Working Title: "Now You Know" (Part Two)

5.

Angie woke in the dark, feeling like she'd been blindfolded and spun around twenty times. She felt the surface of the bed beneath her and the quilt on top of her, but couldn't figure out which way was up or down, which side was her right and which was her left.

"Angie. Hey."

She shrieked and sat up. A hand grabbed her shoulder.

"Angie, Angie, hey, calm down."

She looked over. Ryan was sitting up, too, looking at her wide-eyed with his mouth open.

"You had a nightmare."

He slid his hand from her shoulder to her neck and began to massage it gently. Angie's arms tensed up and her knees locked themselves together.

"It was just a dream, Ange. You okay?"

Angie tried to get out the one simple word 'Yeah', but it stuck in her chest. She nodded instead, then sniffled and noticed the tears drying on her cheeks.

"Are you sure?"

Ryan ran the tips of his fingers up and down her spine. It was what she liked him to do while they watched TV, Angie resting her head on his stomach, sometimes falling asleep from the sensation. Now, all she could think of was the tip of the leather belt dragging across the girl's back.

"I'm okay. Just a bad dream."

"What about?"

She looked over at him and saw an expression that told her he was listening. But, in the dark to which her
eyes had adjusted, and with his fingers sliding along the fabric of her shirt, it seemed as though there were something extra in his gaze. Or, rather, an absence of something.

No, she told herself, that's dumb. It was just a bad dream. Magic quilts didn't exist and husbands didn't torture girls.

"Angie?"

"I, uh...I can't remember. Just a dream."

Goddamn right it was just a dream.

Her body remained tense and alert, though, especially to Ryan's hand, which was still on her back, now with his whole palm flat against it.

"Poor girl. It's all good, now. You're safe and sound."

His hand slid under her shirt and his fingers brushed against the skin of her lower back. A shiver ran through her and pushed goosebumps out of her arms.

"Jesus. You are clenched all the way up, aren't you?"

Angie forced a laugh.

"I just need a second to relax and I'll be fine. You go on and go back to sleep. I have to pee, anyway."

She wasn't lying. Her bladder was about to explode, and when she made it to the bathroom and pulled her pajama pants down, she saw there was a small wet dot in the crotch of her underwear.

"Fuck."

After relieving herself, she went to the laundry room at the back of the house and exchanged her wet panties for a pair of dry ones from the hamper--not clean, but dry. She made her way through the kitchen and down the hall. In the bedroom, a light had been turned on. She halted, reluctant to go toward it.

Why? It's just Ryan in there. Ryan, your skinny little nerd, the man you've shared a bed with when he has the night off for almost two years now. There's nothing to be afraid of. A dream is just a dream, no matter what that crazy bitch Carol says. Did you notice how clean her house was? She probably doesn't sleep, just vacuums all night and wipes everything down with that yellow spray-cleaner shit and the fumes have wrecked her brain.

For all her mental scrambling, she still stood at the end of the hallway, looking at the light from the doorway. Sometimes, when Ryan worked nights and she was all alone in the house, she would hear a noise and a picture would flash into her head of a ski-masked stranger tip-toeing through the living room one wall over. She had the same feeling now as she had during those moments, only the stranger was in her bed this time, waiting with some comment like 'Feeling better?'

She forced herself to take a step forward, and then another. The light in the doorway began to float toward her.

"Feeling better?"

Angie nodded and got back under the quilt, trying to keep her breath steady.

"Why'd you turn the light on?"

She looked at the design of the quilt to avoid making eye contact.

"You seem like you're going to be up for awhile. I figured, since we're having a special weeknight together, I'd
give you the Famous Ryan Berg Back Massage."

The thought of his hands on her again made her cringe inside. She told herself to stop, there was no sense in all of this.

And just to prove it...

"Yeah. That sounds nice."

"Alrighty, then."

He leaned over and kissed her on the neck.

"Lay down and roll on over."

Somehow, Angie managed to crack a smile.

"Does that line work with all the girls?"

Ryan laughed and pulled the quilt off Angie's body. Angie sat up and tossed her pillow on the floor beside her, then pulled her shirt over her head and lay topless on her stomach.

