Intensity

even come to the guest room, Chyna had known that safety lay in movement. Now emotional safety lay in movement, distraction. But circumstances required her to be still and wait. She had too much time to think-and too many disturbing thoughts on which to dwell.
        She worked herself into such a state of distress that tears welled-which was when she realized that she was not suffering unduly from butt ache or back pain or the cold throbbing in her feet. The real pain was in her heart, the anguish that she had been forced to repress since she'd found Paul and Sarah, since she'd detected the vague ammoniacal scent of semen in Laura's bedroom and had seen the dimly gleaming links of the shackling chain. Her physical pain was only a lame excuse for tears.
        If she dared weep in self-pity, however, then a flood would come for Paul, for Sarah, for Laura, for the whole sorry damn screwed-up human race, and in useless resentment at the fact that hard-won hope so often spiraled into nightmare. She would bury her face in her hands, uselessly wailing the question that had been asked of God more often than any other: Why, why, why, why, why?
        Surrendering to tears would be so easy, satisfying . These were selfish tears of defeat; they would not only purge the heart of grief but also wash out the need to care about anyone, anything. Blessed relief could be hers if she simply admitted that the long struggle to understand wasn't worth the pain of experience. Her sobbing would bring the motor home to a sudden halt, and the driver would come back to find her huddled at the step well. He would club her, drag her into the bedroom, rape her beside the body of her friend; there would be terror beyond anything that she had ever known before, but it would be brief. And this time it would be final. He would free her forever from the need to ask why , from the torment of repeatedly falling through the fragile floor of hope into this too familiar desolation.
        For a long time, maybe even since the stormy night of her eighth birthday and the frenzied palmetto beetle, she'd known that being a victim was often a choice people made. As a child, she hadn't been able to put this insight into words, and she hadn't known why so many people chose suffering; when older, she had recognized their self-hatred, masochism, weakness.
        Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation.
        She'd always chosen not to be victimized, to resist and fight back, to hold on to hope and dignity and faith in the future. But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring: Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.
        Now she trembled on an emotional high wire, not sure whether she would be able to keep her balance or would allow herself to fail and fall.
        The motor home slowed again. They were angling to the right. Slowing. Maybe pulling off the highway and stopping.
        She tried the door. She knew that it was locked, but she quietly worked the lever-action handle anyway, because she wasn't capable, after all, of simply giving up.
        As they climbed a slight incline, their speed continued to drop.
        Wincing at the pain in her calves and thighs as she moved, yet relieved to be off her butt, she rose just far enough to look across the dining nook.
        The back of the killer's head was the most hateful thing that Chyna had ever seen, and it aroused fresh anger in her. The brain beneath that curve of bone hummed with vicious fantasies. It was infuriating that he should be alive and Laura dead. That he should be sitting here so smug, so content with all his memories of blood, recalling the pleas for mercy that must be like music to him. That he should ever see a sunset again and take pleasure from it, or taste a peach, or smell a flower. To Chyna, the back of this man's skull seemed like the smooth chitinous helmet of an insect, and she believed that if she ever touched him, he would be as cold as a squirming beetle under her hand.
        Beyond the driver, beyond the windshield, at the top of the low rise toward which they were headed, a structure appeared, indistinct and unidentifiable. A few tall sodium-vapor arc lamps cast a sour, sulfurous light.
        She squatted below the back of the dining nook again.
        She picked up the