| Sources | She grabs the knife—just a butter knife, but a knife all the same—from the tray, gets her back up against the headboard, and hisses like a cat. Miriam waves the silverware in front of her like a weapon. Making sure he sees it.
“Come near me and I start stabbing.”
Eleanor Caldecott doesn’t seem fazed. “So you remember my son, then.”
Beck Daniels stands in the door. Clean shirt. No blood. Smiling softly, like nothing’s wrong, like he didn’t just beat the piss out of Miriam and choke her out on a gymnasium floor. After he murdered a security guard with her knife.
“Miss Black,” Beck says, offering a gentlemanly head nod.
“Your son,” Miriam seethes.
“Hello, Mother,” Beck says.
“Good morning, Beckett.” Eleanor turns to Miriam. “We don’t share the same last name. Nor do we publicize the fact that we’re related.”
“It’s a secret,” Beck says, finger to smiling lips.
Miriam feels like an animal trapped in a corner. Desperate for an escape route. Beck stands between her and the door. She’s got no way to Batman up to the skylight. A window sits off to her right.
That might be the way out.
The knife pivots in her hand. She turns it from blade-out to blade-in so that it’s less about the thrust and more about the stab. Miriam makes a show of it. She has to.
Her fingers tighten so hard around it the blood drains from her knuckles.
“She’s a fighter,” Beck says to his mother.
“She’s more than that,” Eleanor says.
Miriam snarls. “I’m in the room. I can hear you.”
“Look at the way she holds that butter knife,” Beck says, pointing at her.
Eleanor nods. “And she’s eyeing up the window.”
“Fuck the both of you. Twisted fucks.”
“Miriam,” Eleanor says, “I understand if you’re upset. Anybody would be. You’ve been through a lot. Before you make any ill-considered moves, I feel obliged to mention two things. First: We have the girl. We have Lauren Martin.”
Miriam’s bowels clench.
“I’m willing to discuss the girl’s fate with you, but only if you’re kind enough to hear me out. And that brings me to the second thing: If you do something drastic now, you may not be afforded the privilege of discovering what’s really going on. And we will not be able to guarantee the safety of Lauren Martin. Further, you won’t be privy to my offer.”
“Stick your offer up your son’s ass. Preferably with a fist wrapped in barbed wire.”
“You won’t sit for a story, then?”
Miriam says nothing. She just hunkers there against the headboard like a feral child.
Eleanor smiles. “I’ll take your silence as acquiescence. Let me tell you about the time I was raped by Carl Keener.”
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