Normally, it was no big thing to have herself on display like this in front of Ryan. At least, not anymore. Early in their courtship, when they first started to get physical, she would feel the urge to cover herself so he wouldn't see her love-handles, her little bit of belly flab, or the way her boobs hung instead of levitated the way those skinny women on TV managed. She grew less shy over time, though, as it became clear that Ryan was fully aware of what she considered her flaws, and didn't really seem to mind. He even seemed to enjoy them, like when they would spoon in bed and he would hang his arm over her side and massage and caress her stomach. That weirded her out at first, but she grew used to it, even began to like it as she realized it was one of his odd little ways of showing affection.

Now, half-naked in the light with Ryan, her body refused to relax. When his hands touched her back and dug gently into her muscles, her flesh writhed in protest.

Stop it. It's just Ryan, she thought, as though trying to calm a barking dog.

"You all right? You're really clenched up."

"I'm fine. Just a tough week at work."


She realized it had come out more rushed than she'd intended.

"Well, just one more day, right?"

"Yeah."

His hands moved to her shoulders, then slid down her arms. He lowered his body onto hers. She felt the warmth of his bare stomach and chest against her back, then the heat of his breath on her neck as the tip of his nose brushed against her ear.

"Everything is okay between us two, right?"

His voice was low and smooth, almost a whisper.

"Y-Yeah, of course. It's all good."

And then, there was the wetness of his lips against her neck. He ran his hand down the side of her ass and squeezed her outer thigh.

"Good. I love you, you know. You and nobody else."

Angie opened her mouth, but no words formed in her mind. Instead, she nodded slightly.

Ryan's hand traveled back up to the top of her hip and slid into the waistband of her panties, his open palm moving lightly over Angie's bare skin. Her knees moved closer together. Higher up, her most intimate space tightened and closed itself off. She felt her pajama pants and underwear being lowered as Ryan's lips moved from her neck to her shoulder.

"Why don't you turn on over?"

Angie didn't try to tell herself this was okay anymore. The arousal that Ryan's touch usually brought wasn't there tonight. There was no tingling in her breasts or between her legs. No wetness or hunger. There was only repulsion.

She turned over anyway.

They kissed, or rather she let him kiss her. His hand moved over her left breast. He took her nipple between his thumb and index finger, played with it. Against Angie's will, it stiffened and raised.

In her mind she saw the same thing play out. Same hand, same movement of fingers, but on a different body. As Ryan lowered himself down and dragged his tougue over her chest and stomach, all Angie could think of was the dragging of a leather belt.

6

Her phone alarm went off as the sun was beginning to shine its blue morning rays through the bedroom window. She turned it off, took her ear buds out and set them on the table beside her phone and returned to laying on her back, eyes half-open, knowing that when she looked in the bathroom mirror, a baggy, pale face would be looking back.

After they had finished making love--or rather, after Ryan had finished while Angie pretended to--she had tried to go back to sleep, thinking that maybe she would dream again beneath the quilt, and that it would be a different dream this time. Maybe something bizzare and disjointed that she'd only half remember. Maybe even another nightmare, one that played out some other horrific scene, completely unrelated to the one before. At least then, she could safely say it was her own mind that was fucked up, not Ryan's.

But it didn't happen. She laid awake all night, Ryan sleeping beside her like the dead. When it was clear she wouldn't be joining him, she got her earbuds from the living room and plugged them into her phone. She brought up her iTunes playlist and listened to the ethereal beat of 'Melody's Echo Chamber' while thinking in the dark.

There had to be some way of finding solid proof that the whole thing wasn't real.

Her first idea was to search Ryan's car and throughout the house, look for the backpack she'd seen in the dream. But then she remembered: it was already waiting in the stable. Besides, not finding it wouldn't dis-prove anything. She could search high and low and scour every nook and cranny and not find a single piece of evidence, and she'd still be left wondering if Ryan was innocent, or just very good at covering his tracks.

Then, around four in the morning, something occured to her. She'd seen the girl in the dream. Her face, her hair. She remembered it as clearly as if it was right in front of her. Angie was certain she'd never seen that face
before.

Except for in the screen saver.

It was that piece of the puzzle, she realized, that had dug so deeply into her the night before. The girl in the dream was the same girl she saw on Ryan's phone the night before last. It had been swiming under the surface the whole time, and when it finally stuck its head out, Angie's stomach sunk.

The phone alarm went off again. Angie always set two alarms for the morning, fifteen minutes apart.

Ryan stirred at her side and rolled over to face her.

