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  “Are you afraid, Cammie?” He took a step toward her.

  “I know you’re afraid. I have a sixth sense. It’s strange—I can almost smell it when people are full of fear.”

  She raised her arm to hit him, but he caught her arms, clasping both her wrists in one hand as he took something from his belt. The blade caught the light, glittering. Cameryn’s heart froze as she tried to comprehend that Kyle O’Neil had a knife and there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go, no way to save herself.

  “Don’t fight me. You’ll only make it worse.” Everything in his face was dead except his eyes. They were fixed on Cameryn’s with an intensity she’d never seen before, like a magnifying glass burning into her soul. Apart from his eyes, his face was so still it was as though it were embalmed.

  “If you hadn’t come in here, I would never have hurt you. Now ever y thing’s . . . complicated.”

  There was nothing she could say to this. She pulled against him, but his grip was like steel. With his left hand he foraged along the table, grasping a roll of duct tape, then slipping it onto his wrist like a bracelet. Next he reached for a dusty chair and banged it onto the floor.

  “Sit!” he commanded.

  The knife curved at the end, as though it was grinning. “Put your hands behind your back. Do it! ” The tip of the blade grazed against her throat. All she could do was follow his orders. He pulled her shaking hands behind the back of the chair and wrapped duct tape around her wrists, looping it again and again. Cameryn knew about duct tape. Criminals used it all the time because there was no way to break the bond. Binding her ankles, he then looped the tape around a chair leg and up through the handles of a large cabinet behind her. All the while he kept up his diatribe against her.

  “What happens to you now is not my fault,” he kept saying over and over, ignoring her pleas of “Why?”

  She knew then that he was going to kill her. She was a witness, and she’d seen his instrument of death. Using a klystron tube, Kyle had murdered his teacher, the one who he said inspired his writing. He had kissed Cameryn and lied to her face, and now she was in the wilderness, far away from anyone who could help her.

  The outbuilding had a single window facing away from the house. Looking out, she could see a patch of stars. But then she saw something else—a reflected light approaching, beams from a car’s headlights, she guessed. She heard the crunch of tires on the dirt and rocks, and an engine turning off and a door slamming, and footsteps, faltering as they approached Kyle’s house.

  Leaning in close, Kyle whispered into her ear, and she felt his hot breath inside her, as though he himself could enter her mind. “Don’t say a word,” he said softly.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded silently. She strained to hear. For a moment there was nothing but silence, and then a pounding on the door. More silence, and then a light, wavering voice called out. “Cameryn, are you there?” Another pause, and then, “It’s me, Hannah. ”

  The tip of the knife pressed against her windpipe. “Shhhhh,” he murmured.

  “I’ve come a long way to see you,” the voice cried. “I know it’s hard but—if you’re in there, please, come to the door.”

  Her mother, whom she couldn’t remember, was only forty feet away. Cameryn was going to die, and her mother would never know how much Cameryn had wanted to see her, to hear her in person and touch her face.

  “Please, open the door.” The pounding was harder, five strikes with her fist, and then Cameryn heard a choked sob.

  “Please!”

  “Please,” Cameryn echoed in the barest whisper. But Kyle merely pressed the blade more deeply in reply. She could feel her skin give way to the tip, felt the bite of it, and the warm trickle of blood, no wider than a pencil, snaking down her neck.

  “See what you made me do?” Kyle hissed.

  And outside, Hannah’s anguished voice. “What’s happened? Why won’t you come out to me? ” The next words she said were muffled, something Cameryn could not make out. And then, “I’ll leave, if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what you want,” Kyle whispered into Cameryn’s ear.

  And then what Cameryn wanted most and dreaded most happened at the same moment. Her mother got back into the car. The door slammed, the engine coughed, and the car and the lights disappeared down the mountain in a burst of gravel. Cameryn felt the invisible cord between them, the one she had put her hopes on, stretch and then break. But at least Hannah was safe.

  “It’s just the two of us now,” Kyle said, straightening.

  “That must have been hard. You waited all your life for that moment, only to miss it. Too bad.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Cameryn cried.

  Different expressions flitted across his face until he finally settled on one—amusement. “It depends on who you ask. Now, Brad Oakes—he read my writing, and you know what he thought? He said I had—wait, how did he put it?—an attachment disorder. When I fried my dad’s dog I didn’t feel anything. So I guess Brad Oakes was right. I’m not like everyone else. In my world, that’s a good thing.”

  Cameryn’s tongue felt too thick for her mouth, or maybe it was her throat tightening so that she could hardly breathe. Her heart, her thoughts, pounded inside her. “Is that why you killed Mr. Oakes?” she croaked. “Because he knew what you were?”

