“What’s your weakness, Ginge? Taured?”

  She remembered the boys taunting him with nicknames worse than his actual name. And another taunt:

  “Ginger has a finger...” someone would say. “Up Taured’s ass!” someone else would chant.

  “Ginger has a finger...” she said under her breath, looking at him through her lashes. His face was such a tell; it got red—redder than his hair used to be.

  He slapped her, but it didn’t hurt as much as it could have. It felt good to poke his sore spot.

  She leaned her head against the table leg. She could taste blood. She laughed because she could, closing her eyes and rolling her head from side to side against the metal. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, a thoughtful expression in his too-close-together eyes.

  “Do you think that he’ll be happy you’re killing us?” Rainy asked. “You can’t possibly think that. When he finds out what you’re doing, he’ll kill you himself.”

  Ginger’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think he had some kind of plan for all of you? Why do you think he took those photos of you? You think he wants you all out there, living the way you want, godless, ignoring everything he ever taught you?”

  “A good and faithful servant,” Rainy said dryly. “You’re delusional if you think this is the key to finally getting his approval.”

  He studied her, amusement in his face. “I hope the next five are as fun as you.”

  “You’ll never get within a thousand feet of those women. I sent my trusty floppy disk to the police station, along with all the information I had about Feena and Sara.” Rainy had no idea if the police would be able to pull anything off the disk after it had been buried in the desert for twenty years, but at least she’d also had the hard-copy Polaroids of herself and Feena. She’d left it at the buffet with a note for the police, right where Ginger had left her the room key: Police Chowder. And under the word police, just to make sure: SOS Give to Police. Someone would notice. Hundreds of people must go through that buffet every day.

  “Ha! What information? You don’t know anything. You’re smart, but not that smart, Summer.” He was sweating profusely, the hamster-and-bologna smell of him close in her nostrils.

  “How did you get a copy of that disk?”

  His neck jerked back like he was surprised at her question. “A disk? He showed me. He used to sit me on his knee and show me the photos of all those women on his computer. It was easy to remember them.”

  Rainy turned her head, closed her eyes; she was going to be sick. She couldn’t look at him, but then she thought better of it and snapped her eyes open aggressively.

  “I don’t know what he did to you, but I know he did terrible things that no child deserves. He abused you in every way. This choice you’re making, to do this sick shit, is on you.”

  “Boop.” He touched the tip of her nose with his finger and quickly stood up when she tried to bite him. “You care too much.” He took a step back to look at her. “You came for the whore of Babylon—” he said, jerking his head toward a limp Braithe “—because you couldn’t help your friend Sara, is that right?”

  For the first time, she considered that this might not work. He might not—

  Suddenly, there was a noise at the door. She heard the whoosh of air that left Ginger’s lungs as he heard the noise, too. He walked backward, keeping his eyes on the door. He lifted the hammer, swinging it around expertly. He looked sharp, tactical. Flattening himself behind the door, he waited, gun up near his face and ready.

  Then door opened and she saw him. The man from her nightmares.

  “Taured!” Rainy cried out. “He’s behind the door!”

  As the hammer came down, Taured turned sideways, raising his arm to cover his face. He was taller than Ginger, larger. Rainy’s neck was turned as far as it would go as they struggled in and out of her line of sight. Their bodies twisted and she saw the look of shock on Ginger’s face when he saw Taured. It stalled him. The hammer caught Taured’s forearm and Rainy heard him grunt in surprise. His reflexes were fast, and he grabbed for the hammer with his other hand, but Ginger had already lifted it, ready to strike again, and it was coming down like an ax. Rainy waited for the crunch of metal on bone, but again Taured was too fast. Throwing himself backward, he hit the wall and the hammer swung through the empty air. Using the wall as leverage, Taured threw himself at Ginger, grabbing the hammer with one hand and Ginger’s throat with the other. They swung in a circle like they were dancing, the hammer still clutched between them as they stumbled out of her vision toward Braithe. Ginger had a gun; where was it now? If he used it to shoot Taured, someone would likely hear the gunshot in the hotel, even though this wing was under construction.

  And then what, you dummy? He turns the gun on you and Braithe. She clanked her handcuffs against the table leg in a fruitless attempt to move the bolted-down table.

  “Wake up, Braithe!” she shouted. Was it possible she was still alive?

  Braithe was stirring, her head bobbing. And then she looked semialert, holding her head at a steady-ish angle.

  Open your eyes, open your eyes! Rainy had a purely comical thought: The boys are fighting!

  Braithe, who had her knees pulled up to her chest, straightened one leg.

  As they grappled, they lost their balance, and Ginger took the brunt of the fall, hitting the ground and staying there, pinned by Taured’s weight. They’d collapsed just beyond where Braithe sat against her own table leg, struggling.

  Rainy couldn’t see what happened next. The men’s feet were kicking, and she saw flashes of gray boots. Ginger tried to reach for his gun, but Taured was a bigger man with longer arms, and he got there first. She braced herself for a gunshot, her vision swimming as the grunting continued, but the only sound that came was two dull thumps. Braithe was watching, she had a better view than Rainy, and she was trying to keep out of their way, pulling her legs up to her chest. As Taured stood, Braithe’s head followed him, tilting all the way back.

