Page 73 of Return of the Spider

“Do I need to retape your ankles?” Soneji asked. “I mean, you’re not going to try to run, are you?”

“With my knees?” Bunny said and snorted. “After ten years of field hockey and nine dancing on platforms? You don’t have a cigarette by any chance, do you?”

“Your favorite kind, as a matter of fact,” Soneji said.

He retrieved a fresh pack of Winston menthols from his jacket and a lighter from a drawer by the sink. He opened the pack and slid a cigarette and an ashtray to her across the table, past an antique snow globe. He came around and lit the cigarette, which she held with trembling fingers.

Bunny took a drag, then exhaled, and seemed to swoon a bit. She gestured at the metal and glass snow globe with her cigarette. “That for me too?”

Soneji smiled as he went to the refrigerator. “I remember you collected them.”

He brought out bacon, eggs, and a package of ground coffee. “I’ll get the coffee going first. You look like you could use some.”

Bunny cocked her head, her eyes glassy but focused. “I remember you now.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. You’re that brainiac guy who used to come to the club and have me dance. Gary, right?”

“I’m flattered you remembered,” Soneji said, knowing that this changed things; sped up timelines, certainly. But he tried not to alter his tone of concern as he said, “How do you like your eggs?”

“Scrambled, like my brain,” she said, and laughed. “You said something about hair of the dog?”

Soneji smiled. “Let me get a pot brewing and I’ll show you what I’ve got on hand.”

Bunny took another deep drag off the cigarette. “That what this is all about? You want me to dance for you in private, Gary?”

“Maybe a little later,” he said, winking as he took the coffeepot off the stove and turned toward the sink to fill it.

Soneji heard her chair squeak and the hush of fabric rustling just before something heavy and hard smashed into the back of his head.

He lurched and heard glass shattering before his left cheek struck the counter edge. He landed on his back, his awareness swirling toward black.

CHAPTER

59

As gary soneji camearound, he heard the rear screen door slam shut.

He forced himself over onto his hands and knees, cutting his palms on the shattered glass of the snow globe. More blood dripped from a gash on his left cheek.

His head was pounding, a sound like waves crashing.

“Help!” he heard Bunny scream outside. “Help me!”

The inner voice that had always guided Soneji returned with a vengeance. He’d been sloppy. He’d been an idiot to think he could control her with words alone.

And now all his plans and dreams were threatened.

Rage tried to seize him. But he’d already made too many mistakes to go off half-cocked. Not now. Not when his freedom and his future were at stake.

Soneji lurched to his feet, felt like he was going to vomit, butswallowed against it and went to the broom closet in the corner. He pulled out his uncle’s old loaded .308, ran the bolt action on the rifle, and went outside onto the porch.

It was hunting season. No one would question hearing a shot or two this deep into the Pine Barrens.

“Please!” he heard Bunny shriek from the woods beyond the van. “Help me!”

Realizing she’d mistaken the old logging two-track for the drive out to the county road, Soneji went cold. He’d planned to play with Bunny for several days at least before things came to a head.