Deeper Than the Dead

89

He wanted control. He needed a plan. None of this had been a plan. All of it was going wrong.

He would never have chosen the teacher as a victim. She would fight. She had. Now his nose was broken and his mouth was bleeding. He wouldn’t be able to hide that.

He hadn’t been able to subdue her in his usual way. The deviation from routine would lead to mistakes. It already had. He needed to get the necklace, first and foremost, but because she had fought him and it had taken so much more effort to control her, he had forgotten about the damn thing.

Where was it? In her house? Who would find it? He couldn’t know that she hadn’t told someone about it already. But that wouldn’t have mattered if he had recovered it. Now what would he do? He couldn’t go back there.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He had been raised to always have a plan, to keep an orderly mind. These principles had been drilled into him, beaten into him, day after day after day. He always had a plan, and he always took his time. And he never made a mistake.

Everything about this clusterfuck was a mistake: the teacher and the boy.

The boy.

What the hell could he do about the boy?

Everything had been under control. Every component of his life had been in its assigned compartment. Nothing overlapped.

What the hell would he do about the boy?

The car was going slowly now. He would stop soon, Anne suspected. Time would run out. She wondered if Vince would have stopped by the house, or if he would have been too exhausted after the ordeal at the sheriff’s office. The difference would be either people looking for her or no one missing her.

Where would they look? How would they find her?

Half-buried in the ground?

She thought about dinner, about the Peter Crane who smiled and laughed with his son. So charming, so easy to be with. She thought of him stopping to come to her rescue when she thought Frank Farman might hurt her. How could he do that, then turn around and do this? How could that man be this monster?

The car slowed again and turned from a smooth road to a rougher one. He would stop soon. He would try to kill her. He had all the control.

She needed a plan.