  Everything felt perfectly still in those moments, and the light from the high window was shining directly on Rainy’s face, bright white and blinding. She blinked once...twice...and then Taured rose from the ground, a disoriented victor. Rainy could just see Ginger’s boots, unmoving, beyond Braithe.

  Taured stumbled back into Rainy’s view, glancing at Braithe and stepping into the greater part of the room. There was blood on his hands and shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was looking for her. It was her turn to tremble, the weight of her stupid, ridiculous plan crashing down on her. Handcuffed to a table leg on an abandoned floor of a hotel, at the mercy not only of a would-be killer but her worst enemy. She started laughing at the absurdity of it: How had she thought she should deal with a kidnapper herself?

  She couldn’t contain the laughter that bubbled from her lips. All because she grew up in a cult and had a lot of great therapy, she’d thought she could outsmart a sociopath. Her laughter was almost beautiful even to her own ears, illogical yet melodious in this impossible situation.

  “Hello, Taured,” she said, and as he crouched down in front of her, he was grinning. Blood was running steadily from his nose where Ginger had got him good. She wondered if Ginger were still alive. The light wasn’t good, but it looked like there was a lot of blood on that side of the room.

  “You’re not so different,” she said.

  He grabbed her chin and turned her head from side to side.

  “You’re very different.”

  When he let her go, her skin tingled where his fingers had been.

  “That’s good. Want to let me out of these handcuffs? My wrists are killing me.”

  Taured made a face like, Wow, okay, and stood up.

  “Who’s your friend?” He glanced back at Braithe, who was sitting very still.

  “Her name is Braithe. Who’s yours? Do you remember him?”

  Taured looked over to where Ginger lay motionless. “Ginger. Of course I remember him. I got your email. You can imagine how shocked I was, Summer, to see your name pop up from that old email address.”

  She’d used the email he’d had them send their daily journals to, knowing he would still have access to it, would look at it, even after all these years. He needed those trophies.

  “The subject line got me.” He pushed off from the wall and took the few steps needed to reach her. Then, like he’d done a moment ago, he lowered himself in front of her, eyes sparkling. She was in kicking distance of his crotch, the arrogant bastard. She could see the pores on his face, the individual hairs that grew down his neck. The freckle on his earlobe that looked like the tiny stud of an earring. She remembered noticing that as a child. She’d thought, when she’d first met him, that the illusion of an earring made him look cooler.

  You should kick him now; you might not get another chance later.

  “Now, I know you’re this fancy sculptor. I’ve seen the accolades and awards—” he held his hands up, shaking his head “—but you really should try your hand at writing, Summertime.”

  As he looked at her like—like she was a meal, she remembered why she was here. She curled her toes up in her boots. Paul—Ginger—hadn’t said she couldn’t wear boots.

  Taured was still speaking. “The description you sent. Very good detective work, by the way. I knew it was our Ginger.” He glanced up at the ceiling like he was recalling something. “‘Taured, I need your help. A man has taken my friend captive and he’s asked me to surrender myself to save her. He told me that if I contacted the police his first order of business would be to kill her, but if I came willingly, he’d spare her life for mine. All I can offer is a rough description of him...’”

  Rainy exhaled, a sort of laugh that sounded choked. He was imitating her tone like he’d been listening to her speak for the last dozen years. He was creepy...sick. She yanked on her cuffs in anger.

  “Look for a broken nose.” He sounded purely delighted by this point. “And then you actually managed to break his nose!” He shook his head in proud disbelief. “You were always so determined, so dead set on what you wanted. I know that because I read half of your thoughts. The beautiful innocent thoughts of a young girl in her prime.”

  Her head ached in the spot it had met Ginger’s nose.

  “Before he left, he’d been causing problems. You know how disgruntled people get. But thanks to you, that problem is now—” he looked over at the body and then back at Rainy with a gleeful expression “—dead.”

  He spared her more of his fucked-up thoughts when he went to look over his handiwork. He stood, a foot in the puddle of Ginger’s blood, hands on hips, then suddenly he bent down. Legs extended, Rainy bounced on her left side, then right, trying to get blood flowing.

  Fuck. Shit. He was dragging the body toward her. Ginger’s head was not okay. She closed her eyes when Taured propped him opposite her against the door to the walk-in freezer.

  “Hey!” She heard him clap his hands. “He had the sense to turn the freezer on! Do you think it was for you and your friend?”

  Rainy opened her eyes, looked at Ginger this time. Taured had pistol-whipped him pretty good. One side of his head was...dented. Along with the broken nose she’d given him, he was almost unrecognizable.

  Nice way of saying it. Her mother’s voice in her head.

  Rainy looked away quickly, the tears in her eyes fat but unfallen. “I don’t know what he wanted to do. I just did what he said.”