"Gonna turn that off?"

His usual grumpy morning self. Angie turned the alarm off.

Holding the phone in her hand, it came to her.

She turned her head and saw that Ryan had shut his eyes again. He wasn't asleep, though. He'd lay there awake until the grogginess had worn off and then he'd get up to pee and make coffee.

Angie turned on her side with her back to Ryan, placed her phone on the mattress close to her, brought up her Google app and typed in 'missing persons indiana'.

Browsing the sites, it became clear that the people who ran them didn't have their shit together. One site linked her to a page where she had to click on the first three letters of a missing person's last name, which linked her to another page where she had to click on one of the names that came up just to see that person's photo and info. The other sites were no better, none of them offering a way to just scroll through various photos. Even the FBI's 'kidnapped and missing persons' section seemed to cherry-pick who went on the list.

She decided to click on one last site, a community page on good old Facebook, where people could post info and pics of their missing loved ones. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who had noticed how half-assed the other sites were.

Prepared to scroll for a few minutes and probably come up empty-handed, Angie clicked into the Facebook page.

And there she was.

It was the most recent post on the wall, only a few weeks old. There was a video pasted into it, the paused frame showing her in a booth at a fast-food place, smiling and holding a sandwich in her hands, a book lying beside her tray. There was life and light in her eyes, color in her cheeks, and her hair was washed and flowing. Nothing like the condition the girl in the dream had been in. But it was her.

Angie read the text that ran below:

'My daughter, Amy Moore, never came home last Friday. She was last seen riding her bike home from the Marathon gas station on US 31 between Westfield and Kokomo. She was wearing jeans and a green-and-gold Westfield Shamrocks t-shirt. She is seventeen years old, has long dark-brown hair and green eyes, weighs 104 pounds and is 5' 1". Please, if you have any information, contact the Westfield Police Department.'

Angie looked back at the frozen video. She grabbed her ear buds off the nightstand and put them in, lifted her finger to the screen. Her finger hovered a moment above Amy Moore's face, then she pressed the Play button.

The person taking the video sat down across from her. A male voice spoke.

"So, here today, we have an exclusive interview with bestselling author, Ms. Amy Moore."

Amy, chewing a bite of grilled chicken sandwich, rolled her eyes and smiled.

"Yeah. Riiight," she said, doing an impression of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.

"Ms. Moore, how's it feel to go from humble beginnings to being a published writer?"

Amy swallowed before talking. "You mean, how does it feel to get a two-page flash story on a fantasy site no
one's heard of?"

Holding a fry, she looked out the window for a few seconds, then burst into a smile and looked back at the
camera.

"It's the best feeling I've ever had."

She popped the fry into her mouth.

"I'm proud of you, honey," the male voice said. "So, tell us what your story's about."

Amy wagged her finger. "Mm-mm, no spoilers! You gotta wait for it to come out, and then you can see."

"Oh, come on, you're gonna torture your dad for that long? Are you that sadistic?"

"Yes, I am. Ha-ha-ha!"

"Come on! Please tell me?"

Amy let out a dramatic sigh. "Oh, fine!"

Her smiled waned a bit, and she looked down at her tray, stirring a fry in her puddle of ketchup.

"It's about a mother and her little girl who've gotten into a car accident. They slid off the road and crashed into
these woods. It's winter and they're way out in the country. The car is upside down. The mother crawls into the backseat with her little girl--the girl is strapped in her car seat--and they have to wait through the whole night for someone to come along and get help. When they do, they come and rescue the little girl, take her out of the backseat and get her to someplace warm. The mother is still in the backseat, and she looks up at the front seat and sees herself there. She died in the crash is what we find out, but she remained as a ghost so her little girl wouldn't be alone. And the story ends with the mother smiling and this light forming all around her, taking her to heaven."

Amy pursed her lips, then looked back down and took a bite of the fry she'd been stirring the whole while.

"And that's it."

The man holding the camera was silent for long moment before saying, "You're a hell of a girl, hon."

She nodded and looked up with narrowed eyes.

"I know."

"Love you."

Amy covered her face in mock embarrasment, then looked at the camera.

"Love you, too."

The screen went black and up came the frozen frame of the start of the video.

Ryan breathed deeply behind Angie and let out a soft groan. She exited the page and brought her phone back to her home screen. Her lungs hurt as she tried to keep her breathing normal and quiet.

