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Today, when Kate came with the pills, Gaspard managed to get a sentence out when she removed the tape. "I'll swallow them," he told her.

She set the funnel on the tray and he opened his mouth and extended his tongue, like a good patient. She placed a pill on his tongue and held a small glass of water against his parched lips so he could drink. It is the first water he had had since his arrival and it felt good in his mouth and in his throat. She checked around his tongue to ensure that he had swallowed the medicine. They repeated the exercise four times.

When they were done, Gaspard asked, "How long have I been here?"

"It doesn't matter," she said.

He heard a buzzing. At first, he thought it was in his head, but then he recognized the sound : flies. The decomposing corpse on the floor. It reminded him of the other man, and for a moment he was a cop again. "The second man who lifted me into the van," he said. "Where is he? Have you killed him, too?"

Kate raised a bewildered eyebrow. "Darling, you sound like a raving lunatic."

"He was here," Gaspard said, his mind foggy. "Before."

"It's just us," she answered impatiently.

But he wanted to keep her talking, to get as much information as he could. He glanced around at the windowless room. The subway tiles. The medical equipment. "Where are we?"

She was done with his questions. "Have you thought about what I asked you?" she asked.

He had no idea what she was talking about. "What?"

"What you want to send them." This was delivered with thinly disguised irritation. "They're worried about you, darling." She ran her hand lightly along his arm to where his wrist was bound with a padded leather strap to the gurney. "You're right-handed, yes?"

Gaspard had to think on his feet, while he was still lucid, before the pills kicked in. "Why, Kate? You never sent anything from the other bodies." Then it struck him. Her victims. They were always killed within three days of their abductions. "It's been four days," he said. "They're starting to think I'm dead. You want them to know I'm still alive."

"I'll let you choose. But we need to do it now."

The terror was building in his body, but he knew he couldn't agree to her terms. As soon as he did, he became a partner to it. "No."

"I've removed dozens of spleens," she muttered. "But only postmortem. Do you think you can remain still?"

He started to fold in on himself. "Katherine, don't do this."

"It's moot, of course." She picked up a syringe from the tray. "This is succinylcholine. It's a paralyzing agent, used for surgery. You won't be able to move at all. But you'll remain conscious. You'll feel everything." She glanced at him meaningfully. "I think that's essential, don't you? If you're going to lose a part of your body, you should experience it happening. If you wake up and it's gone, how do you know if you feel any different?"

He couldn't stop it. He knew there was no reasoning with her. He could only protect the people he's left behind. "Who are you going to send it to?" he asked her.

"I was thinking Rachel."

Gaspard's mind lurched, imagining Rachel's face. "Send it to Natalie. Please, send it to Natalie Huard."

Kate paused with her preparations and smiled at him. "If I do, you'll have to be good."

"I'll do what you want," Gaspard agreed. "I'll be good."

"The problem with succinylcholine is that it will paralyze your diaphragm." She holds up a plastic tube that leads to a machine behind her. "So first I'm going to have to intubate you."

Before he could react, she inserted a curved steel blade into his mouth, depressed his tongue, and pushed the tube in behind it. The tube was large, filling his throat, and he gagged violently and fought it. "Swallow," she demanded as she pressed her hand against his forehead, pinning his head hard against the gurney.

He could feel his fingers splay, every muscle tensed as he fought the tube. She leaned in close, tenderly, her hand still on his forehead. "Swallow it," she whispered again. "Fighting it will only make it worse."

He closed his eyes and forced himself to overcome the gag reflex and swallow the tube as she slid it farther down his throat, deep into his body. Then it was done. The air filled his lungs. It was calming, actually. It forced his breaths to equalize, his heart rate to slow. He opened his eyes and watched as she slid the hypo into his IV and adjusted the drip into his arm.

He felt suddenly, disturbingly calm. It was the resignation he had seen on the faces of death row inmates. He had no control, so there was no point in fighting any of it. The sensation bled out of his body until it was just deadweight. He tried to move his fingers, his head, his shoulders, but nothing responded. It was relief, really. He had fought so hard in his tiny career to order chaos, discourage violence, prevent crime. Now he could just let it happen.