  “Ah, the million-dollar question. Why. It’s not what you think.” He walked over and pushed the klystron tube to the edge of the workbench, directly in front of Cameryn. Slowly, deliberately, he plugged the cables into the tube, as though he had all the time in the world. “Have you ever heard of Leopold and Loeb? Thomas Koskovich and Jayson Vreeland? Or maybe Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who killed a little boy when the two of them were only ten years old. It’s amazing, when you think about it. They started killing at ten years of age. Why? For what reason? They just wanted to see what it felt like to take a life.”

  "Kyle—”

  “Maybe you’ve heard of Gary Hirte. He’s another Eagle Scout like me, who killed just to see if he could do it and get away with it. We are a group of very special human beings. A small, exclusive group.”

  "You think being able to kill makes you special? ”

  Kyle looked at her, his hazel eyes impassive. “I’m in control. Of who lives, who dies. That kind of power is addictive. I hinted that Brad and Dwayne were, how shall I put it, closer than friends, and watched everyone scramble after my lead. It’s the ultimate high.” He paused, then said, “Could you do it? Could you kill someone, Cameryn? ”

  “Of course not!”

  That smile again, curling up the corner of his lip. “If you could get free, I imagine you’d try to kill me. I’m trying to explain this to you. We, those who are like me, we kill because we want to. It’s the ultimate game, really. Can I commit the perfect murder and not get caught? Eagle Scout Gary Hirte made a fatal mistake—he kept the knife he used for the kill inside its still-bloody sheath. The victim’s DNA was right there, in Gary’s own bedroom, linking him directly to his crime. Stupid, and sloppy.” Kyle shook his head. “An Eagle Scout ought to be smarter than that.”

  He was intent now, absorbed in the fifteen-inch glass tube. “So in my research on microwaves, I stumbled on the ultimate killing machine. A klystron is used in high-power, high-frequency radio transmitters.” Shrugging, he said, “The terminology’s not important. I want you to understand—no one has ever used a klystron to commit a murder before this. I put it all together. Me. Kyle O’Neil. You found the bones of our pig. I put him in the dog carrier and practiced training the beam on him. I was amazed when it worked. He squealed a lot, though. Fortunately, no one could hear him way up here. I dissected him to examine the results.” Kyle paused. “Do you know what makes this method so special?”

  Cameryn sat like stone.

  “I killed Brad Oakes from the outside of his house. That’s the pure genius of it. I didn’t leave a trace inside the crime scene. Not a hair. Not a fiber. I p
lugged the klystron into an outside outlet, aimed it, and”—he snapped his fingers—“that was the end of the man.”

  Barely squeezing out the words, she asked, “Why Mr. Oakes?”

  “Because I’m merciful. I picked him because his last living relative died. He had no family. I chose someone who would hardly be missed.” He turned to look at her. Reaching out, he stroked her hair. Cameryn jerked away. “I want you to know, you made the experience more special, Cammie. I want to thank you for that.”

  Behind her, she pulled her wrists as hard as she could, but the duct tape held like handcuffs. Her flesh ripped against it, pain shot up her arms, and the tape held fast.

  “You’ll never break the tape, Cammie, but good for you for trying. Yes, you made it even better. You were like a bonus, like extra credit points. Part of the fun is watching the police and the forensic team trying to figure out what happened. I mean, they were idiots! They had no idea! ” He laughed, hollowly. “You were my conduit, my eyes into what they were thinking. It was awesome, talking to you about the case. I got to relive it over and over.” He closed his eyes, a look of pure pleasure on his face.

  Cameryn understood a terrible fact: to destroy the single witness, he would have to destroy her. There was nothing she could do. The books said a victim should keep the perpetrator talking in order to personalize themselves, but even as the strategy raced through her mind she knew how futile it was. Kyle had known Brad Oakes well. He killed him, just the same.

  “Kyle,” she said, pleading, “I don’t think you really want to hurt me. I think you don’t really want to do this.”

  Not seeming to hear, he took the plug and pushed it into the outlet. “You want to know why people like me do what we do? That answer is simple. We kill,” he said, “because we can. Besides, murder isn’t that bad. We all gotta die sometime. Mortality stands at one hundred percent.”

  “Please!” she cried.

  He turned back to the tube, his hand on more cables.

  “I know about your mother!”

  Kyle whipped around. The smile, so obvious before, melted from his face. Anger rose in its place, coloring his cheeks, igniting his eyes.

  “I know what happened to her! I saw the death certificate! Did you kill her? I actually thought it might have been your dad, but now I think it was you! You killed her, didn’t you? ”

  He stood, frozen. The cables slipped through his hands as he hissed, “Shut up.”

  But Cameryn couldn’t stop. She’d managed to penetrate his shield, to puncture his veneer. “Why did you do it?”

  “I said, shut up! ” With the back of his hand he smacked her on the side of the head, and for a moment her vision exploded in stars. “I would never hurt my mother,” he cried. “She left me! I would never, ever hurt her. Shut up, shut up, shut up! ”

  Quietly, Cameryn said, “She left you by putting a bullet in her brain.”