Angie knew where Westfield was. She and Ryan had driven through it on U.S. 31 while making their way down to Indy last year for Horror Hound Weekend. It was about a half-hour north of the city and the last suburb you hit before the landscape turned into flat countryside. She remembered passing that gas station. What was it, two, two and a half hours drive from here?

Jesus Christ.

An image popped into Angie's head: Ryan driving north on 31 with Amy Moore on the floor of the backseat, bound and gagged.

She slammed her eyes shut and forced the picture from her head. It was then she realized that her body was trembling.

There was a hot stirring in her stomach and she felt last night's Chinese food circling upwards into her throat. She covered her mouth, tightened her esophagus and made a fist with her right hand, digging her nails into her palm. After several minutes, the nausea gave up, but by no means went away.

The phone alarm went off again. She jumped and a high shriek came from her mouth. A hand touched her shoulder, making her jump again.

"Angie, what the hell's the matter?"

She turned and looked at Ryan, who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his free hand.

"Still jumpy, I guess. More bad dreams after I went back to sleep."

Ryan nodded, but there was still a look of concern in his eyes. Angie realized what was causing it as she became aware of her mouth hanging open and her eyes peeled wide.

"Maybe you should take the day off, yourself. As many hours you've been working, that's probably what this all is. Catching up to you, you know?"

Angie tried to smile, but what she managed was closer to a grimace.

"Yeah, well, it sucks, but...all part of being one of the higher-ups, right? No, I'll--I'll be fine. Friday anyway, right?"

Ryan's hand lightly squeezed the flesh of her arm.

"All right. Suit yourself. Tell you what, you lie in here and get calmed down, and I'll make some coffee and whip up a couple pieces of French toast. You still got time, right?"

"Yeah. Um, you know what, I'm actually going to take a shower while you do all that. Nightmare sweats made me all gross."

Ryan laughed.

"All right. You do that, and I'll have everything ready in the kitchen when you're done. Just let me pee before you get in there, though."

#

Everything was amplified as Angie stepped into the shower. The sliding of the curtain rings along the pole, the
creak of the knob as she lifted and turned it, and the spray of hot water that landed on her skin. The heat sent a small shock wave through her system, but she leaned into it and closed her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in the tub and curl up and fall asleep under the warm rain.

How was she going to deal with this? He was out there right now. Making French fucking toast.

She'd seen a movie once about a woman who finds out her husband is a serial killer who murders women while away on business. Angie couldn't recall how the story went, exactly, except that the wife kills her husband and then finds out that the police were closing in on him the whole time.

Maybe the police were closing in on Ryan, too. Maybe after she left for work, he'd decide to take a trip out to that old barn and the police would be following from a distance, take him to the ground and slap the handcuffs on before he had a chance to do anything else to that girl. Maybe she just had to do nothing.

Or maybe you're just wishing in one hand. Now, try shitting in the other...

Angie realized she was just standing there under the shower-head. She grabbed her blue lather-sponge that was shaped like a rose from where it hung off the knob, squeezed some of her body wash out onto it and rubbed the lather onto her chest and arms, let its butterscotch scent drift up to her nose.

No, if that girl was going to be saved before Ryan killed her by going too far in his sick games--or because he he was tired of her, wanting a new girl to play with--then Angie would have to be the catalyst.

The obvious answer was to go to the police and tell them everything she knew.

Which is what? That your boss's magic quilt made you dream about your husband keeping a girl zip-tied in a barn? That you saw her photo on Facebook and decided yep, that's her? Are you going to show them the screen saver on his phone? The one that you mistook for a selfie but was probably a pic of her scared and in pain that he probably took to get himself hard in the bathroom before he has to go hump that fat, boring wife of his? Go ahead. After all, it's a given he'll still have it on his phone after that close-call the other night. And when the cops ask you where they can find Ryan's torture barn, what are you going to tell them? There's no GPS on Ryan's car, no computer in that old POS, so what are you going to tell them? Hmm? Where's the barn, Ange?

She lowered her her head, which was beginning to ache, and closed her eyes.

"Shit."

The water from the shower-head began to lose heat, went from scalding to warm. Angie rinsed herself and reached for the shampoo. She scoured her mind and memory for any clues, tried to remember anything Ryan might have once told her about a place in the country he used to visit as a kid, maybe a relative who owned horses. She came up with nothing.

