Page 27 of Peak Cruelty

Marlowe

H e closes the door, but I know he’s still standing there. Not moving. Not breathing normally. Just hovering on the other side, unable to decide whether to lock it or come back in and finish what he started.

I keep my gaze steady on the wall, my posture still. Let him wonder what I’m thinking. Let him weigh the cost of checking.

Eventually, he moves away. Quiet steps, no wasted motion. A man trying not to trip over his own aftermath.

I stay tied. I don’t struggle. I don’t test the knots for freedom. I test them for odds. They’re tighter this time. Less margin. He’s overcompensating.

That’s fine. Overcompensating men always underestimate.

Time passes. Not much. Enough. The door opens again. He’s changed shirts. Washed his hands. There’s a bottle of water in one of them. No tray. No talk. Just hydration.

He steps close enough to offer it, unscrews the cap as if this is a peace offering and not damage control. He watches the bottle like it’s holding a confession. Like he wants me to choke.

I don’t. I take it in sips. Small, quiet, steady.

When he sets it down, I speak first. “You missed a spot,” I say, nodding at the edge of his wrist. “Blood’s clingy like that. Check your nails later. That’s where it lives.”

He doesn’t answer, but something in him pauses, as though his system just flagged a warning he doesn’t have words for yet.

“I’m not being a smartass,” I add. “If someone helped me wrap a body, I’d want them to check my blind spots, too.”

Now he looks at me differently. Not softer—he doesn’t have soft—but sharper. Focused. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“Because I like breathing. And useful women die slower. Because you’re rattled, and it almost seems like you’ve never done this before.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a long breath in. I sense his frustration, but I don’t let it stop me. I double down.

“Your plan doesn’t seem very solid so far. All this ocean around us. Let it take care of your problem. Make it look as though he ended up there and disappeared. Did he go for a swim? Who knows? Your best bet is to let the tide take the evidence. The silence will take care of the rest.”

He doesn’t respond. Just stares, as though I’ve offered him too many answers at once and he doesn’t like how easily I gave them.

“Do you know how deep the ocean is?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s seven miles deep.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, but I don’t think he’s listening.

“You have killed a person before, haven’t you?” I shift in the chair. “I hate to ask—it’s just you don’t seem very good at it.”

That gets him. Not a smile, exactly, but the ghost of one. Then it’s gone.

I don’t lean into it. I don’t push. That’s how women die—pressing their luck because they think a man’s near-laughter means forgiveness. It doesn’t. It just means he hasn’t decided what to do with you yet.

He crosses his arms. Leans against the wall. Watching. Still measuring. “You’re not afraid of me.”

I look at him and keep my voice even. “Of course I am. I’m just better at hiding it than you are at earning it.”

He steps closer, trying read my expression—to find some tremor, some shift—but there’s nothing there. Not right now. That’s the trick. Stay still long enough and the threat has to move.

We sit in that for a long second. Nothing in the room moves except the air between us.

He doesn’t say a word when he finally turns to leave. Doesn’t check the straps again. Doesn’t glance back.

But I see it—the hesitation in his shoulders. Half a breath, maybe less. The part where his body wants to look and his pride won’t let it.

This time, he doesn’t wedge the chair under the knob.

And that?

That’s how it begins.