Lies That Bind Us(49)

Except that I didn’t. My momentary elation dies like a sputtering candle, and I feel the full dread of what is going to happen next. He thinks I have tried to hurt him, but I don’t even know enough to negotiate some kind of deal, some way out . . .

I am going to die for someone else’s crime. I am going to be murdered by mistake.

It is almost funny, and if I thought I might be able to convince him of his error, I might still find it in me to laugh. But there is no mercy in that voice, no understanding. He might be giving me one last chance to speak, but he is also toying with me, enjoying my misery, my terror.

He isn’t going to let me live, no matter what I say, no matter what I know or don’t know.

Manos.

The word floats up like driftwood surfacing from some deep, unseen current. It bobs on the surface of my consciousness, rotating in the flood, but I can make nothing of it. It sounds Greek—and familiar, which doesn’t help—and as I try to puzzle it out, a new possibility occurs to me. I have been assuming my captor has the wrong person, that his questions are absurd because he thinks I know something I don’t. But what if I do? Or did? What if I really did stumble upon some crucial truth, the core to everything that is going on, but have forgotten it?

Again the idea strikes me as darkly funny. Dying over something I’ve forgotten is, if anything, worse than dying for something I never knew. Now it’s not just an accident—it’s another study in my dazzling ability to fuck things up.

Manos.

The word continues to spiral on the currents in my head, but it’s already being carried away, and I no longer feel sure that it means anything.

There has to be more I can remember. It is maddening to still have these dark holes in my mind where the last few days have been, though, now that I think of it, the vague amnesia began before I woke up down here, and it affected all of us. We were all tired, listless, forgetful. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I wonder if it was more than sun and jet lag and overindulgence.

Drugs?

God knows we were drinking constantly, and anyone had the chance to slip something in our glasses. But that would mean it had been someone there. One of the group . . .

That couldn’t be. Surely. I have decided that my interrogator was not a local, but I haven’t seriously considered the possibility that the person who chained me up here is one of those I was laughing and drinking with only days ago. One of my friends.

Or is that me sidestepping reality again, just another lie?

No, I haven’t put a face to my captor, but then I haven’t tried to, have—in fact—avoided even thinking about it, because a part of me knows that it is at least possible that the face in the dark is one I know all too well. The thought settles on me like snow, freezing me in place, heaping up around me. It is paralyzing. Unhelpful. Instead of dwelling on who my captor is, I need to focus on escape. If I am going to think about him at all, it is to come up with something I can use against him.

I think over our last encounter again.

A scent blew in with him. It lingers in the darkness still, a sharp, familiar smell—gasoline and motor oil—and it takes me back to the tire and lube place beside the Great Deal employee lot. There are other memories too, some much older and too dark to look at . . .

Night and silence and blood and gasoline all combining to hiss, You have been here before . . .

and one memory that is new and fresh: the generator in the basement of the villa.

That’s where I am. I’m sure. When Simon showed me the generator, there had been another door; I saw it quite clearly in my mind, pulled out of forgetfulness by the scent of the oil. A wire-mesh door to storerooms and cellars . . .

Simon?

No. I just can’t get my head around the possibility. The fact that I am down here close to where he was working—if that’s where I am—doesn’t mean it has to be him. Anyone could have gone down into the cellar, tracking a little oil and gas in as they did so . . .

The oil and gas prove nothing. I try to remember if I had smelled it the first time he came in to question me, but I can’t remember it. It strikes me as I compare the two visits that his demeanor felt quite different that first time, more reserved, less coldly playful. I don’t know what to do with that and come back to the smell, remembering that I noticed something else under the odor of oiled machinery. I reached for it with my mind and came up with, Rubber.

I frown to myself, pushing at the idea, but it holds up. Yes. Some kind of pliable rubberized plastic. And when I tried to hit him—more a panicked reflex than a real strike—I made contact with something hard where his face should be. That had felt familiar too. I put the two together, the plasticky scent and the stiff, resistant something around his head that had made it seem too big for his body: like the bull head of the Minotaur. But suddenly I am sure, though my certainty leaves me almost as bewildered as I had been when I didn’t know.

He is wearing the scuba mask.





Chapter Twenty

The power was still out. I wasn’t sure why that pissed everyone off so much, but it did.

“We’ll have to get more gas while we’re out,” said Simon. “Maybe pick up some more cans too, in case it doesn’t get fixed in the next few days.”

“Few days?” said Gretchen, dismayed. “Why does it take so long? It’s not even raining now.”