The words hung in the air, more chilling than the blizzard’s shriek. *You think I can't smell the bitter almonds from the fern, even from here?*
My feigned unconsciousness evaporated, burned away by the acid of his words. Every muscle in my body, which had been locked in a performance of placid sleep, now coiled into a spring of pure terror. He knew. He had known the entire time. The call to the security company, the tossing of my passport—it wasn't the cleanup after a successful sedation. It was theater. It was a demonstration of his power, a taunt aimed at the "mouse" he knew was wide awake, listening in the dark.
My eyes snapped open. He was gone. The doorway to his study stood empty, a rectangle of deeper blackness in the dim room. The game hadn't just changed; it had been a differen
