“What is this, four hundred questions? Get upstairs, I’ll take care of this.” Nguyen is losing patience. He’s had a hard day lending people vast sums of money and is clearly over this conversation regarding my fate.

The goon flinches and disappears.

“You shot him,” Nguyen continues. “Man doesn’t forget a thing like that. You shouldn’t have done it. Plus, both the old man and the baby he was trying to save died. What a shitshow. And now look at you.”

Sometimes when you’re beaten down, the soul accepts that death is an inevitability. I’ve felt this way once or twice in my life. Once the question of death is out of the way, the soul gets salty.

“I should have done a better job,” I say, around the blood in my mouth. “Aimed better.”

“Ain’t that the truth! Don’t you worry, he’ll be here soon enough. You can discuss it with him.” He turns to leave, then remembers something. “Oh, by the way, scream all you want. You’re in the basement, and this is a six-thousand-square-foot property. The houses on either side are unoccupied.”

As soon as he gave me the square footage, I knew our location. At his house in West Vancouver, where Krista Dennings said the neighbors hadn’t seen him in months . . . years? I can’t remember. It strikes me that no one is going to come around with an apple pie or to ask for a cup of sugar. That as soon as he leaves, I’ll be alone in the dark.

“Wait!” I said, stalling for time.

“What?”

I say the first thing that comes to mind, something that has not taken as much space there as it perhaps deserved. “There was a bouncer who died a couple weeks back. Joe Nolan.”

“Who?” Nguyen continues up the stairs, as casual as could be.

But I’d already heard the lie.

He knew exactly who Joe Nolan was, when I mentioned his name. Nguyen is who Vidal must have called to take care of a messy situation. He just took care of it too well, for poor Joe Nolan’s sake. I was feeling sorry for Nolan, because I was feeling equally sorry for myself. I’d been so close to going to the police and telling them everything I knew and some things I didn’t. How I wish I had.

After Nguyen leaves, I work on trying to loosen the zip ties. Nguyen’s man comes back down with a bottle of water. He pinches my nose until I open my mouth to gasp for breath and then pours as much of it down my throat as he can.

“Bathroom,” I sputter.

“Piss yourself. What do we care?”

Charming.

He leaves after doing the bare minimum to keep me alive, switching off the lights and plunging me in darkness.