The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

blur, but there was one sure bit of knowledge that sliced into her consciousness more clearly than the blade of Kyle’s knife he’d thrust against her back. He is going to kill me. Now, or very soon, my life will be over. She should have known she was living on borrowed time and she thought of Justin and her grandmother, her mother and her father. Before, when he’d tied her up in his chicken coop, Kyle had told her he would return for her.
    “Two guarantees,” he’d said. “First, they’ll never, ever find me. And second”—he’d held up his middle and index fingers, pressing them together in a salute—“one day, when you least expect it, I’ll be back.”
    Despite the barrier of her father’s and Justin’s protection, she was helpless once again. Fear rose in her like bile as Kyle downshifted, the Jeep now careening around deep bends more wildly. The needle on the speedometer inched up to sixty, then seventy, too fast for the winding mountain road.
    You got out of it once, you can do it again. Don’t give up! But what else had he said? As the trees streamed by, she searched her mind for a chink in his emotional armor, trying as hard as she could to bring up memories she’d forced beneath the veil of buried thoughts. Think, she commanded. Think, think, think. He’d told her that she was like him, an idea that made her recoil. But it was a thread she could follow. Desperate, she began, “You said, before, that we are the same. Tell me why you think that, Kyle.” She barely squeezed out the words, but she knew it was best to keep him talking. To use his name.
    “It won’t work, Cammie,” he answered, laughing coldly. “I read the same books. I know all about the psychology of a killer. You’re trying to humanize yourself, aren’t you? According to the books, though, there’s something not quite right with my brain. I don’t care if people die. Not even me. In fact, I’m going to welcome it.”
    Frantic, she cried, “You let me live because of my mother. I met Hannah, right before Christmas. I met her because of you . You let me live, Kyle. You did a good thing. Hannah’s moved back to New York and she’s great—we talk all the time. There’s still good in you!”
    He downshifted again, his foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor. “Did you tell her about me?”
    “I didn’t want to worry her. Slow down! ” she screeched.
    “Then I guess you didn’t say a proper good-bye.”
    “Kyle, why —”
    “Because I want people to remember me. I told you, Cammie, I’ve played the game and I keep winning. I’m bored. If I go out I want to take someone with me. There’s a place called the Ruby Walls where the drop is a thousand feet straight onto rock. No guardrail to stop a car—nothing but air.” His hand flew from the steering wheel, straight out until it touched the windshield’s glass. “I thought you and me would sail right over the side and into eternity.” He looked at her and smiled, flashing teeth. Kyle’s face had frozen like a mask, everything dead, even his eyes. The flecks of gold in them had turned to ash.
    “ No!”
    In reply he gunned the car faster, the engine whining as it made its final ascent. They crested the top and began the winding path down the narrow band of asphalt cut into the mountainside. Boulders covered by shrouds of snow whizzed past as Cameryn tensed, aware of things she’d never noticed before: the way her chest filled with air and the beat of her heart in her wrists, a heart whose beats were numbered. There had to be a way. To live and not die. The knife lay on the plastic dashboard, gleaming in its sheath of blood. Her left hand, crushed, almost useless. Not enough strength. Not enough time.
    The plan came to her, and she realized she was putting the pieces together with surprising calmness. Thinking, calculating, she tugged on her collar with her throbbing left hand to help herself breathe. He was like a statue chiseled from the inside; the only thing left was a hollow shell of a human being. But maybe enough of a husk remained. With a deep, wavering breath, she looked at him. “Kyle,” she said.
    Her voice was almost drowned out by the drone of the engine.
    “Kyle,” she said again. “Look at me.”
    “What is it, Cameryn? Another game? We’ll have forever now to play them.”
    She swallowed hard, trying by the sheer force of her will to keep her panic down so she could speak. It all came down to this. “Kyle, before you do it,