Mind Prey

think you’re making it up.”
    For a moment, she thought he might strike her—his eyes widened in instant, unreflective anger, and he seemed to pull within himself, as when he beat her. But then he smiled, slightly, and said, “Yeah, I’m bullshitting you. There really is a spy. But I don’t know who it is.”
    She shook her head.
    “Called me up out of the blue,” he said. “Said, ‘Remember Andi Manette who sent you away? She talks about you all the time…’”
    “Somebody said that?” She believed him now—and she was appalled.
    “Yeah. Said you thought I was some kind of devil. Pretty soon I couldn’t get you out of my head. I never forgot you, but you were in the back of my mind someplace. I didn’t have to deal with you. But the spy called…”
    “Yes?” A psychiatrist’s prompt, and she felt a little thrill of power.
    “I can remember sitting in that detention room, and you always sat there in these…dresses…you had these tits, you wore this perfume, I could see up your legs sometimes, I used to think I could see your pussy in there; I’d lay up at night and think about it. Could I see it? Or maybe not…”
    “I didn’t realize…” Another prompt.
    “You never knew what made me work, and I couldn’t explain it,” Mail said. “After a while I’d just sit there and look at your tits and burn.”
    “Somebody kept calling you?”
    “I don’t wanna talk any more,” he said, the anger suddenly back. And his eyes turned inward, jelled over. “I want to fuck…” He swatted at her and hit her on a shoulder. She quailed away, and he said, “Get over here, or I’ll really fuckin’ beat your ass.”
     
    L ATER SHE SAID, “Can I call somebody? My husband, or somebody, to tell them that we’re alive?”
    He was irritated. “Fuck no.”
    “John, pretty soon they’ll think we’re dead. Pretty soon all this activity will die down, and it’ll just be one long grinding hunt, and they’ll get you and lock you up forever. If they know I’m alive, you might be able to…move better. There might be a deal somewhere, something you can work.”
    Again, talking almost like lovers: she concerned for his future. He shook it off. “There won’t be any deal. Not with me.”
    “It gives you more power,” she said. “If they convince themselves that I’m dead, they can do anything they want. If they know I’m alive, things’ll be more awkward for them. As a gamer, I’m sure you can see that. And I just want people to know that I’m still out here. I don’t want them to forget me.”
    Mail stood up, began to dress, kicked her clothes at her. “Put them on.” And when she was dressed, he said, “I’ll think about it. You can’t call direct, but maybe we could tape something. I could call the tape in from somewhere else.”
    “John, that would be…” She almost laughed. “That would be great.”
    He reacted to that: he puffed up, she thought. He liked the flattery, especially from her. “I’ll think about it.”
     
    B ACK INSIDE THE cell, after the door had closed and his feet had thumped away, she said to Grace, “We’ve got to think of a message to tape—he might tape a message for us. We have to figure out a code, or something.”
    She was excited, and Grace watched her, her young face solemn, withdrawn, and Andi finally said, “What? What?”
    And Grace said, “You’ve got blood all over your face, Mom. It’s all over.”
    Grace pointed to the right side of Andi’s face and suddenly her hand began to shake with fear, and she began to cry, backing away from Andi, and Andi scrubbed at the side of her face and the blood from her nose that had dried there, after Mail, excited, had begun slapping her during the last sexual frenzy.
    She hadn’t noticed the blood, she thought, as Grace huddled in the corner. She was becoming used to it; a condition of her servitude.
    But things had changed this time. Things had changed.

14
    R OSE M ARIE R OUX, looking too tired to be a chief of police, her purse dangling from her hand, struggled up the stairs and through the open door.
    Lucas followed the chief and T. Conrad Haward—Dumbo—into Manette’s house, to a gathering in the ornate living room. Dunn was there, tense, unhappy, hair in disarray, eyes heavy; he had his back to a cold fireplace, a heavy crystal liquor glass in his hand. He looked past Roux and Dumbo to nod at Lucas.
    Helen Manette perched on an antique chair, mouth too wide and too tight, and Lucas