She felt vinyl under her fingers. She felt cold metal against the skin of her legs. She felt her senses slowly roll back into her consciousness. The chair was metal, and sturdy, and when she tried to move it back and forth it didn’t budge because he had obviously bolted the legs to the floor. She leaned back her head and felt the cold, solid pressure of a wall. She felt the hood move in and out with each panicked breath.
Like the car trunk, he had prepared the chair for a prisoner.
Lydia stared into the blackness of the hood. The material was heavy cotton, like a beefy T-shirt. There was a drawstring or elastic or both around the bottom. She could feel the material gripping tightly to her neck.
In movies, people who were hooded could always see out. They found a sliver of light underneath the hood or the material was too thin so they could see a billboard or the setting sun or something that let them know exactly where they were.
No light bled through the hood. The cotton was so thick and impenetrable that Lydia had no doubt Paul had worn it himself to test for vulnerabilities before he used it on others.
There were definitely others. Lydia could smell a faint trace of perfume. She never wore perfume. She had no idea what the scent was, but it had the sickly sweet odor of something only a young girl would wear.
How much time had passed since Paul had taken her out of the trunk? Lydia’s brief affair with her dentist’s laughing gas had lasted around half an hour, but it had felt like days. And that was with the gas mask over her face at all times. She had a clear recollection of the dentist adjusting the dosage up and down to keep her from coming fully awake. Which meant that the gas didn’t last long, which meant that she hadn’t walked for hours in the forest. She had probably walked a few minutes, tops, because the laughing gas was already wearing off by the time Paul had bound Lydia to the chair.
Lydia pulled at the zip ties. She strained as hard as she could, but the only thing that broke was the skin around her wrists and ankles.
She listened for sounds in the room. There was the distant chirp of a bird. The wind was blowing outside. Occasionally, she could hear the faint whoosh of a breeze cutting through the trees. She strained her ears, trying to pick out anything different: airplanes overhead, cars passing by.
Nothing.
Did Paul have a cabin somewhere that Claire did not know about? There was so much that he had kept from her. He had seemingly endless amounts of money at his disposal. He could buy houses all over the world, for all Claire knew.
Her sister was so fucking clueless. She was probably still at the Fuller house running around in circles like a lost baby bird.
Lydia felt sick again. She was already covered in her own bile. Her bladder was full. She had reached a numbness beyond terror. She tried not to accept the inevitable, that Claire would fuck this up, that she would do something wrong, and that Paul would kill them both.
She wanted so badly to believe that this time would be different, but Claire was reactive. She was impetuous. She wasn’t capable of out-thinking Paul. For that matter, neither was Lydia. He had faked his own death. That had taken a great deal of time and planning, which had most probably involved not only the police force, but the ambulance service, the hospital, the coroner’s office, and the funeral home. Paul had at least one cop and an FBI agent in his pocket. He’d had so much more time to think this through than either of them.
Whatever “this” was, because Lydia had no idea. She had been so hell-bent on damning Claire and planning her own stupid escape that she had not asked herself why Paul had taken her in the first place. What value did Lydia bring to the table? What did Lydia have that made him choose to take her over Claire?
She heard a door creak open.
Lydia tensed. Someone was in the room. Standing at the door. Looking at her. Watching her. Waiting.
The door creaked closed.
She squared her shoulders, pressed her head back into the wall.
Soft footsteps padded across the floor. An office chair was rolled over. There was an almost imperceptible huff of air as Paul sat down in the chair opposite Lydia.
He asked, “Are you panicking yet?”
Lydia bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood.
“You used Dee’s birthday for your iCloud password.” His voice was calm, conversational, like they were sitting across from each other at lunch. The chair squeaked as Paul sat back. His knees pressed against the inside of her knees so that her legs were opened even more. “Are you scared, Liddie?” He pushed her legs wider.
Lydia had tensed every muscle in her body. The hood gripped the front of her face as she panted. They weren’t out in the open this time where anyone could come along and save her. They were isolated in a room that Paul had prepared ahead of time. He had her pinned to the chair. Her legs were spread open. He could take his time with her. He could do anything he wanted.
Paul said, “I’ve been tracking Claire with your Find My iPhone app.”
Lydia squeezed her eyes shut. She tried the Serenity Prayer, but she didn’t get past the first line. She could not accept this thing that she could not change. She was helpless. Claire was not going to save her from this. Paul was going to rape her.
“Claire was at your house. Do you know why Claire would be at your house?” Even now, he sounded curious, not angry. “Was she trying to warn Rick? Was she telling him that he needs to take Dee and hide?”
Lydia tried not to think about the question, because the answer was obvious: Claire hadn’t gone to Lydia’s house. She had gone next door to get help from Rick. It wasn’t enough for her to fuck up Lydia’s life, she had endangered Lydia’s family, too.
Paul seemed to read her thoughts. “Every year, I’ve watched Dee getting older and older.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Two more years and she’ll be Julia’s age.”
Please, Lydia thought. Please don’t say what I know you’re going to say.
Paul leaned forward. She could feel his breath against the hood. “I can’t wait to see what she tastes like.”
