“I like to think of this as my own special form of water-boarding.”
Lydia sucked in great gulps of air. It was piss. He was spraying her with piss. She turned away her head. Paul followed her with the spray bottle. She turned the other way. He turned the bottle.
“Keep breathing,” he said.
Lydia opened her mouth. He adjusted the nozzle so the spray turned into a stream. The wet cotton molded to her lips. The hood became soaked. The material clogged her nostrils. Claustrophobia took over. She was going to suffocate. She inhaled a spray of liquid. She coughed and sucked in a mouthful of urine. Lydia gagged. Urine washed down her throat. She started to choke. He kept spraying, angling the stream no matter which way she turned her head. He was trying to drown her. She was going to drown in his urine.
“Lydia.”
Her lungs were paralyzed. Her heart strangled.
“Lydia.” Paul raised his voice. “I put the spray bottle down. Stop panicking.”
Lydia couldn’t stop panicking. There was no more air. She had forgotten what to do. Her body couldn’t remember how to draw breath.
Paul said, “Lydia.”
Lydia tried in vain to draw in more air. She saw flashes of light. Her lungs were going to explode.
“Breathe out,” he coached. “You’re only breathing in.”
She breathed in harder. He was lying. He was lying. He was lying.
“Lydia.”
She was going to die. She couldn’t work the muscles. Nothing was working. Everything had stopped, even the beats of her heart.
“Lydia.”
Explosions of light filled her eyes.
“Brace yourself.” Paul punched her so hard in the stomach that she felt the metal chair bend into the wall.
Her mouth opened. She huffed out a stream of warm, wet air.
Air. She had air. Her lungs filled. Her head filled. She was dizzy. Her stomach burned. She collapsed forward in the chair. The chain cut into her ribs. Her cheek hit her knee. Blood rushed into her face. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs were screaming.
The wet cotton hood hung down in front of her face. Piss-tainted air flowed into her open mouth and nose.
Paul said, “It’s weird how that happens, right?”
Lydia concentrated on pulling air into her lungs and pushing it back out. She had crumbled so easily. He had sprayed piss in her face and she had been ready to give up.
“You’re beating yourself up,” Paul guessed. “You’ve always thought you were the strong one, but you’re not, are you? That’s why you liked coke so much. It gives you this sense of euphoria, like you can do anything in the world. But without it, you’re completely powerless.”
Lydia squeezed tears out of her eyes. She had to be stronger. She couldn’t let him get into her head. He was too good at this. He knew exactly what he was doing to her. He hadn’t just been behind the camera zooming in.
He had participated.
Paul said, “Now, Julia, she was a real fighter.”
Lydia shook her head. She silently begged him not to do this.
“You watched the tape. You saw how she fought back, even at the end.”
Lydia tensed her body. She pulled at the plastic ties.
“I watched you watching her die. Did you know that?” Paul sounded pleased with himself. “I gotta say, that was pretty meta.”
The zip ties were ripping into her skin. She could feel the plastic teeth sawing back and forth.
“My mom helped look for her,” Paul said. “Dad and I got a big kick out of her slipping on her boots every morning and trudging out into fields and checking streams and putting up fliers. Everybody was out looking for Julia Carroll, and Mom had no idea that she was hanging out in the barn.”
Lydia remembered searching fields and rivers. She remembered the way the town rallied around her family, only to turn their backs two weeks later.
“Dad kept her alive for me. She lasted twelve days. If you can call that living.” He leaned forward. She could feel his excitement like it was a creature standing between them. “They were all so close, Lydia. Do you want me to tell you how close?”
Lydia clenched her jaw shut.
“Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to fuck somebody when they’re dying?”
Lydia screamed, “What do you want from me?”
“You know what I want.”
She knew what was coming. He had taken Lydia instead of Claire because he had business to finish.
“Do it,” Lydia said. He was right about the coke. He was right about everything. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him. Her only hope was that it would be fast. “Just get it over with.”
Paul laughed again, but it wasn’t the delighted laugh he saved for Claire. It was the kind of laugh you gave when you thought someone was pitiful. “Do you really think I want to rape a fat forty-year-old?”
Lydia hated herself for feeling the sting of his words. “I’m forty-one, you stupid motherfucker.”
She braced herself for another punch or a kick or the spray bottle, but instead, he did something far worse than she could have ever imagined.
He took off the hood.
Lydia closed her eyes against the blinding light. She turned her head away. She hissed fresh air in and out between her teeth.
Paul said, “You can’t keep your eyes closed forever.”
She squinted, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the light. The first thing she saw was her own hands clutching the green vinyl pads on the arms of the chair. Then the concrete floor. Wadded-up fast-food bags. A stained mattress.
Lydia looked up at Paul. He held out his hands like a magician finishing a trick.
She had been tricked.
The ambient sound was coming from a pair of computer speakers. The leaves under her feet were on the floor of the garage. The wall behind her was stained concrete block. They were not in an isolated cabin in the woods.
Paul had brought her back to the Fuller house.
SEVENTEEN
Fred Nolan said, “Tell me about your relationship with your husband.”
Claire looked away from his smug face. They were in a cramped interrogation room inside the downtown FBI field office. She had her legs crossed under a cheap plastic table. Her foot was shaking uncontrollably. There was no clock in the room. Hours had passed. Claire had no idea how many, but she knew her self-imposed deadline for telling Paul how to get back the thumbdrive had long passed.
Nolan asked, “Was he a nice guy? Romantic?”
Claire didn’t answer. She felt sick with fear. Paul wouldn’t be sending pictures of Lydia anymore. There was nothing to keep him in check. Would he be anxious? Angry? Did he know that Claire was talking to the police? Was he taking out his fury on Lydia?
Nolan said, “Me, I try to be romantic, but I always end up doing it wrong. Tulips instead of roses. Tickets to the wrong show.”
Claire tasted bile in her mouth. She had seen the violence that Paul was capable of. With Claire on radio silence, what would he do to her sister?
“Claire?”
Tears filled her eyes. Lydia. She had to help Lydia.
“Come on.” Nolan waited a full minute before letting out a long, disappointed sigh. “You’re just making this harder on yourself.”
Claire stared up at the ceiling so her tears would not fall. The clock on the Tesla had read 6:48 when she’d pulled into the parking deck under the FBI building. How long ago had that been? Claire didn’t even know whether or not it was still Sunday.