The help I need is for someone to come along and shoot you, I thought. Barney was busy building a story, some kind of story that would enable him to hold on to what he had. He was doomed to fail. But then, he’d lasted this long, and it must be hard for him to believe it was the end.

And to think I’d suspected Doak Garland. Well, I shouldn’t relax too soon. There might have been three of them.

And I really was thinking about that, so you know my mind was wandering. It was the cold and fear that were doing me in. I sharpened back up mentally just in time. I’d almost laughed at the picture of the whole town of Doraville being in on the kidnapping and the murdering. Like a Shirley Jackson short story!

And then he caught me.

Fourteen

HIS big hands grabbed my shoulders, and like so many young men had been, I was now in his power. Except I had a knife in my hand. He pulled me up and up, until I was almost off my feet. In the twilight it was hard to make out details but I could see the white of his shirtfront, where his unbuttoned coat flapped open, and I swung my arm as hard as I could. The knife went into his skin easily enough but skidded along a bone, maybe his rib, and he screamed as the blood welled through his shirt.

He dropped me and I ran. He caught up with me after a second, though; he was quicker to recover from the shock than I expected. He tackled me, and I twisted, coming up on my side and swinging the knife back. This time I got him in the shoulder and it went in much farther. He really did scream, and heaved off of me, scrambling to his feet. We were close to the edge of the lake then, and I saw a sign or two—we were in some sort of public fishing area. I backed up closer to the water because he was coming at me and I didn’t have a choice.

He’d done all the talking up till now. “Come get me, you bastard,” I said. “Come get me, rapist.”

“They loved it,” he said, amazingly. “They loved it.”

“Sure,” I said. “Who doesn’t like being chained and burned and sliced before sex?”

“No,” he said, panting, “not the boys. Tom. Tom and Chuck.”

“Okay, you make me sick,” I said. “You going to stand there and make me sick some more, asshole?”