Lydia couldn’t stop the cry that came out of her mouth.
“You’re too easy, Liddie. You’ve always been too easy.” He kept pushing against her knees, then letting them go like they were playing a game. “I stayed at Auburn for you. I matched for grad school at MIT, but I stayed for you because I wanted to be with Julia Carroll’s sister.”
The band around the bottom of the hood soaked up Lydia’s tears.
“I watched you. God knows how long I watched you. But you were sloppy and drunk all the time. Your dorm room looked like a pigsty. You didn’t bathe. You were flunking out of your classes.” Paul sounded disgusted. “I was about to give up on you, but then Claire came to visit. Do you remember that? It was fall of ninety-six.”
Lydia remembered. Claire had visited the campus just after the Summer Olympics. Lydia was embarrassed because her sister was wearing a sweatshirt with Izzy, the stupid Atlanta mascot, on the front.
Paul said, “Claire practically glowed when she walked around the campus. She was so happy to be away from home.” His voice had changed again now that he was talking about Claire. “That’s when I knew that I could still have Julia Carroll’s sister.”
Lydia couldn’t contradict him, because they both knew that Claire had curled herself up into the palm of his hand.
Still, she tried, “She cheated on you.”
“I wouldn’t call it cheating.” He sounded unconcerned. “She fucked around. So what? I fucked around, too, but we always came back home to each other.”
Lydia knew Paul hadn’t just fucked around. She had seen the color-coded files. She had seen the murder room in the garage of the Fuller house. She knew that someone had sat behind the camera and zoomed in on the rapes and murders of countless young girls, just like she knew that that someone had to be Paul.
Was he going to finally cross the line into murderer? Was that why he had Lydia bound and hooded?
He said, “You know, the thin
g about Claire was that I couldn’t figure her out.” He laughed, like he was still surprised by the fact. “I never know what she’s really thinking. She never does the same thing twice. She’s impetuous. She has a hellacious temper. She can be crazy and passionate and funny. She’s made it obvious that she’s willing to try anything in bed, which takes all of the fun out of it, but sometimes holding back can be just as much of a game as letting go.”
Lydia shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. She couldn’t hear it.
“Every time I think I have her pinned down, she does something exciting.” He gave another surprised laugh. “Like, get this: I was sitting in a meeting one day, and I get this call on my cell phone, and the ID said it was from the Dunwoody police station. I thought it had to do with something else, so I go outside and I answer, and there’s this recorded message asking if I’ll accept a collect call from an inmate at the Dunwoody jail. Can you believe that?”
He waited, but surely he knew Lydia wouldn’t answer.
“It was Claire. She said, ‘Hi, what are you doing?’ She sounded completely normal, like she was calling to tell me to bring her home some ice cream. But the recording said she was an inmate in jail, so I told her, ‘The recording said you were in jail.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I was arrested about an hour ago.’ So I asked her, ‘What did you get arrested for?’ And do you know what she said?” Paul leaned forward again. He was clearly enjoying this. “She said, ‘I didn’t have enough money to pay the hookers and they called the police.’”
Paul’s laughter was filled with obvious delight. He actually slapped his knee.
He asked Lydia, “Can you believe that?”
Lydia had no problem believing the story, but she was chained up in an isolated cabin with a hood over her head, not talking to her brother-in-law at a barbecue. “What do you want from me?”
“How about this?” He jammed his foot between her legs so hard that her tailbone slammed into the concrete wall. “Do you think this is what I want?”
Lydia opened her mouth, but she didn’t let herself scream.
“Liddie?”
He started to grind in his foot, using the treads of his shoe to press her open.
His tone was still conversational. “Do you want me to tell you where Julia is?”
She forced her mouth closed as the treads cut deeper into her.
“Don’t you want to know where she is, Liddie? Don’t you want to find her body?”
She felt the skin sliding back and forth across her pubic bone.
“Tell me you want to hear what happened.”
She tried to mask her terror. “I know what happened.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know what happened after.”
His voice had changed again. He liked this. He liked seeing her squirm. He was absorbing her fear like a succubus. Lydia heard an echo of the last words Paul Scott had ever spoken to her: Tell me you want this.
Her whole body shuddered at the memory.
“Are you scared, Liddie?” Slowly, he removed his foot. She had a second of relief, but then his fingers brushed across her breasts.
Lydia tried to jerk away.
His touch got harder as he moved his fingers to her collarbone, then down her arm. He pressed his thumb against her biceps until she felt like the bone was going to snap.
“Please.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She had seen the movies he liked to watch. She had seen his files filled with women he had raped. “Please don’t do this.”
“How about this?” Paul grabbed her breast.
Lydia screamed. His hand clamped down like a vise. And then he squeezed harder. And harder. His fingers gouged deep into the tissue. The pain was unbearable. She couldn’t stop screaming. “Please!” she begged. “Stop!”
He let go slowly, releasing one finger at a time.
Lydia gasped for air. Her breast throbbed from his fingers piercing the flesh.
“Did you like that?”
