“You have every right to be angry with me.” But he doesn’t sound like he believes it, only that he thinks he should. “How much did Cole tell you about me?”
That your life hangs in my hands, she thinks. That if I refuse to keep being a guinea pig, he’ll probably shoot you dead. Right here, for all I know.
“Did he tell you that when I came to him with the first animal tests of Zypraxon, he’d squandered millions of research dollars hunting for common links between orphan diseases? That he was losing the confidence of his board and he’d only been CEO for a year. Do you know what that phrase means? Orphan disease?” She shakes her head. “It’s a disease so rare there’s no real financial incentive for a company like Graydon to find a cure for it, or even a treatment. But Cole, for some crazy reason, got it in his head that with the right amount of money and determination, and as it turned out, ignorance, he’d find some commonality between random, isolated, rare diseases and somehow develop treatments for them. His Umbrella Theory. That’s what he called it. It was complete nonsense, and he almost ruined his father’s company over it.”
“And then you came to him with a cure for something else,” she says.
“A cure?” he says. “Maybe. More like a weapon.”
“A weapon that could have saved your mother.”
“And yours.”
“And you killed four men to make it work.”
“Four willing volunteers gave their lives so we could try to make it work. We weren’t out to create a Superman pill. We wanted to formulate something that could seize on the biochemical process of panic itself and transform it into efficiency, competency, responsiveness.”
“Survival,” she whispers before she can stop herself.
He looks into her eyes, smiles slightly. Pleased, no doubt, that she’s just parroted the word he used to justify his actions the night Jason almost raped her.
“Exactly,” he says. “The strength was an unexpected by-product. And one with undeniable defense industry implications that I will admit I did use to secure funding for our further development.”
“But it didn’t work. So you decided to put my life at risk.”
“I knew it would work in you. I had a theory. I was right.”
“What was your theory?”
“Our tests used combat veterans. People who’d been through extreme physical trauma. Trauma so severe it had reshaped their neural pathways. With you, that wasn’t a concern.”
“You’re saying my life’s been free of trauma?”
“Your life is full of grief, betrayal, and loss. But the only time you were ever held down against your will was when the SWAT team saved you from this place. You’ve never been shot or even shot at, much less beaten, violated. The threat of those things has been ever present in your life, as it is in so many lives. But it never manifested.”
“Until you sent Jason to my house.”
“Yes. And we all saw how that went.”
“I don’t believe you, Noah.”
He closes his eyes at this use of his old name. What’s he trying to summon? Patience or violence?
“Which part?” he finally asks quietly.
“I don’t believe you were so confident your pill wouldn’t kill me. I think you thought I was expendable.”
“How, Charlotte?”
They’re thoughts that have only come to her in the past few days, so she’s afraid she might have trouble articulating them now, but when she starts to speak, the words come easily. Is she saddened or relieved to be saying these things? “I think you tracked me down because you knew who I was. And you hated me. You thought I’d made money off the Bannings, off your mother’s murder. You’d already lost a female subject. Maybe it was someone you cared about. Now you needed one you wouldn’t care about at all.”
“Interesting,” he says. “So naturally I spent three months getting to know you so that I wouldn’t be attached when you went lycan on me and I had to destroy you?”
“Those three months gave you everything you needed to set up your test.”
“Two weeks gave me everything I needed to set up my test. You were desperate for someone to talk to, and after our first session you rarely held back.”
“Better for you then.”
“But that’s not why I was there. Not in the beginning.”
She’s startled by his conviction, but he doesn’t rush to say more.
“Why were you there?” she asks.
“I wanted to know who you really were. You’re right. I hated you. Ever since I found out who my mother really was, what had happened to her, I hated you. I’d read your father’s crass, manipulative, disingenuous book. I’d watched every single one of those disgusting films, knowing you got a share of the profits. And I’d never believed a word you’d said in front of a camera. I thought it was all for show, all for money. Even storming offstage on your father like that. Just a teenager getting bored with her old act. And I thought deep down, you probably hated your father because you loved them more. Abigail and Daniel. Your real parents. In short, I believed everything about you that you didn’t want the world to believe.”
She’s never seen him this angry. It takes a form as penetrating and focused as every other intense swell of emotion he’s displayed.
“And then?” she asks.
“And then, one day, I saw you standing over my mother’s grave.”
For a second she’s got no idea what he’s talking about. Then she remembers. The road trip. The road trip she wrote about in her journal only days before.
“After Cole shut down the project, it was like my one connection to my mother died. I wandered around for a bit, but I ended up in Asheville, where she lived. I was trying to put together pieces of her life. And then one day, I walked out to her grave, and there you were. Burning Girl. And you were crying.
“I’d seen the news. I’d read about the lawsuit. I knew you’d won. But you weren’t off vacationing on some island. Instead you’d traveled across the country to bring my mother her favorite flower. And that’s when I realized, we don’t get to pick the other survivors of the shipwreck, and on our darkest days, they’re all we have. So I decided to find out who you really were.”
“You followed me all the way to Arizona?”
“I followed you back to Asheville. Heard you use your new name. I used that to do the rest.”