That was all fantasy bullshit, anyway, the idea that everything was tied together in some convenient way. More than likely, Ryan had just happened upon an abandoned stable while driving in the country one day and decided it would do.

Angie rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and switched to conditioner, trying to think of some plan.

Then, one burst into being in her mind.

She would pretend to go to work for the day, like always, then find a spot nearby where she could park and watch the house, and hope that Ryan decided to take a trip out to the barn. If and when he did, she would follow behind him at a far enough distance that he wouldn't notice her. When he arrived at the farm, she would let him go into the stable where he wouldn't see outside, and then pass by the house and get its address. She'd park down the road, call the police and report a trespasser on the property. It would take a minute for them to arrive, probably, especially since trespassing on abandoned property likely wasn't considered high-priority. If Ryan had left by the time they got there, she would just have to satisfy herself, at least for the time being, with them finding the girl and getting her the hell out of there.

Angie sighed at the whole plan. She wasn't thrilled by the idea of playing detective and hero. This wasn't some damn fairytale. The girl in the barn wasn't some damsel-in-distress waiting in a tower to be saved. She was a girl who'd hadn't done anything wrong but was nonetheless trapped in a dark and smelly place, suffering and scared. And the man who'd put her there, he wasn't some comic-book villain with a twirly mustache. He was Ryan.

Her Ryan. Or so she'd once thought.

No, the situation had not sparked Angie's sense of adventure.

After rinsing the conditioner from her hair, she remained in the shower for some time and let the now-cold water freeze and punish her skin until she shook and closed her eyes. The tears started to flow.

For the first time since this whole thing had started, she let them.

She emerged later from the bathroom wrapped in a pale blue towel that barely went past the top of her legs. Standing in the hallway, looking down into the kitchen, she noticed there was no smell of coffee or French toast. And it was way too quiet. A dull nervousness flared up in her, like the glow of a dying lightbulb.

Angie only heard the last few quick footsteps behind her before she felt the blow against the back of her head.
Darkness flooded in as the floor came up to meet her.

7

She woke up lying face-down in pitch darkness, a sore pulsing in her head. The surface beneath her was lumpy and reeked of urine and mold. With her arms bound behind her, Angie's ability to turn was limited.

She knew exactly where she was, though, and a pinball of sickness bounced around in her stomach.

As her eyes adjusted, she made out the silhouette of a human figure lying beside her on the mattress. The urine-smell, she realized, was coming from that direction. There was another smell beneath it, as well, that Angie didn't recognize and wasn't sure she wanted to.

"Amy?"

She kept her voice low, almost a whisper.

The girl didn't respond.

Angie tried lifting her head to look around. The room spun and she dropped her head back down and felt her eyelids getting heavy.

No, no, no, no. Keep with it, Ange.

She looked back at the figure beside her.

"Amy, please tell me you're awake."

"I don't think you'll get much out of her."

Angie jerked toward the direction of his voice. The pain in her head exploded again. She opened her mouth to
cry out, but no sound came. She lay there with her face tight and twisted.

The room lit up and poured an unbearable whiteness into her eyes. She shut them until the white turned to red, and then slowly dissipated. She re-opened her eyes. Now, she could semi-clearly see the stained mattress beneath her and the plywood floor beyond.

She looked beside her and into Amy Moore's open, lifeless eyes.

She screamed.

Into her line of sight stepped a pair of black-and-red tennis shoes. The khaki-covered legs attached to them bent down into a squat. Angie felt a hand on her shoulder, then was rolled onto her back and saw Ryan's face upside-down.

He held something out in front of her. Her phone.

"You left this out when you went to take your shower. I figured, since you snooped around on mine, it was only fair I take a look at yours, right? I did not expect to find what I did, though."

Angie remained silent.

"Now, Angie, listen to me. I didn't kill her, okay? You have to believe me on this one. We got here and she was just...gone. Maybe it was dehydration, or--" He shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know, maybe I was just too rough on her."

Angie looked back over at the girl's gray and beaten body. She saw the safety pins pushed through the skin in various places on her torso and legs, little spots of dried blood caked around the wounds. She looked at her face. Amy had died with a blank expression, and it occured to Angie that perhaps nothing had killed her, exactly, that maybe she'd just given up the will to live.

