Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

All night she had been left to stare at that lone lightbulb. Several times she had dozed off, only to startle awake, her stomach churning in panic. But panic cannot be sustained, and as the hours passed and no amount of struggling could loosen her bonds, her body seemed to shut down into a state of suspended animation. She hovered there, in the nightmarish twilight between denial and reality, her mind focused with exquisite concentration on her craving for water.

Footsteps creaked. A door squealed open.

She snapped fully awake. Her heart was suddenly pounding like an animal trying to beat its way out of her chest. She sucked in dank air, cool cellar air that smelled of earth and moist stone. Her breaths came in quickening gasps as the footsteps moved down the stairs and then he was there, standing above her. The light from the lone bulb cast shadows on his face, turning it into a smiling skull with hollows for eyes.

“You want a drink, don’t you?” he said. Such a quiet voice. Such a sane voice.

She could not speak because of the tape over her mouth, but he could see the answer in her feverish eyes.

“Look what I have, Catherine.” He held up a tumbler and she heard the delicious clink of ice cubes and saw bright beads of water sweating on the cold surface of the glass. “Wouldn’t you like a sip?”

She nodded, her gaze not on him but on the tumbler. Thirst was driving her mad, but she was already thinking ahead, beyond that first glorious sip of water. Plotting her moves, weighing her chances.

He swirled the water, and the ice rang like chimes against the glass. “Only if you behave.”

I will, her eyes promised him.

The tape stung as it was peeled off. She lay completely passive, let him slip a straw into her mouth. She took a greedy sip, but it was barely a trickle against the raging fire of her thirst. She drank again and immediately began to cough, precious water dribbling from her mouth.

“Can’t — can’t drink lying down,” she gasped. “Please, let me sit up. Please.”

He set down the glass and studied her, his eyes bottomless pools of black. He saw a woman on the verge of fainting. A woman who had to be revived if he wanted the full pleasure of her terror.

He began to cut the tape that bound her right wrist to the bedframe.

Her heart was thumping hard, and she thought that surely he would see it surging against her breastbone. The right bond came free, and her hand lay limp. She did not move, did not tense a single muscle.

There was an endless silence. Come on. Cut my left hand free. Cut it!

Too late she realized she’d been holding her breath and he had noticed it. In despair she heard the screech of fresh duct tape peeling off the roll.

It’s now or never.

She grabbed blindly at the instrument tray, and the glass of water went flying, ice cubes clattering to the floor. Her fingers closed around steel. The scalpel!

Just as he lunged at her, she swung the scalpel and felt the blade strike flesh.

He flinched away, howling, clutching his hand.

She twisted sideways, slashed the scalpel across the tape that bound her left wrist. Another hand free!

She shot upright in bed, and her vision suddenly dimmed. A day without water had left her weak, and she fought to focus, to direct the blade at the tape binding her right ankle. She slashed blindly and pain nipped her skin. One hard kick and her ankle was free.

She reached out toward the last binding.

The heavy retractor slammed into her temple, a blow so brutal she saw bright flashes of light.

The second blow caught her on the cheek, and she heard bone crack.

She never remembered dropping the scalpel.

When she surfaced back to consciousness, her face was throbbing and she could not see out her right eye. She tried to move her limbs and found her wrists and ankles were once again bound to the bedframe. But he had not yet taped her mouth; he had not yet silenced her.

He was standing above her. She saw the stains on his shirt. His blood, she realized with a feral sense of satisfaction. His prey had lashed back and had drawn blood. I am not so easily conquered. He feeds on fear; I will show him none of it.

He picked up a scalpel from the tray and came toward her. Though her heart was slamming against her chest, she lay perfectly still, her gaze on his. Taunting him, daring him. She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned. For two years she’d cowered like a wounded animal in hiding. For two years, she had let Andrew Capra’s ghost rule her life. No longer.

Go ahead, cut me. But you will not win. You will not see me die defeated.

He touched the blade to her abdomen. Involuntarily her muscles snapped taut. He was waiting to see fear on her face.

She showed him only defiance. “You can’t do it without Andrew, can you?” she said. “You can’t even get it up on your own. Andrew had to do the fucking. All you could do was watch him.”

He pressed the blade, pricking her skin. Even through her pain, even as the first drops of blood trickled out, she kept her gaze locked on his, showing no fear, denying him all satisfaction.

“You can’t even fuck a woman, can you? No, your hero Andrew had to do it. And he was a loser, too.”

The scalpel hesitated. Lifted. She saw it hovering there, in the dim light.

Andrew. The key is Andrew, the man he worships. His god.

“Loser. Andrew was a loser,” she said. “You know why he came to see me that night, don’t you? He came to beg.”

“No.” The word was barely a whisper.

“He asked me not to fire him. He pleaded with me.” She laughed, a harsh and startling sound in that dim place of death. “It was pitiful. That was Andrew, your hero. Begging me to help him.”

The hand on the scalpel tightened. The blade pressed down on her belly again, and fresh blood oozed out and trickled down her flank. Savagely she suppressed the instinct to flinch, to cry out. Instead she kept talking, her voice as strong and confident as though she were the one holding the scalpel.

“He told me about you. You didn’t know that, did you? He said you couldn’t even talk to a woman, you were such a coward. He had to find them for you.”

“Liar.”

“You were nothing to him. Just a parasite. A worm.”

“Liar.”

The blade sank into her skin, and though she fought against it, a gasp escaped her throat. You will not win, you bastard. Because I’m no longer afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anything.

She stared, her eyes burning with the defiance of the damned, as he made the next slice.

Rizzoli stood eyeing the row of cake mixes and wondered how many of the boxes were infested with mealybugs. Hobbs’ FoodMart was that kind of grocery store — dark and musty, a real Mom and Pop establishment, if you pictured Mom and Pop as a pair of mean geezers who’d sell spoiled milk to school kids. “Pop” was Dean Hobbs, an old Yankee with suspicious eyes who paused to study a customer’s quarters before accepting them as payment. Grudgingly he handed back two pennies’ worth of change, then slammed the register shut.

“Don’t keep track of who uses that ATM thingamajig,” he said to Rizzoli. “Bank put it in, as a convenience to my customers. I got nothing to do with it.”

“The cash was withdrawn back in May. Two hundred dollars. I have a photo of the man who—”

“Like I told that state cop, that was May. This is August. You think I remember a customer from that far back?”

“The state police were here?”

“This morning, asking the same questions. Don’t you cops talk to each other?”