The Fort (Aric Davis)

But how could he leave Amy alone in the house? There were a million things that could go wrong.
    Hooper hadn’t been watching the news, but if the girl really had just been playing at prostitution, it was likely that people everywhere were looking for her. There was hardly any media coverage when the other bodies were found, but a regular girl was sure to garner much more public interest than a prostitute. Though he loathed doing so, Hooper was going to have to keep up with the news. With the other whores, there had been no connection to him, nothing left on the body for some supercop to link back to him. With Amy in the house, though, there was plenty of evidence that could be used to destroy his life, and Hooper was not going to let that happen.
    So, to keep myself safe, I need for Amy to be safe. Safe would mean no possibility of escape, a perfect place and way for her to be kept and yet still be accessible to him. The basement seemed to make the most sense, but there were two windows down there, and if she escaped her restraints at night, she could possibly make her way out of the house until it was far too late for him to do something about it. If only he had planned, had considered even for a moment that he might someday want to keep one of them. It was no wonder that he hadn’t, though. They were so expendable, like the girl he’d killed the night before.
    Hooper had taken her just to cover his tracks, in case Amy was telling the truth and her friends gave up to the police what they’d been up to and where she’d really been. If they did, someone was going to have seen his car, maybe even remember the license plate number if he was really unlucky. The burned body by the drive-in could change all that, slow down the investigation as the sands of truth fell to the bottom bell of the hourglass. If the friends she claimed to have been with kept up the lie for even a few days, the discovery of the body would make it unnecessary for them to tell the truth—as far as they knew, their friend would be dead, so why get themselves in trouble? Hooper still wasn’t sure exactly what game had been afoot, he just knew that it had allowed him to take Amy, and for that he was grateful.
    The shower ran cold, and Hooper bent to turn it off. They never seemed to last long enough, and he could feel the clarity from the solitude of the running water falling swiftly away. He dried himself quickly and hung the towel on a hook next to the shower. He considered going to the bedroom to get clothes, but instead walked back to Amy. I can shop for what I need tomorrow. Now I want to be with her. Her eyes widened as he entered the room, and he could see her struggling with the chair. He smiled to himself as he circled behind her bound form.
    “You need to learn to calm down,” said Hooper. Not for the first time, he wished he’d learned something of medicine in Southeast Asia, but he hadn’t. NyQuil might do the trick. If it didn’t, booze would. “I can get something to help you relax,” said Hooper. “But for right now, how about something to eat?” He ran his fingers through her hair, and she jerked away from him. “You’ve got to be hungry,” he said, cupping her chin and looking into her eyes. She was tearing up, no longer feeling tough. For Hooper, seeing her already beginning to crack was like receiving a gift from God. “Good girl. I’ll make you some toast, and if you can eat it and don’t try and scream, maybe we’ll talk about what I need from you.” She nodded her head slowly, tears streaking her cheeks. Perfect.

14
    “I still don’t think it means anything,” said Luke. “So some detective is driving around and asking questions, so what? That’s just his job. I say she turns up in a day or so, tired and maybe still a little hungover.”
    “It’s not like all we want to do is go rummaging around the woods,” said Tim. “But we would be, like, the coolest if she were lost back there, or hurt or something, and we found her.”
    “Or dead,” said Luke. “Or say we do play cops, like you guys want, and we find her with her guts torn out? Have either of you thought about that? You know, considered the actual bad parts of this, and not just thought, Oh, cool, cops are at my house ? Where I live, the cops’ being at your house is really uncool. The reality is that if she is out there, she’s probably dead, and I’m not going to lie, I don’t need to see that.”
    “What crawled up your ass?”