him. The way he spoke, the words he used, felt like they were coming from an entirely different person than the George she had known.
Kate quietly wept the whole time, her mind telling her that the death she’d always feared was now here, crouched on her chest. She didn’t try to bargain or appeal to George’s humanity. She submitted, her body going limp like a bird caught in the jaws of a cat. Her bladder released and she didn’t even realize it till she smelled the sharp smell of her own urine. Her submission probably kept her alive. If she’d fought back, tried to convince George to not kill her, her words would probably have been enough to allow him to pull the trigger. Instead, he dragged her across the floor and pushed her into the small, cramped closet, shutting the door and jamming it with a wooden chair. Maybe he did it because he knew the dark, tight closet was a fate worse than death for Kate. Maybe he did it because after being unable to kill her, George simply wanted Kate out of his sight. Trapped in the closet, Kate began to scream uncontrollably, violently, till her vocal cords were raw. And then she wept until, finally, she stopped weeping, curled into a tight ball, and felt nothing.
It could have been two hours or twelve hours later when she heard the explosion of the rifle on the other side of the closet door.
Two days later, Kate’s cousin returned to find her. The front door of the cottage was unlocked, and George’s body was on the floor in front of the barricaded closet. The contents of his skull were spread across the rug.
It was the police who pulled Kate from the closet. She was conscious but unresponsive. Her eyes were squeezed shut, so she didn’t see the remains of George Daniels as she was carried from the house. She spent three months in rehab—half of that time unresponsive—before she went home to her parents.
She never returned to university.
Five minutes after sending her mother the e-mail about Audrey Marshall, she received a reply:
Terrible, darling. Your father and I say come home. Has someone told Corbin?
But it has nothing to do with me, Kate began to write back, then stopped herself. Her fingers rested, unmoving, on the keys of her laptop. She deleted the words. She’d reply to her mother later. She’d reply after she figured out what to do, and she hadn’t done that yet. She wanted to stay, and begin her course tomorrow, because Audrey’s murder (did she even know it was a murder?) really did have nothing to do with her.
You don’t believe that, do you? George’s voice, but also her own.
Maybe it has something to do with me. Because it has something to do with Corbin, and I’m in his apartment. The police have been here, and Audrey’s friend knew something about what might have happened.
Suddenly, the high-ceilinged apartment felt cramped and too warm. And was it her imagination, or had it turned darker? She turned to the tall windows and saw that an inky cloud had crossed in front of the sun. She watched it continue on its path, till the sun was shining again. Still, the sun was lower in the sky than it should be. She checked the time on her cell phone and discovered it was almost five in the afternoon. How had it gotten so late so fast? She’d been thinking of George, of course, and sometimes when she did that time would slip away. Like it had in the closet when she’d been eaten by the darkness and by time itself. She didn’t even think of it as a closet. It had been a room, the smallest room, and she had never left it. It was dark, and all four walls pressed against her.
Go outside, she told herself, and eat a proper meal. And she found herself standing, her head light with lack of food. Before she had too much time to think about it, she grabbed her coat, and an umbrella just in case, and forced herself to leave the apartment.
Chapter 10
Alan had been pacing back and forth across his apartment, steeling himself to go over and talk with Kate, Corbin’s cousin who was staying at his place. He wanted to find out what she knew about Audrey and Corbin, even though he knew that the very act of speaking with her was going to reveal his own interest. He’d