The cuff wouldn't slide off easily. Her hand pulsed, she knew she had to get it off before it completely swelled. Reyes pushed against the metal, wedged the cuff between her feet and pulled with what little strength she had. Skin folded in on itself, metal grated against bone, eyes closed, she pulled with everything she had. The world narrowed, a fuzzy blackness crept at the edges of her vision, finally her hand came free.

Heart pounding madly on the bones of her rib cage, sweat already soaked her shirt, and the thought of going into shock lay heavily on her. Her hands were trembling, her right a mangled mess of flesh, blood and broken bone.

Stairs creaked as she moved up them, less walking more stumbling, holding the handrail with her good hand. The trapdoor was closed, around the frame a small sliver of light shot out. Her heart sank, finally a bit of that despair threatened to take her; it would be locked for sure.

But when she pushed, the door creaked open.

She was in a dimly lit room. Concrete everywhere, shelving around the sides and a pervasive smell of gasoline. This was the garage.

Sarah grabbed the handle of another door, her heart felt lighter when it turned easily. She waited for that music to fill her ears, the classical kind from before. But it was silent, beyond her labored breathing. The door opened to an overbuilt kitchen, with marble counter tops, tiled floors and expensive things a house wife would swoon over. Before she could stop herself, she tumbled to the floor and landed on her hand. Needles shot up her arm, her eyes swam with tears, a vice seized her and kept air from escaping her lungs. She got up shakily, cradling her hand against her chest. After a moment, when her breath came back, she pulled a knife from a block on the countertop.

In the living room, another easel sat upright, she was going to check it but saw the front door and survival won over curiosity. But the handle to the door wouldn't move. She looked down to find a lock on her side of the door, tried fruitlessly at the handle again.

There had been a backdoor near the kitchen. But when she got there it was the same story: door lock on both sides.

It didn't matter, windows could be shattered.

Back in the kitchen, after searching through almost every drawer, she found a metal tenderizer. She left the knife on the countertop and picked up the mallet in her left hand. The weight of it felt good.

For a moment she paused and listened. Waited to hear the creak of floorboards from upstairs or the click of a door opening or closing. If anyone was in the house, if he was here, he'd most definitely hear the window shattering. Could she get out before he got her?

But seeing the world, beyond the two or three inches of glass, gave her courage. She could see the street, darkened by the pitch of midnight. Freedom was a single throw away.

The front window was biggest, she reeled back and threw the metal mallet, squinting and covering her eyes from the shattered glass.

But she didn't hear a sound of a breaking window, instead a dull thud. When she opened her eyes, she saw the window was fine, beyond the tiny mark her tenderizer had left. She reached out and touched it, but it wasn't glass at all. It was a sort of plastic. She brought the mallet down again, but all it did was send a shockwave through her arm.

Sarah picked up the mallet and moved to the dining room, she pulled back, teeth frozen in a grimace, and brought the mallet against another window. Again, a dull thud and the hammer bounced back.

Frantic now, panic beginning to set in, she stumbled from window to window, only to find that every single one was made of the reinforced plastic. Again she hit—each strike punctuated by a cry from the back of her throat—and again the hammer bounced uselessly.

She let the hammer drop to her feet, and let herself sink to her knees, looking out the front window. All at once, she felt like that little girl again: trapped in a big box, with the monsters lurking on the perimeter, pacing in the shadows, giving her a taste of the real world—a car ride somewhere, a piece of food from a fast food joint, in this case a large reinforced window looking out—but never permitting the real thing. A sob crawled up her throat and before she could help it, tears rolled down her face.

She was about to pound on the windows for help, when a shrill bell went off next to her. She recoiled away from the noise.

It was a phone.

Again it rang, but no one answered. She waited for it to stop midway through, to hear that baritone voice come from perhaps upstairs or maybe the room right next to her.

Nothing.

It rang once more, then stopped. The room is once again bathed in silence.

All at once it came to her, her only option. She picks up the receiver, her call to the outside world. Logic dictates she should dial the three numbers for help but she doesn't. Often in a state of panic, victims forget about 911. They call their mothers or brothers, because fear and panic responses send people to something more ingrained—something closer to home.

More likely it's because she trusts him more than anyone else in the world

* * * * *

"Hello?" I asked again and for another moment there was nothing.

"Cooper?" The voice asked, I held my breath.

"Reyes?! Is that you? Are you OK?"

"I'm breathing."

"Tell me where you are."

