpet. I grabbed it, my finger curling around the trigger as I swung around. But I wasn’t in time.