“The rest . . . pretending to be a therapist. Lying to me.”
“It was not my best plan. In the beginning, it wasn’t really a plan at all. It was . . .”
“What?” she asks. “What was it?”
“Hope.”
“For what, Noah?”
He whirls, a visible pulse in one corner of his jaw. “I call you by the name you’ve chosen. Can you do me the same favor?”
“You didn’t do me any favors, Dylan.”
His shame, if that’s truly what it is, shows itself in the quick breath he sucks in through his nostrils, the speed with which he looks out into the woods beyond.
Should she tell him they’re being watched? Shouldn’t he already know? After all, he’s worked with Cole Graydon far longer than she has.
“So who was I?” she asks. “When you finally got to know the real me, who did I turn out to be?”
“You were everything I said you were during our sessions. Brave but deluded. Convinced you were weak simply because you were grief stricken and exhausted. But on a fundamental level, what you’d been through had turned you into something I’d never anticipated. Someone resourceful, determined, honest. But in need of a push.”
“A push?”
“Do you regret it, Charley? Not our sessions. Not what I had to do with Jason. The Mask Maker. Do you regret it? Do you regret bringing him down?”
“Is that what you expected me to do?”
“Never in a million years,” he says with a warm, contented smile.
“Then maybe you didn’t get to know the real me after all.”
“Maybe,�
� he whispers, his smile fading but his stare growing more intense, as if he’s convinced he might learn more about her in this single moment than he did during those three months.
“You said in the beginning, I was hope. Not for . . . your drug, but for something else. What, Dylan? Hope for what?”
He’s studying the view beyond the collapsed walls now. He’s searching the woods; she’s sure of it. Searching for the glint of sunlight off binoculars or a rifle’s scope. But he doesn’t seem frightened.
“Dylan?”
“I thought you might have seen her. When they brought her here.”
“Your mother?” she asks.
He nods.
“I didn’t,” she whispers. “I never saw any of them. I’m sorry. I would tell you the truth if I had.”
“I know,” he whispers back. “I know.”
Either he hasn’t seen what he expected to out in the woods, or he’s given up looking for it. He turns to her now.
“Forgive me, Charley. It wasn’t my plan to involve Cole and Graydon right away. I didn’t want to snare you in their net so soon. I thought we’d have time. I thought we’d have time to work together. To come to an understanding.
“I knew you’d see the worth of what I was trying to do. The implications. For our mothers. For women everywhere who live in fear. For people everywhere who live in fear, overpowered and silenced and erased by those who lack morals or possess brute strength . . .” He studies the altars all around them, and she wonders if these general, academic words are the closest he can come to describing his mother’s murderers in any kind of detail. “Or are pure evil.”
There’s a tremor in his voice when he speaks these last two words. He’s turned in to the shadows so he can face her. If there are tears in his eyes, she can’t see them.
“I take it Cole’s made it clear he has a continued desire to work with you,” he says.
“He has.”
“Has he said what will happen if you turn him down?”
She can’t bring herself to lie, but she can’t bring herself to answer, either.
He looks up, stricken by her silence.
“What has he said to you?” she finally asks.
“That your decision will determine everything.” She nods, avoiding his stare for the first time since entering the house.
“Has he offered you a graceful exit plan by chance?” he asks.
I look forward to seeing your decision. Black and white. Staring back at her from her phone’s screen. She imagines a bullet striking Dylan between the eyes right there if she . . . does what? Runs from the cabin in tears? Slaps him? Or is the place bugged and Cole’s listening to their every word right now?
“Not graceful,” she says. “No.”
He steps forward. Behind her, Luke stiffens and matches Dylan’s step with two of his own. But Dylan doesn’t go any farther, and she realizes he’s searching her expression as intensely as he did the woods outside.
“So if I had given you a choice, if I’d told you the risks, would you have said yes?”
It’s an impossible question, but she’s closer to an honest answer now than she was just twenty-four hours before. It’s what she wrote in her journal.
She closes her eyes, imagines those twinkling vistas that stretched out before her and Luke as they chased Pemberton across Southern California. She tells herself that somewhere out there in those glittering lights are young women, about her age. They’re settling in for the night or getting ready to head out on a first date or maybe even driving to pick up their kids from the movies. Because of Charley, they will make it to their destinations. They will hear the delighted laughter of their children as they slide into the back seat of the car. Or they will lock eyes with their date across the table and have the privilege of asking themselves if this person is the one. They will have a night full of dreams before the sun rises, and they will wake in their own beds. In their own rooms. Not in Pemberton’s basement. Not in the Bannings’ root cellar. Someday they will die, of course, but until then they will be spared the degradation of dying at the hands of someone who derives sexual satisfaction from their agony.
She answers before these images can leave her mind and be replaced by her current, decaying surroundings.
“Yes,” she says. “I would have said yes.”
It’s like she’s slugged him in the center of his chest.