Kate smiled at him, and he knew with that smile that he had been played. He had asked for and received a favor from his murderer. And more than that, he noted with dry detachment, he was grateful.

He could only stare at the familiar fluorescent lights and pipes on the white ceiling, vaguely aware of her movements as she washed her hands, prepared an instrument tray, shaved the hair off his abdomen. Cold iodine was wet on his skin and then she pressed the scalpel into his flesh.

It opened easily under the sharp blade in her hands, a slice and then a pop as it pulled through the muscle. He tried to distance himself from it; to talk himself out of the pain. For a moment, he thought he was going to be all right. That he could stand this. That it's no worse than the carving. And then she inserted the clamp and pried open the hole she had made in him. It was a wrenching, ripping, nausea-inducing pain that made Gaspard scream, only he couldn't speak, couldn't move his mouth, couldn't lift his head. He still managed to cry out in his mind, a strangled howl that he carried with him into unconsciousness.

She let him sleep. It felt like days, because when he woke up, his mind had constructed a tunnel of clarity. He turned his head and she was right beside him, face propped up on two stacked fists set on his bed.

They are inches apart, nose-to-nose. The tube was gone from his throat, but his throat ached from it. She had not slept. He could tell. He could see the fine veins underneath the pale skin of her forehead. He knew her expressions. He was starting to know her face as well as Rachel's.

"What were you dreaming about?" she asked him.

Color images flashed through his mind. "I was in a car in a city, looking for my house," he replied. His voice was hoarse, a cracked whisper. "I couldn't find it. I'd forgotten the address. So I just kept circling." He smirked mirthlessly, feeling his chapped lips crack. A hard nut of pain settled in his chest. "I wonder what it means."

Kate doesn't move. "You'll never see them again, you know."

"I know." He glanced down at the bandage on his abdomen. The pain paled compared to the ache of his ribs. His entire torso was bruised, the skin the color of rotten fruit. His body felt like wet sand. He hardly noticed the smell of decomposing flesh anymore. It was a strange thing to be alive. He was getting less and less attached to the idea. "They get it?"

"I sent it to Natalie," she said. "They haven't released it to the media."

"No, they wouldn't."

"Why?"

"They'll want to confirm it's mine," he explained.

She's perplexed. "I sent your wallet with it."

"They'll match the DNA," he reassured her. "It will take a few days."

She lowered her perfect face next to his again, her fingers started to play with his hair, her accent shining through. "They'll know I took it out of you while you were alive. And they'll find traces of the drugs I've given you."

"It's important to you, isn't it?" he asked. "That they know what you're doing to me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I want them to know that I'm hurting you. I want them to know that and not be able to find you. And then I want to kill you." She moved her hand to his forehead and held it there like a mother checking a child for fever. "But I don't think I'll give you back, darling. I think I'll let them wonder. I like to let them wonder sometimes. Life shouldn't always be so cut-and-dried."

He had squatted in the rain next to so many corpses, seen so much death. He had always wondered how many more she killed. Serial killers often killed for years before the police caught on to a pattern. He wanted to know.

Kate grew impatient. "Just ask me how many people I've killed. I want to tell you."

The effort hurt his ribs and he winced. She was still waiting in anticipation . She was like an insistent child who must be indulged. It was the only way to make her go away. "How many people have you killed?"

"You will be number thirty-seven."

He swallowed hard. Jesus Christ, he thought. "That's a lucky number."

"I had my lovers kill for me sometimes. But I always chose whom it would be. It was always at my bidding. So I think I should get to count it, don't you?"

"I think you can count it."

"Are you in pain?" Her face was lit.

He nodded.

"Tell me," she said.

He did. He told her because he knew it would satisfy her, and if she was satisfied, she might give him some peace. She might let him rest. And when she let him rest, he got the pills. "I can't breathe. I can't take a full breath without a searing pain in my ribs."

"What's it like?" Her eyes gleamed.

He searched for the right words. "It's like razor wire ... like someone wrapped razor wire around my lungs, and when I breathe, it cuts deep into the tissue."

"What about the incision?"

