The footage started the same way: a wide shot of Anna Kilpatrick chained to the wall. Her eyes were closed. Her head was bent. The masked man came into the camera frame. He had the same build, the same coloring, as the man Claire had seen in all of the other movies, but there was something different about him. His skin tone was lighter. His lips were not as red.
There was also something different about the sound. She realized the footage hadn’t been mixed yet. All the ambient noise was still there. Claire heard the whir of a heater. The man’s footsteps. His breathing. He cleared his throat. Anna startled. Her eyes opened. She struggled against the chains. The man ignored her. He neatly laid out his tools on a rolling table—the cattle prod, the machete, the branding iron. A metal heating element was wrapped around the X to heat the iron. The short electrical cord was tied to a longer extension cord and plugged into an outlet.
The man squirted a glob of lubricant onto his palm and started to stroke himself. He cleared his throat again. There was something eerily businesslike about the routine, as if he was getting ready for another day at the office.
None of this would make it into the final clip. This was preproduction. These were the mundane details that Paul had edited out.
The masked man turned to the camera. Claire fought the urge to jump out of the way. He put his face close to the lens, which she gathered was something of a trademark, like the lion roaring for MGM. The man smiled for the audience, his teeth flashing against the metal zipper. Then he walked over to Anna.
Anna screamed.
He waited for her to stop. The sound wound down from her throat like a siren.
He used his finger to pry open a wound on her belly. She screamed again. The man waited again, but he wasn’t unmoved. His cock had gotten harder. His skin was flushed with excitement.
“Please,” Anna begged. “Please stop.”
The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. He whispered something that made the girl flinch.
Claire sat up in the chair. She used the mouse to rewind the movie. She turned up the sound. She pressed PLAY.
Anna Kilpatrick was begging, “—stop.”
The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. Claire dialed up the sound. She leaned forward, too, her ear as close to the computer speaker as the man’s mouth was to Anna’s ear.
The masked man whispered in a soft drawl, “Tell me you want this.”
Claire froze. She stared blankly at the metal shelves with their ancient equipment. Her vision blurred. She felt a sharp, sudden pain in her chest.
He repeated, “Tell me you want—”
Claire paused the movie. She didn’t rewind. Instead, she clicked on the magnifying glass to manually zoom in on the masked man’s back.
This was the unedited footage. Paul hadn’t yet filtered the light or corrected the sound, nor had he erased any identifying marks, like the constellation of three moles underneath the killer’s left shoulder blade.
The kitchen phone started to ring.
Claire didn’t move.
The phone rang again.
And again.
She stood up. She left the garage. She pulled the door closed behind her. She walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“You lied to me,” Paul said. “I had one of my people check the inventory from the crime scene. The key tag wasn’t on there.”
Claire could only hear the words “one of my people.” How many people did he have? Were Mayhew and Nolan the tip of the iceberg?
Paul said, “Where is it, Claire?”
“I have it. Hidden.”
“Where?”
Claire reached up and turned around the fake air freshener so she was out of view.
“Claire?”
“I’m leaving the house now. You are going to send me a photograph of Lydia every twenty minutes, and if I see that you’ve touched one hair on her head, I will upload the entire contents of the USB drive to YouTube.”
Paul scoffed. “You don’t know how to do that.”
“You don’t think I can walk into any copy store and find some pimply geek to do it for me?”
He didn’t answer. She couldn’t hear road noises anymore. He had stopped the car. He was pacing. She heard his shoes crunching on gravel. Was Lydia still in the trunk? She must be, because Paul had abducted Lydia for leverage, and killing her would take everything away.
Suddenly, Claire was struck by a thought. Why had Paul taken Lydia in the first place? If he was really watching the Dunwoody house, then he knew that Lydia had only entered the scene less than a day ago. Even without that, Claire was the one w
ho knew where the USB drive was. Claire was the one who could get it for him.
So, why hadn’t he taken Claire?
She had no doubt in her mind that under even the slightest threat of physical harm, she would’ve told Paul that Adam had the drive. But Paul hadn’t taken Claire. He had made the wrong choice. He never made the wrong choice.
“Listen.” He was trying to sound reasonable again. “I need the information on that drive. It’s important. For both of us. Not just for me.”
“Send me the first picture of Lydia, unharmed, and we’ll talk about it.”
“I could cut her into a thousand pieces before she dies.”
That voice. It was the same tone he’d used with Claire in the alley, the same sinister drawl she’d heard on the speakers before Paul could edit his voice into a stranger’s. Claire tasted her heart in her mouth, but she knew she could not show this man any fear.
She said, “You want me to go away with you.”
It was Paul’s turn to be silent.
She had found his weak spot, but not on purpose. Claire was just now seeing the motivation behind Paul’s wrong choice. As usual, the answer had been right in front of her all along. He kept saying that he loved her. He had hit Claire, but not with all of his strength. He had sent the men to break into the house during the funeral so Claire wouldn’t be there. He had made the wrong choice and taken Lydia because the right choice meant hurting Claire.
He might be able to punch his wife in the face, but he couldn’t torture her.
She said, “Promise me you didn’t participate in any of the movies.”
“Never.” His hope was as tangible as a piece of string between them. “I never hurt them. I promise you on my life.”
He sounded so persuasive, so sincere, that Claire might have believed him. But she had seen the uncut movies—the raw footage before Paul changed the sound and edited down the scenes and filtered the skin tones and distorted the voices and slyly altered blemishes so that the true identity of the masked man would remain unknown.