Rapture

He was ready for it to be him. His death would be an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence practically no one had heard. It would transform Bonnie's and Georgianne's lives forever. The whole story would come out and make news all around the country. They would never escape the importance he would have achieved in their lives. In death, at least, he would have them both, and they would spend the rest of their days haunted by the memory of him. It was a sweet and profoundly satisfying thought, and Jeff smiled at Bonnie again.

"You are like me," he repeated, "and you'd better kill me while you have the chance."

"Listen to me," Bonnie ordered, painfully aware of the cramps developing in her hands. "With that hand, reach into your pocket and take out the car keys. Very slowly, and make no other moves. Then put the keys on your stomach and your hand back under you."

When he did that, Bonnie intended to release his hair, put the keys between her teeth, and then pour some sand in his open eyes so that he couldn't race right after her when she broke for the car. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best she could devise. She didn't want to hurt him, she just wanted to get away. Filling his eyes with sand would slow him down enough ... but Jeff refused to cooperate.

"No," he was saying, "no. You listen to me for a second. I'm not going through that rigmarole with you, Bonnie. You can kill me if you want, but I'm going to stand up. And you should think what you'll say if you do kill me. Are you going to tell the police that I killed your father? What proof will you show them? You don't have a weapon, you don't have a confession, you don't have anything to tie me to your father's death. And what'll you say when the police come up with witnesses who'll testify that I was at home in California when your father actually died? Kill me if you think you have to, but you'll destroy your mother and ruin your own life in the process."

"Don't move," Bonnie demanded, but it came out more as a plea than a command. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her resolve had crumbled away in the few moments it had taken Jeff to speak, and she no longer knew what to do. As long as he had been willing, eager to die, she'd had no doubt that she was right about him. But now everything he'd just said rang true, and she realized how flimsy her case was. Regardless of what had transpired between them, she didn't have a single concrete piece of evidence against him.

"I am moving," Jeff said, and he started to take his hands out from beneath his body. "I'm getting up right now."

Bonnie twisted his head away sharply and shoved him. Then she jumped up and bolted for the car. Annoyed but smiling, Jeff caught up with her before she'd gone twenty yards. He knocked her to the ground, and when she started to roll over, he stepped on her hand and pulled the knife from her grip. Then he positioned himself so that Bonnie would have to pass him to get to the car and, beyond it, the road. He glanced around, but they were the only two people in sight. Bonnie got to her feet slowly, rubbing her wrist and looking confused. She looked at Jeff, and it all came back into focus. A fine mist, so light it was nearly invisible, floated on the air.

.You can understand, can't you?" she asked anxiously. "You can see why I might have thought-"

"Bonnie."

"If you had nothing to do with what happened to my father, what you'd do now is drive me back to Boston."

"And?" It was Jeffs turn to smirk.

"And we'd say good-bye, and that would be the end of it."

"Oh, really? You'd decide you had been wrong about me and that I was really all right, is that it? And you'd never say a word about me to your mother, you'd never tell her anything about-this?"

Bonnie couldn't answer. She kept thinking she should have stabbed him, cut him somehow, not fatally but enough to slow him down. But how could she do that to someone who hadn't raised a hand to her and who might not have had anything to do with her father's killing? Jeff had toyed with her, he had let her appear to get the upper hand, and then, when he was ready, he'd pulled the rug out from under her as if it was the easiest thing in the world. And the worst part of it-what had rendered her helpless-was that he was right: she had no proof, no evidence, not a single hard fact to justify her suspicions.

"You have to understand what it's been like for my mother and me," she said, because she knew she had to talk to him. "I'm sorry, very sorry, I acted like that, but ... I didn't want to think you were involved, but so many crazy things have been going through my mind since Dad died. It really fucked me up. You can understand that, Jeff, can't you? I'm sorry I put you through that whole scene. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. I was scared, and-"

"Yeah, well."