Chapter 18 #3
This is the part where a smart person would beg. Or apologize. Or lie, even. Say anything, Mabel. Say I’m sorry, I’ll stop, please. Any of the ten thousand reasonable things to say when someone has you stabbed through to a desk.
Mabel Edwards lifts her head, and her eyes are streaming, and what comes out of her is simply, “I’m an author.” A sob. “I’m an author, you stupid bitch. How am I supposed to type—”
I exhale and stand up, walking back across the room to implement the part of the plan that I was still on the fence about, until about three seconds ago. She’ll never learn. She’ll never stop. This level of narcissism can be solved exactly one way only.
The terrarium is behind the chair where I left it—a small plastic travel container, no longer than one finger. I carry it back and set it on the desk in the puddle of her blood, and Mabel silences so fast it’s like a switch.
She’s watching me. Both of us can hear the sound inside the plastic. That dry scrape of its pointer, testing the integrity of the enclosure.
I open the lid.
“This,” I tell her, as I lift it out on the flat of my glove, “is Leiurus pallidus mortis. Not many people have seen one. There are a couple hundred left in the world and I own two of them.”
I brought the smaller one, not the mother. The mother is at home in her tank, pregnant and heavy and probably a month or so out from delivering me an army. I would not waste her on this woman.
I set the scorpion down on the desk six inches from Mabel’s pinned left hand.
“She’s not aggressive,” I mollify. “Not really. She’s shy, actually. But she is very, very sensitive to vibration. She’s had a long, lonely ride in a box without her friend, so, I imagine she is going to be extremely interested in warmth.” I peer down at the spreading dark. “And in blood.”
Mabel makes a sound I have never heard a human being make.
“Please.” It is utterly shredded. “Please, please, please. Oh God. Please don’t leave me here, please—”
“It’s easy, Mabel.” I pull my glove tighter at the wrist. “Pull yourself free and run away.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. It’ll hurt more than anything has ever hurt you in your life.” I’m already walking. “I’d do it quickly, though. Before she gets grumpy.”
“DON’T LEAVE ME—”
At the door, I stop.
I look back at her. She’s straining forward, both arms crucified to the desk, staring at a small pale thing that is crawling, and curious, and getting closer and closer.
“Pain teaches. It’s the only thing that teaches. I just want you to learn your lesson.” I check my wrist as if I’m wearing a watch. “Clock’s ticking.”
I let myself out.
The night is thick and warm. The whole street smells like wet asphalt, and behind me, muffled through a door, a woman is screaming.
Will she pull free? I’d be wildly impressed if she does. But I’ve done what I came here to do. I’ve left her a way out. I’ve left her an opportunity. It’s far more than she left that poor girl.
If she survives, there’s a good chance she could identify me.
I might get in trouble, but I’m rolling the dice on a theory.
Mabel Edwards is afraid of pain. She has spent her entire life finding people who would hurt in her place, and now the only person left in the room is her.
No more easy outlets. She is going to sit in that chair and scream and negotiate and wait to be rescued until something with eight legs decides she’s warm.
She’s a coward. I’m gambling on it.
My phone goes off as I reach the corner of the block.
Not the burner. My phone. Probably Callen asking if I’m mad at him because I requested a night off from sleeping together. I strip off my glove, yank my phone from my pocket, fully prepared to respond and comfort him. But when I see the screen, the whole world narrows.
555-231-8983
Dear Callen, it’s your friend. This is a burner. I am being cautious, but I am headed your way. If you still want the package, can we meet next week? Tell me when and where.
Weeks.
Weeks of nothing, and it lands tonight, while my gloves are blood-stained?
I stare at it for a long moment. Then I type.
Hey. Definitely want to meet next week. Hold for location. I’ll be in touch shortly.
Sent.
I stand under a streetlight three blocks from her door and retrace the plan.
Belai brings the box. I take the box. I hand Salisbrie a black box and my word, and I promise her a redacted manuscript, and she calls it done. Everybody lives. Everybody wins.
That’s the plan.
But now that it’s real, now that there’s a pending date on it, I can hear how it sounds.
Because Bridget Salisbrie does not want a redaction. She has never once wanted a redaction. She wants the box in a furnace alongside the manuscript. She wants the canaries who could sing, silenced forever: Belai in the ground, Callen right beside him.
The only reason I’m still breathing is that I haven’t yet told her that is not going to happen. I am going to walk in there and ask a woman like that to be reasonable.
And if she says no, then I have started a war with the soon-to-be second-most powerful woman in the United States.
I put the phone in my pocket.
I keep walking, and note that behind me, a few streets back…
The screaming has stopped.