  The idea that he was in some way affiliated with Taured and his cult had crossed her mind. At first, she’d wondered if he could be Frank, Sammy or Marshall. All those guys had been Taured’s henchmen, but they’d all lacked something she picked up right away in Ginger: he was smart, really smart. That wouldn’t have gone down well at the compound. Taured couldn’t keep smart men because they always eventually called him out. The women had been different: they stayed because they were in love with him, but it hadn’t mattered how smart they were because their feelings for him won out, even if they probably just had Stockholm syndrome. Ginger’s black hair had thrown her off, but then she remembered. It was when the lady at the Quick Mart had said that one of the two men who bought the syrup dyed his hair, had light roots underneath. The little boy who’d followed Taured around the compound until everyone made fun of him: he’d loved Taured, too. And Taured had used that love against him. He’d been training all the kids up to serve him, so possibly he thought of Ginger as the future Frank/Sammy/Marshall. And somewhere along the line his love for Taured started the rot that spread through the rest of him.

  She felt the vomit piling up behind her throat. Turning her head to the left, she let it come, and she was sick across the floor. This kitchen was having an odd baptism. When she looked back at Taured, he seemed pleased. Of course he was: he fed on the emotions he caused. It didn’t matter how gross the outcome was. After another torturous minute of watching her, he dragged Ginger’s body into the walk-in freezer and kicked the door closed, dusting his hands.

  “He hit her pretty good.” Rainy licked her lips, nodding toward Braithe. “Can you check on her?”

  Taured nodded. He walked over to where Braithe sat, taking her in, before lowering himself to his haunches. She was no longer sitting up, alert; her legs were extended in front of her and her head was lolling again. He touched her neck and looked at Rainy. “She’s alive,” he said. Then, as he stood up, he said, “You care about her.”

  “I do.”

  “You offered yourself up to this to save her.”

  “I suppose that’s what it looks like,” she said.

  “No greater love than this, a man who gives up his life for his friend...” He looked down at Braithe for another few seconds, considering either her beauty or her value to Rainy—she didn’t know which—then he walked toward Rainy along the length of table that separated her from Braithe. When he was in front of Rainy, with his back to the freezer, he leaned against it, crossing his ankles.

  “You were never transparent about what you cared about, except for your mother. It was all a mystery to me—what parts you were faking and what parts were real.”

  Rainy thought back to the journaling he’d had them do, the way she’d always try to write things that would please him. And that’s what he was doing back then: brainwashing a bunch of kids into believing their life’s purpose was to please him. Pillaging their brains for information and then using it against them and their families.

  “Ditto,” Rainy said. She wished he’d given her some of that water, too, but she was too proud to ask.

  “Wonderful,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Let’s get to know each other again, then—what do you say?”

  “I’d say it’s about time.”

  Taured looked pleased with that. He surveyed Ginger’s array of food on the counter, his lips pursed.

  “I’ll get us something better,” he said, bypassing the vegetables Ginger had so carefully lined up. “You want a steak, Summer? Who am I kidding, everyone likes a steak, right? Except maybe that guy.”

  “Fine,” Rainy said. “A steak is great.” She wanted him to leave for a bit so she could think and gather herself. She knew he wasn’t going to just let her out of these cuffs. But that was stage two, and she wasn’t there yet.

  She watched him wash his hands using the little bottle of detergent Ginger had brought, washing off Ginger’s blood with Ginger’s soap. She didn’t feel bad for him; the bastard intended to harm both her and Braithe.

  Taured whistled while he scrubbed. Rainy didn’t recognize the tune, but it sounded like something sung at church. When he was done, he pulled off his shirt, making sure to face her as he did it. He was all muscle, tough like a bull. Even his neck had thick cords running through it, veins standing at attention. Dropping the bloody shirt on the floor, he turned away from Rainy; she saw the gun in the waistband of his pants, as she supposed he wanted her to.

  She’d seen him shirtless only once, when she’d accidentally walked into the makeshift clinic for a Band-Aid. He’d been sitting on the examination table, kicking his feet like a kid. Rainy had been so alarmed that he was there she almost hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t wearing anything on top, and then when she did notice, she must have turned a shade of ultrasonic violet, because Taured had laughed.

  “They’re just tattoos, Summa, Summa, Summatime...” And then he’d shown her each one, without getting off the table: animals exploding from leaves across his shoulder blades, and a snake draped across his chest, the tip of its tail touching his belly button. His arms were clean of tattoos, which, he explained, gave the world what they wanted: a respectable man.

  “And I am the most respectable man, Summer, wouldn’t you agree?”

  It was then her job to say, “Yes, Taured.”

  Even then, she’d wanted to laugh when Taured used the word respectable so generously on himself.

  Then he was shrugging on another shirt, a tight, white undershirt he pulled from his pocket. He looked like a dick, she noted, not above being petty in this moment. He picked up the duct tape and walked over.

  No, no, no—she needed to be able to talk to Braithe. He was gentle at least, spreading two layers over her mouth before backing away to look at his handiwork. She watched him walk over to Braithe and survey her. He kicked her leg.

  “She’s out cold,” he said. “She won’t bother us tonight.” And then he left.

  Rainy kicked at the air. Trying to make noise under the tape was exhausting and then the feeling that she was suffocating would creep in and she’d have to calm herself down. But it was only five—maybe ten—minutes after he left that Braithe began to stir.