  Kyle raised his arm to strike again, but then, thinking better of it, he clenched his fist and lowered it to his side. He was breathing rapidly, panting.

  “My mom left me, too, Kyle,” Cameryn said. “But she came back. And she’s out there, waiting for me.” Tears blurred her vision, but she could see him standing there, riveted by her words. “They already know I was with you tonight. If you hurt me they’ll know it’s you. You’ve got nothing to gain anymore.”

  “You don’t know anything! ”

  “I know that you’re a human being. I saw inside you, Kyle. Let me have a chance with my mother. Let me have a chance to live. Please, Kyle. Anam cara.”

  Kyle looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. How much real time went by was hard to say, but to Cameryn it had suspended into another dimension. The pounding of her heart and the throbbing from the prick of the knife were her only clues that it was seconds, not hours, that passed. When she saw him reach for the tube she knew she had lost. But he didn’t turn it on. Instead, he skimmed past it to grab the roll of duct tape. Ripping a smaller piece, cutting it with his teeth, he pressed it over her mouth. Then he turned and walked toward the door.

  “I’m an Eagle Scout. I can survive in the wilderness or wherever I choose. I’m going to give you two guarantees: One, they’ll never, ever find me. And two”—he held up his middle and index fingers, pressed together in a salute— “one day, when you least expect it, I’ll be back.” He looked around the barn, his hand on the light switch. “You’re like me, Cameryn. More than you know.” Opening the door, he pulled his collar tight, looking at the sky. “Wow, it’s cold out here—freezing, actually—and you’ve got no coat. But still, I’m giving you a chance. If it’s meant to be, you’ll live. If you live, you can tell my story. Anam cara.”

  With that, he flicked off the light and slammed the door shut, leaving her in total darkness. She heard the latch slide in place. And then he was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WAS DARK inside the chicken coop, and the cold was beginning to seep into Cameryn’s bones. If she turned her head and strained, she could see bits of starlight through the corner of the window, could hear the trees moaning in lament, could feel the shiver of a breeze as it pushed through the small opening where the chickens, when they were alive, must have pecked and scratched. This remote mountain lay blanketed in a silence like nothing she’d ever experienced before. As her terror over Kyle subsided, a new fear took its place. She realized she was completely and utterly alone.

  Her neck throbbed. She could tell the bleeding had stopped, because the dried blood tugged against her skin whenever she moved her head. In the bit of light, she made out the shape of the pig ribs, curved and grinning, lying near the base of the klystron tube. A mentality that could murder animals and humans for sport was totally twisted and abhorrent: Kyle said he killed because he was special, as if emotion was a weakness he was blessed to live without.

  Something scraped against the metal roof, the noise magnified in the stillness. Fear stabbed her heart—was Kyle still out there, hovering in the woods, playing an insane game with her? There was no doubt he could change his mind and return to finish the job. Leave no witness. Strip the flesh off her bones like he had the pig. Her pulse pounded in her neck as she strained to see.

  More scraping, then a sound of fingers drumming against metal. Kyle! Adrenaline shot through her until she realized that it was only branches chafing against the roof. Stay calm, she commanded. You’re hyperventilating. You’ll lose body heat too fast. That’s it—nice and easy.

  Time slowed to a nauseating crawl as her fingers began to quiver and then finally go numb. Straining against the tape was futile, but she did it anyway until her muscles burned. It was hard to control her emotions. Every night sound became sinister: The squeak of a gate might be Kyle at the door, sliding back the lock; the howl of the wind was Kyle at the window, watching her. Inanimate objects were suddenly malevolent and alive. To cope, she forced herself to make lists of people who would miss her, of steps they would take to find her. But it was possible that no one would begin to put the pieces together until morning, and by then it could be too late.

  Her father didn’t know where she was. No one did, except . . . one person. And she might be driving back to New York by now, certain her daughter didn’t want her. Cameryn wept at the thought of it. She tried to scream in fear and frustration, but the sound was muffled, high-pitched, and thin, and what was the point of it? No one would hear her.

  Think, don’t panic! she commanded herself. There had to be a way out. With all her strength she pitched forward, but the cabinet Kyle had tied her to tipped against her back, threatening to crush her. The cabinet was freestanding and heavy. She wondered if she could manage the weight and pull it, and herself, to the door. Heaving forward again, she heard something inside slam against the metal doors, then felt the weight of it push her chest against her thighs, trapping her, squeezing the air out of her lungs. It couldn’t work! Fighting for breath, she heaved backward with every bit of her strength, her neck pulsing and p
robably bleeding again, until the cabinet finally righted itself against the wall with a bang. Kyle had known exactly what he was doing. She was helpless.