Page 98 of Half the Summer's Night
Kaplan smirks. “Since you showed back up with your fucking fancy degrees. I’ve been taking the trash out of this county for years.”
My map flashes in my head. The deaths I marked with white.
The “accident” at the church. Lacerations to the throat.
Kaplan covered it up. He didn’t have to make it look like an accident because he’s the sheriff. He just had to say it was one. He might have done the same with the suicide on the beach. With any of the other white pin deaths in this town.
“How many people have you killed?” I rasp out.
“Not people,” Kaplan says. “Subhumans. Like you.”
I squeeze the rope tighter. He’s not angry enough. He keeps leering at me, his eyes hungry, but he’s savoring it. Savoring my fear.
Nameless’s leering mask flashes through my head.You’re the focus of everything I do, Abi.And yet I trusted him, a killer of nine people that I know of.
Of course I did. I’m a killer, too. A killer of one.
If I’m lucky, a killer of two.
We’re all killers, all three of us. We all have that darkness burning like a black flame in our chests.
I pull on my rope, my breath tight. “Who was Julian?” I ask. Maybe that’ll get him upset.
But Kaplan just scoffs. “He was another good man that you killed. That’s all that you need to know.”
I don’t take my eyes off Kaplan’s face.“He said thathekilled Olivia Pearce.”
Kaplan’s eyes narrow at that, and I sense a thrum of anger. “He didn’t do shit,” Kaplan snaps. “Julian was a pussy. Couldn’t handle the killing. He collected you whores for me. Happy to do it as long as he could have his way with ‘em first.” Kaplan’s mouth splits into something like a smile. “Did you fuck him before you killed him?” he asks. “Just like you did with Blake?”
Rage surges inside me, a hot column of fire, and it takes all my willpower not to fling myself at him. My muscles quake with the force of not moving.
Kaplan laughs. “Oh, you don’t like that, do you?” He reaches down and unzips his fly. Nausea surges into my throat, and I shift against the wall, holding onto the rope like a life preserver.This is it, I think, as Kaplan pulls out his half-limp cock and strokes it, watching me with a grin.
“I’m tired of talking,” he says. “It’s time to get started.”
Kaplan throws himself on the mattress, jostling me backward. Then he reaches down and extracts a big huntingknife from his side. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it must have been in a sheath on his thigh, blending into his black clothes.
I stare at it in horror now, the blade big and silver in the sallow light. All I have is a fucking rope.
“Let’s get these clothes off you.” Kaplan slides the blade up into my shorts. “Give me something to work with.”
I can’t stand the feel of his hands on me, wet and warm from perspiration. I can’t stand the cold blade of the knife. I can’t standhim, this monster who made my life hell in more ways than one.
So I act. I move in one frantic motion, knowing I only have one chance. I drag my arms forward and fling the rope out so that it slaps across Kaplan’s face. He howls, more in surprise than anything else, and I scramble forward. That’s not what I meant to do. I was trying to wrap it around his throat.
“You fuckingbitch,” he shouts, stumbling backward. “How the hell did you?—”
I roll off the mattress and run for the door. Kaplan roars behind me, and I throw the door open and scramble out into the hallway. It’s windowless. Dark. But there’s a thin sliver of light up ahead, and I run toward it, arms pumping, keeping my eyes fixed on my escape?—
A sudden, freezing coldness explodes in my upper back. I scream in agony and slam face-first onto the dusty floor. The pain brightens, and something hot and sticky flows down my back. I try to reach out, and I feel it, the handle of the knife, sticking out of the muscle of my upper back.
I also hear the footsteps behind me. Slow. Heavy. Mocking.
“You didn’t really think you could get away from me that easily, did you, bitch?” More pain, in my scalp this time. Kaplan has me by the hair, and he wrenches me around so I can no longer see the exit. I sob, grabbing at his arm as he heaves me backward down the hallway. This is it. I lost my weapon. Thereare no stairs for me to shove him down, and the killer I told myself I could trust wasn’t there when I needed him.
Kaplan wrenches the knife out of my back, and I scream again, feeling the blood pulse thick and hot out of the wound. He shoves me against the wall and straddles me, pinning me down against the floor. Pain tears up from my wound.
Then he slices at my clothes, not caring if he cuts me, either. Blood splatters across my chest and my face and my arms in hot drops. I push against him, screaming and fighting him and trying to cover up my breasts all at once. And that only seems to excite him more. His breath blows hot across my face in sharp rasps, and he laughs like he’s delighted.
