He slams to the ground, and she chokes him, her legs now binding his throat.
“I like choking men th
e same way you like choking women,” she hisses, her tone so dark and sinister that it makes me sick, confirming my worst fears. “But I don’t prey on those weaker than me. I don’t prey on the innocent.”
She releases him and flips back to her feet with the same ridiculous, almost unnatural speed. Her words slowly sink in, and confusion rattles through me at their meaning.
Revenge killer. Leonard said it was a revenge killer.
Kinship.
All the little pieces try to add up.
Plemmons coughs, strangling on the air that enters his lungs. “Who…are…you?” he asks through labored breaths.
Her smile deepens. “I’m the girl who takes on the darkest of men. Men who’ve done things dark and twisted to the weak. Men who preyed on the innocent. Men who thought they killed me when I was weak. Just like the women you’ve killed.”
She crouches near his head, as he flops around on his back, still clutching his neck. It’s an act. He’s a horrible actor. Damn it! He’s faking it!
I try to warn her, finally choosing a side, but the words are drowned by the layers of the gag and the steady stream of music.
She brings the knife to his cheek, running the back of the blade against it. He stops struggling, going perfectly still.
“You’re like me,” he says, more surprise in his tone that fear or malice.
“No,” she says quietly. “I’m so much worse and better than you. I’m the thing the monsters in the dark fear. And now I’m even the Boogeyman’s nightmare.”
She steps away, and he rolls to his feet. When he’s facing her, she winks—fucking winks—at him. She’s enjoying every second of this.
She’s doing what she promised; she’s stripping away his pride and power, shattering the immortal feeling of being untouchable he had.
He grabs a lamp, chunking it at her head. As she ducks it, laughing, he picks up the end table, and throws it at her.
She dodges it, using that speed she has to her advantage. It’s like she wanted this to happen.
“You can’t even get it up like a real man,” she goads, grinning when his nostrils flare and fury creases all his features. “You need to cut women up, watch them bleed, just to get a good boner. You’re weak,” she says, walking across the room. “I shouldn’t even bother with you. The men I kill are strong, powerful men who can fuck a woman without forcing her. They only rape when they feel a woman needs to be put in her place.”
She’s saying all the right things to provoke him, to tear away the façade he’s built, and emasculate him. She’s so good at profiling because she’s studied it. She’s learned how to demean and debase all her victims.
The way they debased her.
She’s a victim. Or, at least, she was.
Her words add up, telling the story she’s yet to lay bare.
“You know what I take from them?” she asks, letting her eyes drop to his lap before looking back up to his face. My stomach roils. I know what she takes. “I take everything,” she says at last. “They have more to give.”
She turns, putting her back to him, acting as though he has no power over her, showing him he’s no threat. The gun is lying in front of the closet doors, but he hasn’t gone for it again.
It’d be too weak to go for the gun.
She’s playing him too well.
She’s playing a man who has played the world.
And she’s winning.
He lunges for her, ready to prove himself, and she spins, the knife at her waist as she faces him. He runs right into it, and I hold back the sounds, now worried about being heard.