Page 89 of The Chain House

“Then I’ll come live with you.”

“I wish it were that easy.”

“It can be.”

“I’m on your side, Luther. I’ll do whatever I can—”

“I’m not Luther,” he said forcefully. “I told you that.” In his eyes, she saw fury rising. And then he said, “If I can’t live with you, I guess I’ll have to kill you, Dr. Hawthorne.”

She swallowed hard. “That sounds a little harsh … even for Holden Caulfield.”

“That’s because Holden didn’t say it.”

“Who said it?”

“That was Mr. Hyde.”

CHAPTER45

BETH KNEW SHE was taking a chance in calling out the name Luther.

Luther Wright.

The last time she’d screamed one of her captor’s names, she’d nearly been attacked and raped by one of his men, before “Oliver Crown” himself had come to the rescue. But she also knew the name Luther Wright might trigger him somehow, hoping at the very least it would get him upstairs again and into her room. It might seem like a little victory to her, but if he was in here, if she had his attention, then he couldn’t be elsewhere doing God only knew what to someone else.

What surprised her was how quickly he’d come, and the fact that he’d brought with him a chair to sit in. She’d called his name only three times, before she’d heard his footsteps in the hall and the doorknob turned. He didn’t walk in angrily, she noticed, as he sat in the chair and faced her uncomfortable seat on the floor, but more like he was resigned. Or, perhaps, glad she’d finally figured it out. And before saying one word to her, he removed his Guy Fawkes mask and placed it delicately on the floor. His face was pale and scar-pocked, the mountain-range stitching lurid and raw. For a long beat, they stared at one another.

“So that’s what this has been about all along?” she asked.

“Wrong.”

“Why did you try to kill me twenty years ago, Luther?”

“Luther is dead,” he said. “He died as a little boy … when his father took the red-hot iron poker from the fire and dragged it across my face.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t like me.”

“Why didn’t he like you?”

“Because he never wanted me.”

Beth tried again. “Why did you try to kill me inside the Hawthorne mansion?”

“Because the Breaker of Chains told me too.”

“And not because I wouldn’t take you in as a boy?”

“No.” He scratched the puckered wound on his cheek. “Although the bringing of us together again showed me quite plainly how small the world really is. Do you believe in fate?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Is it fate that has me here … inside a Chain House?”

“You’ve read the books?”

“No,” she said. “But Billy told me about them … before you murdered him.”

“I told him to stop talking, and he didn’t.”