Hidden Pictures(78)

I repeat the exercise three times.

And then I force myself to think.

I still have options. My legs aren’t restrained. There’s a chance I can stand up—but if I do, the chair will be bound to my back, like a turtle shell. Walking will be slow and awkward but maybe not completely out of the question.

I can turn my head left and right. I can see just far enough into the kitchen to read the glowing LED clock on the microwave oven: 11:07. Adrian is due back around midnight. He’s promised to come see me. But what happens if he knocks on the door of my cottage and no one answers? Is there a chance he’d try to get inside?

No, I don’t think so.

Not unless I can signal to him.

I can’t reach my pockets but I’m pretty sure they’re empty. No cell phone. No keys. No stun gun. But there’s a drawerful of knives in my kitchen. If I could somehow reach a knife and cut through the restraints, I would be out of the chair and armed with a weapon.

I plant my feet on the floor and lean forward, trying to stand up, but my center of balance holds me back. I realize my only hope is to throw myself forward with enough momentum to rise up. I’m just afraid that I’ll spill forward and topple onto the floor.

I’m still working up the nerve to try when I hear footsteps outside the cottage, climbing the worn wooden stairs. Then the door swings inward, and Caroline switches on the light.

She’s dressed in the same scoop neck dress from before but now she’s also wearing blue latex gloves. She’s carrying one of her pretty supermarket tote bags—the kind you bring to the grocery store, to prevent plastic waste from cluttering up the oceans. She seems surprised to find me awake. She sets the tote bag on my kitchen counter and begins to empty its contents: a BBQ grill wand lighter, a metal teaspoon, a tiny syringe and needle with a plastic orange cap.

All the while I’m pleading with her but I can’t form words, only sounds. She’s trying to ignore me and focus on her work, but I can tell I’m irritating her. Eventually she reaches behind my head and the strap goes slack; I cough up the wet rag and it rolls down my lap, landing on the floor with a splat.

“No yelling,” she says. “Use your inside voice.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I tried to give you a nice send-off, Mallory. I made my seafood salad. I hung up streamers. Ted and I even put together a severance package. A month’s pay. We were going to surprise you with a check tomorrow morning.” She shakes her head sadly, then reaches into the tote for a small polybag filled with white powder.

“What is that?”

“This is the heroin you stole from Mitzi’s house. You took it yesterday afternoon, after you snooped around her bedroom.”

“That’s not true—”

“Of course it is, Mallory. You have a lot of unresolved grief. You’ve been masquerading as a college student, a track star, and it’s generating all this anxiety. And then the pressure of losing your job—losing your paycheck and losing your place to live—all those stresses caused you to relapse.”

I realize she doesn’t actually believe this—she’s just rehearsing a story. She continues: “You were desperate for a fix, and you knew Mitzi was using, so you sneaked into her house and you found her stash. Only, you didn’t realize her heroin was cut with fentanyl. Two thousand micrograms, enough to bring down a horse. Your opioid receptors flooded and you stopped breathing.”

“This is what you’ll tell the police?”

“This is what they’ll infer. Based on your history. And the autopsy. Tomorrow morning I’ll knock on your door to see if you need help packing. When you don’t answer, I’ll use my key to come inside. I’ll find you lying in bed with a needle sticking out of your arm. I’ll scream and call for Ted. He’ll pound your chest and try to give you CPR. We’ll call 911 but the medics will say you’ve been dead for hours. They’ll say there’s nothing we could have done. And because we’re such good people, we’ll make sure you have a proper burial and headstone. Next to your sister. Otherwise Russell would get stuck with the bill, and that doesn’t seem fair.”

Caroline unseals the polybag and holds it over the spoon, carefully filling it with white powder. She leans over the counter, concentrating on her work, and again I see the tattoo that’s just below her neck.

“You’re the angel in the drawings. You hit Anya with your Viper and then you strangled her.”

“It was self-defense.”

“You don’t strangle someone in self-defense. You murdered her. You stole her little girl. How old was she? Two? Two and a half?”

The spoon fumbles out of Caroline’s fingers and lands on the counter with a clatter. The powder spills everywhere and she shakes her head, irritated.

“Don’t pretend like you understand the situation. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

She reaches for a plastic spatula and slowly drags it across the counter, gathering all the powder into a tiny little mound.

“I know you had Ted’s help,” I said. “I know he’s the man in the pictures. You killed Anya and took her daughter. And then you sent Ted to bury her body. When did this happen, Caroline? Where were you living?”

She shakes her head and laughs. “I know the game you’re trying to play. We use it in therapy all the time. You can’t talk your way out of this.”