Blue Dog reached around behind his back and pulled out a revolver. It was a small-frame, airweight Smith & Wesson that looked like a toy in his hands. Serena mentally took stock of the gun. Light and easy to conceal. Five rounds. She wondered if she would be alive to see the last four.
"I've thought a lot about how to do this," he told her. He put the barrel of the gun to the cap of her right knee. "You know what it feels like to get a bullet right here? Makes you want to die. I thought about doing both your knees, and then poling you after that."
Serena wriggled and tried to move the bed.
"Then I thought, you won't feel me inside you if I do that. I don't want you in so much agony that you can't feel what it's like."
He put the gun to her forehead. The barrel was warm where it had been inside his pants. "I also thought about making you suck my dick."
"You put anything in my mouth, you're not getting it back," Serena said.
Blue Dog laughed. "Yeah, I'm a practical guy."
"You'll never get away with this."
"We'll see about that. You think we're still on planet earth? Let me show you how wrong you are."
He pulled the revolver away from her head and pointed it upward at the ceiling, and without hesitating, he squeezed the trigger. Serena felt the shock waves inside her skull. Dust and paint fell in a cloud, and a stream of water dribbled over her chest like a mountain waterfall from the hole that punctured the roof. The echo screamed in her ears. Her head throbbed as if he had put two live wires to her temples.
No one came running. There were no sounds outside except the constant, whistling roar of the blizzard. Serena shivered as the falling water kept on, soaking her skin.
"See?" he said. "It's just you and me."
Blue Dog stood up. He grabbed an out-of-fashion men's tie from the floor and dangled it in her face. It was wide, with black-and-yellow slanted stripes. "Is this ugly or what? I found it in the farmhouse where I hid during the hurricane."
He strung it around Serena's neck and began to pull the ends tighter.
Blue Dog unzipped his pants. "Remember this guy?"
Serena knew she was running out of time. Her hand stretched again for the metal piece on the floor and missed it. She didn't even know what it was or whether it would help her cut through the fabric that tied her to the bed.
Blue Dog climbed onto the cot at her feet, and the springs beneath them groaned under the weight of their two bodies together. The bed moved a fraction of an inch. He lowered his weight down on her. His shirt dampened as it rubbed against her wet chest. His hands took hold of the two ends of the tie and began pulling them in opposite directions, narrowing the loop that hung around Serena's neck. Below, between her spread legs, she felt him try to invade her.
"I'm going to love watching your eyes," he said.
The sand gathered in the bottom of the hourglass.
Her fingers were flat on the floor. She reached again and this time felt the piece of metal slide under her palm, where she scooped it into her hand and prayed.
It was a fish hook. Sharp as hell.
52
Maggie grew increasingly desperate as she crisscrossed the streets of Duluth. The weather made it worse. Her windshield wipers sloughed aside snow, but the downpour was so heavy that she could see little more than a swirling sea of white powder through the beams of her headlights. She squinted to see where she was going, and the car veered and fishtailed on the unplowed streets. The glowing clock in her Avalanche told her it was nearly four in the morning. They had several hours of darkness left, and even when the sun rose, it would be behind an impenetrable blanket of black clouds. The storm would still be howling, spilling a foot of snow over the city and then billowing it into house-high drifts with a wind that swept down from the Canadian tundra and blinded everything.
No one else was out on the streets, not at this hour and not in the middle of the storm. The cars were mounds of white, pasted over with snow-caps. When she passed a van that fit the right size and shape, she had to get out of her truck and brush off enough snow with her hands to make sure that it wasn't the missing vehicle from Byte Patrol.
As she passed along the south end of Portland Square on Fourth Street, she saw windows of light in a house on the opposite side of the park and realized that it was Katrina's upstairs apartment. She must have had every light in the place turned on, and Maggie knew why. For weeks after it happened, she found herself up in the middle of the night, turning on lights and sitting in the kitchen with her gun in reach on the table. It was irrational, but that was what fear did to you.
She turned left and drove around the square to the north side and parked near Katrina's building. When she got out of the car, the gales almost knocked her over. She fought through drifts on the sidewalk and then ducked into the protection of Katrina's doorway. She rang the doorbell.
Katrina's voice crackled through the speaker. "Who is it?"
"It's Maggie."
"Oh. Hi. Come on up."
Maggie tromped upstairs, leaving wet footprints on the steps. Katrina stood in the doorway with the door open when she reached the second floor. She was wearing an extra-large Minnesota Wild T-shirt that stretched to the middle of her thighs. Her legs were bare.
"Sorry it's so late," Maggie said.
"I was up."
"Yeah, I figured."
Katrina nodded. "I was watching TV. I know what's going on with your friend Serena. Sounds bad."
"It is."
"Is it the same guy who…?"
"We think so, yeah."
"You want to come in?"
"For a couple of minutes, sure."
Maggie took off her coat inside and hung it near the door. She did the same with her hat and gloves. Snow melted and dripped on the carpet. Katrina had the gas fireplace turned on, and it gave off a little heat when Maggie sat near the hearth on the yellow futon. Katrina shuffled to the opposite end, and they stared at each other.
"Look, I suppose I should say I'm sorry," Maggie said.
"Why?"
"Because I never reported what happened. Maybe we could have caught this guy before he got to you."
"It's not your fault."
"How are you? How do you feel?"
"Like an empty milk carton, nothing inside."
"It won't always be like that."
"Did you feel the same way?"
Maggie shook her head. "I was out of my skull. I couldn't stop crying."
"Tell me something. Have you had sex since it happened?"
Maggie shook her head.
"Me neither. Thinking about sex makes me nauseous. I feel like he took that away from me, the bastard."
"Give it time." Maggie's guilt showed in her face again. "I wish I'd said something."
"Let it go," Katrina told her. "You don't owe anybody but yourself."
"Stride doesn't get it," Maggie said.
"He's a man. It didn't happen to him. You can't live your life around what he thinks."
"I'm not doing that."
"No? That's a switch."
"He's my safety net. You know that. When things got bad with Eric, I found myself turning to Stride again. It's safe, because I know he's not interested in me anyway."
"Don't be so sure of that."
"Please. I'm a kid as far as he's concerned. And it's not like I can compete with someone like Serena anyway."
"So start living in the real world," Katrina told her. "What do you really want?"
"I have no idea."
"Bullshit. I think you do."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, there's only one thing you've wanted for the last two years. And it's not Stride, and it's not Eric, either."
"A kid," Maggie said.
"Bingo."
"Well, so much for that dream. Three strikes, and I'm out."
"You don't know that."
Maggie shook her head. "No way. I'm not going through that roller coaster again. Get my hopes up and my hormones up, and then feel like my life is over when I lose it for the fourth time? No, thanks. Besides, I'm missing half the equation now. No husband."