The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Jo thinks her arm is broken. It happened on the beach. One moment she was looking for the keys, eyes down studying the sand, knowing it was pointless. Then Cyris was with her again. He was angry. Before when he hit her, when he manhandled her, that seemed tame in comparison to the beach. He struck her in the face with a closed fist. She tasted blood. He twisted her arm and she felt and heard something snap, and before she could scream he pushed her face-first into the sand.

That was the moment she was sure she was going to die. She was going to suffocate. Or he was going to drag her into the water. Where the hell was Charlie?

He hit her again. Hard. Right in the side of the head. Things got dark then, and she could feel herself being dragged by her broken arm, but the pain wasn’t there, and she wasn’t really there either, she had gone somewhere else, her mind leaving her body.

She came to again in the car. She was lying in the trunk. At least that’s what she thought. It smelled like a car, and she could hear the engine and the space she was confined in was bouncing around, and every now and then it would light up red as he put on the brake lights. When she went to scream, she couldn’t. Her mouth was taped closed. Her hands were still cuffed in front of her, but tape had been run up the length of her forearms, keeping them pinned together.

The car pulls over and goes dark. The door opens and closes, then the trunk is popped open. Cyris stands there looking down over her. He looks bad. Disfigured, almost. Burned. What the hell happened? He has a coil of rope over his shoulder. He has a black satchel in his hand. He reaches in and grabs her by the hair and pulls her out. It hurts more than her broken arm.

“Let’s go,” he says, and drags her until she can find her feet.

She’s at the pasture Charlie pointed out to her. In the distance are what he was calling Dalí’s trees. She doesn’t see why. There’s a wire fence and Cyris climbs over it then pulls her over.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “Your husband is on his way.”

They walk through the pasture-well, Cyris doing the walking and Jo is the one being pulled. She imagines this is what the girls went through the other night. She is petrified. So scared there’s every chance her heart will stop before they reach the trees. Last time Charlie came here he was trying to save a stranger, and he failed. Last time he had a tire iron and no shotgun. This time it’s all opposites. The only thing that hasn’t changed is Charlie-he’s the wrong person to be coming for her.

They reach the trees. Cyris switches on a flashlight. The trees look like they’ve been dragged from the set of some B-grade sci-fi movie, perhaps the same one she seems to be caught in. Everything is eerily silent, as if the sound guy came along earlier and packed the bugs and insects into containers and took them away.

There’s a clearing up ahead. He pushes her hard into a tree. “Move and I’ll cut your arms off,” he tells her. She believes him. She doesn’t move.

He wraps a piece of wire so it goes around her neck and around the tree. It’s tight. Any tighter and it’d cut off her air supply. Then he stands in front of her. He stares at her. He looks her up and down and she thinks he’s determining her worth. He hates her. He’s going to kill her. The best she can hope for is that he does it quick.

He steps forward, tugging at a roll of duct tape. He wraps pieces around her waist and arms, so she can’t move her hands anywhere. Then he disappears. He moves past the edge of the clearing. He moves into the darkness. He’s gone for five minutes. And then he comes back.

“Your husband is here,” he says.

She tries to beg him to leave them alone, but her words are muffled against the tape.

He steps behind the tree. The wire around her throat suddenly gets tighter. She can feel her eyes bulging out. She can’t breathe.

There is movement ahead. Charlie is sneaking through the trees. Suddenly he appears at the edge of the clearing. He sees her, and she knows that he knows it’s a trap, just as he knows if he doesn’t run forward to loosen the wire around her throat she’s going to die. He freezes. She doesn’t know what she would do in his situation, but she knows she wants him to help her.

“Hold on,” he says, and he runs forward, pointing the shotgun all around him as he does. There’s nothing to shoot at. He reaches her and tries pulling on the wire, but there’s no slack, and it only gets tighter when he pulls it outward. “Fuck,” he says, and he moves behind the tree. “Fuck,” he repeats, and she hears him putting down the shotgun to try and loosen the wire.

She knows how it’s going to go from here.

She suspects Charlie knows too.

The wire slackens off. She pulls in a deep breath. Then there’s a thud, followed by a bigger thud. She’s heard enough people getting hit in the head and falling over this week to know what’s just happened. She begins to cry.

Cyris drags Charlie out in front of her. He tosses the black satchel onto the ground. The material has taken on a plastic look and the zip has been gummed open. It’s been burned. He uses the rope he brought to secure Charlie’s ankles. Then he claps a set of handcuffs onto Charlie’s wrists. He throws the rope over one of the branches. He grabs it and pulls down. He goes about his work methodically and without delay.

Charlie’s feet are dragged into the air. Cyris keeps pulling on the rope. Charlie’s jacket falls over his head and hangs from his arms. The handcuffs stop it from coming off. His T-shirt bunches up around his chest.

Cyris moves to his satchel and a moment later a can of lighter fluid comes into view.

Oh, Jesus.

Jo struggles against the duct tape, against the wire, but it’s no good.

Cyris pops open the can and starts spraying it over Charlie.