"It's starting to throb. It's a different kind of pain. More of a burning. It's okay if I don't move. My head hurts. Especially behind the eyes. The wounds, where you cut me, it feels like it's getting infected. And my skin itches. All over. I think my hands are asleep ... I can't feel them."

"Do you want your medicine?"

He actually smiled, imagining the tingling wave of fog that followed the pills. His mouth watered for it. "Yes."

"All of it?"

"No," he said to her. "I don't want the hallucinations."

"Just the amphetamine and the codeine?"

"Yes."

"Extra codeine?"

"Yes," he replied, choking.

"Ask me for it."

"Can I have some extra codeine?"

She smiled wide. "Yes."

She emptied the pills from bottles on a counter against the wall and returned with the water. She fed them to him, and let him drink. She doesn't check to see if he's swallowed them, because she doesn't need to.

It would be fifteen minutes before he felt the medicine, so he tried to divorce himself from the slow death of his body. She sat in a chair beside his bed, hands neatly on her lap, staring.

"Why did you decide to become an English teacher?" he asked her after a long silence.

"I liked to read."

"But you've got medical training."

"I worked as an ER nurse. I went to medical school, but I dropped out. I would have been a great doctor, though, don't you think?"

"I'm maybe the wrong person to ask."

They sat quietly again, but she was fidgety.

The first tingle bloomed in the center of his face and begin its tidal surge across his body. She reached out and touched his face. It's an affectionate gesture he had learned often indicates that she was about to do something terrible.

"I want to kill you, Gaspard," her voice soft and sweet and untroubled. "I've thought about it. I've fantasized about it for so long."

She ran her fingertips over the edge of his earlobe. It felt good. His breathing eased as the codeine softened the pain of his broken bones, his split flesh. "So do it."

"I want to use drain cleaner," she told him, as if discussing a wine they might serve at a dinner party. "I've always done it quickly. Made them drink a lot of it at the end. Death comes very suddenly." Her face became animated. "But with you, I want to do it slowly. I want to watch you experience death. I want you to drink the drain cleaner slowly. A tablespoon a day. I want to see how long it takes. What it does to you. I want to take my time."

He met her stare. Amazing, he thought, what psychopathic horror lives in that pretty, demure body?

"Are you waiting for my blessing?" he asked.

"You said, you'd be good. I sent the package to Natalie. Like you asked."

"So that's part of the fantasy? I have to take the poison willingly?"

She nodded, biting her lip. "I'm going to kill you, darling," she said with absolute assurance. "I can carve you up and send you piece by piece to your family. Or we can do it my way."

He considered his options. He knew that she presented him with impossible choices, fully realizing that he can choose only one outcome. She wanted total power over him. His only weapon was to retain some illusion of power himself. "Okay," he agreed. "On one condition."

"What?"

"Four more days. If I'm not dead from it in four days, you find some other way to kill me."

"Four days," she concurred, her blue eyes bright with pleasure. "Can we start now?"

He watched her body language change; her excitement fill. He nodded his surrender and she immediately jumped up and went to the counter against the wall. She poured a glass of water, and retrieved a beaker of clear golden fluid, and returned to him. "It will burn," she instructed him. "You'll have to resist a gag reflex. I'll plug your nose for you and follow the drain cleaner with water to wash it down." She poured a teaspoon of fluid from the beaker and held it at his chin.

The familiar smell sickens him. "Are you ready?"

He had no sense of consequence. It wasn't him there in the basement with Katherine Cross. It was someone else. He opened his mouth while she plugged his nose and thrusted the spoon far back into his throat and emptied the poison.

He swallowed. She held the glass of water to his lips and he gulped as much of it as he could. The burning was overwhelming. It scalded his throat and then flamed into his gullet, and for a second he was back in his physical self, his nervous system in full panic. He screwed up every muscle in his face and bit down on his tongue to keep from vomiting. Then, after a while, it passed and he laid panting on the bed, Kate holding his head in her hands.

"Shh," she said, soothing him. "You did well." She smoothed his hair and kissed his forehead several times. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out six large white oval pills. "More codeine," she explained. "You can have as much as you want. From now on."