The bike was the most important part of the plan, and the plan was working.

He knew the girl wouldn't be happy in those first few hours in the house. He remembered how the other girl had cried for hours, begging him to let her leave until Roger felt ready to do it, to just drive back into town and shove her out the van door. He hated to listen to her crying. But he remembered something his father had told him, part of that long talk they'd had right before his dad died.

"Roger," he had said, "people don't understand the things we men do anymore. No one's going to feel sorry for you."

And Roger thought he knew what he meant. What he was doing looked bad to everybody else, and if he let the girl go, let her go back to town and her life, she would tell and there would be h.e.l.l to pay.

So he kept the first girl, and he would keep this one too.

When he brought the new girl back to the house, she didn't cry at first because she was still a little out of it from the punches. He parked the van at the rear of the house and carried her upstairs to his bedroom. He couldn't bring himself to sleep in the room where his parents slept, but he had made the concession of moving their bed-their big bed-down the hall to his room so that he and his wife could share it like married couples did. And that was the bed he placed the new girl on while he waited for her to come around.

She stirred and groaned a little bit. She still wore her biking clothes, spandex shorts and top and black shoes. Roger decided to loosen the tape around her ankles, and then he took the tape off of her mouth. It made a ripping noise and left a nasty red stripe across her soft, freckled skin. Roger felt bad because he had hurt her, and she already had a bruise forming on her cheek where his fists landed.

He studied her face carefully. She had a small nose and dark eyebrows, and in the sunlight that came through the bedroom windows, he saw small, almost invisible hairs along her jaw line. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a tight ponytail, although some of the strands were coming loose, and he reached out to smooth them back behind her ear when she started moaning some more. Her eyes fluttered open, and Roger pulled his hand back like he'd touched a hot stove.

Her eyes darted around the room, then settled on Roger.

"What the...what are you doing? f.u.c.k you, you creep."

She thrashed like a beached fish. Her movements were awkward because her hands were still tied, but she kicked wildly with her newly freed legs, and one of her kicks caught Roger in the stomach, knocking the air out of him and making him gasp. She kept thrashing and cursing, and even though there were no neighbors within a mile, Roger didn't like the noise and the awful words she was saying, so he jumped forward, using his body weight to pin her legs and stop the movement. His right hand easily covered her mouth. It covered half of her face, and the cursing and the thrashing stopped.

He held his hand in place, waiting.

The girl's face was pressed against the mattress, and he could only see one side of her. Her left eye widened, the brown iris rolling to the side to get a better look at Roger, and the fear he saw there made her look like a spooked animal.

"Stop it," Roger said. "Stop it, and I won't hurt you."

She moaned again, like she wanted to say something, but he didn't trust her not to scream. Then he thought of something. He looked at his big hand and the little bit of her face that showed. He was covering her nose and mouth, and maybe, he thought, maybe she couldn't breathe, so he slipped his hand down a little, freeing her nose.

He heard the air whistling through her nostrils and thought her eye showed relief.

You almost blew it right there, you big dummy. You almost blew it again.

But then he didn't know what to do. He'd known what to do with the other girl. They had a routine. She was his wife. But now he had a new girl, and she was different, so obviously different, and he didn't know what they were supposed to do to get used to each other.

"If I take my hand away, will you scream?"

She nodded her head up and down, her eye still wide.

"Why do you want to do that?"

She started squirming again, wriggling around on the mattress like an eel.

"Be still," he said. He leaned against her, adding more weight. "Be still."

She stopped moving. Roger waited, then eased up.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.

The girl grunted.

"I only hit you in the van because you fought me. I had to do it."

She didn't make any more noise, but Roger could feel her hot breath against his hand.

"I'm going to take my hand away, but I want you to promise not to scream." He started to move his hand but stopped. "No one can hear you even if you do. There aren't any neighbors or anything."

He took his hand away slowly and wiped his palm against his pants leg.

The girl took in several deep mouthfuls of air. She turned her face away from the mattress so that Roger could see her straight on. She stared at him with something flashing in her eyes, a combination of fear and anger.

"Let me go," she said. "Let me go, you f.u.c.king creep."

"Don't talk to your husband that way."

Roger raised a hand to strike, but when he saw the girl flinch, he stopped himself. He held his big hand up in the air, the flat of the palm exposed, then let it drop to the bed.

He didn't want to hit her. He had already hit her more times than he ever hit the last girl. He needed to control himself. He had the plan. The plan had worked.

"My husband?" the girl said. It sounded to Roger like she spit when she spoke. "My husband? What in the name of G.o.d are you talking about? I wouldn't marry you if you were the only man on earth. Now let me out of here. Cut me loose and let me out of here."

Roger raised his index finger as a warning, and the girl stopped talking. It crossed his mind that he might have made a mistake, that maybe he should have taken the time to study the girl longer to see if she was the kind he would want to have as a wife. But he quickly chased that thought away. He knew this was the right girl. The clearing told him to go find her, and there she was, riding down the road. The plan wouldn't have worked so well if she wasn't meant to be the one to come and live with him. He knew it was her.

