‘I’m not a psychopath,’ I say. ‘There’s a difference between a person who ignores his conscience and a person who doesn’t have one.’

Is there? Thistle sounds doubtful. I remember again what she said about Luxford, when I said he might not have a fetish for pain. I bet that’d be a real comfort to the victims.

The timeline is coming together in my head. Sindy quits her job with Warner. She knows how to seduce a man, but doesn’t like getting fucked. She discovers the giantess forums somehow—maybe via her deadbeat husband?—and asks She’s Alive to make a giant doll she can pimp out. But they can’t, so Sindy hatches a plan to make men screw each other instead of her. She uses nTangle to target men with plenty of flesh and therefore plenty of skin, all the same shade. Her taxidermy skills are good enough to turn them into a doll. She buys hair from Armana Black—and maybe some other women—to make a wig for it, and one for herself.

Sindy uses the giantess forums to find clients. But one of them, Biggs, realises what she’s done and flees in terror. He dies of a heart attack in the woods, and I take the body before she finds it. This leads to an FBI investigation, which she tries to derail by planting one of the bodies in my backyard.

What happened to her husband? Maybe some of the oldest skin is his—or maybe he’s already been replaced by fresh grafts.

The trapdoor opens.

Sindy comes back down the stairs.

She’s holding the hunting rifle.

•

I put my hands up immediately. ‘Whoa, hold on.’

Sindy levels the gun at my head. ‘You want to tell me who you really are?’

She’s dropped the soothing, sexy shtick. Now she’s just an angry, scared person with a gun. I’m close enough that she won’t miss, and far enough away that I can’t grab the rifle. Right in the danger zone.

‘I’m no one,’ I say. ‘My name is Hank. I’m just a guy who wanted to bang a giant. A real one.’

She cracks the stock open, showing me the shell casing inside. Then she snaps it closed and points it back at me.

‘No you’re not,’ she says. ‘If you were, you’d already be doing it. You’re a cop.’

‘I’m not a cop. A cop wouldn’t have paid you, right? That’s entrapment.’

‘Holy shit.’ Her eyes widen. ‘You’re that fucking FBI agent. I thought you looked familiar.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. I was good to go—but that’s not a giant. It’s a dead animal. A bunch of dead animals.’