The Sanatorium(27)

She waits: silence.

There’s a strange moment of suspension, a lag. Adele feels a sudden rush of fury. If they want to hurt her, kill her, then be done with it. Not this . . . not this delay.

She makes a decision. If her captor comes near, she’ll use the only weapon she has: the force of her body. She’ll jerk forward, strike them with the full weight of her head. Inflict whatever damage she can. She isn’t going to make it easy.

But they don’t move any closer. Instead, they reach out a hand, a piece of paper held between two fingers. The paper is only inches from her face, so close the image on it blurs.

Her captor moves it backward. The photograph resolves.

Adele instantly recognizes it—a male body. Lifeless. Mutilated. Bloody.

She now knows that this is no mistaken identity. No random assault. This is planned, meticulously planned.

Revenge.

Her stomach turns. She wants to retch, but she knows she can’t. With the gag in her mouth, she’ll choke. Instead, she tries to control her breathing. Pull air deep into her lungs.

Don’t move a muscle. Don’t react. Don’t let them know they’re getting to you.

She forces herself to think about Gabriel. Supplant the blunt force of the image with happy ones: his baby toes curling up when he fed. Fat, starfish hands clutching soggy batons of cucumber. The green-blue of his irises.

But the vision of Gabriel dissolves: the image in front of her is replaced with another.

A close-up.

The photograph plummets to the floor. She can sense movement, behind her. A hand at the back of her head, in her hair. There’s a slackening around her mouth.

Her captor has removed the gag. Perhaps this is it, she thinks. Perhaps the photos were the point of all this. They wanted her to see the photos, and now they’ll let her go. It’s then she sees it: another mask, directly in front of her, thin cracks in the rubber like sores.

Adele wonders if she’s seeing double. If there’s another person in the room.

But as the mask moves, gets closer, she realizes it isn’t another person at all.

The mask is for her.





22





Isaac follows her gaze, eyes widening. “Shit, I hadn’t noticed.”

“You hadn’t noticed,” Elin says evenly, her pulse pounding in her ears, “that there’s blood on the rug?”

“No, but it’s hardly anything, is it?” Crouching down, Isaac rocks forward on his haunches. “Besides, how do you even know it’s blood? It could be anything, a stain . . .”

“It’s blood.” Her fingers curl into a fist.

“Well, if it is, it’s probably been there ages.” Tiny beads of moisture are breaking out on his upper lip.

Elin shakes her head. “I don’t think so. The standard of cleaning is really high in a hotel like this. Marks like this—the rug would be cleaned, or replaced.”

Her tone is brisk, matter-of-fact, but internally, she’s raging: He has answers for everything, doesn’t he? Never fazed.

Isaac straightens, pushes his hair away from his face. “You think it’s Laure’s?”

“It looks recent, so I’m guessing it’s from you or her. Has either of you hurt yourself since you got here? A cut, or . . .”

Relief floods Isaac’s features. “I know what it is. Laure cut herself shaving the other night. It was deep, wouldn’t stop bleeding. I had to get her a Band-Aid, from downstairs. She must have walked across the rug.”

Elin processes it: Laure cut herself shaving. It’s the most likely explanation.

But another thought is there, beating through her head:

He’s done it before. He’s capable.

Elin’s eyes fix on the vase in the corner, the glass reflecting a tiny prism of the room, swimming in front of her. Her head feels like it’s going to explode. She doesn’t know what to feel.

Already, she thinks, she’s being sucked in, turned this way and that, no idea what’s up or down. She’s forgotten this—how mercurial it is, being with Isaac.

Trying to gauge him . . . it was like looking through water. One minute you have the perfect view, can see right to the bottom, but within seconds, the water’s shifted, and all you can see is something hazy and unclear.

Isaac touches her arm. “Elin, are you all right?”

She hesitates, a beat too long. “Fine.” She gives a tight smile, but her eyes find more blood.

More rust-colored specks dotting the soft fibers of the rug.



* * *



? ? ?

Back in her room, Elin closes the door and leans against it, waits for the churning nausea to subside.

There’s a note from Will.


Gone for a swim. Join me?


She kicks off her shoes, walks over to the window. The weather has committed, set in—the pale blue skies of only a few hours ago now consumed by thick gray cloud. Snow is falling furiously. Everything is a perfect, pristine white: the cars parked around this side of the building, the hotel signage, the outside lights.

Yet every time she blinks, she sees not white, but red. Bloodred.

Blood on the rug. Tiny droplets.

Her thoughts jump to what Isaac did while she was in the bathroom: hid something from her. Slipped something into his pocket.