Page 107 of Locke 2

There was no longer any sound at all but that of my breaths leaving my body in quick intervals.

Then I sensed it again. That presence. I turned my head, and my entire body went numb as I looked at the figure at my window. Only this time he didn’t use the light. He just stood there. Watching me. His face was blank and unrecognisable. This was not the handsome doctor that charmed me and made me feel crazy for not wanting him.

I knew in that very instant that I had found him.

He was the man on Lenny’s wall.

He was the man that looked into his window.

His voice sounded out, and it sounded dead. “I found your friend.”

I didn’t speak, didn’t blink. I just stared at him, feeling more and more helpless.

“It didn’t end well for him.”

I thought of the gunshot, and now my stomach began to churn.

He continued, unperturbed. “It won’t end well for you, either, but I can give you a head start—”

Before he even finished, I stuck the key into the ignition and turned it. My heart fell when nothing happened. What the fuck had he done to the truck? I tried again and again, but the car was dead.

“I can turn around, close my eyes, and you can run,” he continued, like I didn’t just try and bolt. “I carry a stopwatch. You might smash the old record. That would be fun.”

I grabbed the phone and turned it on. I tried to call 911, but nothing happened. My fingers shook as I repeatedly called to no avail.

“If you don’t want to play, that’s fine,” he continued. “It just means I’ll be pulling you out of that car and we’ll be playing a different sort of game.”

I felt dizzy and faint. I knew these feelings well. But you never got used to it. You never made friends with fear.

“Are you going to run?” he asked. “Or are you going to continue to hide in that car, waiting for someone to save you?”

It was cliche, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Why are you doing this, Nick?”

“Why does anyone do anything?” he returned, coldly. “We are who we are, Kari.”

“Were you born a monster?” I genuinely wondered as I looked at him. My hand gripped the handle of the knife so tightly, my muscles ached. “Or did someone make you that way? Was it your father?”

He smiled, but like his voice, it just looked wrong. “My father taught me how to build shelters and catch fish. More than that, he taught me how to hunt. But he didn’t hunt for sport. Hehunted to eat. You’d be surprised how challenging a difference like that can be between a father and son.”

I thought of the photos on the wall of his clinic. Happy photos when he was a child, his father grinning ear to ear in front of fires and rivers.

Then I thought of the photo of Nick’s graduation, and the empty look on his father’s face. I misread it as cold. Perhaps he was terrified of his son, or aware of what he was.

“Where is Lenny?” I asked. I wanted to sound furious and demanding. To let him know I was aware of what he had done. But I couldn’t help the fear that clogged my throat. The sadness that enveloped my being at the idea of that little boy being hunted down for sport.

Nick’s face filled with sick curiosity. “Is that what you’d rather play?”

“I don’t want to play anything.”

“You have to play,” he said, determinedly. “One option leaves you running in the forest, the other hiding in this truck, and the third…the third is a one-way ticket to your creator, but the payoff is knowing where he is.” He took a step closer, his face nearly pressing against the glass as he peered at me ominously. “How bad do you want to know, Kari?”

All his options led to my death. I kept looking around, but no one was there. He just said he’d gotten to Jem, and that was my fucking fault. I did this, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to get into this truck if I didn’t move. If I ran, he was going to find me. If he took me to Lenny, though…would it offer me comfort knowing what happened to him?

How did I want to go?

Running, hiding, or knowing where Lenny was?

This man was sick. He stared at me with such excitement in his eyes, I wanted to use the knife on him just to know he could bleed.

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