Tabula Rasa by Kitty Thomas Page B

stopped
me.
    “And Elodie? Don’t make me chase you.”
    I should have run, I know I should have, but I was so scared I
couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know if I could trust he didn’t
kill innocents, but if I ran from him would I stop being innocent in
his eyes? Would it justify killing me too? He clearly knew his way
around places like this. I knew he could find me. I knew he could
outrun me. Then he would chop me up into little pieces just like he
was about to do with Trevor.
    I tried to blank my mind of everything but the immediate task in
front of me and went into the other room to get the sheets. When I
returned, the body had been drained and he was moving it onto the
plastic.
    Shannon arranged the body and then took the sheet from me. He
squeezed the blood out down the drain in the floor. “Now go put
that in one of the fireplaces to burn.”
    I shook my head. “Please... I-I can’t...”
    “Sure you can. You couldn’t survive what’s happened to you out here if you
weren’t strong. I need you to keep moving.”
    But still I stood staring at the bloody sheet he held out to me like
it was nothing. All of this was nothing to him.
    “Why do you need to drain and cut him up to bury him?”
    “I’m not burying him.”
    “Why? No one would find him out here.”
    Shannon just stared at me, his eyes frigid blue ice. “No. I don’t
do loose ends.”
    I got the terrified feeling that he was beginning to see me as a
loose end and I started to cry again. He ignored my tears and stood
up, cleaning his hands in one of the pitchers of water. “Come with
me,” he said.
    “W-why?”
    “Because I don’t
trust you. You look like you’ve changed your mind about things.
Have you changed your mind? Because now is a bad time for that. We
are past the point of return. I’m destroying evidence. That looks
bad. You’re in this with me for the long haul. I chose to help you
on your terms because, against all my training and better judgment, I
feel sorry for you and the fucked-up shit you’ve been put through.
But now that means I need to know I can trust you before you’re
allowed to be a free range human again.”
    That didn’t sound good. So I was effectively a hostage now? Why
hadn’t I just let him call the police and get me help? But how
could I have known what he was? How could anyone expect... this?
    “Let’s go,”
he said.
    I couldn’t move. What if this guy was a million times worse than
Trevor? Whatever he’d gone through to develop into a person who
could do something like this had to have shut off the tap of at least
part of his humanity. Even if he’d shown some in being willing to
help me, it was such a small gesture compared to what I’d witnessed
from him since.
    “Just leave me.
P-please. I swear I won’t say anything. How could it benefit me to
talk about this?” I sure as shit didn’t want the attention it
would bring.
    Shannon’s expression closed off, and suddenly it was like any pity
he’d felt for me had been sucked away into another dimension
somewhere or maybe down that big drain with all the blood. He took a
coil of rope out of his bag and advanced on me. I turned and ran, my
self-preservation instincts finally coming to my aid. But he was far
too fast for me.
    He grabbed my arm and hauled me over to a chair in the banquet room.
    “Sit,” he
ordered.
    I sat. “Please... I don’t know what I did wrong. A-are you going
to kill me, too?”
    “No. I’m not
killing you but I can’t have you running.”
    I sat there miserably while he tied me up. Why had I thought even for
a second this guy could be any better than Trevor when all evidence
had pointed to the opposite? I’d just been so desperate for
anything safe to hold onto that I was making up imaginary saviors
where they obviously didn’t exist.
    Once he’d secured me, he disappeared back into the kitchen. He came
out with the bloody sheet and tossed it on the fire, then he was gone
again. He went to another part of