Lydia was going to black out. He had stopped, but she could still feel his hand twisting her breast. She was panting. She couldn’t catch her breath. The hood was too tight. It felt like there was something around her neck. Was his hand around her neck? Was he touching her? She turned her head left and right. She tried to wrench her body from the chair. The chain dug into her stomach. She lifted her hips off the seat.
Clicking.
She heard clicking.
A spring bending back and forth.
Was he bouncing the chair? Was he jerking himself off?
There was the sharp smell of urine. Had she wet herself? Lydia squirmed in the chair. The stench was overwhelming. She tightened herself against the chair. She pressed the back of her skull into the wall.
“Breathe,” Paul said. “Deep breaths.”
Click. Squeak. Click.
A spray bottle. She knew the sound. The tiny spring in the handle. The sucking noise as the pump pulled up liquid. The click as the handle released.
Paul said, “You’re going to want to keep breathing.”
The hood was getting wet. The thick cotton was getting heavy against her mouth and nose.
“I like to think of this as my own special form of water-boarding.”
Lydia sucked in great gulps of air. It was piss. He was spraying her with piss. She turned away her head. Paul followed her with the spray bottle. She turned the other way. He turned the bottle.
“Keep breathing,” he said.
Lydia opened her mouth. He adjusted the nozzle so the spray turned into a stream. The wet cotton molded to her lips. The hood became soaked. The material clogged her nostrils. Claustrophobia took over. She was going to suffocate. She inhaled a spray of liquid. She coughed and sucked in a mouthful of urine. Lydia gagged. Urine washed down her throat. She started to choke. He kept spraying, angling the stream no matter which way she turned her head. He was trying to drown her. She was going to drown in his urine.
“Lydia.”
Her lungs were paralyzed. Her heart strangled.
“Lydia.” Paul raised his voice. “I put the spray bottle down. Stop panicking.”
Lydia couldn’t stop panicking. There was no more air. She had forgotten what to do. Her body couldn’t remember how to draw breath.
Paul said, “Lydia.”
Lydia tried in vain to draw in more air. She saw flashes of light. Her lungs were going to explode.
“Breathe out,” he coached. “You’re only breathing in.”
She breathed in harder. He was lying. He was lying. He was lying.
“Lydia.”
She was going to die. She couldn’t work the muscles. Nothing was working. Everything had stopped, even the beats of her heart.
“Lydia.”
Explosions of light filled her eyes.
“Brace yourself.” Paul punched her so hard in the stomach that she felt the metal chair bend into the wall.
Her mouth opened. She huffed out a stream of warm, wet air.
Air. She had air. Her lungs filled. Her head filled. She was dizzy. Her stomach burned. She collapsed forward in the chair. The chain cut into her ribs. Her cheek hit her knee. Blood rushed into her face. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs were screaming.
The wet cotton hood hung down in front of her face. Piss-tainted air flowed into her open mouth and nose.
Paul said, “It’s weird how that happens, right?”
Lydia concentrated on pulling air into her lungs and pushing it back out. She had crumbled so easily. He had sprayed piss in her face and she had been ready to give up.
“You’re beating yourself up,” Paul guessed. “You’ve always thought you were the strong one, but you’re not, are you? That’s why you liked coke so much. It gives you this sense of euphoria, like you can do anything in the world. But without it, you’re completely powerless.”
Lydia squeezed tears out of her eyes. She had to be stronger. She couldn’t let him get into her head. He was too good at this. He knew exactly what he was
doing to her. He hadn’t just been behind the camera zooming in.
He had participated.
Paul said, “Now, Julia, she was a real fighter.”
Lydia shook her head. She silently begged him not to do this.
“You watched the tape. You saw how she fought back, even at the end.”
Lydia tensed her body. She pulled at the plastic ties.
“I watched you watching her die. Did you know that?” Paul sounded pleased with himself. “I gotta say, that was pretty meta.”
The zip ties were ripping into her skin. She could feel the plastic teeth sawing back and forth.
“My mom helped look for her,” Paul said. “Dad and I got a big kick out of her slipping on her boots every morning and trudging out into fields and checking streams and putting up fliers. Everybody was out looking for Julia Carroll, and Mom had no idea that she was hanging out in the barn.”
Lydia remembered searching fields and rivers. She remembered the way the town rallied around her family, only to turn their backs two weeks later.
“Dad kept her alive for me. She lasted twelve days. If you can call that living.” He leaned forward. She could feel his excitement like it was a creature standing between them. “They were all so close, Lydia. Do you want me to tell you how close?”
Lydia clenched her jaw shut.
“Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to fuck somebody when they’re dying?”
Lydia screamed, “What do you want from me?”
“You know what I want.”
She knew what was coming. He had taken Lydia instead of Claire because he had business to finish.
“Do it,” Lydia said. He was right about the coke. He was right about everything. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him. Her only hope was that it would be fast. “Just get it over with.”
Paul laughed again, but it wasn’t the delighted laugh he saved for Claire. It was the kind of laugh you gave when you thought someone was pitiful. “Do you really think I want to rape a fat forty-year-old?”
Lydia hated herself for feeling the sting of his words. “I’m forty-one, you stupid motherfucker.”
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