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agreeable, cooperative—but not overly friendly, or he would sniff out the lie.
    He was perceptive, not easily deceived. He would know she had to be angry and scared. There was no need to conceal those feelings completely, even assuming she could. But she needed to tone them down, feign a comfort level she hadn’t achieved, and perhaps soothe his own anxieties also.
    “Very good,” he said finally. She heard the crinkle of folding paper. “The letter, I mean. You were smart not to try anything clever. I would have used the Ultron on you for sure. Or done something worse.”
    Proper response—subdued or combative? She chose a middle course, hoping to distract him while he slipped the letter in the envelope. She didn’t want him to notice her pitiful SOS.
    “You really don’t have to keep emphasizing your control over me,” she said mildly. “It isn’t necessary.”
    “Isn’t it? I take it, then, that my control is understood.”
    Acknowledge his power—a subtle compliment to him. “You’ve got the stun gun.”
    “I’ve got more than that.” The chair scraped the floor. Two quick footsteps. She felt him near her. “Hold out your hand.”
    Hesitantly she obeyed. Touched something smooth and cylindrical. The barrel of a handgun.
    “It’s a nine-millimeter.” He pulled the weapon away. “Fully loaded. I can kill you at any time, Doc. I can put a bullet in your heart”—click of a safety’s release—“or in your brain.”
    “I told you, it’s not necessary—”
    She tasted metal. The muzzle of the gun, thrust between her teeth, blocking speech.
    “Bang,” he whispered.
    Breath stopped, she sat rigidly, hands gripping the edges of the chair.
    If he pulled the trigger, she would never even know it. That thought scared her worst of all.
    “I don’t like you lecturing me on what is or is not necessary.” Fury clawed at the polished smoothness of his voice, shredding it at the edges. “And I don’t need to hear any of that crap about ‘control.’ I’m simply trying to establish guidelines for our relationship. Rules for you to live by. Literally.”
    The gun withdrew. The pounding violence in her ears was the racket of her own heart.
    “From now on, I—and I alone—will determine what’s necessary and appropriate. That’s acceptable to you, isn’t it, Doc? Or would you prefer to suck my pistol till it comes?”
    The ugly sexual imagery, the explicit connection drawn between violence and intimacy, frightened her worse than the gun itself.
    Show contrition now. No trace of defiance, nothing to set him off. “I’m sorry ... really ... if I said the wrong thing.”
    “That’s better.”
    He sat down again. She fought to suppress the tremors shivering through her body. The dampness on the inside of the blindfold was a sprinkle of tears.
    “I honestly don’t mean to hurt you.” He spoke in a gentler tone. “I will if I have to, but that’s not the way I want things to work between us. See, I have plans for you.”
    His pause solicited a question. She obliged. “What plans?”
    He didn’t answer directly. “I have a problem, Doc.”
    This time she waited, asking nothing.
    “A problem,” he said again, gently. “I guess you’d call it a compulsion. I’ve yielded to it more than once.”
    “What sort of compulsion?”
    “I kill people. Women. I kill women.”
    Don’t lose it now. Come up with a response. Something noncommittal, until you know what he wants you to say.
    Erin held her face rigidly composed. “I see.”
    “Three women so far. Three over a period of fifteen years.” The chair creaked as he leaned forward. “You probably think I enjoy it. That violence gratifies some twisted desire of mine. But it’s not true. I don’t kill for fun. I get no pleasure from what I do. It makes me sick.”
    His voice dropped with each of the last four words, ending in a whisper.
    “I do it”—he spoke so softly she had to strain to hear—“because I can’t stop myself.