Chapter 72

HE WAS SMILING. I could hear it in his voice.

“What’s your decision?” he asked.

“When I find you,” I said, “I’m going to shoot you in the leg. You deserve to have all the pain you’ve caused to others inflicted back on you. I’m going to start there, and I’m going to continue shooting until you’re just a pile of broken bones and bloodied flesh.”

“You have a very graphic mind,” he said. “I enjoy hearing your little violent fantasies. I really do. I have my own ones. You’ve been able to see some of them.”

“Lucky me,” I said, curling on the ground, holding the phone to my ear.

“You sound cold,” he said. “I spent a lot of my time in prison feeling cold. I know you’re out there in the wind and rain hunting me. With every layer I strip from you, you’re going to feel that icy chill. Brand-new skin exposed to the air. It’s kind of exhilarating, isn’t it? Those people, Eloise and Gary Jansen, they’re another layer I’ve taken from you.”

“You keep their names out of your filthy mouth,” I snarled.

“Eloise told me some things about you,” Regan said. Wherever he was, it was dead quiet. “She didn’t take much prodding to remember you among her collection of needful children. You were her dark-hearted one. Her wild bird. She had to really work on you. You trusted no one.”

I closed my eyes and listened, remembering.

“She said she could tell you’d been in the system a long time. When she tried to hug you, you backed away. You ate furiously. She caught you hoarding snacks in your room. She said you were utterly without warmth toward the smaller children they were caring for at the time. You didn’t find them cute or entertaining. You’d probably been around so many of them in your life, right? What’s another snotty-nosed brat who no one wants?”

He was really enjoying this. I held the phone against my ear, trying to catch my warm breath and filter it back against my face with the collar of my coat. My leg was throbbing. I remembered Eloise trying to show me how to crochet, sitting on the couch, colorful balls of yarn all around her. When she’d tried to take my fingers, reposition them on the hook, I’d dropped everything and stormed away. I wished now I’d given her more of a chance.

“Eloise Jansen told me all these things about the child Harriet Blue,” Regan said. “She told me that you came around. That you eventually learned to trust them. She’d wanted to keep you longer, because she knew you had promise.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to listen but not being able to pull the phone away.

“I have those memories now. I even have a little picture of you that Eloise kept on the wall. The illusion you’ve held about yourself all these years is wrong, Harry. That layer is gone. The hope and the brightness and those warm moments with people like Eloise Jansen—I’ve taken them away.”

“How long am I going to have to listen to this?” I asked. “Listening to you talk makes me want to peel off my own face and eat it like a crepe.”

“You’re not enjoying this?”

“Not at all.”

“I am,” Regan said. “This is all about you, sure. But every time I take someone meaningful from you, I get all these beautiful things in return. It’s good work that I’m doing here, Harry. You’ll see.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I’m glad you’re happy. You enjoy those things while you can. I’m going to take them back from you when I kill you. It’ll be like a trip down memory lane. Me remembering, you screaming in pain.”

He laughed. I wiped my running nose on my sleeve.

“The Sydney police tried to set me up,” Regan said. “They used your mother as bait.”

“Oh?” I said.

“They really have no idea, do they?” he said. “She was just a vessel for you. I’m not interested in her. I want to take the people who you really value, the ones you think you need.”

“You really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” I said. “You’re such a versatile killer. Some people you strangle and stab. Others you bore to death.”

“Our mothers were the same,” Regan mused. He was almost talking to himself now. “Just empty shells.”

I paused. The exhaustion was pulling away my anger. I needed to start listening. He wasn’t just talking. He was trying to draw me into his mind.

“Did you love her?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He sounded comfortable. Relaxed. Perhaps the kill had tired him. “I’ve loved in my life. You know that I have.”

“My brother,” I said.

“Yes,” he admitted. “That was the first time. I was seventeen. I’d never felt it before. Those last few days with my mother were probably the closest I ever got. She’d walk me up to the lighthouse and we’d stand together, and I’d try to love her. So close, but…” He trailed off. I pressed the phone hard against my ear.

A lighthouse, I thought. I have to remember that.

“Where do I go next?” I asked him. “You’re taking me somewhere that’s important to you, aren’t you? You said I’d understand you when we met. When will this end, Regan? Just tell me.”

“This is about me, Harry,” he said. “But it’s also about you.” There was an odd pause, the phone going silent, as though he’d taken it away from his mouth and I couldn’t hear his breathing any longer. When he returned, his voice had gone up an octave. Excited.

“Things may be moving faster than I’d planned,” he said.