Killer Move - Michael Marshall [33]
I got out to check the folder on the computer once again, to make sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen.
When I opened the door to our bedroom, the lights were out. I could hear Steph breathing in the darkness, however, and it didn’t sound to me like she was asleep.
She said nothing as I carefully slipped into bed. I didn’t say anything, either. I lay there on my back, thinking about what I’d confirmed. The pictures of Karren were all in a folder together on my laptop’s desktop. I keep as tidy a virtual desktop as I do in the real world, and knew I hadn’t created this folder. Someone else had, somehow, before filling it with these photographs.
The folder had been called MODIFIED.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hunter returns, eventually. This time the man in the chair knows he’s coming. He hears the clatter of a distant door being opened and re-secured. It sounds like something temporary, a piece of hardwood with a padlock on it.
He hears the measured tread of footsteps approaching along the concrete of the floor below. These cease, beneath where he is sitting, to be replaced by a difficult-to-interpret sequence of noises that culminate in Hunter pulling himself up onto the half floor of this level. He does this with disconcerting ease, like a man hoisting himself out of the shallow end of a swimming pool. The man in the chair cannot know how much of this strength and agility comes from exercises Hunter performed, day in, day out, in his cell; alongside regimens in the yard and further programs during the twice-a-week free-weights sessions prisoners were allowed if they wanted. When he’s up, he dusts his hands off. He appears to ignore the other man, walking over to one of the tarps, pulling it aside, and looking out.
“Beautiful day,” he says. “You possibly found it kind of warm, though, maybe.”
The man in the chair says nothing. Hunter has been back before, he knows. The man woke from a fractured drowse not long after dawn to see that a cool bottle of spring water had been placed in the middle of the floor, next to the chalked words saying “Who else?”
Not very subtle. But effective.
Were it possible for the human mind to move physical objects, the bottle would no longer be there, but instead in the man’s lap, and empty. It isn’t. It’s still standing next to the chalk letters. And it’s still full.
Hunter sees him looking. “Oh, right,” he says. “You saw that? The water? Looks good, huh?”
“Fuck you.”
“Want to know what I had for breakfast? Or lunch? Man, I am enjoying getting some proper food again.”
“I refer you to my previous answer.”
Hunter tells him anyway. The man tries not to hear. His head feels like it’s in a vice. Every swallow is bleakly memorable. He is finding it hard to think in straight lines, relying upon stitching together moments of clarity occasioned by surges of pain from his leg. It’s been bleeding intermittently ever since Hunter dropped the cinder block, and the muscle has started to feel heavy, thickened, right up into the thigh. He hopes part of this is merely related to the low, throbbing ache present in most of his body, dehydration, and having been forced into the same position for such a long time.
It says something for the magnitude of this discomfort that the man welcomes the distraction of wrenching twists of hunger when they come. He is a man whose needs are used to being met before they have to even raise their voice. His body is becoming shrill now. His body is getting concerned. Trying to think about abstract matters is the only tactic at his disposal for muting its visceral anxiety.
He has spent all day focusing on what to do, therefore, and finally thinks he has a plan.
It formulated late. Sleeping isn’t easy when you’re strapped to a chair, and his night was rough—not least because a series of short thunderstorms