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18

UPON regaining consciousness, Karen’s first thought was that she was no longer in the trunk. Though she couldn’t see, her present blindness owed to the blindfold tied around her head. She felt a cold wind in her face and an erratic source of light struggled through the oily-smelling cloth that masked her eyes.

Karen did not remember being moved. For all she knew she was dreaming again though the chill metal against her cheek seemed convincingly real. She tried to move but could not, her hands and feet now bound with thick rope. The numbing grogginess of thirst weighed down her head.

Footsteps approached, the tip of a boot now inches from her face. She smelled the grass and dirt that clung to it—raw and earthy.

"You’re conscious, I see."

The voice contained no reverberation. She was outside.

"Where am I? Please take off the blindfold."

"We better leave that on for now. I tell you, you’re a heavy gal. If I sound winded, it’s because I just carried you up two hundred fourteen steps."

A prickling crawled through Karen’s spine. "Where is this?" she asked.

"Don’t you see the light? Even through the blindfold I don’t know how you could miss it."

"I don’t under—"

"That light is magnified by a First Order Fresnel Lens, operational since October First, Eighteen Seventy-two. Karen, let me quell your fear." The man sat down beside her. "I brought you here to let you go." Karen began to cry, filling with the purest relief. "But I have to hold on to the Widow Lancing. You remember her from the trunk?"

"Yessir."

"See, the only reason you’re being released is because I flipped a coin. You were heads, it landed on heads, you get to live."

"Why are you doing this?"

She smelled his lemony breath in her face and his words came very even and very quiet.

"You think this is all about you you arrogant twat?"

"No, I—"

"I only took you and Elizabeth Lancing to get someone’s attention. Can you guess who it is?"

"I don’t know."

"You should know. You’ve fucked him. Well, I’m just making an assumption there but—"

"I don’t know who you’re—"

"Andrew Thomas."

"What do you want with him?"

"Seven years ago, Andrew shot me, left me to die in a snowy desert."

"I’m so sorry."

"No, don’t be. What I’ve got planned for him is going to make it all worthwhile. One last thing. Think hard before you answer. Do you believe you’re an evil person?"

"No, I’m—"

"Why not?"

Her captor’s breath warmed her mouth as she thought of all the charitable acts she’d performed in the last year—Wednesdays in the soup kitchen on 54th, the new writers she’d guided to publication, the angel tree at Ice Blink.

"I’m a decent person," she said.

"And me? From what little you’ve seen. Am I evil?"

"No sir. I don’t believe you are. I don’t know you. I don’t know what sort of parents you come from. I don’t know if tragedies have happened to you. I’m sure things have caused you to behave…"

"Destructively."

"Yes."

"Is anyone evil, Karen?"

"People get damaged. They malfunction. But no, I don’t believe in evil."

"I see. Thank you for talking so candidly with me."

The blindfold was removed.

Karen stared through iron bars across a half mile of pines and marshland and dunes to the Atlantic. From this height and distance the ocean was mute though in the light of the yellow moon she could make out the ragged thread of surf extending for miles down the coastline.

Her captor was gone.

She managed to sit up and saw that she occupied a small observation deck encircled by iron railing. At her back a ladder climbed the last six feet of the tower up to the lantern room of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.

Its beam was blinding. It flashed on for 2.5 seconds. Off 2.5 seconds. On 2.5 seconds. Off 22.5 seconds. This rhythm repeated, dusk to dawn, and she could not behold the mighty lens as it magnified its 160,000 candlepower beacon out to sea.

Karen strained against the rope but the knots held. As she dragged herself around the platform, her eyes followed the ribbon of Highway 12 as it