Chapter 55
Luke
The house is different when you’re alone in it.
But I was never alone in this house with a man chained to the basement wall.
Marin’s flight left an hour ago. I watched her taillights disappear down the driveway and then I stood in the doorway and listened to the silence the way you listen to a fuse.
The list is on the counter. Marin’s handwriting—sharp, precise, the handwriting of a woman who managed accounts worth millions and now manages a hostage with the same attention to detail.
Ibuprofen: morning and night. Water: every four hours. Food: twice a day. Nothing he has to cut. Don’t engage. Don’t feel sorry for him. If Mrs. Mather comes by: he’s sleeping. Always sleeping.
I fold the list. Put it in my back pocket.
First feeding is at eight.
I go downstairs at eight. Open the basement door. The light from the stairwell cuts across the concrete floor and hits Charles’s legs first. He’s sitting against the wall. Wrists in the cuffs. Eyes open. He’s been awake. I don’t think he’s slept.
I set the plate on the floor. Water. Two ibuprofen. Toast. Scrambled eggs—because the list said nothing he has to cut, which means nothing that requires a knife, which means Marin has thought about Charles getting a knife and decided against it. Smart woman.
Charles looks at the plate. Looks at me.
“Where is she?” he says.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Out.”
He picks up the toast. Eats it slowly. Watching me the way he watched me the first time I stood in his doorway—cataloging, calculating.
But something’s different now. The lazy contempt is gone.
What’s in its place is harder to read. Fear, maybe.
Or the thing that lives next to fear when a man has heard what Charles heard last night.
“You fucked her,” he says. Matter of fact. Like he’s reading a headline.
I don’t answer. I lean against the doorframe.
“On the table,” he says. “I heard the legs dragging.”
I still don’t answer.
“And then you discussed burying me in the backyard.”
“That was a joke.”
“Was it?”
I look at him. He looks at me. Two men in a basement with scrambled eggs and a question that doesn’t have a safe answer.
“Eat your breakfast, Charles.”
“Was it a joke?”
“Eat your breakfast.”
He eats. I watch. Not because the list says to—because I want to see what’s behind his eyes.
Fear is useful. Fear keeps a man in his cuffs.
But the thing I’m seeing isn’t fear exactly.
It’s recalculation. Charles is running the numbers on a new equation—one where the handyman isn’t just fixing things, one where his girlfriend isn’t just angry, one where the basement might be the last room he ever sees.
Good. Let him run those numbers.
I take the plate when he’s done. Go upstairs. Wash it in the sink. With the brushed nickel faucet. The water runs smooth.
I check my phone. Nothing from Marin. Nothing from Javi’s friends. Nothing from anyone. The house is quiet. The road is quiet. The whole world is quiet in the way it gets quiet before something happens.
I don’t like quiet.
I spend the morning doing what I always do in this house—fixing things.
The bathroom door upstairs sticks. The gutter on the east side.
The back porch has a crack I’ve been meaning to fill since before Emily died.
I work. I measure. I cut. I nail. I do what my hands know how to do while my head does something else entirely.
At noon I go downstairs again. Water. Charles drinks it without speaking. His eyes follow me the way prey watches a predator—not because it thinks the predator will strike right now, but because it knows the predator can.
“She’s coming back,” he says. Not a question. He’s reassuring himself.
“She’s coming back.”
“When?”
“When she’s done.”
“Done with what?”
I look at him. “You don’t get to ask that.”
He sets the water down. Leans his head back against the wall. Closes his eyes.
“You know this ends badly,” he says. Eyes closed. Voice flat. “For all of us. You know that.”
“Most things do.”
“She’s going to get caught. Or I’m going to die down here. Or you’re going to—”
“Charles.”
He opens his eyes.
“I’m not your friend. I’m not your therapist. I’m the guy who feeds you and gives you water and makes sure you don’t choke on your own spit in the middle of the night. That’s it. So save the predictions for someone who wants to hear them.”
He closes his eyes again. I go upstairs.