“Now you won’t have to figure it out anymore,” Al Galbraith says, and I can tell by the sound of his voice, the fluctuations in the volume of it, that he continues to turn around, looking in my direction.

I don’t move in a way he can see, the entire back of the SUV outfitted as a cargo area, the backseat permanently folded flat, and I try to envision what is in here. It is difficult to think, difficult to breathe. My hands are free. He didn’t tie me but wrapped the net around me, and it is quite tight, and oddly I think of creatures entangled, of the huge leatherback and what I was told. They run into something like a vertical line and panic and spin themselves up in it and then they drown.

Don’t panic. Slow, deep breaths.

My phone is gone. He has my phone. He has my shoulder bag, unless it and my phone are on the pavement of the Fayth House parking lot and he left them there.

He wouldn’t leave them.

My hands are pinned against my chest, and I move them, poke my fingers through what I realize is the cargo net we use to secure our equipment, and I feel a knotted tie-down and try to loosen it but I can’t. My fingers are stiff and cold, and I’m shaking as if I’m shivering, my teeth about to chatter, and I will myself to calm down.

“You should be awake,” he says. “I didn’t give you that much. I’ve always wondered if they could smell it coming. The sweet smell of death coming.”

I don’t remember anything at all, but I know what he did, probably keeps a bottle of it in his car, in that silver Jeep Cherokee, for when the urge strikes. His murder kit.

You son of a bitch.

“Of course, everybody reacts a little differently,” he says. “That’s the danger and the art. Too much and the show ends early, which is what happened to the lady in Canada, had to keep knocking her out because I was driving.”

I can tell from the sound of the pavement under me and the change in pitch of the engine that we are going through a tunnel.

“Her head was in my lap, and I knew she was going to fight me if I didn’t keep the cloth handy. Then she wouldn’t wake up anymore. I didn’t get a chance to tell her what she needed to hear. Stupid as hell, such a waste. She never heard a word. Not one.”

I wiggle my fingers through the net and feel the rough plastic side of another case.