Tears pooled in her eyes, and a sickness rose up in her throat. She convulsed and began vomiting.

"Shit." Ryan turned her onto her side, away from the corpse. He stroked her hair as she emptied her stomach over the edge of the mattress. When she was done, she began sobbing.

"Why, Ryan? Why did you do it?"

Speaking through the tears, her voice was borderline incoherent.

"I told you, I didn't kill her."

"Yes, you did, you son of a bitch."

"NO!"

Ryan stood up, took a step back from the mattress.

"I was going to let her go, Angie."

She shook her head.

"Bullshit."

Ryan was silent a moment, then walked around the mattress, stepping over the pool of puke. He knelt down beside the work lamp lighting the room and opened the side pocket of the backpack on the floor beside the doorway. He fished something out, then knelt back down by.

"I was going to give her these."

Ryan held two full vials in front of Angie's eyes, his hand blocking the glow of the lamp so she couldn't read their labels.

"Propofol and liquid Lorazepem. Combine them together and it creates a hypnotic sort of state in a person. Makes them really suggestive. You have to be really careful, though, this is the same combo that killed Michael Jackson. When I was done with her, I was going to give these to her and spend a day, you know, messing around in her head so when I let her go, she wouldn't remember anything." He looked intently at Angie. "It was as much for her as for me."

"Oh, was it now?"

"I guess, in a way, it's a good thing she didn't make it. I mean, I can't swipe these from the hospital just whenever, right? Now I can use them on you."

Ryan smiled, as though this was great news for both of them. An icy chill ran through Angie. She imagined herself strapped to a dentist-like chair in a dark room, a strobe-light flashing while Ryan spoke calm suggestions in a soft monotone. It wouldn't be like that for real--he couldn't afford that kind of setup--but he had something planned for her.


"It's the only way we can make this right. I should've done it the other night, but I guess I chickened out."

Angie shut her eyes. How the hell was she going to get out of this? It was clear Ryan was far gone. She opened her eyes and saw her husband stick the needle into the first vial. This, she thought, must be what it's like to be a death-row prisoner tied down to the lethal-injection chair.

She turned her head away from Ryan and looked at the dead girl beside her.

"I'm sorry".

Then, looking at the pierced and beaten cadaver, something occured to Angie. If she were able to get Ryan out of the room for just a moment--

But her thoughts scattered as the needle stung her upper arm. She turned her head toward the pain and saw the syringe sticking out of her flesh, the needle having sunk all the way in. A cloud of red displaced the clear fluid in the syringe.

Acting without thinking, she jerked her right side as far off of the mattress as she could.

"Angie, no!"

The motion caused the needle to tear through Angie's muscle and tissue. Blood spurted and shockwaves of pain ran through her. It also caused Ryan to lose his grip on the syringe. Angie saw it dangling from her torn flesh, and quickly rolled onto her other side. There was a crack and a crunch, and Angie saw redness spreading out on the mattress under her.

"Oh, god!" Ryan stood on his knees and grabbed a fistful of his own hair. "Oh, my god! What the fuck did you do!"

Angie lay silent on her side, shivering with pain.

"What the fuck did you do? You stupid bitch!"

He threw his fist into Angie's rib cage. She screamed. Ryan pulled his arm back for another go, but stopped himself.

"No, it's okay. It's okay. Angie, it's all going to be alright. I'm, I'm sorry I hit you." He caressed her trembling side. "I promise that'll never happen again. But, now, I have to...I guess I'll have to go get some more, that's all." He was talking to himself now. "Just go back to the hospital, say I forgot something. No big deal. It's all going to be okay."

A mad chuckle burst from his mouth.

"Ryan." Angie's voice had become a tearful whisper. "I'm bleeding too much. You have to get something to stop it."

He looked at the spreading pool of blood.

"You're right. You're right." He stood up. "Okay, I'm going to get the First-Aid kit out of the glove box. I'll patch you right up. You'll see, it's all going to be fine."

Angie's eyes had been closed the whole time she'd been laying on top of the broken needle. She kept them closed as she heard the door swing open, Ryan's footsteps getting fainter and fainter until there was the far-off sound of a door being opened and shut.

Now, she knew, would be her only chance.

She rolled onto her back and slid closer to Amy Moore's body. She looked it over and decided the safety pin in Amy's inner thigh would be the quickest to get to. She threw her leg over the girl's and dragged it toward her. It was hard work, with the loss of blood making her lightheaded and the contact with dead skin making her own flesh crawl.