He blinks, stares at her. He works his jaw suddenly to hide the fact that it just started to quiver. Does he think she’s lying? She isn’t. It’s the truth, as much as she’s capable of telling the truth about a possibility that no longer exists, an opportunity that was stolen from her by a man who’s only just now realizing that his belief in what’s best for others can bring him close to committing the kind of violent acts that destroyed his life. Or one of his lives. A life that will never be, with a mother he never got to know.
So what if he doubts her answer? That’s his burden to bear. He’s the one who stole the choice from her. He’s the one who made sure they’ll never truly know if she would have accepted the risks, the challenge. The opportunity.
For the first time since she’s met him, he looks miserable.
Maybe he regrets it all. The loss of life—the slaughtered bikers, the chaos that followed. Maybe he really does regret stealing the choice from her, putting her through hell in the name of his warped view of scientific research.
Maybe he cares about her as much as he’s capable.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that she has the answer she came here for.
She can’t let him die.
“So,” he finally says, voice shaky. “What will you tell our mutual friend about our meeting?”
“Nothing he probably doesn’t already know,” she answers.
With a smile, he looks to the woods, nods. “Makes sense. You’re one of his most valuable investments now. I’m sure he’ll do anything to protect you.”
“Maybe,” she says. “He took some of my blood after I was triggered. He’ll be able to work with that for a while even if I choose not to do any more tests.”
“And what about me?” he asks.
“What about you, Dylan?” she asks.
“If you decide to go no further with him, what did he say about me?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“I never do,” he says.
“You played the therapist for me. What did you play for him?”
“I didn’t play anything. I just offered him a release of his tension; that’s all. So that he could focus.”
“A well-timed one, given what you were asking of him.”
“Cole Graydon doesn’t fall in love with people. If he’s threatened me it’s because of the risk I pose to his company. And to his secrets.”
“Or that. But you’re both more alike than you realize.”
“How’s that, Charley?”
“You’re both more human than you’d like to be.”
He nods, tries for bitter laughter, but it gets caught in his throat. “I see,” he says. “So he did give you an out, just not a graceful one. He said you could walk away, but that it would be the end of me.”
Her expression confirms his suspicions. He laughs, looks to the woods outside again.
“It’s genius, when you think about it.” He approaches what remains of the nearby wall, which only comes up to his knees. He steps into the shafts of bright sunlight pouring through where one corner of the roof used to be. “This way, you can agree to go along with him out of a crushing sense of obligation. You almost killed Jason. You almost killed Pemberton. And you may very well lose control and kill someone during a future test. And so even if things do get bloody in the months ahead or the years ahead or however long it takes us to isolate whatever it is about you that makes this drug work, you’ll always be able to console yourself with the fact that you spared my life. It will keep you going. For him. And you think I’m the master man
ipulator.”
“I think you two were made for each other.”
“Well, he’s wrong,” Dylan says, turning on her now. “You’re not going to do it to spare my life.” When he digs into his pocket, Luke steps forward. “Easy, Cowboy. It’s just this.” Dylan rattles a small pillbox in one hand and stops. He’s several feet away from her, back turned to all the shadowy hiding places in the landscape outside. He extends the box to her. It’s shaking. It’s shaking because his hand is shaking. “You’re going to do it for everybody who was buried on this farm. You’re going to do it for my mother, and you’re going to do it for yours.”
When she reaches for the pillbox, she feels a firm pressure in her shoulder, so sudden and strong she wonders if Luke just grabbed her. But when she looks over her shoulder, he’s still several paces away. Studying her. Ready to react, to what he’s not sure, but he’s ready. Ready and watching.
Now she can see the tears in Dylan’s eyes. But he doesn’t blink them away, and he doesn’t stop staring into hers.
“Don’t do it for me,” he whispers. “I don’t need you to spare my life, Charlotte Rowe. Make the choice for yourself and for the other women you can keep alive. Do that for me, if you can find it in your heart to do anything for me at all.”
Pam, she thinks. Jessica, Sara. Maybe they have ordinary names. Maybe they have ordinary lives. Or maybe they’re currently living lives that seem ordinary on the surface but will ultimately unveil some extraordinary purpose. Maybe they will invent something or one day become a senator or a president. What matters is that they are alive. A mass of dreams and potential, vulnerable to fate but protected from Frederick Pemberton. But she’s not just thinking of them, of the women whose lives she’s saved. She’s thinking of ordinary-looking human monsters. Men like Pemberton, women like Abigail. She’s thinking of other basements and closets keeping untold horrors just out of view until they are revealed by a gate left open or a cop responding to a noise disturbance or the accidental sighting of a girl who went missing years before.
She extends her hand toward Dylan’s, allows him to drop the pillbox into her open palm. They’re in full view of whoever might be watching from the woods, but she hasn’t closed her fingers around the box yet. She’s studying it, as if unsure whether or not to pocket it and the responsibility it contains. But all she sees are the faces of these bland-looking killers, with placid half smiles and faraway expressions. They’re inventions of her mind, of course, but they’re born from the mug shots of dozens of depraved human monsters, of which the Bannings were only two. People who spent most of their midnight hours on the sadistic manufacture of fear and agony so that one day the mere mention of their names would send a shiver through anyone who hears them.
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