“You fucker!” Emma Green yells and pulls the trigger.

His body goes tight for a second before going completely loose. There’s a low crackling sound of volts being transferred. Tiny lights are dancing in front of my vision that turn out to be small pieces of paper with serial numbers on them too fuzzy to read. Cooper’s hands slip off my throat and he falls on me, his face pressing hard against my face, the full weight of his body on me. I push him off to the side and he rolls onto his back. There are two thin wires leading from his open mouth to the Taser in Emma’s hand. Her finger is still on the trigger and Cooper is jerking on the floor until she lets go.

I wipe at my eyes but things still remain blurry. I crawl away and get to my knees and when I stand up I walk sideways and crash into the wall then back down to the floor. Emma puts the Taser down and picks up the crowbar. Her hands are still tied together, but now they’re in front of her. She must have hooked her feet up and through.

“Who are you?” she asks. “Who the fuck are you?”

I hold my hands over my head, ready to defend myself if she starts swinging, not sure that I’m going to be able to. “Your father, he, he sent me to, to find you,” I say.

“You look familiar.”

“That’s, that’s because . . .”

“You ran into me last year. What the hell? Have you come here to hurt me?”

“No, no, of course not,” I say, trying to get my breathing under control.

Cooper starts gagging. He’s trying to move his arms but he can’t. His mouth is open and his tongue is swelling up. There’s a bulge growing in his throat. His face is turning purple and he can’t breathe. He’s trying to reach his mouth but he can’t.

“Your father hired me,” I tell her. Sweat is mixing with the blood from my scalp and whatever fluid was in that jar. I keep wiping it from my eyes. It stings like hell. “He thought that I owed it to you and to him to find you. That’s why, why, I took on the case.”

“Stay where you are,” she says. “Stay on the floor. If you try to move I’ll start swinging. I’m not kidding.”

“What about him?” I ask, nodding toward Cooper. His face is dark purple now.

“Was he going to kill me?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Then let him die,” she says.

“You don’t want that,” I say. “You do now, but soon you’ll regret it. Trust me.” I push myself up from the floor. I wipe at my eyes and suck in some deeper breaths. I try to move over to Cooper. My knee isn’t bending again and hurts to take any weight.

“Stay where you are,” she tells me.

“He’ll die.”

“If you move one muscle I’ll put this through your skull. You got a phone?”

“No.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “Everybody these days has a phone.”

“Yeah? Where’s yours?” I ask.

“I don’t know. He took it from me.”

I wipe the bottom of my shirt over my face. My vision is starting to clear. Cooper is making gagging noises.

“Why do you want to help him so much?” she asks.

“The police are on their way, but they’re still five or ten minutes away, and honestly I’m just as happy as you are to stand here and watch him die. But he has information I need. There’s another woman I’m looking for. Another girl that he hurt.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You have to trust me.”

“I’m never trusting anybody again.”

I reach into my pocket. I find the photograph Donovan Green gave me the day I got out of jail.

“Your dad gave me this,” I tell her, and I show it to her. “He said the day this was taken you turned ten. He said all you wanted for your birthday was a puppy and when they didn’t get one for you, you ran away. He told me they found you two blocks away at the park on the merry-go-round trying to talk to the birds in the trees and make friends with them. They were so relieved you were okay and when they were about to tell you off, you talked your way out of it. Your dad said you told them you ran away because you felt bad about having wanted so much from them, and not because you hadn’t gotten it, and that you ran away because you were a bad girl. He knew you were making it up, but the way you said it was believable and made them feel bad and they couldn’t bring themselves to tell you off. He said you’ve always been able to talk your way into getting what you want from him. Put down the crowbar, Emma, and let me help him.”

“He told you all that?”

I nod.

She doesn’t put down the crowbar, but she nods toward Cooper. “Help him,” she says. “Ask him what you need to.”

I move over to Cooper and crouch down next to him.

“Calm down,” I tell him.

He doesn’t. He isn’t moving much, mostly just shudders, but I need him to stay perfectly still.

“Stop struggling or you’re going to die. Now, this is going to hurt but at least you’ll live. You got that?”

He stops moving.

I take the pen off the crossword book and snap it in half, giving me a plastic tube.

“What are you doing to him?” Emma asks.

“I’m going to save his life. You know what I’m about to do?” I ask Cooper.

His eyes tell me that he gets it. I pick up a piece of glass from the broken jar, put my hand on his forehead and push his head against the floor to keep him still, then drag the glass down his throat, between two little ridges. He starts struggling again. His face is covered in sweat. When the cut is big enough, I jam the tube into the wound.

He starts breathing, air going through the pen.

Sirens finally start sounding in the distance.

“The police are here,” I tell her. “Go and find some clothes. I’ll wait with him.”

Emma leaves the room. Cooper stays where he is. His skin is returning from the purple color back to normal.

“You remember Natalie Flowers?” I ask him.

He finds the strength to nod.

“Do you know where she is?”

He shakes his head.

“Any idea at all?”

He shakes his head again.

“If you knew, would you tell me?”

Another shake of the head.

“You sent her down a path, you know that, right?”

He nods.

“People are dying because of her, because of what you did to her. You’re a piece of garbage, you know that, right? The rest of the world is going to know it too because you were kind enough to take the photos to prove it. They’re going to know that you’re the worst kind of rapist. You know, I’ve been in jail, I know what it’s like, but for you, well, there’s a special place in jail for you. My experience in jail is going to look like a vacation compared to yours. Help me with Natalie, and maybe I’ll see what I can do. Maybe you don’t have to spend every day sitting on a bag of ice to keep down the swelling.”

He lifts his hand slightly and signals that he wants to write something. Every breath he makes is drawn in and out of the pen, accompanied by a hollow whistling sound. I find the nib and plastic spine that came out of the broken pen and hand it to him, along with the crossword book. He tilts it toward him and writes, then puts down the pen. I take the book back off him.

He’s written Fuck You in the margin. I look down at him, and he grins. Then he reaches to the plastic tube and pulls it out.

The smile stays on his face for ten seconds. He’s controlling the situation, controlling his fate, controlling the outcome. He’s avoiding jail, avoiding the responsibility, avoiding the media circus. He prefers death to the humiliation he’ll have to face with his peers. His thoughts are very clear in his eyes. He’s happy with the decision he’s made. Then that smile flickers around the edges. He begins to turn purple again, sweat is running down his forehead. He’s beating the system, but he’s not looking as happy with his decision anymore. Twenty seconds into it and there is no longer any hint of a smile. He begins fumbling with the plastic tube. He lifts it up to his throat. He gets the tip of it against the cut but can’t get it in there, there’s too much blood and he can’t get the angle right. It keeps slipping around the edges of the wound and also in his fingertips. He tries to widen the hole with his finger, but in the process he drops the tube. It rolls over the floor toward me.