Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(100)

She spends the next thirty minutes scrolling and clicking and finding nothing out of the ordinary. She freezes when she hears footsteps overhead, the floorboards squeaking with weight. She slams shut the laptop and readies to run when she hears a stream of piss rushing into an upstairs toilet—then the roar of the flush—then the footsteps again and the faraway squeal of bedsprings. She waits in silence for several minutes until the sound of snoring again filters down the stairwell.

She opens the laptop and checks the sent box. She is into July’s messages and about to give up when she spots an address she recognizes: [email protected].

She clicks open the message. “I promise,” it reads. At first she attributes this to Miriam, then realizes it is a sent message. Reprobus promised her—what?

She scrolls down, past the top matter of the next message, and reads what Miriam wrote: “Promise me you won’t let her get involved.”

She can still hear Reprobus snoring. She could stand by his bedside, prod him with the knife to wake him. She stands at the bottom of the staircase. It is wooden and turns a corner, vanishing into shadow. She doesn’t trust it. She has no sense of the upstairs layout, and in a house this old, every step could creak.

There is no indecision, no fearful desire to run. She is done with this. Tired of being left in the dark, tired of being treated like a child.

She goes to the living room and peels off one of her socks. Slowly she unscrews a lightbulb from a lamp and tucks it inside the sock. She crushes it with her hands. It makes a muffled ping and crunch.

At the base of the staircase she waits for another snore. There it is. Like cardboard tearing. She gently shakes out the glass from her sock onto the linoleum. The shards sparkle in the moonlight, thousands of tiny white teeth.

In the kitchenette, a round wooden table with a newspaper on it, the New York Times. As quietly as she can, she peels away the front page. Then she looks up at the brass chandelier, and next to it, the smoke detector with its winking red eye.

She goes to the kitchen and clicks on the gas stove and brings the newspaper to the flame. She hesitates a moment, the newspaper burning in her hand. She hadn’t noticed the headline about Jeremy—“Soldier of Misfortune”—accompanied by a faraway photo of him dressed in a neon-orange jumpsuit and dragged from a black Chevy Suburban by men in black suits. She wouldn’t have recognized him. Bald and worm pale and so thin he might break over a knee. But she recognizes the man beside him, the Tall Man gripping him by the biceps. She knows it is him, though his face is a smear, unrecognizable. The flames scare her back to reality—the fire licking its way through both Jeremy and the Tall Man, making their bodies warp and blacken. She hurries to the dinette and climbs onto a chair and holds up the torch until the tips of her fingers sear and the fire alarm screeches to life.

The newspaper’s flaming remains flutter to the floor and char and curl and die. She ducks behind the counter and listens over the painful shriek of the alarm. She has made a bet. That he will rise out of bed bewildered and panicked. That living and teaching on campus all these years have made him soft. The unlocked door makes her feel confident this is true.

Directly overhead she hears a thud when Reprobus swings out of bed. He thumps down the stairs without caution, hurrying through the dark, still shaking off whatever dreams enchanted him seconds before. She wishes she had her Glock, but the serrated knife drawn from her pocket will have to do.

She hears the footsteps booming louder—he is almost to the ground floor—and then he cries out, a bark of pain. She leaps up in time to see him crash down, a mewling heap on the floor. Wearing a white T-shirt and white briefs. Clutching his feet, the blood black in the moonlight.

She hits the light switch—and with her knife out and the alarm still shrieking overhead, she approaches him.

He throws up an arm against the sudden light. The pain and confusion on his face transform to perverse pleasure when he observes her standing over him. “How can I help you, Claire?”



She cleans up the mess she made. Tweezers, blood-spotted paper towels. Bandages. A broom drawn from the closet, a dustpan tinkling shattered glass into the garbage can. He sits in the dinette, watching her, chuckling, saying how she certainly knows how to get someone’s attention. He is still in his undershirt and underwear, a half-filled glass and a bottle of J&B on the table.

She feels as stupid as she does relieved. Somebody knows her, acknowledges her by name. She feels like a ghost who passes mournfully through walls suddenly marveling at the resistance of flesh. She exists. “All this time you’ve known who I am.”

“How do you think you got admitted? Miriam was one of my pupils, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. People seem to enjoy that. Me not knowing things.”

He makes a pyramid of his fingers and through it she can see his smile. “I was under orders, you know. It’s apparently what your father wanted. You not to know.” His voice goes from playful to derisive in the space of a sentence.

She can ask him about that later. For now, she needs to tell him about Miriam and the videos. His smile fades when he listens. He combs a hand through his beard. “You have no way to contact her outside of email? And no indication of where she might be staying?”

She shakes her head, no.

“I want to say she can take care of herself. I believe that. But still, this is disturbing news.” He tells her to get a glass from the cupboard and she does and he pours her two fingers. He raises his glass in a toast and she hesitates a moment before reciprocating with a clink. She drinks and twists up her face. “Tastes like smoke.”