Karin Slaughter - Triptych

“Take off your shorts,” Michael ordered. He squirted a glob of shampoo on her as she struggled to stand. “Get them off.”

Even if she’d wanted to, Angie couldn’t do anything with her hands tied behind her back. Michael seemed to realize this. He reached in and ripped open the top button of the cutoffs, then pulled down the zipper.

“Underwear, too,” he said. “Now.”

Her fingers were numb, the circulation cut off. Still, she managed to hook her thumbs in the waistband and pull down the shorts. She kicked them away with her feet.

“What did you do with the little girl?” she demanded, pushing down her panties. “What did you do to Jasmine?”

“Don’t worry.” Michael smiled, like he was enjoying a private joke. “She won’t talk.”

Angie lunged again, her head barreling into his gut. Michael fell back into the hall and the gun skipped across the wet floor. In one swift motion, he picked up Angie and threw her across the room. She landed awkwardly, reaching for the empty space behind her to break the fall. Her right hand twisted as her full weight pressed into the wrist and she heard a crack just as a lightning bolt of pain set her arm on fire.

“Get up,” Michael ordered.

Her hand was throbbing, needles running up and down her arm. She rolled to the side, sobbing. Oh, God, she had broken her wrist. What was she going to do? How was she going to get out of here?

She heard noises in the next room. Michael was gone. Where was the girl? What was he doing to Jasmine?

Angie pressed her face into the floor, forcing herself to her knees, then her feet. She leaned against the wall as her head started swimming, her vision blurring. She took a breath, braced herself, then moved away from the wall. Her wet underwear was wrapped around her ankle and she kicked it off as she limped into the outer room.

Michael was sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, foot bouncing up and down. The Glock was on the cushion beside him. He knew she couldn’t get to it in time.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating the rocking chair by the fireplace. Carefully, she sat on the edge of the seat, trying not to fall back.

“What were you doing in my house?”

Angie looked around the room, which was about ten feet by twenty, a living room with a small kitchen at the back. She remembered the mountains outside, the stark isolation of the cabin. He had been right: no one would hear her scream.

She asked, “What are you going to do?”

He had that same smirk on his face, that smile she had seen the night of Ken’s party and taken for flirting. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

Angie could not stop her bottom lip from trembling. Her hand was going numb, dull throbs of pain ringing around her wrist. The rope was wet from the shower, somehow made thicker and heavier by the water. The skin felt as if it had been burned away.

She looked at the gun on the couch.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Angie cleared her throat, feeling like she had swallowed cotton. “John told me everything,” she said, wondering how hard she could push before Michael broke her. No one knew where she was. Will was probably still interviewing John Shelley, trying to get to the truth. If John had learned anything in prison, he was keeping his mouth closed. It would be hours, maybe days, before Will even thought to look for her, and when he finally did, there was no way he would know about this tiny cabin in the hills.

Michael asked, “What did John tell you?”

“About Mary Alice,” Angie said, praying she’d got the girl’s name right. “He told me what really happened.”

Michael laughed, but he wasn’t smiling. “John doesn’t know what really happened.”

“He figured it out.”

“John’s too stupid to figure anything out.”

“I told everybody.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he warned. “I’m being nice now, but we both know what I’m capable of.”

“Will. I told Will.”

He was scared of Will. She could see that in his eyes.

He asked, “Trent?”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

Michael kept staring at her, obviously trying to decide if she was telling the truth. Finally, he shook his head. “Uh-uh.” He didn’t believe her.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I’ve known him all my life.”

He let his gaze take in her body. She was naked below the waist, her legs braced apart so that she would not fall. He told her, “You need to remember there are a lot of different ways you can die.”

“The scar on Will’s face,” she tried. “It goes down his jaw to his neck.”

Michael shrugged. “Anybody can see that.”

“His hand,” she said. “He was shot with a nail gun. I took him to the hospital.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. He stood slowly from the couch and walked over to where she was sitting. Angie tried to lean back as he put his hands on either side of her, bracing himself against the arms of the rocking chair. His voice was a low growl when he asked, “What did you tell him?”

Fear tightened like a band around her throat. “Everything…” She heard the terror in her voice, knew he would hear it, too, but her mouth would not stop moving, the words would not stop coming. “John told me…and I told…I told Will…”

He was gripping the arms so hard that the whole chair seemed to vibrate. “Told you what?”

“That you knew Aleesha!”

“Fuck!” Michael pushed himself away from the chair so violently that it almost tipped over. Angie’s legs flailed as she scrambled not to fall. “God damnit!” He lifted his foot to kick over the coffee table but stopped himself at the last minute. Slowly, his foot went back to the floor, but his fists were still clenched at his sides and he shook with fury.

Angie stared at his back, breathless with fear. Carefully, she stilled the rocking chair, inched her way closer to the edge of the seat. The floor creaked as she shifted her weight.

Michael turned and backhanded her so hard that she slammed onto the floor.

Angie lay there. She couldn’t move. Her head was still echoing from the impact.

“Get up.”

He didn’t have to threaten her. Angie tried to sit up but couldn’t. She pressed her face to the floor and closed her eyes, waiting for the punishment.

Nothing came.

“My dad left me when I was ten.”

Angie opened her eyes. She must have passed out, missed something. Michael was at the kitchen sink. He took a metal tin out of one of the cabinets.

He said, “You know what that’s like?”

Angie didn’t answer. She watched him open the tin, check the contents.

“John thought he had it hard. He didn’t know what hard was.” Michael waved a bag of white powder in the air. He was back to being that guy again, that normal guy he projected out to the world so that they wouldn’t figure out what a monster he was.

He said, “This is good stuff. You want some?”

She tried to shake her head.

“You didn’t want that last drink, either.” He smiled like it was funny. “Remember that, Angie-Ken’s big party? I got you a drink.”

She couldn’t remember, but she nodded anyway.

“Roofies, baby.” He sat down on the couch, putting the tin on the coffee table between them. “You gulped down a mouthful of roofies.”

Rohypnol. He had drugged her.

Michael laughed at her expression. He took a razor blade and a small mirror out of the tin and tapped some of the powder onto the glass. Angie watched as he chopped the coke with the blade. “You ever have a kid?” he asked, not looking at her. “I bet you’ve had about sixty abortions by now.” He kept cutting the coke, businesslike. “My son has problems. You know that.”

Angie willed her body to move. She was gasping with pain by the time she managed to sit up. At least she had managed it, though. At least she was no longer lying helpless on the floor.