Page 9 of Preying Game

“Who was your favorite English author?”

What? They were going to discuss literature? She answered, “Thomas Hardy.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“He was so good at rendering the lives of everyday people.”

“How do you compare him to Dickens? Isn’t he known for that?”

“Hardy didn’t write as many books, of course. His subjects are always so dark.”

“Dickens is dark.”

“Not always. And often his books turned out okay for the characters you liked. He wrote A Christmas Carol. That’s a classic feel-good story.”

“True.”

While they ate, they continued to discuss the books from her college courses. He seemed so well read, that she felt almost like she was having lunch with a professor. But she knew this was just part of the fun for him of holding her captive.

As the lunch progressed, he switched subjects and began filling her in on what he considered amusing historical episodes. One was called The Defenestration of Prague when a group of disgruntled assemblymen threw two imperial governors out a window where they fell thirty meters, landed on a pile of manure, and survived.

Hayward laughed. “A very colorful episode in European diplomacy.”

Probably the imperial governors hadn’t been amused, but she refrained from making any negative comments. As long as he was talking about long-ago events, he wasn’t thinking about what he was going to do to her.

And even with all the undertones of danger, the conversation was a distraction from the barren life she was being forced to live. There were no books in her cell and certainly no television set.

The only bright spot had been the man who said his name was Jonah Ranger. And he might not even be real.

“What?” Hayward said sharply.

Her head jerked up. “What do you mean?”

“An expression I wasn’t expecting crossed your face.”

She felt suddenly cold. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how closely he was watching her.

“What kind of expression?”

“You looked . . . hopeful.”

She managed to shrug.

But it seemed, he wasn’t going to let it go. “What were you thinking about?”

She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I was thinking about how Hemingway felt emasculated by his wound in the Spanish Civil War, and how it came out in his writing, especially The Sun Also Rises.”

“How did that pop into your mind?” he demanded.

She wasn’t sure. But she was startled by the red flush that crept up Hayward’s neck and into his face.

Scrambling for a reason, she managed to say, “I haven’t focused on literature in a long time, but you gave me the opportunity to remember some of the classes I enjoyed. Like my Hemingway-Twain seminar.”

“Are you sure you weren’t thinking about someone coming to rescue you? Someone who could get the better of me.”

Good God. How had he come up with that? “Who?”

“You tell me.”

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