"You have to stay," Roger said. "You're going to live here, and we're going to take care of each other and not be alone, just like my mom and dad used to do. Just like the other girl used to before she got sick."

The new girl didn't say anything, but she narrowed her eyes and studied Roger as though he were a strange creature in a zoo. He wished he hadn't said anything about the last girl. He didn't know if it was right to mention her. It might scare the new girl too much, and the look on her face told him that it probably had.

"This is a good place to live," he said. "The house is nice, and there are woods, and I can go to town and get the groceries and the newspaper while you take care of things inside here."

The girl started shaking her head. Her lips quivered in a strange way, and Roger thought she was going to cry, just like the last girl had when he first brought her home. Roger hoped she wouldn't. He hated the crying most of all, even more than the times he had to hit them.

But the new girl wasn't crying. She started laughing. At first, it was just a series of low snorts, but then it spread through her body and became something deeper, something from her chest that came out loud and almost boisterous, the way she might laugh at a party or a comedy show.

It went on for a few minutes, the girl laughing and Roger watching. He felt his face turn red. When the girl calmed down, she looked at Roger again.

"You're serious, aren't you? You really want to keep me here."

"I won't hurt you," he said.

"Look, I can tell that you might be a little confused about some things." Her voice was lower, softer. It sounded warm and almost friendly. "Maybe you saw me and you thought I looked nice, but I'm not. And I can't come and live with you. I go to school, and I have friends and parents and a life of my own. Now if you just take me back to my bike and let me go, there doesn't have to be any trouble. I'll tell the police you didn't mean to hurt me-"

"The police?"

The girl stopped talking. She blinked her eyes a couple of times.

"Okay," she said. "I don't even have to tell the police. I'll just say I fell off my bike and hurt myself, and I'll pretend like I never met you..."

Roger shook his head. What she said sounded good and made sense, but he knew he couldn't do it. Dad was right-they would never understand. And like his mom used to say, I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. The girl would tell. She would tell just as soon as she could.

"You're staying," he said. "Here with me. As my wife."

Roger tried to sound firm, the way his dad used to sound when he gave orders around the house. When his dad talked, everybody listened.

And it seemed to work. The girl looked at him for a minute, and then she nodded her head as though she finally understood what was going on. Roger shifted his weight a little, easing up on her more. Maybe she'd come around quickly, he thought, just like the last one did. Maybe he just had to talk to her a little bit.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said.

Roger hadn't thought of that. He hadn't thought to offer her something to eat or something to drink. He had been so concerned with just getting her into the house and up the stairs that he hadn't thought about anything else she might need or want. He reminded himself that this was all new to her, that the last girl pretty much did what she wanted around the house because she'd lived there for so long, but this girl was new. h.e.l.l, she was still a guest, and his mom had always made a big point about the right way to treat guests. Roger couldn't remember exactly what he was supposed to do for guests since he hadn't had any in so many years, but he figured that letting a person go to the bathroom when they wanted had to be part of it.

"Okay," Roger said. "You can go."

"Where is it?"

"Here."

He leaned forward and took her by the arm, helping as much as pulling her to her feet. The girl grimaced and made a squeaking noise. He realized he'd pulled too hard.

"Sorry," he said, but he kept his hand on her arm and walked with her out of the bedroom and to the left toward the bathroom. He turned the light on for her when they arrived. It was bright, but the bathroom wasn't very clean. The sink was dirty, and Roger smelled a hint of pee in the air. Nothing had really been cleaned for weeks, maybe months. He thought about asking the new girl to start in the bathroom but decided to give her a day or so to get used to being there.

"My hands," she said.

"What?"

"I can't do this with my hands tied. You need to cut them loose or something."

"Oh."

Roger hesitated. The knife was in the bedroom, and he didn't want to leave the girl alone. But how far could she run with her hands tied? He'd hear her in the hallway moving around. He went and got the knife, moving as quickly as his big body would let him. When he came back to the bathroom, the girl was still there. She hadn't moved a muscle. Roger slit the tape that held her hands together at the wrists. He folded the knife and waited in the doorway.

"Excuse me," she said.

"What?"

She started to push the door shut with Roger still in the way. He held up his hand and stopped it.

"I do this alone," she said. "Unless you think this is what husbands and wives do together."

Roger didn't know what to say, but he did know that he could never remember his mother going to the bathroom with the door open. The last girl didn't either, except when she was sick. When she was sick, he had to help her to the bathroom, but he didn't stay and watch, so he let the new girl close the door.

Roger slipped the knife in his pocket and waited, staring at the closed door. Before long, he heard the faint, spritzing sound of her urine hitting the bowl and the water. The sound gave Roger a funny little shiver that started below his waist and spread to the rest of his body. He liked the sound and wanted to listen to more, but something told him he owed the girl privacy, that he didn't know her well enough to stand there and listen to something so private, so intimate.

