I worked the blade up and down against the twine, felt it slice through, felt my wrists begin to spread apart. I kept slicing and watched Cody roll around at my feet.

The strands around my wrist suddenly separated and my wrists pulled free of one another.

I placed the knife on the counter and shook my hands in small circles for a full minute to get the circulation back.

I looked down at Cody on the floor as he held his ankle aloft, gripped his knee, and moaned, and I felt an exhaustion that had become all too common lately-a bitterness with what I did and what I’d become that had taken residence in my bone marrow like errant T cells.

I’d had hopes, it seemed, of becoming someone else at some point during my younger life. Hadn’t I? What kind of life was this-dealing with the Leonards and Cody Falks, breaking into homes and committing felonious assault, snapping the anklebones of human beings, however putrid those human beings might be?

Cody’s breath was coming in harsh sucking hisses as the shock wore off and the pain took hold.

I stepped over him and picked up the brightly colored sheets of paper he’d dropped on his way in. There were ten of them, all addressed to Cody, all written in a girlish scrawl.

All were signed Karen Nichols.

Cody,

At the club, you seem to love your body as much as I do. I watch you with those weights and the sweat beads on your skin and I think of running my tongue up the inside of your thighs. I wonder when you’re going to make good on your promises. That night in the parking lot, didn’t you see it in my eyes? Haven’t you ever been teased, Cody? Some women don’t want to be courted, they want to be taken. They want to be ground down and held down. They want you to shove yourself in, Cody, not slide. Don’t be gentle, asshole. You want it? Come take it.

Are you up for that, Cody?

Or is it all just talk?

Waiting,

Karen Nichols

The rest were more of the same-taunting, pleading, daring Cody to force himself on her.

Among the pages, I also found the note Karen had left on Cody’s car, the one I’d balled up and stuffed in his mouth. Cody had smoothed it out, kept it as a souvenir.

Cody looked up at me. There was blood in his mouth, and a broken tooth or two rattled when he spoke.

“See? She asked for it. Literally.”

I folded nine of the pages, put them in my jacket. I kept the tenth and the note I’d shoved in Cody’s mouth in my hand. I nodded.

“When did you and Karen finally have, ah, sex?”

“Last month. She sent me her new address. It’s in one of those letters.”

I cleared my throat. “The sex, Cody, was it good?”

He rolled his eyes back into his head for a moment. “It was mean. A good mean. The best mean I’ve had in a while.”

I wanted to get my gun from my glove box and just unload it into him. I wanted to see parts of him rip free of his bones.

I leaned back against the wall for a moment, closed my eyes. “Did she protest? Did she fight you?”

“Of course,” he said. “That was the game. She kept it up until I left. Even cried. She was a twisted sister, totally into the game. Just how I like it.”

I opened my eyes, but kept them on the far counter and fridge. I couldn’t look at Cody for a moment or two. I couldn’t.

“You held on to this note she left on your car, Cody.” I dangled it by my leg.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile through the blood and move his head on the floor in an approximation of a nod.

“Of course. That was the beginning of the game. First contact.”

“You notice anything different between the note and these letters?”

Now I looked directly at him. I forced myself to.

He said, “Nope. Should I have?”

I squatted by him and he turned his head to look up into my face.

“Yeah, Cody, you should have.”

“Why’s that?”

I held the letter in my left hand, the note in my right, and placed them in front of his eyes.

“Because the handwriting doesn’t match, Cody. It’s not even close.”

He tried to roll away from me, his eyes bulging with horror. He flinched violently as if I’d already hit him.

When I stood, he rolled again, flattened himself below the sink.

I stayed where I was, watched him try to burrow into the wood cabinet. Then I took the butcher knife and walked into the living room. I found a lamp with a long cord, and I cut the cord, came back into the kitchen, and tied Cody’s hands behind his back with it.

He said, “What’re you going to do?”

I said nothing. I yanked his arms back and tied off the end of the cord to the steel leg of his refrigerator. It was a small leg, and thin, but stronger than four Codys even after a day of rape and workout.

“Where’s my wallet, car keys, stuff like that?”

He tilted his head up at the cabinet above the oven, and I opened it, found all my personal belongings in there.

As I stuffed them in my pockets, Cody said, “You’re going to torture me.”

I shook my head. “I’m done hurting you, Cody.”

He pressed the back of his head into the refrigerator and closed his eyes.

“But I am going to make a phone call.”

Cody opened one eye.

“See, I know this guy…”

Cody turned his head, looked up at me.

“Well, I’ll tell you about him when I get back.”

“What?” Cody said. “No, tell me. What guy?”

I left him there and let myself out the sliding glass doors onto his porch. I left the yard through the tall wooden gate, then through Cody’s side yard and reached the front of the house. I picked up the morning Trib off the front steps, stood for a moment, and listened to the neighborhood around me. It was still. No one about. While my luck was holding, I decided to make the best of it. I walked to my Porsche, hopped inside, and drove up Cody’s driveway, stopping at the garage. Here, I was covered from prying eyes by Cody’s house to my right and the long line of thick oaks and poplars that formed the edge of Cody’s property line to my left.

I let myself into the garage through the door Bubba and I had left through last time, and used my cellular as I stood in the cool dark by Cody’s Audi.

“McGuire’s,” a man’s voice said.

“This Big Rich?”

“This is Big Rich.” The voice was wary now.

“Hey, Big Rich, it’s Patrick Kenzie. I’m looking for Sully.”

“Oh, hey, Patrick! What’s going on?”

“Same old.”

“I hear that, brother. Yeah, hang on, Sully’s in back.”

I waited a moment and then Martin Sullivan picked up the line in the back room of McGuire’s tavern.

“Sully.”

“What’s up, Sul?”

“Patrick. What’s shaking?”

“I got a live one for you.”

His voice darkened. “No shit? No doubts?”

“None whatsoever.”

“And someone’s tried to reason with him?”

“Uh-huh. Conversion seems out of the question.”

“Well, it’s rare,” Sully said. “That disease is like Ebola, man.”

“Yeah.”

“He waiting?”

“Yeah. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I got a pen.”

I gave him the address.

“Look, Sul, there are some extenuating circumstances here. Barely, but they exist.”

“So?”

“So don’t make the damage permanent, just severe.”

“All right.”

“Thanks, man.”

“No sweat. You be there?”

“I’ll be long gone,” I said.

“Thanks for the tip, brother. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe anybody anything, man.”

“Peace.” He hung up.

I found a roll of electrical tape on a shelf and then let myself back into the house through the other door in the garage, came out into a rec room, empty except for a Stair-Master in the center, a few curling bars on the floor. I walked through that and opened another door onto the kitchen, took two steps, and was standing over Cody Falk again.

“What guy?” he said immediately. “You said you knew a guy. Who are you talking about?”

I said, “Cody, this is very important.”