He puts on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and pads barefoot into the kitchen. There is orange juice in the fridge that he brought from the Twins’ house, along with some fresh eggs and bread from his mother’s house that isn’t as fresh now. There were already a few food items out here, but mostly junk food, like bags of chips and a fizzy drink of the kind he was never allowed to drink growing up and doesn’t want to drink now. He pours himself some orange juice and puts some bread in the toaster and puts on a pair of shorts while waiting for his toast to pop. He sits at the kitchen table and reads the newspaper he gave to Cooper yesterday. He learns the name of the girl he found last night. Emma Green. He reads an article about capital punishment, about the rights and wrongs of it, agreeing with both sides. The Twins deserved to die for what they did to people, but Adrian doesn’t deserve to die for what he did to the Twins. And if he did, then wouldn’t the people who carried out those executions on prisoners, wouldn’t they be killers too, and then wouldn’t they get arrested and go to jail and be next in line for the electric chair? Did New Zealand even have an electric chair? He isn’t sure when they got rid of the death penalty in New Zealand, or if they even had it, and, if they did, how did they use to do it? Probably a firing squad. Not all killers are monsters. Some have their reasons.

He pours a second glass of juice and tucks the Taser into his pocket and grabs hold of the gun and opens up the bedroom door where Emma Green is tied to a bed similar to the one he slept in. He thinks this one was perhaps the master bedroom for whoever the Twins killed out here before taking it over. The furniture is old-fashioned with lots of curves and engravings, and the bedspread has lots of flower patterns over it. The window is open and the air is warm and the girl is fast asleep and he stands motionless staring at her. He wants to smell her hair and use his finger to stroke it from her face. After a few minutes she starts to stir as if sensing him. Her eyes flutter open and fix on him. She pulls back in horror.

“I’m the one who found you,” he says, “and helped you. See, I have something for you to drink.”

“What . . . what do you—” she says, then starts to cough. Her body tightens as she tries to cover her mouth with her hand but her hands are tied up around the headboard. “Do you, you, want?” she asks.

She’s naked, but last night when he tied her to the bed he draped a sheet over her. He realizes now that she thinks he’s the one who took her. Didn’t she see Cooper?

“Please, I’m not the one who abducted you,” he says. “I’m trying to help you.” He steps toward the bed and she has no more room to pull back from him. He holds the glass out toward her. “I want you to drink this,” he says. “I want you to feel better.”

Before she can answer, he tips the drink toward her mouth. She gulps it down eagerly.

“Don’t you remember me?” he asks, while she’s still drinking. “I helped you. I put you into the bath and helped cool you down and gave you water and took the duct tape off your eyes.”

He pulls the glass away. She slowly nods. Her lips are wet with juice and there are drops on her chin. He’ll have to pick up some more glue when he’s getting supplies today.

“I remember,” she says. “You put me in the trunk of a car against something that smelled dead,” she says, “but if you didn’t take me, why do you have me tied up?”

“It’s complicated,” he says, and it always is. “I’m the man trying to help you,” he says, which isn’t exactly a lie. He wants to help her get better so he can give her to Cooper.

“But you kidnapped me,” she says.

“No, I found you,” he says.

“Then why tie me up?”

“It’s complicated,” he says again, and he likes this answer. He’ll use it on Cooper too when Cooper starts asking him things he doesn’t want to talk about.

“If you didn’t kidnap me,” she says, “then can you untie me? And I need food too—I haven’t eaten in days.”

“I’m going to untie you,” he says, “and give you some food, but first you need to understand that there’s no way you can understand what’s going on here. If you help me I can help you, and then you can eat and I can take you home,” he says, and the first part is true but the second part isn’t, and he can feel himself blush. He hates lying to somebody so . . . so pretty.

“Help you?” she asks. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“I’m hurt,” he says, and he looks down at his leg. With the gun still in his hand, he tries to roll up the leg of his shorts but the Taser in his pocket stops him. He takes it out and rests it on the chest of drawers behind him where it is well out of Emma Green’s reach. Then he rolls his shorts up to reveal the medical padding. “I was shot last night and there’s an infection and I need you to clean it and bandage it.”

“I’m not a nurse,” she says.

“But you’re a woman,” he says, and in his experience all women seem to know what to do. “Please, help me with my wound and I’ll let you go.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I don’t lie,” he says, lying and feeling bad about it.

“So what exactly do you want me to do?”

“Clean the wound and bandage it. I want you to make me feel better.”

“And for that you’ll let me go.”

“Of course.”

“You promise?”

“On my mother’s life.”

“Then you’ll need to untie me.”

“I have a gun,” he says, waving it back and forth slightly even though surely she’s seen it by now. “If you try to escape I’ll shoot you. Please, don’t make me do that, it really is the last thing I want to do,” he says, and this time the entire statement is true.

“Where’s the first-aid kit?”

“There are some things in the bathroom,” he says, “but I don’t know what everything is and most of it is old anyway.”

“Then untie me and bring everything you have back in here.”

“No. I’ll get everything first and then untie you.”

He heads back into the bathroom. He stares at the mirror. The rash is still there with the same intensity, but he’s no longer flushed—if anything he looks very pale. Like a ghost. He scoops everything into a plastic bag and carries it back into the room. He returns to the bathroom and fills a bucket with warm water and finds some cotton balls and a couple of clean cloths.

“It will be easier if you take your shorts off,” the girl says.

“Ah . . . I don’t know. I think it’ll be okay,” he answers, remembering the time he vomited on the prostitute.

“They’re going to keep getting in the way.”

“It’s just that . . . that . . .” he doesn’t know how to finish. He’s never taken his pants off around a woman before, except for last night when Cooper’s mother helped him, but she was more like a mother and less like a woman and that’s a big difference. “The shorts stay on.”

“Okay. It’s your decision. You need to untie me.”

“I know.”

“And I’d like another drink.”

“When we’re done.”

“You promise you’re going to let me go?”

“You sound like you don’t believe me.”

“I do believe you,” she says. “After all, you saved me from whoever took me, and for that I’m thankful.”

Adrian smiles. He likes her.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Adrian,” he tells her. He had never planned on telling her his name, and can’t believe how quickly he’s told her now.

“I really like your name, Adrian.”

“You do?”

“Of course,” she says, smiling at him, and wow, what a smile! He can feel his heart beating. “It reminds me of classic romance novels.”

“It does?”

“Sure it does,” she says. “Adrian . . .”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just saying your name. I like it.”

He’s pleased that she likes it. It makes him feel . . . warm inside.

“My name is Emma,” she tells him. “Emma Green. I’m glad you’re going to take me home, Adrian, because my family will be worried about me. My mum especially. I can imagine she will be crying a lot, and so will my dad, and I have a brother too. My mum has cancer,” she tells him, “and is dying.”