Page 8 of Boardroom Mask

The radiator.

My own breathing, loud and wrong. His breathing, louder and worse.

At some point, my eyes fall to the side. I saw a sock on the floor by the door. Just one, gray with a pink toe. I’d been looking for its match all week. I spotted it from the bed while he was on top of me and I thought, with perfect clarity,Oh, there it is.

Then nothing. Gaps. Time folded over itself and swallowed the rest.

I let it all go and I locked the door behind it.

I might’ve stayed in that memory forever, if it weren’t for one sentence that drags me back. A single sentence, three little words, whispered—no, rasped—no,purredin my ear, thedarkest purr I’ve ever heard. It’s bitter chocolate and glinting knife edges; it’s broken streetlights and starless nights; it’s twisted and liquid and crooning and wrong, so wrong, because in one word, he opens all my locks and slides back all my deadbolts and unhooks all my chains and throws open all my doors, all of them, every last one of them, so that The Fear I’ve spent five years running from can take one step out into reality, look around, and grin its wicked, wicked grin.

The man in the darkness with his hand over my mouth puts his lips to my ear and whispers, “Hello, little fox.”

4

JILLIAN

“Words like violence / Break the silence / Come crashing in / Into my little world”

— “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode

The Fear is everywhere. It’s in my throat, in my chest, behind my eyes, crawling and sliding and oozing over every exposed inch of skin.

But I’m still breathing.

And if I’m still breathing, I can think.

So I think. I stop thrashing and biting at leather. I go still against the wall and I force my brain to do what it does best: Observe. Analyze. Ask questions.

I am a reporter. This is what I do.

I breathe in through my nose, and when I exhale, I take The Fear and I shove it back into its room and I slam the door.

The intruder’s hand is still over my mouth. I wait, and after a few seconds, he eases the pressure just enough for me to speak.

“Who are you?” I ask through a throat shredded raw by all the screams I didn’t let out.

Nothing.

“What do you want?”

Nothing.

Acting on an inkling of an urge, I toss out, “Is this about the Lazarev story?”

He doesn’t answer any of it. Instead, he says, “Kneel.”

“What?”

“On the ground. Face the wall. Hands behind your head.”

I don’t move.

“We’re going to talk,” he assures me in that raspy purr. “But not like this. Kneel, Ms. Pierce. You can do it on your own, or I can make you. The choice is ultimately yours. But one way or another, youwillkneel.”

My brain is running on three tracks at once. Track one: He knows about the Lazarevs. Well, to be specific, he didn’t deny it, but neither did he react at all, which is its own kind of answer. I don’t know exactly what to make of that yet, but I file it away for the time being.

Track two: He called me by my name, which means he knows me, or knowsofme, or has been watching me long enough to learn that little detail. None of those options are good. I do true crime for a living, so I don’t exactly seek it out as entertainmentin my spare time. My day job is so full of dark shit that I just don’t have much of an appetite for it once night falls. But other people do, of course—my best friend Rae being one of them—so, through her, I know enough about the psychology of intruders to understand that obsession is a dangerous, dangerous thing.