He started to rise. Then saw something in her hand. What—? Oh, it was just a cup. It had to be plastic. There wasn’t anything inside that could be broken or made into a knife.

He’d thought of that.

But one thing he hadn’t thought of.

What the cup held:

Ammonia, from under the sink. She’d filled it to the brim.

The cut hair wasn’t a message or a lesson. It was a distraction.

He tried to turn away but Kayleigh stepped forward fast and flung the chemical straight into his face; it spread up his nose, into his mouth. He managed to save his eyes by half a second, though the fumes slipped up under his lids and burned like red-hot steel. He cried at the pain, pain worse than any he’d ever felt. Pain as a creature, an entity, a thing within his body.

Screaming, falling backward, wiping frantically at his face. Anything to get away! Choking, gasping, coughing.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

Then more pain as she hit him hard in the throat, the wound where he’d fired the bullet into his own neck.

He screamed again.

Doubling over, paralyzed, he felt her rip the keys from his pocket. He tried to grab her arm but she was quickly out of reach.

The bitter, biting chemical flowed deeper into his mouth and nose. He sneezed and spit and coughed and struggled to catch his breath. Edwin staggered to his feet and shoved his face under the faucet in the kitchen sink to rinse the terrible fire away.

But there was no water.

Kayleigh had run the supply dry.

Edwin stumbled to the refrigerator and yanked it open, feeling for a bottle of water. He found one and flushed his face, the cold liquid little by little dulling the sting. His vision, though fuzzy, returned. He stumbled to the front door, which she’d closed and locked. But he took a second key from his wallet and opened the door, then hurried outside, wiping his eyes.

He looked around. He spotted Kayleigh running down the road that led to the highway.

As the pain diminished, Edwin relaxed. He actually smiled.

The road was three miles long. Gravel. She was barefoot.

She wasn’t going to get away.

Chapter 77

EDWIN STARTED AFTER her, jogging at first, then sprinting.

The terrible burn of the chemical had diminished his passion but not eliminated it. He was all the more driven to fling her to the ground, rip her jeans off. Then over onto her belly …

Make her cry, the way he was crying. Teach her who was in charge.

He saw her disappear around a curve in the road, only a hundred feet away. He was closing fast.

Seventy feet, fifty …

Teach her that she was his.

And then he turned the corner.

He ran for ten more steps, five, three, slowing, slowing. And then Edwin stopped. His shoulders sagging, coughing hard from the run and the ammonia.