There's a pause from the other line, "I'm in his house, Cooper. You have to help me. I can't get out, I'm locked in, the"—she paused for a halting moment, as if she's heard something, and whispered— "there's no way out."

"Do you know the address?"

"No. No I don't I—I have to get out of here, Cooper. I have"—I heard her choke something down and take a breath. Then her voice came back, "Lemme check."

I was already moving for the front door, leaving behind the dead woman and ghastly painting of Reyes and her ferret. The glass walkway doesn't seem so bleak or cold, the faces in the photos watched me leave instead of leering at my presence. I'm walking down the stairs when the receiver moved again.

"I got mail here." She said, her breathing sounded labored, pinched somewhere. I waited for her to recite it.

"What's the address, Reyes?"

"There's two addresses between every piece of mail."

"Is one of them in East Barrington?"

"Yeah," She said, and for a fleeting moment I heard the voice of my partner. The kind she used in interrogation room three. "How'd you know?"

"Doesn't matter, where's the other?"

"1035 Lincoln." She said, then added, "It's the one with the hedges in the front."

I made a mental note, sprinting towards my leased cruiser.

"Got it, keep your head down, OK?"

She didn't say anything.

"Reyes? Are you still there?"

I ran but held my breath at the same time, listening for something on the other line. "Reyes—Sarah, are you there?"

In a voice soft and quiet, so timid I could barely hear it, she whispered, "He's here."

"Get something sharp and hide." I said, swinging open the door to my car. I cranked it on and pressed my foot to the gas without bothering to put on my seatbelt.

"Coop. Please hurry." For the first time that night, I felt terrified. It clicked, that human deep inside me: I'm sure I'm about to lose someone.

"I'm coming." I told her.

The other line clicked off. I reached down for the radio, only then remembering there wasn't one in this retired cruiser. I flipped on my lights and peeled out of the neighborhood, dialing the station on my mobile.

"This is Mary, how can I direct—"

"This is Cooper, I need every able police cruiser to deploy to 1035 Lincoln Ave. And a morgue unit sent to 435 East Barrington."

"Cooper?" She asked. "Weren't you sup—"

"Can it, Mary. Reyes is at that address, she's in trouble. Get—"

"I'll get Chief on it right away."

"Thank you. Remember, 1035 Lincoln."

"I got it, Coop." She said in a voice not kind and hung up.

I tossed the phone into the passenger seat. The midnight streets whizzed past as I pressed the gas pedal down further. I blasted through the neighborhoods, rocking any slumber these quiet suburbs once held. I pulled onto the main road and pushed the car to 90.

Lincoln was in an old part of town, more drugs, more prostitutes, far from the precinct, meaning less law, which meant I could be the first there if I hurried; not out of selfishness but sheer primal protectiveness. In the same way a father would trust himself before he trusted a trained professional to save their child. Freeway lights flashed by on the open road, I pushed the car faster: 110, 120...

I hoped I'd make it in time to save Reyes.

* * * * *

She was in the living room when he came home. He parked his car on the street and walked through the lawn that runs up to the house. There was a rattle from his keys and the door swung open. He carried a grocery bag in one hand, and a large duffel in the other. He shut the door, dropped the duffle and locked them both back in. She couldn't get a good look at his face, with one eye swollen shut, it was nothing but a blur beyond the hair and clean shaven skin.

Whistling a tune, he moved through the living room. Her right hand trembled against her chest, the left still clutched the metal mallet, she thought of the knife she left on the counter top. She could see him, hear his boots click against the hardwood, from the corner next to the couch. If he cared to look, he'd see her straight out, a bruised and bloodied mess smeared into a picturesque room of cream colored perfection.

But he didn't.

He moved to the kitchen, still whistling—Beethoven's Fur Elise, her memory told her—placed the bag near the door to the garage and began to unload the paper bags until he spotted something. His head tilted as he looked at an open drawer, the one that used to house the tenderizer now in her hands, then he looked to the knife on the counter. He paused for a halting moment, closed the drawer, and went back to his bags, whistling his tune.

She ducked her head down and waited. For the first time in decades, she felt true terror. Eyes closed, she couldn't help the trembling in her lip or the wetness on her cheeks. A shudder washed over her body and she's pissed herself. All of a sudden she's horribly aware of how she smells. Of blood and piss and sweat. She's sixteen again.

