"My name is Mason."

What's that rattling sound? Like dice?

While he talked, he kept one hand buried deep in the pocket of his pants.

Dice. He has dice in his pocket. Dice that he kept nervously fiddling with as he watched her eat.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Was this a test? she wondered. Was she supposed to answer or keep quiet?

"You can speak."

She was at a disadvantage since she couldn't read his face, but he sounded pleased.

"I give you permission."

"Gillian." Her voice came out a rough croak. She cleared her throat and tried once more. "My name is Gillian."

"Gillian."

That rattling again.

"Mason and Gillian. I like that."

Wouldn't he already have known her name? Wouldn't he have heard it on the news? Yes, he was testing her to see if she told the truth.

Blythe must be out of her mind with worry. And Mary. What was Mary doing? She'd be pissed at her for getting herself into such a mess. What would Mary do if she were here? Gillian wondered. If she were sitting across the table from a killer?

"Eat some more," Mason demanded.

It was hard to think of him as someone with a name. The mask over his face made him seem inhuman.

While he watched, she ate a little more soup and drank some of the milk. The numb, thick-lipped feeling started coming over her once more. She was staring into her bowl, watching the tiny bubbles of orange oil gather at the edges, when he said something.

Hmm? She lifted her head. It was heavy. Her whole body was heavy, and she realized she'd been drugged again.

"Are you finished?"

She nodded, her eyelids weighted.

"Would you like to dance?"

She suddenly imagined him doing the twist in the middle of the kitchen. She started to giggle, but at the last moment was able to turn it into a hiccup.

Her feet were bound in the crippling shoes, and she stumbled as he led her to the adjoining living room. He left her standing in the middle of a round, floral, latch-hook rug. Beam me up, Scotty.

He fiddled around in the corner, then came back and put one hand at her lower spine, her right around his waist. With the other, he grasped her free hand, poised in what she guessed was going to become a waltz.

The music started.

It was Britney Spears singing, "Oops!… I Did It Again."

Maybe the drugs were a good thing. She might have laughed for real if she weren't so fucked up. And it certainly took the edge off her fear.

He dragged her around in the cramped shoes, her head lolling from side to side.

Oops, I did it again.

She wasn't a very good dancer, he thought, looking down at her through the annoying edge of the ski mask. And at the moment, she wasn't very pretty. Her eyes were half-closed, and her mouth was hanging open. But he liked her. At least he thought so. It was hard to tell because she hadn't really said much, but at least she hadn't lied to him. She hadn't tried to tell him she was somebody else.

He knew who she was: Gillian Cantrell. He knew she was a cop assigned to the case-a BCA agent. The media had let that slip last night. The police department and the FBI had been hoping to keep her occupation a secret. They must have been afraid he'd panic and kill her if he found out who she was. On one channel, a Minneapolis detective named John Wakefield had been interviewed, and he'd berated the news people for not being able to keep their mouths shut. He'd waved his arm at the camera, saying, "All for a story. You're nothing but a bunch of sharks."

The song ended, and he stopped.

"Mason?"

The s was slurred. Her eyes were closed. He'd given her too much dope. It was hard to know how much to give a person. She ate more of the soup than he'd thought she would, and the drugs seemed to hit her harder than they had the other girls.

"I gotta sit down."

He dragged her to the couch and propped her in the corner. He should have carried her into the bedroom, but he wanted her to sit with him awhile. He pulled up a chair so he was close to her.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"That's good."

"Would you like a boyfriend?"

"Not… r-really."

He laughed at her honesty.

"What do you do for a living?"

She frowned. "Huh?"

Playing for time, he noted. "What do you do?"

She pretended to be sleeping. That made him mad. He grabbed her arm and squeezed. "Do you want me to hit you again?"

"N… no."

"I have a place where I take girls who are bad. It's a special place I've made. Do you want me to take you there?"

"No."

"Then tell me what you do."

Her eyes opened. Beyond the drug-laden haze was lucidity and the core of who she was. "W-why are you… askin' me somethin'… you already know?"

He was caught off guard. Was she talking back? Was this something she should be punished for? She hadn't lied to him. He decided it was funny, and he laughed. "I like you!" he said, delighted. She was fading again. He shook her arm, not wanting their conversation to end. "Don't go to sleep. Let's talk some more."

She was lolling in the corner of the couch. Her posture was bad, but he felt this wasn't the time to scold her for it. "I want to talk," he repeated. "Those other girls were stupid. They weren't interesting to talk to at all. But I think you might be. Do you like to read?"

Gillian struggled to stay awake. She'd been a reader her entire life. There had even been a time when she'd tried her hand at writing. "Blake," she said, not expecting to produce the right answer, but hoping it would open up the conversation.

"Blake? You read Blake? He's overrated."

"Joyce," was her next offer. This was like playing the child's game of hotter and colder.

"Well…" Warmer.

Then "Proust."

She heard him inhale and knew she was hot.

"You've read Proust?"

"Not everything. I read Swann's Way and In a Budding Grove."

"Really? I've never met anybody who's read Proust."

He'd apparently been hanging around with the wrong people. She used to belong to a Proust group that met every other Thursday at a coffee shop on the U campus.

"I've read the entire seven volumes," he announced proudly.

A diehard. Even in her exalted group, she didn't know of many who'd read all seven. "That's… amazing."

"More than once. Maybe five or six times."

Five or six times? She felt a black wave of sorrow wash over her. Once was admirable; five or six times was impossible to fathom. It was an obsession beyond obsession and a total lack of social interaction rolled into one. It spoke of delusion and a life that existed completely within the boundaries of fiction.

"This is fantastic! We were meant for each other!"

Mason was ecstatic. "I must do something. Share something of myself with you."

He was already sharing enough, she thought, shoving herself up a little higher, her hand sinking into the plush couch.

All at once, he pulled off the ski mask.

There was nothing monstrous about him. Nor was he handsome in the way the witness from Canary Falls had stated. Something she would later notice was that he had a face that, when you really examined it, seemed unfinished. There was a haziness to his features, an undefined quality, as if he'd been erased a little. He was the last copy before the printer decided too much quality was being lost. He was one of her mother's pots before the detail and glaze were added.

He was no one she knew. None of the suspects on the police department's list. No one they were watching or looking for.

"This is something rare."

Mary, Anthony, and Elliot stood in the lab of Dr. Henry Joseph ling, Professor of Horticulture at the University of Minnesota. He was a leading authority on roses, and held patents on many varieties that were currently being tested at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. "This rose petal, the one found with the raped college student, is a garden-variety rose. But this one-" He pointed to the microscope. "This is something unique."