Tabula Rasa by Kitty Thomas Page B

the bed
beside me.
    “If you want a shower, now is the time.”
    God, yes, I wanted a shower. I hadn’t had a real shower in months,
and even worse was the fact that I couldn’t remember it when I
actually had.
    I was in there a lot longer than he preferred. Probably fifteen or
twenty minutes. Until the water ran cold. It was just such a lovely
novelty having hot water pouring over me.
    Shannon banged on the bathroom door. “Let’s go.”
    He probably thought I’d climbed out the bathroom window. There was
no bathroom window, but I’m sure it didn’t prevent him from
imagining some way I could still do it. Or maybe he thought I was
fashioning a weapon out of the sink pipe.
    I was just turning off the water and pulling back the shower curtain
to get out when he kicked the door in. I jerked the curtain around
me.
    “We need to get on the road,” he said as if he hadn’t kicked
the door down. Just a normal day with Shannon. I wondered what his
friends thought of him or if they were just as bad. Maybe they were
all just like him: highly paranoid and shady.
    Shannon retreated back into the bedroom, and I got out, dried off,
and put the clothes he’d given me at the castle back on. He didn’t
say another word about either my long shower or busting in on me like
that. Every time he had an opportunity and I thought he was going to
pounce on me and just... take... nothing happened. I was becoming
increasingly convinced that I was right about Shannon not
prioritizing sex.
    In a way, that scared me more. I felt sure it was some deeper sign of
sociopathy or something. Like he got all his thrills from the big
death instead of the little one.
    We got back in the SUV, Shannon turned in the key, and we were on the
road again. I wondered what he’d used for ID when he’d gotten the
room? Had he used his real information, or did he have fake IDs? Or
had he talked his way out of it, using the kid’s desire to leave
work against him?
    Shannon stopped a couple of times for gas, a couple of times for
food, and gave me a few more bathroom breaks. He watched me like a
hawk at each location.
    I was about to go crazy without the radio or human speech. You’d
think I would have gotten used to it with all the time with only
Trevor, but there were the chickens. And birds. And sometimes deer
would wander into the park. A few times I sat so statue-still that
they’d come up to me. But it had taken weeks. It had been a game to
see how close one would come. I think six feet from me was my record.
And then a stupid crow had sent it running.
    And there had been music in the castle. Ren Fair music, but still.
And at least Trevor spoke to me.
    I could probably manage to fit most of my conversation with Shannon
since leaving the castle onto the back of a napkin.
    He’d had to make a detour to the airport where his car was parked
and drop off the rental SUV. He carefully kept me out of view of
cameras without making it look too odd, then we got into his car and
continued.
    His real car was a shiny black four-door Cadillac that looked like
something you’d drive the president around in. The license plate
said, Georgia. I half expected to ride in the back with a glass
divider between us, but he put me in the front with him. There was no
glass divider.
    I could have screamed for help in the airport rental place, and I’m
pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to stop me. But there was
that luggage with Trevor in it that we were dragging around. What if
I got help but then they decided I’d been an accomplice? There was
also an insane part of me that trusted Shannon, despite all
reasonable evidence that I shouldn’t. There was still a part of me
that wanted to crawl inside his cold dead silence to escape the
scrutiny of the world.
    Shannon was a man of utility. He packed the most practical, versatile
things. He drove the most unobtrusive car. He spoke the fewest words
necessary to get his point across. When we got to his house, I knew
it was