These days, Archie isn’t so sure. He feels farther from the killer than he’s ever been, and the murders are only accelerating. Each new killing weighs heavier than the last. “Why didn’t she scream?” he asks. It has been bothering him all day. “Her upstairs neighbors were home the whole time, and didn’t hear anything. He would have had to take off the tape to feed it to her. Did he hold the blade to her throat and force her to drink the drain cleaner? Or did she do it willingly? Was she just done?”

Gretchen squeezes his hand. “The killer had been terrorizing her for hours by then. It was probably something of a relief.”

Archie isn’t sure which is worse—the idea that the drain cleaner had been forced down the victim’s throat, or the idea that she’d been driven to take it without threat or force, as a means to end her own suffering. “She should have screamed,” he says.

They are quiet. The curtains on the window move a little. The spider on the ceiling dances. Otherwise, the room is still.

“Is that why you thought of me today?” Gretchen asks. “Because she looked like me?”

The truth is more shameful. “I thought of you because she was naked on a bed,” Archie says.

“It turned you on,” Gretchen says softly.

He looks away. Lidia had been a beautiful woman, even bloodied and cold, and she’d been sexually staged, splayed open and tied to a bed. He’s male. He has reactions. Lizard-brain reactions. He can’t be blamed for that.

“It’s okay,” Gretchen tells him.

Archie swings his feet onto the floor and sits up. “I have to go home.”

Gretchen crawls behind him and puts her arms around his waist. “It’s an understandable biological response,” she says. She lifts a hand and runs it through his hair along the back of his scalp. “Look at me,” she says.

She has perfect blue eyes.

“It was nothing. Don’t let it get to you.” A smile plays on her lips. “Some people like to be tied up,” she says, eyes twinkling. She moves her face near his cheek and nuzzles at his ear. “If I asked you to tie me up, would you?”

Archie pulls away and looks at her, unsure if he’s heard correctly.

She raises an eyebrow at him and smiles.

“I don’t want to tie you up,” he says.

“You’ve done a lot of things recently you never thought you’d do,” she points out. She lowers her chin and gives him a flirty look. “It’s fun. I would make it fun. It’s fantasy. It’s completely normal. A lot of people play games in bed.”

“I’m going now before you pull out a latex mask,” Archie says.