Breathe, Alex.
Owen had taken his hands off her, but the phantom pressure of his touch remained like a wound, an incision. He had been growing more and more animated as he spun his tale, regaling her with his dominance of the Procedure. His years of plotting, planning, scheming for his chance at the grand stage. He’d taken the last Fallows and twisted it into his own personal chessboard, brought them together only to kill them off one by one.
“I began to see that I didn’t need Fallows,” he said. “I didn’t need Benjamin Locke and his old-fashioned ideas of literary theory.”
Sensing her confusion, Owen smiled.
“You’re not the only one to have paid him a visit, Alex. Where do you think I finished my studies after I left Rock Mountain?”
Of course: Owen was the failed protégé Locke had mentioned to her and Keller. Alex scolded herself for not seeing it earlier.
“At first Dr. Locke was impressed with my obsession for Fallows. We spent nights discussing those old, tired theories about his identity. But something changed. I began to see that Locke would never go far enough. He refused to see the Procedure as legitimate scholarship, and of course he had no idea where the third manuscript was hidden. I moved on and came to this campus, and it was here that my plan took full shape.”
She shivered at the thought. But he was slipping, Alex knew. Because if he killed her and Keller, there were still others. Christian at the house. Sally. He’d never finish the game, clear the board.
Use it against him, Alex. Convince him to let you go.
“You’ll never win,” she said. “There are others, others who will know what you—”
Owen dismissed her with a shake of his head. “Good try, Professor. But I’ve come this far, what’s to stop me now? After all, the madman Aldiss is here, right here in this room.” Owen’s voice rose in pitch, became almost demure as he acted out the role of the victim. “That evil man, Detective Black. You should have seen what he did to her. You should have seen how ghastly it was. And I tried to stop him. I tried so hard . . .”
He shook his head, his shoulders slumping just slightly. And as they did, when he dropped the light a fraction of an inch, Alex glanced over the nurse’s shoulder at Aldiss and saw two things.
First, the professor’s eyes were open.
And he had freed his right hand.