Then the whistling stopped. He saw a spot on the floor. He frowned, and knelt down. There was red, betraying the place where she'd fallen. He swiped a finger across it, smeared it between his thumb and first two fingers, then looked to the drawer he closed before.

He unzipped the duffel bag, pulled out his mahogany mask—this one grins—and secured it to his face. He reached back in and pulled out something black.

"Detective..." the voice called from behind the mask. With the flick of his wrist, the baton shot out. A ball nub at the end of a long metal rod.

She heard the click of boots on tile, then in the garage. He was humming a tune. When he saw the opened trapdoor: "Clever little girl... How very exciting."

Somehow, somewhere, she found courage and got up, moved back towards the front door. Her bare feet quiet on the cold tile near the entry. A wall dissected the house, blocking his sight from the garage.

"Detective." He sang, elongating every word. "I know you are here."

She heard his footsteps and moved to the dining room, staying 15 feet ahead of the sound of his feet and horrid humming, trailing behind her.

The footsteps stopped, she heard something resembling laughter and felt a current run through her.

"Well this is certainly unexpected. What a lovely twist." He inhaled deeply, "Do you smell that? Tension. Terror. Trepidation."

She saw him lift the cover of the dining room table and peer below. "Peekaboo." He said playfully, then sagged a bit when she wasn't there. "Oh, darling...I just want to help. Where are you?"

Back in the kitchen, her feet padded the floor quietly. Her heartbeat deafening in her ears.

"You are quite the muse, Detective." His voice was a fingernail up her spine. The deep baritone resonating in her mind. "We will create something beautiful, you and I; the Painter and the Poet entwined with cosmic beauty."

She moved again, circling around the dissecting wall and into the living room, she waited for him to walk from the entry way, but his feet stopped, and they didn't start again. Instead, something else: the sound of his boots hitting the floor, first one then the other. Then all was quiet.

She couldn't hear him. All she could hear was her pounding heart: a bass drum in an opera hall. In a mad dash, she went to the garage, hoping to find a spot to hide. Cowering in the darkness, she saw him walk to the garage door, and pause. She held her breath, covering her mouth so she didn't scream. He walked on.

For what feels like an eternity, there was nothing. She gripped the mallet hard in her hand, a board creaked from the living room, her heartbeat faster now, cold sweat stuck to her like fly paper. She peered from behind the box, saw nothing in the kitchen. Her mind told her to duck and hide, but she couldn't peel her eyes away from the doorway.

No floorboards protest, she had no idea where he was. Between the pain, the fear and the fever, her vision was tunneled. She couldn't see him, but she could feel him. Like a ghostly hand tickling the hairs on the back of her neck.

Then the mask leered from the doorway. The smile carved into the dark wood taunted her, blue eyes flickered, peering right at her and a chuckle echoed, crawling its way into her skin.

"Gotcha." He said in a whisper and walked into the garage.

He moved towards her with steady purpose. She backed away from him, mallet shaking in her hand.

"Get away from me," she shouted. A tremor seized her arm, and she smelled something burning.

He stepped towards her, swatting away the mallet she swung like an adult dealing with a petulant child.

"I'll admit," he said, inexorably walking towards her, baton in his hand. "I underestimated your gumption. Your...." he paused for a moment, thinking of the word. "...Je ne sais quoi."

Her back touched the far wall of the garage, she scrambled to move when pain shot through her again.

She couldn't help it now, she screamed, his fingers were tightly wrapped around her broken hand. He pulled, dragging her across the concrete, then through the kitchen. Light flashed across her vision, bile rose up in her throat.

"Into the light," he said, right hand gripping her wrist. "I must see it all." He left her on the floor and went to his bag. Pulled out a folded canvas and laid it out like a picnic blanket.

Pain avalanched up her arm, but she got to her feet, and grabbed for the knife on the counter top.

"Ah, ah, ahhh..." he scolded. "You shouldn't play with sharp things." She turned and slashed, the blade caught him across the open hand that reached for her.

He recoiled back, clutching his gashed palm. Crimson coated his fingers, dripping to the floor. His breath shuddered and he let out a moan. "Oh yes..." his voice a mouthpiece of ecstasy, head tilted back reminding her of that Man that haunts hers dreams. "You will be my magnum opus; my canvas of flesh."

Before she could move, he brought the baton down and crippled her other hand. That feeling burst in her chest and she screamed. She heard screeching tires, saw a white light, the smell of butterscotch and burnt plastic and felt herself being pulled.

Heard him humming his terrible tune.

Then everything went dark.