The Husband

that death was settling on the girls, that they were not long for this world."
    "And...were they?"
    "Winter came early that year. Many snows followed one another, and the cold was very hard. The spring thaw extended into summer, and when the snow melted, their bodies were found in late June, dumped in a field near Arroyo Hondo, all the way around Wheeler Peak from where I'd seen them on the road. I recognized their pictures in the paper."
    Holly says a silent prayer for the families of the unknown girls.
    "Who knows what happened to them?" he continues. "They were found naked, so we can imagine some of what they endured. But though it seems to us a horrible death, and tragic because of their youth, there is always a possibility of enlightenment even in the worst of situations. If we're seekers, we learn from everything, and grow. Perhaps any death involves moments of illuminating beauty and the potential for transcendence."
    He switches on his flashlight and is sitting immediately before her, cross-legged on the floor.
    Had the light surprised her earlier in their conversation, she might have flinched. Now she is not as easily surprised, nor is she likely to flinch from any light, so welcome is it.
    He wears the ski mask in which are visible only his chewed-sore lips and his beryl-blue eyes. He is neither naked nor painted with the blood of those he killed.
    "It's time to go," he says. "You will be ransomed for a million four hundred thousand, and when I have the money, then the time will have come for decision."
    The dollar figure stuns her. It might be a lie.
    Holly has lost all track of time, but she is confused and amazed by what his words imply. "Is it already...midnight Wednesday?"
    Within his knitted mask, he smiles. "Only a few minutes before one o'clock Tuesday afternoon," he says. "Your persuasive husband has encouraged his brother to come through with
    the money quicker than ever seemed possible. This whole thing has moved so smoothly that it's obviously coasting on the wheels of destiny."
    Rising to his feet, he gestures for her to rise, as well, and she obeys.
    Behind her back, he binds her wrists together with a blue silk scarf, as before.
    Stepping in front of her again, he tenderly smoothes her hair back from her forehead, for some of it has fallen over her face. As he performs this grooming, with hands as cold as they are pale, he stares continuously into her eyes in a spirit of romantic challenge.
    She dares not look away from him, and she closes her eyes only when he presses to them thick gauze pads that have been moistened to make them stick. He binds the pads in place with a longer length of silk, which he loops three times around her head and ties firmly at the back of her skull.
    His hands brush her right ankle, and he unlocks the manacle, freeing her from the chain and the ringbolt.
    He plays the flashlight over her blindfold, and she sees dim light penetrate the gauze and silk. Evidently satisfied by the job he's done, he lowers the light.
    "When we've reached the ransom drop," he promises, "the scarves will come off. They're only to incapacitate you during transport."
    Because he is not the one who hit her and pulled her hair to make her scream, she can sound credible when she says, "You've never been cruel to me."
    He studies her in silence. She assumes that he studies her, for she feels naked, undressed by his stare.
    The wind, the dark again, the hideous expectation all make her heart jump like a rabbit battering itself against the wire walls of a trap cage.
    Holly feels his breath brush lightly across her lips, and she endures it.
    After he exhales four times upon her, he whispers, "At night in Guadalupita, the sky is so vast that the moon seems shrunken, small, and the stars you can see, horizon to horizon, number more than all the human deaths in history. Now we must go."
    He takes Holly by one arm, and she does not shrink from his repulsive touch, but moves with him across the room and through an open doorway.
    Here are the steps again, up which they led her the previous day. He patiently guides her descent, but she cannot hold a railing and therefore places each foot tentatively.
    From attic to second floor, to first floor, and then into the garage, he encourages her: "A landing now. Very good. Duck your head. And now to the left. Be careful here. And now a threshold."
    In the garage, she hears him open the door of a vehicle.
    "This is the van that brought you here," he says, and