When the message is sent, it takes five minutes before I receive an affirmative response and provide the number for a landline that will forward the call to a burner phone in my possession.

I set a timer on my watch and return to the couch to watch the rest of 13 Going on 30, though I’m ready to gouge out my own eyes. I’m partway through Friends with Benefits when the alarm goes off and I return to my laptop to open the text-to-speech program. By the time the burner phone rings, my heart is hammering nearly as hard as when I attacked Cynthia in the parking garage.

I accept the call.

“This is Caron Berger.” His tone is smooth, calm. Deep and rich, not anything like his appearance.

I type my response.

“How can I be sure?” the computer-generated voice says in reply from my laptop.

“You can’t.”

“There is one way, Gabriel. Tell me your real last name.”

There’s a long pause on the line, the silence between us filled with Cynthia’s whimpering. “Kaplan,” he finally says.

“Tell me your brother’s name.”

“Elijah.” There’s no delay this time when he answers, but there is a drop in the pitch, a darkness in it. He’s irritated. Good.

“Do you want Cynthia Nordstrom back, Gabriel?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll meet me in ten days, alone. I will provide the address. If you attempt to track this number, Cynthia will no longer remain unharmed.”

“What do you want in return?”

“Abigail Ramos,” I reply. I don’t really give a shit about Abigail Ramos, I just know it’s a name he’ll recognize.

I hang up the phone.

And now I wait.

I watch the rest of Friends with Benefits as Cynthia whimpers and whines. I try to learn something from it, but honestly, it’s a fucking challenge. Really, I just want to finish up here. I’m leaving for the interviews the day after tomorrow and I took extra time off to “clear up some loose ends” before the trip, or at least that’s what I told Eli. But does it mean I want to stick around here longer than I have to? Not really.

I shouldn’t complain. The timing of this couldn’t be better. I’m a little nervous doing something this big without Samuel in the background, so heading out of town for a few days is wise. If I mess something up, I’ll know. I’ll be watching from a distance, and it’ll give me time and space to regroup. The thought lingers on the periphery that I could run, if I had to. I could disappear. But I know I can’t leave Eli behind, just as much as I know he wouldn’t leave with me if I asked.

…Shit.

That realization is like being hit in the face with Dick Piston’s fist.

Eli loves me, or he thinks he does. But would he give up everything to be with me? Would I want him to? Would I even deserve to ask? After all, I’ve got Cynthia here, tied to a chair, with the full intention of using her to get close enough to catch a ghost. I’m going to enjoy it too. I always do, always will. It’s who I am, and I’m not sure I can change that and still be me.

Maybe I can try. Maybe when I catch Gabriel for Eli, I can become someone else.

I’m flicking through these thoughts and worries when the alarm sounds from my laptop.

My adrenaline spikes. I rise from the couch with a little happy clap.

“This is going to be so great,” I say to Cynthia as she wriggles and cries in her chair.

I bring up the screen for the cameras aimed at another of my lairs, a small, rundown farmhouse set back in the woods away from any roads and neighbors. A Praetorian SUV parks on the long driveway a distance from the house and three bodyguards exit the vehicle, guns drawn. One of the men I recognize, the one from the restaurant. He and his colleagues fan out and stalk toward the building.

“I might be able to change once I catch him,” I say to Cynthia, finishing my earlier thoughts as I ready a phone I’ve labeled with a red number four. “But today is not that day.”

The men creep closer to the house, checking a vehicle I’ve left near the entrance as a decoy. There’s nothing there for them to find aside from some fake papers belonging to another alias I’ve created.

They continue on to the house.

One man heads to the back, checking the windows as he goes. The other two creep up the front porch. The man from the restaurant turns the handle of the front door, slowly, carefully, then pushes it open. They enter at the same time as the bodyguard at the back.

I told him not to trace the phone. Caron and I aren’t off to a trusting start here.

When all three men are near the center of the house, I use Phone Four to detonate the hidden charges. The cameras surrounding the structure vibrate with the explosion. All I can see is fire and smoke and dust.

I text the burner phone I left with Cynthia’s bodyguard.

I told you not to track the phone. Now I’m owed a pound of flesh.

I watch the dust settling on the cameras and laugh. I’m having a blast. A blast, get it? I’m still giggling as I sit back in my chair and look toward Cynthia.

A pound of flesh.

I take Phone Four and open the web browser.

How much does a human hand weigh?

Average is 409.6 g or 0.9 lbs. Close enough.

I get up and head outside to the wood pile, returning a few moments later with the hatchet which I clean in the kitchen sink. I don’t want Caron’s crew thinking I won’t take care of my hostage. It astounds me, quite frankly, when I really stop and think about it. I have a hostage. I suppose it shouldn’t be all that different from taking someone like Tristan back to my house with the intention of never letting him go. But it is different. And at this stage, I need to go big and drive Caron out where I can catch him. I can’t leave that to the FBI. They’ve made a shitshow of hunting cults in the past, and the irony that he’s got a better shot at living through being caught by a serial killer than the feds is not lost on me.

I will catch Caron. I will bring him to Eli, and Eli can decide what he wants to do with his long-lost brother.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t punish Caron or anyone who’s helped build his empire on the backs of vulnerable women.

“They fucked up, Cynthia,” I say, my eyes locked to her wrist. She fights her bonds and screams into the unrelenting glue stuck to her mouth. The handle of the ax bounces against my palm. “I’m just taking what’s mine.”

My weight shifts to my back foot. My shoulders roll, my back twists. The ax swings in an arc over my head and comes down in a clean strike just above Cynthia’s wrist. Her hand flops to the floor, blood pattering like rain across the plastic sheets. Cynthia wails and screeches in distress.

I strap a belt around her forearm in a quick tourniquet before taking a recycling bag from the kitchen to pick up the severed hand like a dog shit. I bring it to the island next to my laptop. After double-checking the location privacy settings on my photos, I position the hand so it gives the viewer a middle finger, then I send the picture to the bodyguard with a simple message:

Send this to Caron. Fuck up again and I take her head. Ten days, we meet. Alone. Reply to confirm.

It’s less than a minute before I receive a reply.

Confirmed.

I destroy this phone.

Cynthia is still wailing, her cries weakening as her blood leaks across the floor with the galloping beat of her heart. And here’s that moment, that magical moment, distilled to its purest essence. The moment when life and death cling to a choice, where all the possibilities fit in the palm of my hand. I could wrap up Cynthia’s stump and apply a better tourniquet to keep her alive. I could let the belt go, let her bleed out, maybe even take her second hand to hasten the process.

Honestly though? As much as I’m enjoying myself, I also just want to go home. I want to go on this trip to Ogden and come home and catch Caron and live. Be a student. Be a girlfriend. Be loved. Give love, if I can. Maybe be someone different than I’ve ever been, at least for a little while.