The Tenth Circle Read online

He held the boy at knifepoint, backing Jason up against a pine tree until he was kneeling, securing his arms and ankles behind him with duct tape so that he was effectively trussed. The whole time, Daniel kept thinking of what Laura had said about Dante-of Trixie’s soul trapped in that tree, with Jason’s body wrapped around it. That image was all he needed to give him the strength to subdue a seventeen-year-old athlete when Jason started fighting back.

  Jason struggled, pulling on the tape until his wrists and ankles were raw, while Daniel built a campfire. Finally, the boy sagged against the trunk and let his head fall forward. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Daniel took his knife and slipped it under the hem of Jason’s T-shirt. He dragged it up to the boy’s throat in one long line, cutting the fabric in half. “This,” he said.

  Daniel systematically shredded Jason’s clothing, until the kid was naked and shivering. He tossed the strips of fabric and denim into the flames.

  By then, Jason’s teeth were chattering. “How am I supposed to get home?”

  “What makes you think I’m going to let you?”

  Jason swallowed hard, his eyes on the knife Daniel still held in his hand. “How is she?” he whispered.

  Daniel felt the granite gate of restraint burst inside him. How could this bastard think he had the right to ask after Trixie? Leaning down, Daniel pressed the blade against Jason’s testicles. “Do you want to know what it’s like to bleed out? Do you really want to know how she felt?”

  “Please,” Jason begged, going pale. “Oh, Jesus, don’t.”

  Daniel pushed the slightest bit, until a line of blood welled up at the crease of Jason’s groin.

  “I didn’t do anything to her, I swear it,” Jason cried, trying to twist away from Daniel’s hand. “I didn’t. Stop. God. Please stop.”

  Daniel set his face an inch away from Jason’s. “Why should I? You didn’t.”

  In that moment between reason and rage, Trixie slipped into both of their minds. It was all Jason needed to break down, sobbing; it was all Daniel needed to remember himself. He looked down at his hand, holding the knife. He blinked at Jason. Then he shook his head to clear it.

  Daniel was not in the bush anymore, and this was no village corporation store he was robbing for booze or cash. He was a husband, he was a father. Instead of having something to prove, he had everything to lose.

  Lifting the blade, Daniel staggered to his feet. He hurled the knife the hundred feet it would take to land in the middle of the river and then walked back to Jason, who was fighting for breath. He took the boy’s car keys from his own pocket and wrapped them tight in the only morsel of mercy he had left. These, he wedged into Jason’s hand, still bound by duct tape.

  It was not compassion that led to Daniel’s change of heart, and it was not kindness. It was realizing that, against all odds, he had something in common with Jason Underhill. Like Daniel, Jason had learned the hard way that we are never the people we think we are. We are the ones we pretend, with all our hearts, we can’t become.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  4

  I t took Jason a half hour to saw through the duct tape with his keys. When he could pull his arms forward again, the blood burned as it circulated, a severe pain that overtook the numbness caused by the cold. He stumbled to his feet, running toward the spot where Stone had made him leave the truck, praying it was still there.

  The only clothes he had were in his hockey equipment bag, so he wound up dressing in a jersey and his padded pants. He kept expecting to be ambushed again at any moment. His hands shook so badly that it took four tries to get the key into the ignition.

  He drove to the police station, thinking only that there was no way he was going to let Trixie’s father get away with something like this. But as he pulled into the parking lot, he heard Daniel Stone’s voice in his head again: Tell anyone, he’d said, and I’ll kill you. Frankly, Jason could believe it. There had been something in the man’s eyes-something inhuman-that made Jason think he was capable of anything.

  He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t see the pedestrian walking across the parking lot. As Jason braked hard, the car lurched forward and stopped. Detective Bartholemew, the same man who’d arrested Jason, stood with one hand on the hood of his car, staring him down. And suddenly Jason remembered what the judge had said at the arraignment: If Jason had any contact whatsoever with Trixie Stone or her family, he’d be shipped off to the juvenile detention facility. He was already accused of rape. If he reported what had happened to the cops, would they even believe him? What if they confronted Daniel Stone-and he insisted it had been Jason who approached him?

  The detective walked to the driver’s side of the car. “Mr. Underhill,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “I…I thought I might be getting a flat,” he managed.

  The detective walked around the vehicle. “Doesn’t look that way.” He leaned closer to the car; Jason could see him doing a quick visual assessment. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  It was all right there, caught behind the fence of his teeth: He dragged me off, he tied me up, he threatened me. But Jason found himself shaking his head. “No, thanks,” he said. He put the car into gear and drove at snail speed out of the parking lot, aware of Bartholemew’s gaze following him.

  In that moment, Jason made the decision to tell no one what happened: not his buddies, not his parents, not his lawyer. Not the police. He was too damn scared that telling the truth, in this case, would severely backfire on him.

  He found himself wondering: Had Trixie felt that, too?

  The way drunks kept a bottle of gin hidden in the toilet tank, and addicts tucked an emergency hit in the hem of a threadbare old coat, Daniel kept a pad and a pen in his car. In the parking lot of the hospital, he sketched. Instead of his comic book hero, however, he started penciling his daughter. He drew her when she was only minutes old, rolled into a blanket like sushi. He drew her taking her first steps. He froze moments-the birthday when she made him spaghetti for breakfast; the school play where she fell off the stage into the audience; the high-rise hotel they visited, where they spent hours pushing all the elevator buttons to see if the floors looked any different.

  When his hand cramped so badly that he couldn’t sketch another line, Daniel gathered up the pictures and got out of the car, heading toward Trixie’s room.

  Shadows reached across the bed like the fingers of a giant. Trixie had fallen asleep again; in a chair beside her, Laura dozed too. For a moment he stared at the two of them. No question about it: Trixie had been cut from the same cloth as her mother. It was more than just their coloring: Sometimes she’d toss him a glance or an expression that reminded him of Laura years ago. He’d wondered if the reason he loved Trixie so damn much was that, through her, he got to fall in love with his wife all over again.

  He crouched down in front of Laura. The movement of the air against her skin made her stir, and her eyes opened and locked onto Daniel’s. For a fraction of a second, she started to smile, having forgotten where she was, and what had happened to her daughter, and what had gone wrong between the two of them. Daniel found his hands closing into fists, as if he could catch that moment before it disappeared entirely.

  She glanced over at Trixie, making sure she was still asleep. “Where were you?”

  Daniel certainly couldn’t tell her the truth. “Driving.”

  He took off his coat and began to lay the sketches he’d done over the pale green blanket on the hospital bed. There was Trixie sliding into his lap the day Daniel got the phone call about his mother’s death, asking, If everyone died, would the world just stop? Trixie holding a caterpillar, wondering whether it was a boy or a girl. Trixie pushing his hand away as he brushed a tear off her cheek, and saying, Don’t wipe off my feelings.

  “When did you do these?” Laura whispered.

  “Today.”

  “But there are so many…”