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“Oh no. She wasn’t important. She wasn’t anything.”

“I’ll bet she disagreed with that.”

“Probably, but who cares?”

“Why me?”

He laughed, and she bet that if she could see his face, he’d be smirking, so pleased with himself. “Not just yet, Rebecca. You and I have got lots of things to do before you know who I am and why I chose you.”

“There’s a reason, naturally, at least in your mind. Why won’t you tell me?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, or not. We’ll see. Now, I’m going to give you another little shot and you’ll sleep again.”

“No,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom. Let me go to the bathroom.”

He cursed—American curses mixed with English-sounding curses, and an odd language thrown in that she didn’t recognize.

“You try anything and I’ll knock you silly. I’ll strip the skin off your arm and make it into a pair of gloves. You hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you. I thought you were fastidious.”

“I am, about blood. There wouldn’t be all those fountains of blood if I just peeled the skin off your arm.”

She felt him untie her hands, slowly, and she supposed that the knots must have been complicated. Finally she was free. She brought her arms down and rubbed her wrists. They burned, then eased. She was very stiff. Slowly, she sat up and swung her legs off the bed.

“You try anything and I’ll put a knife into your leg, high up on your thigh. I know just the place that won’t show much, but the pain will make you wish you were dead it’s so bad. There wouldn’t be hardly any blood at all. Yeah, forget about skinning your arm. Don’t try to see me, Rebecca, or I’ll have to kill you right now, and that’s the end of it.”

She didn’t know how she managed to walk, but she did. Then, as the strength came back to her feet and legs, she wanted to run, run so fast she’d be a blur and he’d never catch her, never, never.

But she didn’t, of course.

The bathroom was just off the bedroom. He’d removed the doorknob. When she was through, she paused to look at herself in the mirror. She looked pale and drawn and gaunt, her hair tangled around her head and down to her shoulders. She looked vague and on the edge, like a woman who had been drugged, knew it, and also realized, at last, that she might very well die.

“Come out now, Rebecca. I know you’re through. Come out or you’ll regret it.”

“I just got here. Give me some time.”

There was nothing in the bathroom to use as a weapon, nothing at all. He’d even removed the towel racks, cleared everything from beneath the sink. Nothing.

“Just a moment,” she called out. She raced back to the toilet and fell onto her knees. It was old. If the big screw that held the toilet down had ever had a cap on it, it was long gone. She tried to twist it, and to her utter surprise, it actually moved, just a bit. It was thick, the grooves deep and sharp. She was choking, sobbing deep in her throat, praying.

She heard him, just outside the door. Was he touching the door? Was he going to push it inward? Oh, Jesus. “Just a second,” she yelled. “I’m not feeling too well. That drug you shot into me, it’s making me nauseous. Give me just another minute. I don’t want to vomit all over myself.” Turn, damn you, turn. Finally, finally, it came free in her hand. It was thick, about an inch and a half long, deeply grooved, and those grooves were sharp. What to do with it? Where to hide it?

“I’m coming,” she called out as she gently pulled some thread loose in the hem of her nightgown. “I feel a bit better. I just don’t want to vomit, particularly if you’re going to tie my hands again.”

If he’d been standing by the bathroom door, he wasn’t now. He was back in the shadows when she came out. She couldn’t make out a thing about him. He said, his voice deep, ageless, “Lie back down on the bed.”

She did.

He didn’t tie her hands over her head.

“Don’t move.”

She felt the sting in her left arm, right above her elbow again, before she could even react. “Coward,” she said, her voice already becoming slurred.

“Filthy coward.”

She heard him laugh. And again, he licked her, her ear this time, his tongue