She powered through it, though, using her legs and feet to pull herself over Amy's right leg so her ass rested between the girl's knees. She moved her bound hands over the smooth, cold thigh until she felt the safety pin. She unhooked it and pulled it out, then she went to work on the middle zip-tie holding her wrists together.

The outside door opened and closed again.

"Shit."

Angie slid the pin inside the clasp of the tie and pushed up on the locking mechanism, freeing the ridges. She pushed the pin the rest of the way through so it held the locking mechanism up, and pulled the slack of the tie out of the clasp. The tie fell away from her wrists and she brought her hands out in front of her. She stood up as the door began to open.

No longer feeling the pain in her head or arm, only the adrenaline surging through her body, she ran across the small room. Ryan's face became visible in the doorway. She jumped and slammed herself into the door, swinging it outward. The edge of the door hit him in the face, knocked him on his ass. The First-Aid kit he'd been holding flew out of his hand and landed a ways away, opened and spilled its contents all over.

Angie jumped on top of Ryan, straddling him, and brought her elbow down onto his throat. His whole body jerked and then convulsed as he struggled for air. Angie found herself wanting to savor the choking noises that came from him, but she wasn't about to give him a chance to get the upper hand. With both hands she grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head off the floor and then threw it back down. She did it again. Then again and again. His eyelids sank down and closed as his mouth tried to form words.

He went still. Angie came to her senses and carefully checked his throat for a pulse. It was weak, but there.

Angie suddenly felt weak, herself, and got off of Ryan. The adrenaline was gone, and she fought the urge to lie down and sleep, crawling over to where the First-Aid supplies had spilled. She wadded up a roll of gauze and pressed it tight against the still-pouring wound in her arm, letting out a groan of pain as she did so. Then, she searched Ryan's unconscious body, looking for his cell phone. He didn't have it on him.

She got to her feet and staggered to the outside door, opened it and walked out into the daylight.

8

"His phone wasn't in the car, either. Weird for him--he never goes anywhere without it."

Angie looked down at the serving of lo mein on her plate, which she'd been unconsciously playing with, using her fork.

"He would have been in a big hurry, I guess."

Across the booth from her, Carol Drake took a sip of her Diet Coke, then folded her hands.

"At least he left the keys in."

Angie forced a bitter smile. "Yeah, there's that."

They sat in silence a moment.

"Is there going to be a trial?"

Angie shook her head. "I don't know. His lawyer is trying to work out a deal, second-degree murder instead of first-degree, along with everything else. Who knows if it'll fly? At the very least, they can't make a wife testify against her husband, so no matter what happens, I won't have to take the stand."

"Ah. So, that's why you haven't divorced him."

"Yep."

When they finished eating and the check came, Carol insisted on paying. Angie didn't battle her over it as hard
as she might have in better days. The four weeks of work she'd missed had hit her bank account where it lived, and it would be a long while of ramen dinners and life without cable before she once again stood on solid ground.

They made their way to the parking lot, where their cars were parked side-by-side.

"Come over here a second," Angie said.

Carol followed her to the driver's side of her car.

"Got a present for you."

Carol smirked. "Oh? And what might that be?"

Angie opened the back door and pulled out the rolled-up quilt.

"I don't know if you intended this as a loan or a gift, but either way, you can have it back."

Carol looked at the quilt, then at Angie. She gave her an understanding look and took the quilt in her arms.

"Angie? I guess I should say I'm sorry--"

Angie held a hand up.

"Don't. All that thing did was show me what I should have seen three years ago."

A smile formed on Carol's face, then slowly evaporated. She looked down.

"You know, sometimes when I think about my ex-husband, about how things ended up, sometimes I think it would be nice if I could just go back and erase all of it. All the things that made me suspicious of him in the first place, you know?"

Angie looked off to the side.

"Yeah, I know."

Carol hesitated a moment before speaking again.

"If you had a chance to do that, do you think you would?"

Angie took a moment, then the corner of her mouth curled slightly upward.

"I think, for the sake of my own sanity, I ought to leave that alley unexplored."

Carol nodded, then walked around the rear of Angie's car. She turned back. "See you Monday, Ange."

Angie just waved, then opened her car door and got in.

THE END

{/pre}