“That’s right.” He groans behind me, and I know he’s pleasuring himself. “Clever girl.”
Clever girl.
He figured it out.
“Show me how you come.”
If I come, I can’t hide it from the camera, but my body doesn’t care. One flick of the finger and my back arches and my feet come off the floor.
With my last jerks, he grunts. I turn. He smirks at me with a handful of pearly jam.
I bolt to standing. The dress falls around my ankles. “You’re disgusting.”
That’s what I say. What I mean is, You’re brilliant. He came in his hand to hide figuring out what was inside the pocket hem.
“I know that.” He wipes his palm with the carefully laundered shirt. “Next time, you’ll lick it clean.”
“Twenty-seven Colonia women. Where are they?”
“Massimo knows I’m not going to tell him that.” He balls up the shirt and folds his arms over his bare chest. “Tell him it’s coming this month. The 25th. He’ll have to figure out the rest for himself.”
It’s over. I don’t know if I did what I came here to do or if I let him wound me for nothing. I back away and start down the hall on fast little feet.
“Sarah!”
I turn and run back. He’s standing with his arms stretched up and his hands against the glass.
“Come back and I may tell you where to find the women I buried.”
Is that a promise he can keep? He said it out loud and he knows we can be seen and heard, so it must be something he wants them to know.
“Okay.”
“Come closer.”
Despite everything that just happened, I obey.
He lowers his arms and bends to put his mouth at the slit between the panes. I bend forward so he can whisper. His words are breaths, traveling from his lungs to his lips without passing through his voice.
“You tell him to choof off. He knows what it means.”
“Choof… what?”
He leans back. With a finger to the glass, he taps out the shape of numbers—I LOVE YOU.
4 5683 968
He has to do it twice, but I’ve thought about the placement of those letters so deeply I can place them where they go.
4 5683 968
Tension was holding me up, and when those numbers take it away, the bottom drops out of me. He got it.
4 5683 968
I LOVE YOU
CHAPTER 12
DARIO
<CON NOR WAITS OUT SIDE >
On my knees, with my shirt in my lap, I watch her black skirt sway as she leaves.
<CON NOR WAITS OUT SIDE >
I’m going crazy. I’ve starved. Lived on the street. I’ve been locked in a closet for four days by the kids of a foster parent. Yet I’ve never been in a worse situation than I am now. I thought I’d stayed sane through all of it. Now I’m not so sure. A sane man wouldn’t be obsessed with fucking his wife right now.