It should have made him laugh, Thomas realized, after agonizing over the Argument, after harboring the chill premonition that Neil could be right. All along the answer could be found in any freshman's psychology course notes—or work of literature for that matter. Neil hated, and like any other man who hated, he wanted nothing more than to see the object of his hate destroyed.

'Who hates you?' Ripley asked, looking at him curiously.

Thomas was startled. Had he spoken aloud?

'No one, honey,' he said. 'I was just mumbling.'

None of them were safe. Not Ripley, not Nora, not even Mia or Sam. Neil was coming for them.

Have you an arm like God?

Think clear. Think straight.

Neil wasn't playing Kurtz to his Marlowe, he was playing God to his Job. He was obsessed. For some reason Neil had become obsessed with his best friend. Somehow he had developed, nursed, and concealed some kind of psychopathic affective fixation.

Thomas clutched his trembling hands.

Control had returned. The world had resumed its place outside the fishbowl.

An old professor of his had argued that psychologists were the true fishers of men. Great nets of expectation, he said, bound individuals into communities. And when individuals violated those expectations, the psychologist was called to cast further nets about them. That's all the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was, he insisted, a way to entangle the unexpected within expectation, to utterly eliminate the threat of surprise. Trespasses became symptoms. Abominations became clinical evidence.

'There's no escape!' he would shout to his class. 'That's the true motto of all psychology.'

No escape.

For the first time, Thomas truly understood what the man had meant. For the first time, he truly understood Neil Cassidy. Neil was a stalker—little more than a mutt as far as psychological disorders go. A simple obsessional. Domestic. Delusional. Highly organized. Definitely psychopathic.

There were many ways to crack this chestnut. Any number of interpretative viewpoints suggested themselves: the socio-cultural, the learning, the humanistic, the psychodynamic…

Stupid, he thought. Stupid. So fucking stupid! How could he have missed it?