"I'm going..." he said, but his voice didn't raise, and he let the thought trail off. He didn't want to disturb her, didn't want her to think he was hanging around outside the door, like a pervert. She had already called him a creep, and he didn't like that. He needed to back off a little and let her begin to feel at home.

He wandered down the hallway, back to the bedroom. It smelled in there, too. He hadn't changed the sheets since the last girl died, and the smell of sickness and death still clung to the room the way the smell of smoke lingered after a fire. The odor hit Roger in the face, turning his stomach a little. He hoped the new girl could take care of that, too. Change the sheets, clean the curtains and the rug, make the place nice again, like it used to be.

Roger went over to the window and lifted it open, hoping for some fresh air. It wouldn't do much, but it might help a little. He heard the toilet flush down the hall, the water running in the pipes. He had given her enough privacy now. They needed to get on with settling in. The girl didn't have any clothes, although Roger thought some of his mother's would fit. They fit the last girl no problem. But Roger also knew that women liked and needed special things, things he didn't have around the house. Hairbrushes, soaps and powders that he might have to buy at the store just to keep her happy for a while.

He crossed the room and was about to step out into the hallway when something smacked him in the face, knocking him backward and causing him to stumble and almost fall.

It was a sharp, concentrated pain, just above his left eye. He brought his hands to his head and felt around, and his fingers came away sticky and wet with blood. The blood ran down his face, stinging his eyes, and Roger couldn't see. The pain throbbed and distracted him, so it look him several moments to realize he had bigger problems than the cut on his head.

It had been the girl. The girl had hit him.

He wiped the blood away from his eyes. The plunger from the bathroom lay in the hallway, and Roger understood. She had used the rounded end of the wooden handle like a spear and jammed it into his face. She must have wanted to get him in the eye, to put his eye out and really hurt him, and Roger felt fortunate that she had missed.

He regained his balance and went into the hallway, looking for her.

But she wasn't there.

The girl was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Roger ran downstairs.

He didn't see her in the living room or the dining room, but the front door was still closed. He looked through the big picture window that gave a view of the small front yard and the long driveway that cut through the trees and out to the highway. He didn't see her out there either. He moved toward the back of the house and the kitchen, but stopped before going in. His eye had started bleeding again, and he had to wipe more blood away.

She might be in there, Roger thought, with a knife or a pan or who knows what else. He needed to be cautious.

He peered around the doorframe. He saw the cluttered counters, the big table. And the back door standing wide open.

"Oh, no. Oh, G.o.d."

Roger lumbered through the kitchen, his footsteps shaking the floors and rattling the dirty pots on the stovetop. He went outside and into the yard. The side doors of the van were open, but when he went over and looked inside, it was empty. She probably thought she could find the bike there, find the bike and ride away. But Roger had disposed of the bike already. It was part of the plan. He looked around the yard and off to the trees and woods. There was nowhere else she could have gone. She had to have run into the trees. And toward the clearing.

By the time Roger made it across the back yard and to the path into the woods, he was huffing and puffing. Sweat formed on his forehead, mingling with the blood and causing his cut to sting. He wiped the blood away and pushed on.

The tree cover had thinned with the progression of fall. As he moved down the path, the occasional branch took a swipe at his arms and legs. Roger looked ahead, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl. A couple of times he thought he saw her, the red shirt catching his eye somewhere in the distance then, just as quickly, fading from sight. He knew that eventually, if she continued on long enough, she would reach a county road or one of the new subdivisions that had recently been built, but those were several miles away, and the paths weren't straight or predictable. He didn't want her getting away and causing trouble for him, but he didn't want her ending up lost or hurt either. He cared about her. He wanted her back.

Roger came to a spot where the path forked. To the left, the more well-worn path, was the area he hunted, the places he would go with his father. The safe places, as he liked to think of them. And to the right, down the slightly overgrown and less frequently used path, lay the clearing. Roger stood at the fork, considering his options. He thought that it made sense, and seemed more likely, for the girl to take the easier path. Wouldn't she think that she would be more likely to find help down there, in the direction that it appeared more people had traveled? Roger took two steps that way and then stopped.

But...

If someone wanted to throw someone off their trail, wouldn't they take the unexpected path, the one that led to the right? Roger reversed his course and returned to the fork.

It was getting on toward evening. The tall trees blocked most of the declining sun, letting only filtered and indirect light reach the floor of the woods where Roger stood. He had been out there enough to know that the clearing didn't do much to him during the day, that only at night did he feel its full power. But standing there at the fork, and knowing that the new girl might be down there as well, caused the sweetly painful stirring between his legs, a more intense cousin to the feeling he had experienced standing outside the bathroom door just a few minutes earlier. The feeling spread through his blood, a cold current that made his skin p.r.i.c.kle, and if it had been dark, as it usually was when Roger came out here, he wouldn't have been surprised to see sparks leaping off of his skin like Fourth of July fireworks.

A low, animalistic grunting slipped through his teeth.